Beautiful Outlaw(2)

“I have to get away from him; I have to leave.”

I’ll beg if I have to, anything to be free. I cannot survive one more day living with a mad man. I refuse to continue pretending to be someone else. If I have to smile once more while my husband calls me another woman’s name, I’m going to die.

He stands there for a moment more, just looking at me, before finally sitting down again. “I’ll give you five minutes to tell me what’s going on. Then, I’m out of here.”

Still holding his hand, I start to tell my story. “Marcus calls me Gwendolyn.”

The first time it happened was the day he told me I was going to be his wife. Right after he leaned down and kissed me, he whispered her name in my ear. Told me how much he loved me, but he wasn’t talking to me. No, he was talking to the only woman he will ever love, a dead woman.

I can feel his body tense, before he pulls his hand from mine. He leans back in his chair, staring at me in shock. “Gwendolyn? Isn’t that his first wife’s name?”

I slowly nod, before reaching to the floor and grabbing my purse. Setting it on the table, I try to control the tremble in my hand as I pull out my proof; something no-one in my family has ever seen. I slide the picture across the table and watch as he looks down at it. “This is Gwendolyn.”

He doesn’t take it, just stares at me with anger in his eyes. “I don’t need to see her picture.”

“Please, just look at it.”

He finally takes it out of my hand. Starting down at it, he starts to mumble. “What the fuck?”

I don’t reply, just sit quietly as he looks his fill. What he is staring at is a replica of the woman sitting in front of him; the woman Marcus has forced me to become, a walking, talking, living doll.

“Can you explain this shit to me? Why do you look so much like her?” He finally asks, still not looking up from the photo.

I reach my hand up and run it over my now straight nose. “Do you remember the time I wrecked my bike, when we were camping?”

He nods, lifting his eyes to meet mine. “Of course, I do. You broke your nose and had to get stitches on your knee. I thought Mom was going to pass out when she saw all the blood.”

Laying my hand on the table, I look into his eyes. “That was the first thing he fixed. See, Gwendolyn didn’t have a bump on her nose.”

“Fixed?” The one word is a question, but one I can’t quite answer without telling him everything.

I lift my hand and motion toward my chest. “Next, I had my breasts reduced. She was smaller than me and my larger size disgusted him.”

He sits there staring at me, shock clear on his face. “What the hell are you talking about?”

I suck in a deep breath, trying to gain courage for the task ahead. “I met Marcus at one of Dad’s company picnics, when I was fifteen years old.”

He dips his chin to his chest and pulls in a deep breath. Confusion is clouding his eyes, letting me know that I have a lot to explain. “It was when you were in Iraq the first time.”

He nods, before raising the picture enough to grab my attention. “Yeah, but what does that have to do with this?”

“His wife had just died the year before. He said that the minute he laid eyes on me, all he could see was her.”

He looks back down at the picture and shakes his head. “You didn’t look anything like this then.”

His words cause an ache to form deep in my chest, making me wonder if they are true. The only time I see the real me is brief glimpses of pictures, during the rare times I’m allowed to visit my parents. “I didn’t think so, but he saw something in me that reminded him of Gwendolyn. What wasn’t there, he knew he could change.”

Before my marriage, my blonde hair barely reached my shoulders. It was drastically different from the nearly waist length red it is today. My eyes were blue, nothing like the deep brown contacts I am forced to wear now. I always sported a tan from spending hours at the lake with my friends. Now, I never leave my home without sunscreen. Even my hands are coated in a layer of protection. The effect has left me looking like a ghost.

I was also a size eleven, weighing almost fifty pounds more than the size five frame I now carry. Now my figure resembles the models in Milan, sunken cheeks and ribs visible through my skin. I loved jeans, tee-shirts, comfy pajamas; I had never even considered wearing an outfit that cost more than my parents’ mortgage payment. Now, my underwear cost more than most outfits I had worn before.

“He started those changes as soon as we got married. First the hair, then the contacts. The surgeries started a few months later.”

He looks at me taking in all the changes, things he had seen, but purposely ignored. I watch as he sucks in a deep breath then asks, “Surgeries? How many?”