Tiger King [excerpt]

I was walking across a quad on a college campus I didn’t recognize. Emma, a little girl again, was with me, dancing and playing in the grass. Hearing a large commotion behind me, I turned. A herd of animals must have escaped from the zoo. They were charging onto the quad. Seeing that some of the animals were dangerous, I had to act quickly! As I looked for a path of retreat that would avoid the elephants and the giraffes, I spotted a tiger. Where is Emma? Turning in a panic, I saw her standing frozen thirty feet away, looking very afraid. The tiger hadn’t seen her yet, but it was eyeing me, pacing, getting ready to charge. What should I do? If I sprinted in the opposite direction, I could draw the tiger away from Emma, but I would have to sacrifice myself. That would also leave her exposed to the other animals. If I made a running grab for her, I was pretty sure the tiger would catch us both. Without turning to look at her, I shouted, telling her what to do. “Emma, when I get the tiger to chase me, I want you to run for the building.” I drew the tiger’s attention and started running as fast as possible, hoping that Emma had escaped to safety.

Around 9:30 AM I picked up Emma, my youngest daughter, from her father’s house. Half awake, sloughing off her winter gear, she shuffled her way into Bill's living room, where she took her usual place in the big stuffed chair. Charlie, our Yorkshire puppy, leapt to his place in her lap. She gently pushed him to the side, so she could open her laptop and log into biology class. Emma hated online high school. 

After bringing her the blueberry smoothie I whipped up every morning, I settled onto the love seat. Grabbing my MacBook, I opened the philosophy paper I had delivered last summer at a conference in Vienna. I was editing it for publication, but had lost my momentum. As the weeks in isolation passed by, I had a knawing sense this paper might never again see the light of day. Not to mention my dissertation, from which the paper was taken. All the added tasks brought on by the pandemic left little time—overseeing Emma’s online schooling, emailing back and forth to teachers, ordering and sterilizing groceries, preparing three meals a day. With most the restaurants closed, no one was eating out. 

Emma had sunk into depression as many kids did. Given her ADHD, asking her to attend school online, was asking too much. It quickly became a nightmare. Every day she struggled to keep track of assignments and class times. Throwing off the laptop, she expressed frustration. "I can't do this! I can't calm my thoughts enough to focus--not when people are dying, Mom!"

After COVID had claimed the life of a sweet, elderly uncle on her father's side, I started silencing the radio when Emma was in earshot.. I couldn't stand to see the panic seize her breath and freeze her face. The news only undermined her already fragile sense of security.

Worried, I called the school guidance counselor, trying to enlist her understanding. “Emma is having a hard time. She’s falling behind. I don’t want to press her too much or cause her more anxiety."

Most teachers were supportive, patient, and willing to work with her, but Emma had complained that Mrs, Gibson, her biology teacher, was too strict.

Just after 5:00 PM Abe arrived to take her home with him. Abe is my previous husband, who I had met in college. We divorced nine years ago. Each evening, as he stood by the door waiting for Emma to gather her belongings, I updated him on Emma’s progress, as if I was his secretary rather than her mother. I hid how it demoralized me. Since Emma went to live with him, tow months ago, my parental role felt compromised. From the day Emma was born, Abe attempted to drive a wedge between me and Emma. The more the marriage devolved, the more he actively tried to turn her against me.

For instance, prior to our separation, he refused to assist me in establishing a regular bed time. Each night, I put Emma to bed, she would inevitably reappear, a silhouette standing at the entry to the living room, with a pleading look on her face.

"Can't I fall asleep on the couch next to you?"

As I rose to shew her back to the bedroom, Emma would lift her arms groping for Abe from across the room. "Please, Daddy,"

Instead of taking her back to bed, he would lift his arms in response, and in a childish voice, "Come here, honey."

As Emma glanced at me to see my reaction, Abe's voice would descend to a growl.

"Just ignore your mother." 

Now, nearly a decade later, helping Emma to gather her belongings as Abe stood just inside the foyer, I tried to give Emma a hug. She shrugged me off, making a disgruntled face, she turned and rushed to hug her father, as they bantered back and forth in the baby language they had used since she was little. 

I didn't say a word.

Caught between us, Emma consistently displayed her outwards signs of loyalty to Abe. It was that or face his anger. I refused to participate in his tug of war., but quietly tried to keep the peace. It was better if he vented his rage at me. 

Stephanie said children will often try to appease the more dangerous parent.

Early in our relationship I discovered Abe's ability to swing between a dopey, childish persona, the sort depicted in cereal TV ads, and a berserk animal. At six foot five and 220 pounds, the latter side of him terrified me. He rarely let others see it, so most people had the impression Abe was a big, cuddly teddy bear.

Closing the door behind them, I grabbed a glass of wine and retreated to my writing desk upstairs, at which point Bill, my current husband, descended the stairs for dinner.  

