The Game of Two

The definition of a toxic relationship.

Dr. Garrett Cooney was born and bred in a wealthy, quiet town off the coast of Vermont. A short boy in stature, he was a bit unhandsome and wore thick glasses that rested on his hooked nose. He grew up in a large colonial home, the kind that has many rooms with no purpose, like a parlor. His father was a prosperous short-tempered investment banker with an overpowering personality. Those who did not love him still admired him for being able to turn nothing into a lot of something. Garrett’s mother, on other hand, was the embodiment of a meek, elegant, and delicate woman. She never raised her voice at his father or her children and seemed immune to her husband’s harsh critiques. His father worked tirelessly, sometimes every day of the week, while his mother ensured everything was in perfect order and dinner cooked by the time he would arrive.

Garett hid away from his father’s overpowering personality and tried to imitate his mother by being quiet and non-defiant around him. This helped him remain unnoticed when his father would throw his scheduled weekly tantrums. His father had a massively large vision of what short little Garrett was to be. He forced mild mannered Garrett to play hockey all through middle and high school, something he truly detested. He was not a very good hockey player, nor a good golfer, or a good fisher. Garrett did, however, greatly excel in academics, and felt an equally great passion for art. He relished in looking at paintings and drawings, analyzing every shadow and detail. He would especially study artists’ portrayals of faces, their different shapes, their different structures. He enjoyed trying to pick out the physical attributes that made a person seem awkward or unattractive and ponder on the why particular parts were particularly unappealing.

Garrett’s father envisioned him as a physician. Although being a physician didn’t make as much money as an investment banker, it would certainly bring prestige to the family. Garrett knew there was no other way about it and it seemed his destiny was chosen for him. He did not dare go against his father’s wishes, not wanting to unleash whatever monster was barely hidden under his father’s skin. His love of physical attributes and fastidious obsession with detail led him to the artistic field of plastic surgery. Plastic surgery seemed so grotesque to him; looking at women’s erogenous zones simply to enlarge them. The thought of a woman exposing her breasts to him in any setting would make him blush quite fiercely, so he decided to focus on facial plastic surgery instead. It was the art of shaping faces; changing and molding physical attributes to create an ideal and pleasing face to admire. That was it. He told his father the great news that he not just become a physician, but a surgeon instead. His father was enthusiastic about the news.

Garrett got accepted into a surgeon’s program and off he went. Along the way, he met Laura, a beautiful woman, far above him in the beauty scale. She was a tall, hour-glass shaped woman with fine, delicate facial features. He knew she would never look his way based on his own appearance. He was three inches shorter than Laura and had an overwhelming amount of body hair that seemed to have crawled away from his scalp. When he mentioned he would soon become a graduated surgeon, his looks didn’t seem to matter anymore. Laura was swooped by her surgeon lover. His prospects were far more handsome than he was, but that was something he was willing to put aside. Laura was stubborn and strong-willed, like a wild horse in need of taming, something Garrett had plenty of experience in dealing with his father. However, when Laura began acting the way Laura was, something in him snapped. He began to have the courage to speak up and defend himself. He began to disagree. He was very proud of disagreeing. In fact, he would even disagree about things he perfectly agreed with, simply to demonstrate that he was not someone to be pushed about. He grabbed on to this new courage and, with a tremendous fear of losing it, began to turn it into something quite monstrous. Disagreeing now turned to belittling and intimidation, which Laura would counteract with brute untamed force.

He began to resent Laura and her once-endearing strong free will. He studied her face one morning, while eating the breakfast he made for himself paying close attention to her unappealing traits. He noticed her delicate facial features now seemed quite masculine. He noticed her eyebrows were set just too low and her forehead protruded a millimeter just too far. Her eyes were sunken in just a little, their bright blue now appearing somewhat dull. Her nose, or more specifically her nostrils, seemed to flare too large with every exhalation and squeeze in too small with every inhalation. Her upper lip was a bit too thin, disproportionate to her rather full bottom lip. Her cheekbones were not as high as he once made himself think they were, and her cheeks were too hollowed in. Her sun-kissed freckles had grown quite large to that of liver spots that made her look quite old. She looked up at him, meeting his stare. He stared at her for a second longer, without saying anything, hoping the extended stare would imply his disapproval, if not disappointment.

