I understood right away what Nick wanted. But I didn't understand why he wanted it. "I can't quit my job," I said numbly. "We can't afford to lose my salary."

"I'm about to get a promotion. We'll be fine."

"But . . . what would I do all day?"

"Be a wife. Take of the house. And me. And yourself." He

came closer. "And I'll take care of you. You're going to get pregnant soon anyway. You'd have to quit then. So you may as well do it now."

"Nick, I don't think — "

"We're both stressed, sweetheart. This would help take the pressure off, for you to handle all the stuff that never gets done." Reaching out, Nick took one of my hands gently, and brought it to his face. "I'm sorry about what I did this morning," he murmured, nuzzling into my palm. "I swear it'll never happen again. No matter what."

"You scared me, Nick," I whispered. "You weren't yourself."

"You're right. You know that's not me." With infinite care, he brought me against him. "No one could love you as much as I do. You're everything to me. And we're going to take care of each other, right?"

"I don't know." My voice was scratchy and tight. I had never been so torn, wanting to stay and wanting to leave, loving and fearing him.

"You can always get another job if you want," Nick said reasonably. "But let's try it this way. I want you to be free for a change."

I heard myself whisper, "Please don't do it again, Nick."

"Never," he said at once, kissing my head, my ear, my neck. His fingers came very gently to my reddened cheek. "Poor baby," he murmured. "I'm so glad I did it openhanded, or you'd have a hell of a bruise."

CHAPTER FOUR

Little by little our marriage closed around me. At first it seemed like heaven when I stopped working. I had all the time I needed to make the condo look perfect. I vacuumed the carpet so the polyester nap was arranged in symmetrical stripes. Every square inch of the kitchen was sparkling and clean. I spent hours poring over recipes, improving my cooking skills. I arranged Nick's socks in color-coordinated rows in the drawer.Just before Nick came home from the office, I put on makeup and changed my outfit. I had started to do that after he'd told me one night he hoped I wasn't one of those women who let themselves go after they'd caught a husband.

If Nick had been a jerk all the time, I wouldn't have been so compliant. It was the in-between moments that kept me with him, the evenings when we cuddled in front of the TV and watched the news, the impromptu slow dance after dinner when our favorite song came on. He could he affectionate and funny. He could be loving. And he was the first person in my life who had ever needed me. I was his audience, his reflection, his solace, the person without whom he could never be complete. He had found my worst weakness: I was one of those people who was desperate to be needed, to matter to someone.

There was a lot about our relationship that worked. The part that I had a hard time dealing with was the constant sense of being off balance. The men in my life, my fathers and brothers, had always been predictable. Nick, however, reacted differently at different times to the same behavior. I was never certain when I did something if it would be received with praise or displeasure. It made me anxious, always hunting for clues about how I should behave.

Nick remembered everything I had ever told him about my family and childhood, but he colored it all differently. He told me I had never really been loved by anyone but him. He told me what I really thought, who I really was, and he was so authoritative on the subject of me that I began to doubt my own perceptions. Especially when he echoed the standard phrases from my childhood . . . "You need to get over it."

"You're overreacting."

"You take everything too personally." My own mother had said those things to me, and now Nick was saying them too.

His temper exploded without warning when I made the wrong sandwich for his lunch, when I'd forgotten to run a particular errand. Since I didn't have a car, I had to walk or bike a quarter mile to the grocery store, and I didn't always have time to accomplish all I needed to do. Nick never hit me after that first time. Instead he broke possessions I valued, jerking a delicate gold necklace from my throat, throwing a crystal vase. Sometimes he would push me against the wall and shout into my face. I dreaded that more than anything, the force of Nick's voice blowing all circuitry, shattering parts of me that couldn't be reassembled.

I began to lie compulsively, afraid to reveal some little thing I had said or done that Nick wouldn't like, anything that might set him off.

I became a sycophant, assuring Nick he was smarter than everyone else put together, smarter than his boss, than the people at the bank, than anyone in his family or mine. I told him he was right even when it was obvious he was wrong. And in spite of all that, he was never satisfied.

Our sex life went downhill, at least from my perspective, and I was fairly certain Nick didn't even notice. We had never been all that successful in the bedroom — I'd had no experience before Nick, and I had no way of knowing what to do.

In the beginning of our relationship, I'd found some pleasure in being with him. But gradually he had stopped doing the things he knew I liked, and sex became a slam-bam deal. Even if I had known enough to explain to Nick what I needed, it wouldn't have made a difference. He had no interest in the possibilities of sex beyond the simple matter of one body entering another.