During the days I made large batches of soup, pizzas for Emma's lunch, salads, homemade spaghetti sauce, clam chowder, beef stew, and shepherd's pie. All through the lockdown, food prep was relentless. Tonight as Bill and I passed on the stairs, I recited the menu du jour, “There’s broiled salmon, sautéed spinach and pine nuts, and left over potato au-gratin. I hope you’re not too sick of it. Oh, I almost forgot, there's a salad in the back of the fridge.” 

“Thank you, Mar Mar. It sounds delicious.” I had to give Bill credit, every now and then, he thanked me. 

Abe, in one of his surly moods, would hover over me, slinging insults, as I slowly tired to back away.

"You think what you do matters--it doesn't amount to shit."

After Bill had finished his meal and returned upstairs to his study, I ate dinner alone as I contemplated the rest of my evening. I should work on my paper. Back in the living room, opening the laptop, I read the first paragraph. Sometimes, this was all it took to get me typing again.

"When Narcissus discovered his image in the pool, did he encounter the sublime, something greater than himself? Whatever it was--a human face, an idea, an indefinable something--it captivated him and held his attention indefinitely."

In the last few years of my studies in philosophy, this question, which  grabbed MY attention, had emerged not from my dissertation work, per se, but from my personal history. 

I was sickened by the self-serving men that had dominated my life even before it began. But this awareness had come too, late. Here I was, stuck again.

Dark thoughts started flooding my psyche. It's not fair the way men use and abuse women. 

I pushed the laptop aside. That line of thought only leads to despair. I don't want to feel those emotions right now. Turning on the television, I looked for a new series to binge on—something insightful, cathartic, but less violent than Margaret Atwood's handmaid saga--anything to take my mind off things. I was hedging, avoiding my unbearable reality, when I should be strategizing to get free of my marriage. Unable to get past the challenges that kept me from leaving Bill, I kept cycling around to the same place, seated on the same loveseat facing the same old flatscreen.

I've lost my income, I have no resources, we're in the middle of a pandemic... maybe it’s best to stay put and wait it out. 

I scrolled through my options on the TV screen. Nothing leapt out at me. so I resumed watching the Tiger King, the reality TV series about big-game petting-zoos and their owners. Released during the first weeks of the pandemic, it quickly became a social media sensation, a kind of collective diversion from COVID’s escalating numbers. I admit, at first, I foundTiger King’s soap-opera theatrics entertaining, a form of comic relief, but I quickly noticed the misogyny on display, all the rivalry and scapegoating—why is this so alluring? It can’t be healthy. The escalating blame-game gave me shivers, but the pent-up tigers prowling around in cages made me downright anxious. Sooner or later, someone was bound to get hurt. I switched it off.

That night, I dreamt about the tiger.

In my next Zoom session with Stephanie, I recounted the dream. She waited for my interpretation. Sure enough, I started connecting dots that led from the present to the past.

“I remember something that happened thirteen years ago, when Emma was little, when I was married to Abe. We had a terrible argument.” 

Unclenching my hands to brace the seat of my chair, I described it aloud for the first time.

* * *

Abe came home much later than planned. When I complained about being left alone to care for Emma without a break, he exploded. I should have know better,

Closing in on me, he fumed in my face. "I don't have to answer to you. I was working. What were you doing? Nothing of value, that's for sure."

Startled, I retreated to the bedroom. He followed me, picked up a bed pillow and gripped it in both hands. Terrified, I ran from the room, but Abe chased me down, the pillow held to his chest. Heading towards Emma's room, to grab her and escape, like I had done countless times before, I tripped and landed on all fours, just feet from her door. where she was napping. 

Abe crouched down next to me and raised the pillow in the air, he slurred his speech.

“I'm so sick of you.”

I curled up as best I could, wrapping my arms over my head. Emma, two  years old, emerged from the bedroom, rubbing her eyes still groggy from sleep, she saw us, stopped and turned rigid. I tried to shield myself as Abe brought the pillow down over and over again, pounding the floor next to my head, while spewing a relentless stream of anger. 

"I'm sick of your complaints."   

He had been violent before, but this time, I knew Abe might kill me in front of our daughter. Miraculously, he stopped, got up and started pacing the room like a big cat circling its prey. My one thought was to protect Emma. I crawled to a nearby table, where I reached up, grabbed and muted my phone. Hiding my actions, I dialed 911. 

When Abe heard me speaking to the operator, I thought for sure Abe would come back to strangle me, but instead his large frame collapsed on the couch, still raging but visibly shrinking before my eyes. Abe reproached me in an harsh, but hollow voice. 

“You shouldn't have done that. Do you know what this means?”

Crawling to Emma, I pulled her close--shaking, sobbing, I remained on the phone with the operator. “Please don’t hang up, I’m afraid. Please tell them to come right away. My daughter's just a toddler, my daughter is with me.”  

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All characters and their particulars found in the book Pillow Talk are based in reality, but do not correspond with actual persons, places, or events.