Laura caught the unprovoked slight, stood up from her chair at the dining table, calmly grabbed her car keys and purse and walked out of their lavishly high-rise minimalistic apartment. She did not say where she was going, and he did not want to give her the satisfaction of asking. He sat alone with his brewing thoughts at the empty dining table for over an hour. She had not yet returned. He started to feel regret but decided he would rather feel angry instead. He did not want to admit he did anything wrong when nothing was even said. Laura had now been gone for two hours without checking in with him. Did she think she was going to get away with this little act she was trying to pull? He wanted to let her know that he was not to be treated with such indignity and decided to leave as well, hoping she would return and see the empty apartment and be forced to call him instead. He dressed in his most elegant suit and styled what was left of his thinning hair. He kept picturing Laura sitting on their couch, longing for him to return and wonder where he went off to looking so dashing. He wanted her to think that he, perhaps, was with another woman, even though Laura knew perfectly well no other woman would set eyes on him. It took him an entire hour to get ready, hoping she would come home, catch him in the act of dressing up and ask where he was going or who he was going to meet. When she still had not returned, he drove to his wife’s favorite boutique, where he blankly stared at the over-priced unnecessary goods, pretending not to look at the prices to assure the sale staff that he was a wealthy man of means. He picked up a small square green bottle of au de toilet and sprayed it in front of him, careful to only allow some of the mist to fall on his sleeve. Laura might then wonder who left scent there. He then treated himself to lunch and went to one of the most expensive restaurants he could think of, which he didn’t really like, and ordered one of the most expensive dishes. After all, he was the one bringing in all the money and he wanted Laura to remember that. He looked at his watch. It was two thirty in the afternoon. He thought it would be too soon to return, so he decided he would watch a movie at the theater instead. He purchased two tickets to a romantic comedy and imagined Laura going through his suit pocket. She knew he detested romantic comedies and would tragically think he went because he took another woman. He looked at his watch. It was five-thirty in the evening. He was not hungry but decided he would really make Laura suffer his silent absence by going to yet another restaurant for dinner.

After barely managing to consume his dinner and forcing two glasses of twelve-year-old scotch down his throat, he sat back, delighting himself in imaging Laura’s face, worried, hopefully even crying, waiting for him to come home. He looked at his watch and saw that it was now nine-thirty at night. This, to Garrett, would suffice. Time to go home and teach Laura who’s boss, he grinned to himself. He arrived at his apartment building, and took the slowest elevator up, brandishing in his wife’s likely misery. He took out his house keys from his suit, making sure he jiggled them loudly so she could run to him at the front door. He unlocked the door and, to his utter dismay, saw total darkness. He looked to his left where Laura would always place her purse and keys on the entry table, but noticed they were not there. He searched the apartment, turning on every light, only to find it empty still. Had she been gone this entire time? Where could she possibly be?

Garrett removed all his dressings and stepped into the cold-tiled shower. He felt a sudden revolting feeling in his stomach. His once steady surgeon hands were now trembling. He laid down in their empty bed, drowning in the deafening silence of Laura’s absence. Where was she? What did she do all day? Who was she with? He laid awake in bed until he finally heard a loud clinking of keys at the front door. He quickly glanced at the bright green face of the clock on his nightstand. It was twelve forty-five past midnight. He heard the door open and shut almost too loudly. She dropped her purse and keys on the entry way table and made her way to their bedroom. She showered with the bathroom door open, and he pretended to be asleep when she laid down next to him. He had hoped she would try to wake him, but she did not. He had hoped she would confront him, even if outraged, but she did not. He had hoped he would teach her a lesson, but it turns out two can play that game.