Redo

by Brigitte Winter

3.

In our third timeline, I met you on New Year’s Eve.

I had slept off a migraine half that day, so I wanted nothing more than to spend the evening by the fireplace cuddling with Jamie and our ancient basset hound. But New Year’s Day would be my fifth wedding anniversary with Jamie — our “wood” anniversary — and he had gotten tickets to a burlesque show because he thought he was hilarious. Predictably, he insisted that it would be wasteful to skip the show because the tickets were fifty dollars each. Plus, booze was included. Plus, he could watch women dance out of their clothes, which was significantly more interesting than watching me sit around all night in the oversized sweater and leggings I’d been wearing since Christmas.

“Plus, Mary,” he said, “maybe you’ll surprise yourself and have fun for once.”

And so I pulled a black slip dress over my leggings and twisted my unwashed hair into a bun, and Jamie and I squeezed into the dingy black box theater just as the first dancer finished her set. Jamie muttered something about me making him late again before disappearing to the bar. He didn’t ask me if I wanted anything, which was fine because I didn’t. My temples pounded along with the bass blaring from the too-close speaker. Everyone in the audience was standing, and the guy directly in front of me was well over six feet tall and completely blocking the stage. The back of his jacket was a maroon velvet that looked so soft and dark that I longed to press my face against it until the bass stopped pumping and my brain stopped throbbing.

And then the bass stopped pumping.

I pushed up onto my toes to peer around the velvet jacket as slow piano and the first rich notes of Des’ree’s “Kissing You” wrapped around me and pulled me forward until I found myself standing in front of the tall man.

By the time you glided onto the stage, I had somehow edged my way to the front of the crowd. They introduced you as Ale Mary. Your sequined teddy glinted like a disco ball with every slow, luxurious spin, and your arms were clad in long feathery wings, which you used to cover and uncover your body in delicious, teasing motions. You were the most glamorous woman I had ever seen.

And each time you spun toward the audience, you looked directly into my eyes.

By the time the song ended, Jamie had made his way to the front of the house and draped his heavy arm around my neck. I barely felt it.

“I have to pee!” I yelled over the music, untangling myself from him. He nodded, eyes glued to the stage. The next dancer was already down to pasties and a thong, flossing a purple boa between her legs.

I didn’t want to fight the crowd to the back of the house, so I slipped through a door to the left of the stage. I realized my mistake as soon as the door clicked shut behind me and an icy wind whipped down the alley outside the theater with enough force to make my eyes water.

“Shit.” I grabbed the door handle and yanked. Nothing. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

I spun around and growled, eager to kick the nearest dumpster or brick wall or some other big hard alley thing, and nearly collided with you. My eyes pricked with embarrassment, but I was not going to cry in front of you.

You extended a gloved hand. You were holding an old-fashioned cigarette holder, smoke curling off the tip and spiraling into the frosty air in serpentine curls. “Want a drag?”

“Um, I . . . I don’t smoke.”

“Me neither.” You laughed and your whole body shook with a raw, chaotic energy that complicated the graceful, glamorous persona you’d presented on stage. “I needed some air so I bummed this off one of the gals. I found this prop cigarette holder in the green room; couldn’t resist trying it out.”

I shuddered as another frigid blast of air cut through the alley, bringing a swirl of snow flurries. You stopped laughing. “Oh, shit. I’m so sorry, darling,” you said. “I’m blabbing while you’re freezing. I think I’m still jittery from my set. I always talk too much when I’m jittery.”

As you spoke, you unwrapped the fat infinity scarf from your neck and draped it over my shoulders like a shawl. Your hands brushed down the sides of my arms as you did it, and I smelled your perfume — sweet jasmine and vanilla mingling with something muskier. I shivered again at your touch, a rush of warmth heating my cheeks and tingling over my scalp and down my spine.

“Why j-j-jittery?” I shivered. “You were amazing.”

“Thank you.” You grinned and dipped into an exaggerated bow. “Getting all jittery is part of the fun of performing. I’d have to drive off a cliff for the same adrenaline high I get from dancing.” You winked. “Dancing’s safer.”

I reflexively looked down, away from the wink, and right at your chest. Without your scarf, your cleavage rose over the scooped collar of your faux-fur jacket. Your breasts were covered in goosebumps.

“If you’re going to stare at my boobs, it’s only polite to tell me your name.”

