Welcome to the Party

Trigger warning: Themes of disturbing sexual content, violence, and mental illness portrayed in the following story.

Barbie cocked the trigger of the gun aimed at her husband, Richard, with one long elegant thumb. Her bubblegum pink nails shined in the ambient light of the parlor. She dearly wanted him gone. It was 3 a.m. and he was sitting at the computer in the parlor, looking at pornography. And it wasn't the usual stuff, it was pictures of little boys.

Richard was visibly shaking.

Good, she thought, he needs to suffer.

He raised his hands in front of his body, as if to ward her off.

"Barb, you don't want to do this," he said quietly. He began tugging on his necktie. Their two beautiful children were asleep upstairs.

"Don't tell me what I want to do. You're so arrogant. You think you know me? You don't know anything about me. You didn't know I had this, did you?"

She straightened her right arm a little bit more, moving the pistol a couple inches closer to Richard.

"No, no I did not."

"Who are you, Richard?"

He started to stand up out of his chair.

"Don't move." She took a step towards him. He was about ten feet away now.

"All right, all right. But please, please don't shoot me. You'll go to prison and the kids will have no one."

"No, they will have me. Because you're going to disappear. You're a stranger to them. You like to watch child porn and that makes you a sick man and a threat to our children. Have you molested them, Richard?"

"Of course, I haven't. I would never..."

"Shut the fuck up, you bastard. I don't believe anything you say, now. You're a stranger to me. I knew we had problems but it appears you've been leading a double life, now, doesn't it?"

She continued. "All those nights you called me and told me you were working late, you were watching porn at work, weren't you?"

"No, I would never do that. I wouldn't jeopardize my job that way."

Richard was an aide to the governor of Indiana. He had political aspirations and had been promised favors for his campaign skills on the governor's behalf. But she still didn't believe him. Political jobs were filled with arrogant narcissists and anti-social phonies who just wanted power and the accompanying cash that always found its way into their pockets.

"You've always thought you were the smartest person in the room, haven't you darling? But now it appears, you're not. Because I've caught you. You’re jeopardizing your job right now. You could go to prison. Why, why would you do this? How long have you been looking at this...this...repulsive, heinous shit?"

"I wasn't looking at child porn, Barb. You don't understand. I was looking at regular porn and they suck you into these other sites and then you get trapped in it and can't get out. You don't understand..."

"Shut up!"

"Calm down," he hissed.

She took a deep breath. Thank God, the walls in this old house are soundproof, she thought.

"I want you to pack your things and leave. Now."

He laughed. "This is my house. I'm not leaving."

"Your house? Not 'our' house, huh? Well, you can have it. I'm starting to hate the old thing. It's the shape of a shoe box and you keep me here all the time, while you take our only car and drive off every day and disappear for up to 16 hours at a time, without even a phone call, sometimes. But for now, you're going to leave because I don't want you anywhere near our children."

"Barb, you can't..."

And that's another thing. My name isn't Barb. It's Barbie. Like the doll. You have refused to call me by my name ever since we got married and you know I don't like the name Barb. Yet, you keep doing it. You're a real man, aren't you, Richard?"

He narrowed his eyes and flared his nostrils. She'd seen that look before. But not until after they'd been married.

"You bitch."

"Bingo. There's the real Richard Charaud. I knew you'd show yourself eventually."

"I never loved you, you know."

She felt her throat muscles constrict and tears filled her eyes.

Finally, she asked "Then why did you marry me? I don't understand. It makes no sense."

"I thought I would feel different," he said.

"You thought you would feel different how?"

“I thought I would grow to love you. But I didn’t. And that’s your fault.”

He started coughing and began loosening his tie and the collar of his white dress shirt. 

“What’s wrong, Richard? A little frightened, are you?”

“I’m not scared of you. You’re named after a doll, for God’s sake. You are brainless, just like that stupid doll.”

She fired.

Richard fell backwards out of the office chair and hit his head on the old tongue-in-groove oak floor, clutching his chest.

“You shot me! Owww. Owww. It hurts so bad!”

She started laughing. It felt so good to see him on the floor, terrified out of his mind.

“Now, you know how I feel when I think about you living in the same house with our children,” she said.

He looked at his body. There was no blood anywhere.

“What the…” He didn’t understand.

