2016 – Day 16

Start writing a story that...

Step 1: takes place: in a house by the sea

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Barry's family had owned the house in Yarmouth for three generations. It stood atop a hill overlooking the ocean, with a private expanse of beach that was shared with four other homes. All of the homes were too stately to be considered beach bungalows, but the one owned by Barry's family was largest among them, featuring six bedrooms, three bathrooms, a living room, a dining room, and a kitchen with full appliances, including a six-burner gas stove. When I first came to the house after Barry and I got engaged, I tried to complement his mother on the beauty of the decorative style without letting on how astonished I felt. All I could picture was the small motel room my parents had rented for a month each summer, so that my two brothers and I could run around the beach under the watchful eye of our grandmother while my parents went back to Boston for work. When they visited us on weekends, my brothers would give them the pull-out couch and then sleep in their sleeping bags on the floor.

After we were married, Barry and I stayed at the family beach house for three weeks every summer for our vacation. Sometimes Barry's older sister Beth would be there with her family at the same time, and his younger brother Tyler would come with his serious girlfriend, whose parents were already close friends of the family. Barry's parents would be there for most of the summer and welcomed their children any time they could come. Everyone was welcoming to me, too, and I liked to imagine that I was an equal among them, but sometimes there were inside jokes or childhood remembrances were so far removed from my experiences that I felt myself an outsider and could never completely relax.

About three years after we were married, things began to unravel in the fall. Barry had always been fun, a loud drinker who took center stage at any party or bar, but drinks with the guys after work started going later and becoming more frequent and he would come home quiet or angry instead of chatty and sweet. Sometimes I wondered if there were other women by the scent of perfume mingled with the smoke, sweat, and stale beer on his breath. But the starker realization came when he was no longer just a drunk who stumbled home on the train, with a bar address written in Sharpie on his arm so he knew where to find his car the next day. It was when I could see more than Sharpie ink marks along his arms and I realized that the surliness he greeted me with when he finally made it home was the aftereffect of the heroin that had become his new source of enjoyment. We argued. I accused and he denied and accused me back of wanting to keep him locked up and unfulfilled. It always ended with apologies from both sides and promises to do better before the cycle began again. It was not until April that I finally understood what I was up against when my credit card was rejected at Whole Foods and then I was unable to withdraw any funds on the bank card. I rushed home to log into all of our accounts. There was hardly anything left.

That night, I confronted Barry with furious accusations and threats to finally leave. With both of us in tears, he promised to get real help. Together we called his family to ask for money to pay for treatment at a nearby facility. His mother, always the stalwart of the family, requested that I calm down and not take things so far. His father said he distrusted the doctors at the facility. Who were they to know what someone like Barry needed? I begged for help, any help. They offered the beach house. Our own private detox center where Barry and I could take the time we needed, alone.