Body Parts by Caitlin Rother

gold patch at the crotch, and as long as it wasn’t wet, it wasn’t too revealing. So, of course, Wayne made her get into the pool so that everyone could see her in full glory.
    After a mix-up with the rent checks, the landlord got upset with Wayne, so they all had to move. However, Karen and her boyfriend got their own place because Wayne kept making racial slurs about the boyfriend being unclean and unfit to handle their food.
     
     
    Kelly got a new job working with thirty men in a warehouse, so Wayne switched gears and made sure she wore baggy clothes when leaving the house each morning. He also started trying to entice her into incorporating bondage into their sex acts.
    While he and Kelly were walking around Hollywood, they stopped at a sex shop, where he bought a deck of cards featuring women from the neck down or the knees up. The cards were specifically focused on the breasts, which were generally wrapped or tied up.
    Wayne got the idea that Kelly should imitate these women’s poses during sex. He had her dip her breasts in wax so he could make molds of them. He also told her he’d like to cut holes in a sheet, then cover her up so that only her breasts were exposed.
    Kelly felt as if she was losing herself amid all this kinkiness. “During this whole time, basically because of the verbal abuse . . . I had to have . . . such a tight rein on my emotions, so that I just didn’t totally have a breakdown. . . . I was just like a walking zombie.”
    Her salvation came in the form of a coworker named Bob, who, like her, was unhappy in a bad marriage. Bob became her confidant, and he began telling her that her home life “was not right.”
    Kelly’s breaking point came a couple of weeks before Christmas in 1982.
    Wayne was a total grinch. They’d spent two Christmases together, but they’d never gotten a tree, and he wasn’t one much for gifts. Kelly somehow persuaded him to let her put up a tree that year.
    One night, she came home from work, and as she always did, got on tiptoe and peered through the glass pane in their front door before she opened it. She could see Wayne inside, wrapping a big stack of presents he’d bought her. But after he saw her, peeking inside, he dragged her through the door and made her open every one of them. He was furious that she’d ruined her own surprise.
    When Kelly finally got up the guts to tell him that she was leaving, Wayne became apologetic and contrite. After Christmas, he even called her up at work and asked if she’d go to marriage counseling with him. She agreed.
     
     
    The therapist was a woman, who talked first to Wayne alone for half an hour, then to Kelly alone, and finally to the couple together. As she conveyed Kelly’s concerns to Wayne, Kelly could see the veins throbbing in Wayne’s neck.
    At the end of the session, the therapist pulled Kelly aside and said she’d have someone drive Kelly home. “I don’t want you going home with him,” she said.
    Wayne had never hit Kelly before—only grabbed her by the arms and shook her occasionally—so she wasn’t all that concerned.
    “No, no, I’ll be fine,” Kelly said.
    Kelly had seen Wayne get violent only once, when a kid in the video arcade had bumped Wayne and caused him to lose his game. Wayne hauled off and hit him so hard that he broke the kid’s nose, embedded his eyeglasses in his face, and split the skin above his eye deep enough that he needed stitches.
    After the counseling appointment, Kelly and Wayne went to the movies and discussed the therapist’s suggestions, one of which was to live apart for a week—him on base and her at the house. So that’s what they decided to do.
    The next day at work, Kelly told Bob what had happened and he suggested they go to dinner with some coworkers. Kelly had taken the bus to the warehouse, so Bob drove her home afterward. As they were approaching the house, Kelly could see a truck belonging to one of Wayne’s friends parked in the driveway, a sign