“I didn’t shoot you. I hit the wall behind you. And you actually claimed I’d shot you and that you felt pain. How sad.” She began laughing, again.

“Wait, there was practically no noise. Do you have – “

“A silencer on the gun, yes.”

He was quiet for a minute. Then he said, “You really planned this out, didn’t you?”

“Last night, I started down the stairs and saw you on the computer. It was around 1 a.m. I couldn’t believe you would be on it so late, since you presumably had been on one all day. I turned around and went back upstairs and went back to bed and waited for you to come upstairs. Finally, around 2 a.m., you crawled into bed. I waited until I heard you snoring and slipped out of bed and went downstairs and looked at your history. That’s how I found out.”

A wave of nausea hit her. She pushed it down. She wasn’t going to move. She needed to keep the gun aimed on Richard or this could all go badly. Her forehead broke out in sweat.

Richard immediately noticed. He was good at reading people. The best she’d ever seen. If there was a weakness in someone, he could tell instantly. She’d always marveled at this particular skill because she knew if she was as good at it as he was, she would feel more safe. But now, she understood that he used this canniness to figure out how to control people, not to empathize with them like she did.

“What’s wrong, Barb? You’re looking shiny there. And a little pale. You’re feeling bad.”

She cocked the gun again. “Shut. Up. And you need to call me Barbie. I’ve told you.”

He began rubbing the back of his head. He loosened his collar and rubbed his neck again.

He said “Can I get up off this floor and at least sit in the chair? You’re really nice, you know it?”

“No. I like you right there. Right where you belong. On the floor with the rest of the dirt. You never really answered my question. If you didn’t love me, why did you marry me?”

“Why don’t you sit down? You don’t look so good. I promise I won’t come after you.”

“Yeah, uh no. Absolutely not. You lie about everything.”

“Not everything. I just lie to you all the time.”

“Why? Why would you do that? I’ve been a good wife to you. Oh, I don’t even know why I should care anymore. You’re a sick, sick man. You look at nude pictures of little boys. Tell me, how can you do that? What makes you attracted to a child? Actually, never mind, I don’t want to know.”

He grinned luridly. “I’m not attracted to little boys. I told you. I was trapped in the site. They draw you in so they can keep you on as long as possible.”

She shook her head in disbelief.

He continued. “But I’ll tell you honestly why I married you. You’re my trophy wife. I got you to impress everyone. You’re cute and relatively smart and you understand politics. Well, to a certain degree. You didn’t pick up on the fact that I’ve been conning you. But you understand other people better than most and you’ll be an asset when I run for state representative.”

“You’re not running for state representative. You’re going to jail.”

“No, I’m not. You’re not going to tell anyone what you saw here tonight. No one will believe you. Don’t you understand? I’m a master of deceit. It’s so easy. I’ve got hundreds of friends and you have no one. Your family won’t stand by you. Your own mother didn’t even want you from the time you were born. My god, she tried to kill you when you were sixteen just because you were smoking weed and you’d never been in trouble before. Do you think she’ll come to your aid now?”

She felt another wave of nausea and sweat ran down the sides of her torso. 

He’s right, she thought. I don’t have anyone to stand by me, except the law and they are useless, a lot of the time. But I must win this fight.

“I don’t need her. I don’t need anyone to do this. I’ve managed to survive on my own without anyone’s help since I was young. If you think I won’t manage this, you’re mistaken.”

He continued. “And what do you think is going to happen when everyone finds out you have Complex PTSD? They’re going to think you’re crazy. And you are!” he exclaimed. 

She smiled. “No, I’m not.”

She heard Dr. A’s soothing, loving voice in her head, telling her how much she had grown as a person over the years. How she was the hardest working patient she had and that she was going to be fine without her when she retired. She had helped her change her life. She used to have nightmares every night and was in constant physical pain for years. After she had seen this brilliant psychiatrist for only four months, the nightmares went away, and the pain began to follow. Incrementally and steadily, she kept getting better. But it took years, because she had been traumatized so many times. Her mother and father had been violent, broken people. Together, they were a toxic couple.

But no one had ever held her parents accountable. They had lived out in the country in an old clapboard farmhouse and the nearest neighbor was down the road about a quarter of a mile and the next nearest neighbor was a half mile the other direction. No one was ever around to witness all the yelling and the beatings and the baseless accusations her parents made against each other and their children.

