Chapter 20: Bad Behavior

Dave was surprised as he entered his office at work on Monday morning to find Derek Wilson, his boss’ boss. Derek again had broken the rule that top executives weren’t supposed to leave the vaunted executive offices on the upper floor. Maybe things are changing, or else he was in deep shit.

“Good morning, Dave.”

Dave greeted the man cautiously. He had multiple reasons to be worried about his relationship with the man – he was now routinely fucking the man’s wife, she wanted to join the Circle, Abby his girlfriend also had expressed interest in a return visit for a ‘longer time’ the following week – implying some desire to at least see the sex underway, and his immediate boss’ wife was also enamored with the Circle despite her husband’s near violent disagreement. Dave thought there might be a couple of others, but he focused on Derek.

“Everything all right,” Dave questioned as he put his briefcase down.

“Oh, fine. I just wanted to thank you for having us over on Saturday afternoon. That was a real treat. I hope we didn’t cramp your and everyone else’s style too much.” He gave a lascivious grin.

“Oh, not at all. You saw that Matthew was around. When he’s there, we keep everything really cool. He’s caught us a few times, but I don’t think things register with him the way they do for adults. He describes what’s happening as two people who really like each other and kiss a lot.”

“I’m sure. The main reason I’m here is I heard Abby trying to finagle an invitation from Alice and Pam for next Saturday that included the late afternoon, cocktails, your cookout, and then hanging around – and I know from Emily that means sexual things going on. Abby figured that out, too, but didn’t mention it further. I just want to be sure that’s really all right. She’s overly curious, but I don’t want that to impair anything that would normally be going on in the Circle. She’s her own person, in that regard.”

Dave breathed slightly easier. Derek was being high solicitous and sensitive to the others. This was a good thing.”

Dave cautioned, “You are more than welcome to join us, anytime really, but know that from cocktail time on, there will be nudity and perhaps open sex. After dinner, it’ll be a sure thing. Are Abby and you spectators or participants?”

Derek smiled, “I’d like to be a participant, recognizing that I’m fifty-eight and am suffering some limitations to my performance. Abby, I can’t speak for, but as far as I’m concerned, she can do what she wants.”

“Intercourse with others?”

He grinned, “Whatever she wants. I apply the same rules to Abby as Emily. They are their own people. I don’t own, control, or possess them. I enjoy and love them, and I’m ever grateful that they share themselves with me.”

Dave spoke slowly, “My recommendation is for you both to bring some STD test results in case you get inspired and decide to participate. Seeing what a knockout Abby is and how distinguished you are, I can guarantee that you’ll both be invited by others to play. I will probably invite her to my bed, so to speak, so be careful what you wish for. I think you have a hot girlfriend.”

Derek laughed, “What I have is yours to enjoy. I’m not worried. We do have a unique relationship just like my marriage with Emily. I’ll see to the tests.”

After that, Derek sauntered out of Dave’s office and down the hall, pausing to chat with Nancy on the way out, and some of the others in Dave’s department.

Emily was not expected on Tuesday evening. For the Prentiss family it was going to be a normal night. Dave had planned to jot some notes about his department’s strategic plan; Alice also had brought home some work from her office. Heather was perpetually studying; and Pam was putting together a PowerPoint presentation to give to the TVA the following week. Owen had come by to spend time with his family; he had some portfolios he was reading with great interest. Julie was looking over the same material as the two talked quietly in one corner of the Prentiss-family living room.

Emily breezed into the house as she’d been told to do. “Hi everybody. I need a serious meeting with all of you. It’s about Joan. I had lunch with her today, and there’s something serious going on, even more serious than she realized until I called it to her attention. I got her talking about what’s been going on with her husband.”

Dave brought the family together in the living room and Emily sat in the one large overstuffed chair and leaned forward. She started, “First, this is about Joan, and second, I don’t know what to do. That’s why I’m here.”

“What’s wrong? You sound upset,” Alice chided.

