Dick came home tired from working a double. As he entered the living room, he turned the television on to the baseball game, sat, and just stared. Not focusing on the pitches or even the batting count, he waited anticipating Jane’s arrival.



Soon enough footsteps were heard from the upstairs bedroom, as if someone was stumbling out of bed. Dick sighed and braced himself as if he was entering a sequence of déjà vu he did not want to experience. The stumbling was her descending the stairs and now the hallway. Only a wall separated the two. Jane, in her drunken rage, called her husband.



Hesitantly, he replied to the calls, got up from the armchair, and met his wife. She was now leaning on the hutch which housed pictures of happier times within the shelves of fragile glass glossed by dust.



“Where have you been? I’ve been here all alone needing you! You’re never here when you’re needed and here when all I want to do is get rid of you! Where the hell have you been?!”



Dick has heard this all before, too many times in fact. He is now numb to the allegations of abandoning the marriage, but the painful words still brand him as if he was a steer being readied for the slaughter. As she continued her rant which carried on for what seemed to last an eternity, he stood there, frozen in place.



“Do you know what your problem is? You need a life; all you do is work, leaving me to fend for myself! You disgust me. Every time I see your face, I cringe. Every time I hear your voice, I just get the urge to scream in agony.”

Her eyes were now glaring at him piercing into his now vacant and self loathing soul. The once peaceful, tranquil oceans of blue that made up her irises were now overtaken by storm waves tossing and turning as if in a hurricane. The smell of vodka filled the room with every breathe she made, choking Dick who was already gasping for air. He continued to stand there still, not moving a muscle, appeasing his tyrannical wife.

She hurt him like she always had, but this time the atmosphere in the room was different. Jane’s appearance, beauty hidden by the never ending need for alcohol, seemed that of a stray animal crazed by hunger, ready to do anything for nourishment. She lunged at Dick full-force, but he managed to get out of the way as the act broke icy shackles that held him captive. Jane fell into the hutch crashing into the shelves knocking them down onto the hardwood floors as she too fell. The sound of breaking glass echoed throughout the house as each pane smashed into what seemed to be a million pieces. Shards ripping what were left of Dick’s desolate heart.

The memories that kept Dick into the undoubtedly disastrous marriage were now ruined, lying torn on the floor. He was done, he was over it, he couldn’t take it anymore. As he saw Jane laying there passed out from either the pain or the alcohol he could no longer picture the woman he met, the woman he saw walking down the aisle, or even the woman he wished she could be. All that was visible was Jane for whom she really was, and abusive, unloving, and dreadful being. He was done, so too was the marriage, and thus the abuse.