It came out wrong.
Almost like a sob.
“You assaulted me.”
“Stop being dramatic.”
“You shaved my head while I was sleeping.”
“Hair grows back.”
I stared at her.
For three years, I had swallowed insults.
Little comments.
Little corrections.
Little judgments.
The way I dressed.
The hours I worked.
The food I ordered when I was too tired to cook.
How often I traveled.
How much I made.
How much Daniel made.
Eleanor had opinions about all of it.
She moved into our house eighteen months earlier after a minor surgery.
She was supposed to stay six weeks.
Six weeks became three months.
Then six.
Then a year.
Every time I mentioned her moving back to her apartment, Daniel had another reason.
Her knees.
Her blood pressure.
Her loneliness.
The stairs at her building.
Then he started calling the arrangement permanent.
Without asking me.
I had paid Eleanor’s doctors.
Her prescriptions.
Physical therapy.
A new mattress.
A phone.
Groceries she claimed were necessary for her diet.
I did it because Daniel said she had nobody else.
That was not entirely true.
She had a daughter in Wisconsin.
A brother in Indiana.
Several friends.
But I had the largest paycheck.
So I became the solution.
That was how everything worked in our house.
Daniel called it partnership.
Eleanor called it family.
I called it exhausting.
Daniel worked in sales too.
Or at least that was how he described it.
He had changed jobs three times in four years.
He earned around a third of what I did.
Some months less.
He spent like we earned the same amount.
Imported shirts.
Golf membership.
Restaurants.