She had known since she was around 4 or 5 years old that something unnameable was wrong with her mother. She was angry all the time and when she made a mistake or forgot about something she was supposed to remember, her mother would immediately accuse her of lying and tell her father. When he came home from the job he hated, the last thing he wanted to hear was that his eldest child was disobedient. He would turn her over his knees or even bring out the belt sometimes and make her drop her pants and lash her bare buttocks. Sometimes, if she cried, he whipped her harder.

He did have good days. Days in which he was somewhat happy, and he would refuse to whip or beat her. Her mother would become mad and sometimes threaten to leave him. She overheard the words for years. They were always the same words, “It’s either her or me, it’s either her or me.”

It took her years before she understood that her mother was still a child inside and didn’t see her as her daughter, but as competition for her father’s affection. She’d finally realized the full extent of the truth when her mother was arguing with her shortly before she’d tried to kill her when her two brothers and father were gone.

She’d looked at her and said, in the same tone as Richard had used today, “I’m so sick of hearing about you from other people. I’m so tired of how great you are supposed to be. It’s always ‘Barbie this and Barbie that’. You were supposed to be my little doll. But you’re not. Why should you get anything good? Why should you have a father? I didn’t have a father. You don’t deserve a father.”

Later that day, she attempted to put her in a pine box by swinging a baseball bat at her head. She’d missed and she’d yanked the bat out of her mother’s hands, ran out the door and threw it as far as she could into the corn field so she couldn’t find it.

Quietly and furiously, the meaning of “And the truth will out” was made clear to her in those long moments alone with her mother that day.

Suddenly, Richard was right in front of her. She kicked him in the balls with the sharp tip of her right Cuban cowboy boot. He collapsed on the floor and tears began streaming out of his eyes as he held his hands over his groin.

She had anticipated a struggle and had put the boots on purposefully. They were full-grain leather and the toughest boots she owned.

“Aaaaah, aaaaah, aaaaahhh! You effing piece of –”

“Shut up. I mean it. You wake our kids up and I will shoot you and drag your body out to the car and dump you in the White River. No one will ever find you because it’s the filthiest river in the United States and hardly anyone goes on it or in it.”

He looked at her closely. He took his hands off his groin and began tugging at his necktie and shirt collar again.

She was bluffing again, but she was a good actress. The stakes were too high to lose. She didn’t want Sam and Emmy near him. They were too young to understand what he might do to them and it would be easy to manipulate them.

Richard said “I’ll go to a therapist. I’ll change. I’ll make it up to you.”

“You’re such a liar. You’ve been alternating between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ever since this began. Do you really think going to a therapist is going to change you fast enough to save this marriage and this family?”

Tears began streaming down her face, now. She knew the truth. So did he. She realized that her dream of having a shiny, happy family was dying. Again. But this time, she was going to save the children from the mistakes of the father and mother before they were really damaged.

She kept the gun pointed at Richard as she walked over to the wardrobe and pulled out a small suitcase and a garment bag and threw them at him. They barely missed his head.

“I feel like such a fool for loving you. But I’ll get over it. I packed these for you, all ready, because I had the feeling you might act like this and I just want you to go. I don’t ever want to see you again. I know I’ll have to, but you’re not going to destroy us like you’ve destroyed yourself. I know this is not all your fault. I know your mother and father did a number on you, but you chose to accept their abuse. You could’ve fought back like I did. You had free will. No one tried to kill you.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said.

“No, you’re not. You keep telling me who I am. And it’s clear you don’t know me. You had no idea I was going to do this, did you?”

He just stared at her. “I am Barbie Andersson and I am a good mother and a good woman. I am smart and I am proud of who I am. You think that everything I love is a joke, including our children.”

He started to talk but she waved the gun for him to shut up and he did. “It’s clear to me that a part of you has to hate them or you wouldn’t do what you do. Here.”

She pulled his car keys out of her pants pocket and threw them to him. 

“Go. Now.”

She began walking him to the front door of the big, old “I” house, shaped like a shoe box with a low peaked roof on it. He opened the door, looked at her briefly and walked to the car parked on the street. The crickets twanged in the humidity of another hot summer. It was 5 a.m. She closed the heavy door, turned around and slid down it onto the floor and began sobbing until the sun peaked through the curtains onto the floor. Then, she went into the kitchen to make breakfast for the kids.