“Oh, sorry, um . . .” My cheeks went hot again. “I’m Mary.”

You gasped. “You’re kidding me.”

“I’m not.” I wanted nothing more than to melt back through the locked door and vanish into the crowd.

“I’m also Mary. Like, legally. Not just for the show. Well, Marian, technically, but it’s close enough. That means I’m obligated by law to show you the nearest open door back inside.” You grinned again. “Which is a shame because I’d really like to keep talking to you.”

You were standing so close that I could feel your warm breath against my shoulder. I could see your smile lines cracking the makeup around your hazel eyes, the way you kept licking the red lipstick off the inside of your lips, the way your tongue —

“I’m married!” I announced, and then instantly wished myself dead.

You laughed again. The snow flurries collecting on your false lashes sparkled in the light from the streetlamp illuminating the alley. “Me, too.” You raised an eyebrow. “Buy you a drink?”

And so I followed you back out to the street and around to the theater’s front entrance. As we climbed the steps, my head spun with a wave of dizziness so intense and unexpected that I reached for your hand and squeezed it tight. You squeezed back — three short pulses — and the gesture felt somehow familiar, a happy memory I couldn’t place. The harder I strained to remember, the dizzier I felt. I didn’t want my migraine to come back, so I slipped my hand from yours and opened the door for you.

The theater lobby was empty, and muted bass pumped behind the closed doors to the house. A bored bartender with a glittery mohawk sat behind a bar near the coat check, their chin propped on their fist. The clock over their head read 11:16 p.m., and the short hand’s proximity to twelve — to the crowd swarming the lobby to celebrate the new year and Jamie requesting a midnight kiss and a sober ride home — made something twist in the bottom of my stomach.

The bartender stood as we approached. “What can I make you?” they asked.

Without thinking, I blurted, “Two Stoli O and gingers, please.”

You perched on a stool and looked up at me with pinched brows. “How did you know?”

“How did I know what?”

The bartender plunked the drinks onto the bar, and you passed them a credit card before I could dig into my purse. “You ordered my favorite drink,” you said.

“Oh.”

You sipped your drink and crossed your legs. “I mean, I’m not mad about it.”

“Lucky guess.” I had no idea why that drink popped into my head, or why I still felt so dizzy, or why I was so helplessly drawn to you.

“Lucky.” You covered my hand with yours, and that was that.

We talked while we drank, a desperate ping pong of frenzied question and response, with topics deepening in intimacy the closer the hour hand climbed toward midnight.

Where did I grow up? Here. I’d never lived more than ten miles from where I was born. I’d always wanted to live near the ocean, but I was worried it was too late to start over somewhere new and Jamie burned easily and hated the beach.

What were you like when you weren’t performing? Boring. Happy. A technical writer with a cozy government job and three Siamese cats.

Had I ever been with a woman? Yes, but not since Jamie and I became official in college.

Was your husband here tonight? Wife, and you were separated.

What would Jamie think if he saw you stroking the outside of my thigh? I didn’t want to know, but I also didn’t want you to stop.

Should we maybe go for a walk, find someplace more private?

You slid off the stool and pulled me toward the other side of the lobby and into a pop-up photo booth conveniently tucked behind a heavy black drape. The booth was full of photo props — a bedazzled bowler hat, a rainbow-colored boa, several different cardboard mustaches on sticks. There wasn’t much distance between the prop table and the camera’s touchscreen, and the slender space between our bodies buzzed with energy. We were nearly the same height, and I could feel your breath against my lips when you spoke.

“I’d really like to kiss you,” you breathed.

I closed the space between us, pressing my lips to yours, lightly at first, and then with greater urgency. Somewhere in the wild tangle of arms and lips and hands and hair, a flash lit the booth, and then another, and another. You pulled away from me, laughing and pointing at the camera. “Guess we’ll have a souvenir to remember tonight,” you panted, “like it’s possible to forget how you taste.”

“How do I taste?” I smirked.

You smiled and closed your eyes, sliding a finger down the front of my throat and between my breasts. “Like Stoli O,” you laughed. “But also like something warmer — honey, maybe. Or sunshine. Shit, you’ve made me a romantic. What’s your email address for the photos?” You reached for the touchscreen. “Just kidding. I’ll delete them. You should have seen your face. You believed me for a second.”

And then we watched the photos fade into a text screen, and my chest squeezed so tight I couldn’t breathe.

