Page 203 of Perfect
Once my childhood home sells and nothing legally ties me to my old life anymore, I change my name to Alexandria Marie Shearer.
I chose it, and it’s mine.
“It’s so annoying,” I complain to Theo, sipping the piss-poor excuse for coffee the visitation room vending machine serves. “It’s so much effort to change aname. I have to get a new driver’s license, a new passport, a new social security card, my bank accounts changed over,allof it, and it’s a fuck ton of paperwork.” He shrugs with one shoulder, his other arm tight around my waist because the guard on duty is less strict and we can sit next to each other.
“That sucks, honey. I don’t remember the process of my last name getting changed, but I was a kid,” he says, sipping his own coffee.
“Yeah, well, I should have changedmylast name to Anderson. It would have saved me the trouble of doing it later,” I say, sipping my coffee to hide my smile as Theo’s body goes rigid next to me. I glance up at him, and his head tilts slightly to the side as he pulls me closer. He smiles at me slowly, one side of his mouth picking up more than the other, and he’s unable to speak for a minute.
“Um, you don’t have to change your name again,” he says finally, and I raise my eyebrows in surprise.
“Really? I thought you’d be thrilled about that.” He shrugs, trying and failing to seem nonchalant, and I feel his thumb tracing circles on my hip.
“I mean,yeah, but I’m thrilled either way. I want you to be happy, so it’s your choice.” I’m the one who can’t speak for a minute after he says that, and then we get yelled at by the guards because excessive displays of affection arenotallowed.
“I fucking hate it here,” he mutters as he lets go of me, shooting the guard a dirty look as I begrudgingly move to the other side of the table.
***
The year passes quickly. I rebuild my life in Astoria in a more permanent way. I’m not hiding here anymore, and everything truly is my choice, so for the first time in my life, I feel like I’m standing on solid ground.
I slip back into my old routine and expand it. I go back to work full time, mostly because I love the women I work with, who are more family than anything else at this point. Catherine, Suzie, and Bailey come over for dinner once a month, and I have Sunday dinners with Bailey and her family. I babysit Miles whenever I can, and he even comes to my house occasionally.
Anna and Jessica and I go out for brunch every other week, and I start going back to trivia with them. The first time I go, I see Ben, and he pales when he sees me and sits as far away from me as possible.
I ignore him, but the girls don’t.
Anna smiles a little too wide when she asks me how Theo’s doing and tells me how much she hopes he’ll start coming with us when he’s out. Jessica joins in, sweetly asking Ben if he’s ever met my boyfriend, and I have a hard time not laughing at the terrified look on his face.
He never shows up at trivia again.
Theo gets slightly calmer and less panicked as the months go by, but hehatesprison. He gets thin because he hates the food and exercises as much as possible to help with his separation anxiety, which has gotten extremely bad.
The prison psychiatrist puts him on medication, and he seems different, calmer and more solid somehow, but less likehimself. He doesn’t like it, although itdoeshelp with the anxiety, much to his chagrin. He’s also forced to see a therapist in prison, who he either refuses to speak to or lies to constantly.
I don’t care, because I buy two copies of every book my therapist recommends, books about trauma and self-esteem and domestic violence, and I make Theo read them with me.
We both struggle with it.
We read things that apply to us individually, but have difficulty addressing them whenever they interact with our relationship. We read things that apply to our relationship and feel like they’re right for other people, but wrong when it comes to us. There’s a level of intense codependency and trauma bonding that we can both acknowledge and recognize istechnicallyunhealthy, but it doesn’t feel wrong to either of us.
I get comfortable enough in therapy and my support group that I start to let little things about Theo slip by accident. When my support group leader pulls me aside and starts trying to address my relationship with Theo, I stop going to the group. When my therapist starts trying to address my relationship with Theo, I stop going to therapy.
Without ever explicitly discussing it, Theo and I decide to do nothing to change how our relationship works, because it works for us.
We start fitting together in a much deeper way. We get to know each other better,reallyknow each other, because neither of us lies anymore. We write each other long letters about the things that are too hard for us to talk about, and we talk on the phone every day, and I visit every week. Because there are no conjugal visits in Oregon, it feels like a weird, continued version of us dating.
I miss him constantly, but I make a point to enjoy my time without him. I have the distinct feeling that once he gets out, it’ll be a while before I’ll be alone again.
I don’t mind.
He doesn’t want to let me out of his sight, and I always want him to know where I am.
I get the desire to start painting again a few months after Theo goes back to prison, and then I start painting alot. It becomes a fixation, and it’s all I do with my time outside of working and seeing my friends. I paint abstract canvases in varied colors, but they always have the same general shapes. Every time I finish a painting, I feel slightly lighter, but I don’t know why. I keep painting the same thing in different forms for weeks until I finally feel like painting something else.
After a month, I look at one of the canvases and realize I’ve been painting various abstracted versions of Danny’s face hovering over me in the cabin, and then I tuck all the paintings away in the attic.
Ialmosthave everything back that he took from me.