“I am. We had lunch, and I’ve fretted all afternoon. I’ll tell you right off; Joan is an abused wife. Brian is beating her up, stripping away her self-confidence, and playing mind games with her to his benefit and her demise. He hasn’t touched her physically, yet, but he may as well have. She’s become a cripple under the man. I didn’t realize she’d sunk so low. She’s been putting on a good front for everybody, but I got through it today. He made her quit her job in the doctor’s office. She’s supposed to stay home and not go out without his permission. She snuck out to our lunch because we’d set it up before his edict. She thought she could get away with it if he found out.”

Pam leaned forward, “What did she say? What brought this on?”

Emily nodded, “I invited Joan to lunch near where she used to work today to try to figure out what was going on with her and Brian, vis-à-vis the Circle. She was all interested and he wasn’t, if you recall. He got angry and steamed out of here, and she had to follow. He would have left without her, and I think she knew it. That was the tip of the iceberg.

“Anyway, here’s the list as I assembled it from talking to her.” She pulled out a cocktail napkin with writing on it in ballpoint pen. “Brian has taken to throwing away stuff she likes – clothing and knick-knacks, for instance – into the trash without asking because he says he doesn’t care for them. He tells her that she has to account for his tastes. He calls her terrible names and not in jest, claims her wanting to be in our Circle would make her a slut and whore, and he calls her those names all the time now. He’s been doing that for almost two years as it turns out. He insisted she put an app on her phone so he knows where she is every minute of the day; if he feels she stepped out of line, he yells at her and makes her account for her time. She’d left her phone at home on purpose so we could have lunch. He calls her and asks just what the hell she’s doing not being in her routine. When she makes a phone call, he comes into the room and stands there listening to her talk or he picks up and listens on the extension phone. He’s limited the number of friends she can have to those he knows and approves; that’s one of the reasons he doesn’t like any of you in the Circle. He forbade her to contact any of you again. I’m also on his shit list.

“Last night, he told her to forget about all of us, plus even to forget about the friends she’d made in their neighborhood. He told her that he wanted her home with him or working on the house, not socializing and wasting time with neighbors or friends. He’s commanding and ordering – autocratic. He’s threatening her, and has he so cowed she can barely breath without his permission.

“He’s refused to give her spending money, so she couldn’t help pay for lunch. She told me she’d owe me the ten dollars for our lunch, but I refused to take an IOU. He won’t tell her what the family finances are, and she thinks he cancelled her off their checking account because he took her checkbook so she’s not sure. He won’t tell her what he does with the paychecks she deposited to their joint account. He tells her it’s none of her business because she’s inept. He did tell her that he’d consider giving her an allowance if she makes it through the next couple of weeks without pissing him off the way she has been.

“When she reminds him of something he said or did, he gaslights her.”

“Gaslights?” Owen asked. “What’s that mean?”

“Makes comments that question her own perception of reality or sanity within the relationship or about what the truth is. He’s constantly telling her that she’s crazy, and that stuff she knows happened didn’t happen, or that he said something that she’s sure he didn’t. He tells her that her memory is failing, and that she’s getting mentally ill. She’s starting to believe him – a lot. He’s refused to talk about much of their relationship, calls some of her ideas wild and out of touch with reality and normal behavior, and trivializes her concern about their relationship. In the next breath, he accuses her of trying to make their marriage fail or that she’s out to purposefully make him feel bad about himself, only he’s doing that to her. And then, he’ll tell her that they’ve already talked through all that stuff, and she admitted to him that she’s mentally deranged.

“The trouble with all of this is that it’s a constant barrage on her from morning to night. He’s really on her case now. She couldn’t even go to work to properly quit. She told me her performance at work was suffering as a result of all this anyway. She has no confidence, no self-esteem, no sense of self-worth, can’t sleep, feels hopeless, is being forced to withdraw from the world, and told me she’s increasingly depressed about life in general. It’s all because of how Brian treats her. I’ve never met anybody so depressed. I worry about her.”

Dave swore, “Shit; that’s classic mental and emotional abuse. He’s not leaving marks on her body, but he may as well be. She’ll head into a mental breakdown at the rate he’s pushing her with all that stuff, maybe even suicide. Mentally depressed people are at risk.”