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7.

“That’s how I found out what you’d done,” Jamie says. “At least that’s how it worked in our third redo. I got to learn you cheated with her again in a Facebook album, along with the rest of the world.” Jamie shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath, in and out. I imagine him counting to three, slowly, the way our couple’s therapist taught him. “It took longer in other timelines,” he says. “Sometimes years.”

A dull pain throbs behind my eyes, blurring my vision. So much of the story he told me seems familiar. It feels distant — like something I overheard years ago at a cocktail party, or the plot of a book I haven’t read since high school — but somehow undeniably true. I slide my wedding ring up and down my finger. It’s grown tight over the past twenty years, and it digs in sharply each time I force it over my knuckle. The pain grounds me.

And I remember.

I remember details from the story Jamie told me, but also . . . other things. The tall man with the maroon jacket. Des’ree. Your face. The way your laugh bounced off the alley walls. Your fingers in my hair. Tart orange on your tongue. I remember all of it.

“I don’t remember,” I tell Jamie, pressing my fingers against my throbbing temples. “I don’t remember any of it.”

“Of course you don’t.” His voice is velvet. He sits next to me on our big comfy sofa and strokes my hair. “I shouldn’t have pushed you to go to the show that night. I didn’t in our fourth timeline. We stayed home, made a fire, watched the snow fall outside. It was perfect. I felt so close to you.” He pulls my head against his shoulder. “I love taking care of you.”

“What do you mean?” My body stiffens each time he strokes my hair, but I know I shouldn’t pull away, not if I want to hear more. And I want to hear everything.

“Your headaches were so much worse after that fourth jump — not an uncommon side effect of the redo process — so we stayed home more often. We made adjustments to keep you healthy.”

We made adjustments to keep you healthy. His words shudder down my spine and twist around my stomach, drive me from the couch to the big front window, the one that looks out over the beach. It’s February and probably freezing outside, but the day is bright and the water is calm. Jamie moved us here a decade ago, one of the most thoughtful things he ever did for me. And then he made partner faster than anticipated and my migraines got so terrible and unpredictable that he encouraged me to stay home and pursue my art full time. A big canvas with a half-finished painting of a sunset rests on an easel by the window.

Did he move us here because he thought it would make me happy, or because we’d be six hundred miles away from you?

“How many times?” I ask him. “How many times did you do it?”

“Marry you all over again? Seven. Seven times, and I’d marry you a thousand times if I had to.” I hear his slippers shuffle across the hardwood floor. He rests his hands on my shoulders. “That’s why I’m telling you everything today, for our anniversary. I want you to know how hard we’ve both worked to earn this celebration. Because we’re worth it.”

And with another flash of pain behind my eyes, you are back again.

“Because we’re worth it,” you said, sprawled naked and flushed across your bed. One of your fat Siamese cats, Ursula, perched above you on a shelf stuffed with worn sci-fi paperbacks and creative writing textbooks you’d carried with you since college.

“Run away with me, darling,” you purred dramatically, lingering on the “aaaah” in darling. The quilt was printed with purple tulips, and I imagined you lounging in a garden.

“You look like a painting,” I told you. “A portrait of a fancy Renaissance lady reclining by a fountain. I’d love to paint you in a place like that.”

“Only straight white cis men are into time travel fantasies.” You laughed.

Jamie squeezes my shoulders and your bedroom fades. Your sudden absence wrenches the breath from my lungs. I imagine myself drowning in the ocean beyond the window, my body burning for air while his hands hold me just below the waves.

“How does it work?” I ask him. “The time travel, I mean. The redos.”

He spins me so we face each other, and smiles. His dark hair is streaked with gray, but it still spills over one eye when he looks down at me. I loved him so much in the first years of our marriage. My chest used to ache when he looked at me like that, with his cheeks dimpling like an eager little boy, his eyes peeking through his hair and suggesting all the naughty, amazing things he wanted to do to me, whether we were home in our bedroom or pushing a cart through a crowded grocery store. We met when I switched schools in second grade, so I know the story of every tiny imperfection on his beautiful face — the two chicken pox scars on his left temple because he couldn’t help scratching them when he was eight, the way his front teeth cross slightly because he was too impatient to wear his retainer after his braces came off in ninth grade, the scar in the center of his chin from trying to impress me by diving into the shallow end of the pool at Mimsi Patrick’s sixteenth birthday party. Always impatient, always impulsive.

