Three Legged Pig

“Where the fuck have you been?” Ali spat, slamming the apartment door behind her.  The blue glow of the television poured into the dark living room, coating the coffee table and sofa in light. A glare bounced off Ryan’s glasses, hiding his eyes. She could barely make out his black, mussed up hair and stubbled beard in the partial darkness.

“I just can’t believe you would have the nerve to show up, let yourself in, and sit on the couch and watch TV until I got home. Like nothing ever happened. Do you know what it feels like to believe that you’ve been walked out on?” she asked.

“Ali, really. You’re over reacting. It wasn’t that big of a deal,” Ryan said without removing his gaze from the television.

“Not that big of a deal? You were gone for a month!” 

“I don’t see what the big deal is. I was in Vegas with Lance and Jim,” he said, with an eye roll. A growl escaped from her throat as Ali stormed toward the bedroom, flipping on lights as she passed through the apartment.

“Vegas? How did you pay for a trip to Vegas?” she yelled over her shoulder. He followed, leaned against the bedroom door frame.

“I just put it on the credit card. It’ll get paid off, eventually.”

“How, Ryan? You don’t have a job.”

His eyes widened at first, but he shook his head and lowered his eye lids resuming his dispasionate gaze.

“You can make the payments until I get another one. Not a big deal. It’ll be fine.”

“I can’t stand it when you say that! Not a big deal? This is a very big deal!”

I can’t take this anymore, she thought searching the semi-lit space around her for something, anything, to throw. Her entire body vibrated. Curling wisps of wavy hair touched her cheeks and clung to the moisture on her face. Had she started crying without noticing?

Her eyes locked onto the wooden figure of a three-legged-pig sitting quietly atop the dresser. A trinket he had picked up on another one of his secret vacations, that one to Chile. 

Any time Ryan disappeared, he left no indication as to his whereabouts. No note, no email, no texts, nothing while he was gone for days, sometimes weeks. Eventually he would return; usually sunburned, sometimes with strange injuries: a broken hand, a black eye. Every time he insisted that Ali was overreacting. That these “sabbaticals” were “no big deal,” as if he had been to visit his grandmother down the street. 

The pig came with a scrap of paper stating that it was supposed to bring good luck. The paper had been lost instantly. There’s not enough luck in the whole universe to save this marriage, she thought. 

“I’m not paying off any more of your credit cards!” she said. Her right hand darted out from her side. She grabbed the pig and hurled it at his eye hoping to crack his glasses. He dodged it with a side step.

“What’s wrong with you? Calm down,” he yelled. His forehead crunched into his eyebrows.

Memories flooded her mind:  the trips, the money, the booze, the jobs. Memories of the doubt that clouded every sensation in her body when he acted as if it was all normal. 

Her shoulders stiffened. I’m not crazy. This isn’t normal, she thought, her blood boiling even hotter than it already was. 

“If I hear ‘Ali, calm down’ or ‘not a big deal’ ever again, I swear I’ll murder something! Why did I think getting married would make you stop being a selfish ass hole? You’ll never change,” she screeched, reaching back to the dresser. She snatched a hardback book, How To Win Friends and Influence People, of all titles. He never read it, but held onto it all these years, moving it around the apartment as if finding the perfect spot to display some degree or certificate of achievement. 

She rocketed the book toward his nose. 

It flew through the open door behind him. Before hearing it crash, she reached for the carved, wooden box containing spare buttons that took her years to collect. She couldn’t care less about them now. She watched the box careen into his chest, buttons flying through the air, as he released a grunt.

“Ali, stop,” he yelled. 

“Fuck you! Don’t ‘Ali, stop,’ me,” she screamed back, hardly recognizing her own voice. She had never yelled this loud in her life.

“How many times are you going to lie to me, Ryan? How many times?”

He stared at her, shoulders squared, jaw set, eyes narrowed.

“First that lie about being born in Dublin. That ridiculous fake accent!” she scanned the dresser for another projectile. Her eyes zeroed in on a pile of pens. She shot one toward his mouth. It flew past his head. 

“All those times you dropped out of college and didn’t say anything about it. You left the house every day like you were going to class. I even paid for your tuition when your parents refused! You lied to me for three semesters!” 

Another pen, launched at his forehead, another miss.

“And that car wreck! ‘Uhh, I hit a patch of ice,’” she mocked. “We live in Texas in the middle of the worst drought in history! THERE WAS NO ICE! YOU WERE WASTED AND TOTALED YOUR CAR!”

“Shut up,” he said. 

“And now this? You disappear for a month. I finally get brave enough to call the bar and they tell me you haven’t worked there in four months!”

“Ali!” he yelled.

“You lost your job four months ago and you didn’t think to mention anything about it to me, your wife! No, instead you left and God knows where you were, or what you were doing, or how you were your covering your half of the rent without a job!” she screamed, her voice like the shrill screech of some otherworldly monster from old fairytales. She lobbed the remaining pens toward him. 

“Shut up! Stop talking!” he yelled.

“Fuck you! I won’t stop talking! Do you have any idea how embarrassing it was to be told that your husband’s been lying to you by his boss?”

“ENOUGH!” He roared. His face twisting, he turned toward the dresser, swept his hands across the top of it, spewing papers and trinkets to the floor. 

He grew an extra foot as he rushed toward her. There was no time to think. Her forearms went up on their own, putting a barrier between the two of them. Pushing her back against the wall, his right fist flew above her head as his left arm pinned her in place.