Emily pleaded with all of them, “What can we do? We’ve got to do something. We’re her only close friends, even though I know we haven’t been able to get very close to her. She told me that Brian told her to think about what a poor excuse for wife and a human being she was. He told her the world would be better off without her. She’s scared of him and doesn’t want to cross him.”

Pam asked, “What’d she do for work? I never heard.”

Emily rolled her eyes, “She’s got a Ph.D. in pharmacology, but Brian wouldn’t allow her to work in her field. He told her it was beneath their family. Instead, she worked in an office where they type up the dictations of medical doctors to go into patient files. The pay is a fraction of what she could be making working in a pharmacy or pharma company. Brian told her to lump it whenever she raised the idea of changing jobs, and that he liked her in just the place he arranged for her to be. She didn’t dare cross him. Again, he ran down her degree and her ability to do decent work for anybody.”

Dave shook his head. He wanted to punch his boss out, but the reasons had nothing to do with work, and everything to do with how he was treating his wife.

Pam continued, “Do they have children?”

“None. Joan told me that when they got married about twelve years ago, he told her he wanted kids, but then he never allowed her to come off of birth control. It was always the wrong time, and then he ‘reminded’ her that about four years ago she told him that she didn’t want kids, so he reluctantly agreed. He put it on her, and she’s sure that never happened. She’d still have kids even at this late stage, only she’s afraid he’d hurt the baby or her if she went against him.”

“Fuck.” Dave muttered.

The others turned to Dave. He asked, “What’s she think of Brian?”

“She said she loves him, but obviously she’s scared shitless of him. He’s got her in a corner with nowhere to go. I don’t think there’s much love, respect, or affection in their relationship, only her terror of disobeying him. He’s told her she’d be worse off if she went anywhere else, that nobody else in their right mind would have her, and she’s come to believe that. She hinted to me that her life is so bad that she’s started to think about taking the easy way out, and I think she means suicide.”

Dave said, “We need an intervention, but she’s got to be ready to participate in it. We can’t MAKE her do something. We’d run afoul of the law and everything else.

Emily asked, “Can you do anything at work?”

Dave shook his head, “No, in a word. Derek probably can’t either. We see no symptoms of this from the man. He must be a really good actor.”

The group kicked around a number of ideas. Fundamentally, they realized that to ‘save’ Joan, they needed to extricate her from the toxic home environment she was in, and to build up her self-confidence and self-worth again to the point where she could see the reality of the situation and then cope on her own terms. All agreed that for her to start that behavior now at home would be hopeless, as Brian would verbally and emotionally beat her into submission. She didn’t have the strength or skills to cope with him any further.

Owen finally held his hand up. “Here’s a plan to kick around. First, we need her to buy into escaping from her toxic environment. Emily you seem to be acceptable to contact her, so immediately talk to her about taking a time out from the relationship, preferably one without telling Brian where she’s going so he can’t intervene and bring her back under his control.

“Dave you stay out of this so you have plausible deniability. I suggest you leave the room now so you don’t hear the rest of my suggestions.”

Dave nodded in understanding and left the immediate room. He did stand near the base of the stairs and listen to the rest of what was said.

Owen continued, “If Joan consents to leave, ask her to go with all of you immediately. If it’s safe, she could pack a small bag to go with her. I will make the plane available to take her to a rehab facility I know about that specializes in abused women. I won’t tell you where it is, so you can’t answer Brian’s browbeating. The organization, one of the Bennett Foundation projects, is known for their innovation, especially in the area of psychologically-battered spouses, but don’t ask for further details for a while. This is the kind of problem they’re ideal to help fix. We can have her there before dinner, and getting immediate help. None of us are equipped to deal with the emotional fallout from this situation, but the folks at this place are. If she’s hinting at suicide, she’s almost begging to be saved.”

Owen stopped and looked at the others. Everyone agreed. Alice calmly said, “Dave you can come back in. We have a plan.” Dave walked back into the room. He winked at Alice.