“You really want to know, don’t you?” His smile widens. “Well, I really want to tell you. Today, I want to tell you everything.”

He laces his hands with mine, and his familiar wedding ring is warm between my fingers. Our rings are simple gold bands, scratched and dented over the years. They belonged to Jamie’s parents, and his grandparents, and very likely multiple generations of great and greater grandparents before them. I felt strange accepting them from his mom and dad, who were very much alive and still together when Jamie and I got married, but they presented the rings with such enthusiastic ceremony that it was impossible to refuse them. Plus, Jamie had just started law school and it seemed likely that we’d be in debt forever. Free was an excellent price for gold.

Jamie guides me to the mantle over our big stone fireplace. Before he dropped the “I’ve married you seven times” bomb, our twentieth anniversary morning plan had involved chocolate chip pancakes, pajamas, and a wood fire. The pancake batter is still mixed and waiting on the kitchen counter.

Three framed photographs stare back at us from the mantle, each a wedding portrait: Jamie’s grandparents, his parents, and us. Jamie scoops up the photo of his parents with his free hand and smiles down at it.

“Do you see how happy they look?”

His tall, willowy mother is wearing a long-sleeved, perfectly seventies wedding gown that I was blissfully able to refuse because it wouldn’t zip over my boobs, and her head is resting on his dad’s shoulder. His dad’s powder-blue tux is somehow overshadowed by his gigantic square glasses, but his grin is contagious.

“They do look happy,” I admit. “Your parents were always crazy about each other.”

He lets out a staccato laugh, the same one he uses when he’s bested me at trivia, even when we are on the same team. “They weren’t always crazy about each other,” he says. “That took work. And three redos.”

A sick feeling sucks at the pit of my stomach.

“For my grandparents, it wasn’t that easy,” he continues. “My grandfather redid their marriage five times, and then they decided together on a sixth redo to celebrate their twenty-fifth anniversary, right before my parents were married.”

In the photo of Jamie’s grandparents, his grandfather stands behind his grandmother, wrapping his arms around her waist as if they are posing for a prom picture, the familiar rings adorning their interlaced fingers.

“It’s the rings,” I say weakly. My mouth is dry and my tongue feels heavy.

He frowns and grips my hand more tightly. “How did you know that?”

“I —”

“Have you used them?”

“No! Jamie, I —”

“Have you gone back to see her?”

“You’re hurting my hand.”

He lets go. “I’m sorry. Oh, shit. I’m really, really sorry.”

I turn away from him and ball my hands into fists so he can’t see them shaking.

“Mary? Can we hit rewind on this conversation? This is not how I wanted it to go.”

My eyes sting with the tears I keep blinking back.

“Sweetheart? Listen to me. It’s just that you’re not supposed to remember any of it. That’s how the rings work. We can wish for a redo together like my grandparents did for their anniversary and then we both remember our last timeline, or one of us can make the wish for both of us and only that person remembers. Either way, we always go all the way back to the morning of our wedding day and start over again. Each time I’ve made the wish on my own, the memory of the redo has been my burden to carry. And I’ve been honored to carry it.”

My head throbs again and I’m dizzy with all of the truths I’m fighting to hold at once: the truth of what Jamie has done, but also the dozens of electric conversations I shared with you on the commuter train where we met in our first timeline together, the impossible softness of your skin, your loud and bawdy humor, your vintage lingerie collection, the way you’d snore into my hair when you fell asleep right after sex. And at the center of all of it, the sudden deep, throbbing ache of the loss of you, of the many lives he stole from us.

“Mary, love —” He grabs my arm — too hard — and I spin free of him, nearly tripping over the Lego castle Annabelle built last night before bed.

Annabelle.

My God.

I sink into the sofa.

“Jamie, I need to know something.”

He nods. “Anything.” He sits next to me and slips his hand under mine. His eyes are big and mournful. He wants to make this right.

“In the other timelines, did we have a baby?”

He presses his lips into a straight line, but I know the answer. I know I never wanted a child. Annabelle — our sweet, stubborn, hilarious daughter who hates marzipan, loves seahorses, never brushes her hair, and wants to be the Easter Bunny when she grows up — she exists because he willed her to. And any minute she’s going to bound down the stairs and ask why we haven’t called her for pancakes.