“RYAN! STOP! I’m pregnant!”

He froze for a split second, his face still contorted with rage. For that moment she thought he would stop, but his grip did not loosen. Her eyes squeezed shut as his fist came racing down toward her. 

The wall behind her shuddered as a loud crack reverberated from a point to the right of her ear.

Turning back toward the bed, he yanked his fist from the fresh hole in the drywall. He lifted her laptop from the bed and hurled it at her, hitting her raised forearms. Arms flailing over his head, he moved around the room taking wide steps like a male gorilla on a rampage. He grasped at anything in his path. The alarm clock shot out of his hand, grazed her elbow and crashed into the dresser beside her. 

A ringing sound pierced her ears. Ali stayed frozen, watching his rage pour out of him and fill up the room. 

I went too far, she thought. I pushed him too far. This is my fault.

Her vision blurred. Her knees felt weak as if she might fall to the floor. A vase of dead flowers flew past her head, shattering against the wall behind her.

Leave! Something deep in her gut screamed. Get out of here! This is not safe! 

Chin tucked to her chest, she peered down at her belly, not yet beginning to expand. 

Move! Her mind screamed to her body.

With ragged gasps she pushed, unnoticed, through the room toward the closet, dodging the torrent of flying objects. 

Tunnels had appeared around her vision. She pawed at the suitcase on the highest shelf. It tumbled down with a thud. The sound drew his attention back to her. He froze, a wooden lap desk held above his head ready to launch through the window.

“What are you doing?” he yelled, panting like a rabid dog as she stuffed shoes and dresses into the luggage.

“I’m getting the fuck out of here,” she said, her voice like gravel, eyes focused on her task.

Setting the lap desk down, his eyes widened seeing his destruction as if for the first time.

“Ali, I’m sorry,” he begged, moving toward the closet.

“Don’t come near me!” She pulled her phone from the back pocket of her jeans, holding it in front of her, her finger hovering over the emergency call button. “I will call the cops.”

“No! I just lost it, but I can fix all this stuff. It’s not a big deal.”

“This is a big deal! I thought you had changed. That was stupid. You clearly are not fit to be in any sort of relationship. Everything you say is a lie, and when lying gets too hard, you disappear. And when that doesn’t work, well,” she said gesturing toward the destroyed room. 

I should have seen this coming, she thought. Why didn’t I see this coming?

Long forgotten images of past fights sparked through her brain, like lightning strikes as she bent to zip the suitcase.

“Get out of my way, Ryan,” she said through clenched teeth.

“My name’s not Ryan!” he blurted. 

“What? What the fuck are you talking about?” She shook her head pinching her eyes closed.

“I changed my name right before I went back to college, the first time. Before we met. My parents just agreed to call me Ryan, but I never made it official. And then you found out the whole Irish thing wasn’t true, and I still hadn’t told you about the name. I just couldn’t say anything. I was afraid you’d…”

“What are you saying? Are you saying…that I don’t even know my husband’s real name? If your name isn’t Ryan…does that mean your last name isn’t Wright? Does that mean our marriage license is a fake? Is that why you wanted Lance to be the officiant?”

He was silent.

“You have got to be kidding me,” she said, quietly at first. 

“I can fix this. We can go to the JP and get a new marriage license. It’ll be fine,” he rambled.

“You have got to be kidding me!” Her voice came choppy and loud this time.

Her fists clenched at her side, ringing invisible necks of small creatures. Grinding her teeth, she shook head back and forth.

“Ali,” he said.

“Lies! Everything you say! It’s all lies!” she yelled. “And now you’ve turned my life into a lie! I’m done. Don’t touch me again. Don’t call me again. Don’t look for me. I’M DONE!” she yelled, moving toward him out of the closet. 

Chest puffed out, he stood firm. His hands wrapped around her elbows. Moving one forearm up across her body like a shield, she pushed, hard, into his chest. To her surprise he crumpled slightly at the waist as she burst through the door. She kept moving, couldn’t stop, couldn’t lose the momentum propelling her out of this life, away from the lies.

“Wait,” he said, reaching for her arm again. Keeping her eyes glued to the path through the destroyed room, she twisted her arm out of his grasp. She flew through the apartment, suitcase in tow. Grabbing her purse and keys from the table beside the front door, she paused spotting his car keys. She pocketed them and pulled hard on the top of the table. It crashed to the floor of the entryway blocking the door. It wouldn’t hold him up for long but might give her time to run to her car.

“You’re never getting anywhere near this baby, you lying son of a bitch!” She regretted the statement, instantly. Now he would definitely follow her, but she just couldn’t stop herself. One last attempt to hurt him as much as he hurt her.

She sprinted to her hatchback, hurling his car keys into the woods skirting the parking lot. She tossed the suitcase in the back, cranked the engine and peeled out of the lot as she dialed the first number that came to mind. She could see him in the rearview mirror running out to the center of the lot.  For a moment, she watched him search the ground for his keys as she steered toward the road. He shrank smaller and smaller in her mirror.

A tiny muscle near her eye twitched, catching her attention in the mirror. 

Her gaze locked on. She stared into her own eyes like a child might stare into the intense blaze of a bon fire. 

What have I done? She thought.

She blinked as the rhythmic brrrring of the call touched her ear, guiding her attention to the road ahead.