“You needed a reason to stay,” he says quickly. “And it worked. We made it twenty years this time, seven of them with Annabelle. Before we had her, we never even made it fifteen.”

“You’re a monster.” My voice comes out flat, limp.

“Well, that’s a bit dramatic, don’t you think?” He pouts and squeezes my hand, which rests on his like something dead. “It’s not like I killed that woman. I just gave us more chances to get things right.”

I stand and pull the wedding ring from my finger. It leaves an indentation on my skin, white and shiny as a scar. I drop the ring into the chest pocket of my flannel pajamas.

“What are you doing?”

I walk toward the front door.

“You have no idea what I’ve been through, what I’ve sacrificed for us!” he calls after me. “You think those headaches are bad? That it hurts to forget? Imagine what I’ve experienced. Imagine what it’s like to remember everything.”

I pull my winter coat from its hook and step into my boots.

“Don’t do this, Mary!” He’s shouting now, loud enough for Annabelle to hear. “I’ve started my career over seven times. Seven times, I went from senior partner all the way back to first year associate. Seven times I watched my father die, watched my mother fall apart grieving him. Seven times I watched you leave me, again and again — for that woman — no matter how hard I worked to take care of you.”

I wrap my fingers around the doorknob. It’s cold and hard in my palm. He doesn’t understand what he’s done, what he’s taken from me, from you. And I don’t need to explain it to him. I don’t want the last word. I want my freedom.

3.

You looked from the photo-booth touch screen to my stricken face and back to the screen again. “Well, I guess we’re screwed,” you said.

My heart pounded and my cheeks burned. I felt like I was going to cry, but a strangled laugh came out instead, and once I was laughing I couldn’t stop. I laughed so hard that my sides ached and I propped my back against the wall to keep from doubling over.

“It’s not funny.” You crossed your arms and pressed your lips together, but soon you were laughing, too, and then tears were streaming rainbow rivulets of eye liner down your cheeks. “Is this fate?” you hiccupped. “Am I doomed to mess up every good thing in my life?”

I forced down a few deep breaths until I could speak without laughing or sobbing. “I don’t believe in fate,” I said. “Fate is just an excuse lazy people use to avoid taking responsibility for their choices.”

You sniffled and smiled. “I like you,” you said. You linked your fingers with mine. “I like you a lot.”

I closed the distance between us and kissed you again. “I like you a lot,” I said.

“We were doing better in the alley,” you said. “Come outside with me until we get caught? You can bring your coat this time.”

7.

Jamie stands and crosses his arms. “You won’t do it.” His voice is steady. He isn’t yelling anymore. “You won’t walk out on Annabelle.”

I laugh sharply. “Why not? Men walk out on their families all the time.”

The words taste bitter in my mouth. I take a deep breath and change course, walking back toward the kitchen.

“What are you doing?”

“Making breakfast for Annabelle.”

He follows me. “This is the right thing, Mary.”

I click on the gas stove. The burner flames a searing blue.

“You can’t go back, you know.” He rests his big hands on the counter, fingers splayed, trapping me in the corner by the stove. I can barely move my arm in a wide enough circle to scoop the pancake batter into the pan.

“Those other timelines were erased the second we left them,” he says. “Everything you shared with that woman is gone. She won’t know you if you find her.” He grabs my forearm and squeezes so hard that I drop the spatula. “Will you stop for a moment and listen to me? This is important.”

“Let go.” I try to pull my arm away and he tightens his grip.

“I’ve learned from my mistakes and grown into a better man because of you.” He presses his body against mine, bracing himself against the counter with his free hand. The hard marble digs sharply into my lower back. I can’t breathe.

“Jamie, back up. Please.” I need air and he’s so much bigger than me and he won’t let me go.

He’ll never let me go.

“I’ve given you everything you asked for, everything you needed even when you didn’t know you needed it yet.”

And everything he’s given me — his lies, my headaches, our beautiful child, this gilded cage we live in — will tether me to him whether I walk out that door or not. And he knows it.

“Mary?” His lips curl into a boyish half-smile.

Unless —

My heart pounds so hard that I can hear the blood rushing in my ears. I reach behind me, feel for the familiar edge of the wooden block. And then I pull the carving knife from its slot and slam it down on the counter. The knife slices through his fingers with a thud and then clicks against the marble.

He shrieks, releasing my arm and crumbling to the floor. He leaves his severed fingers on the counter by the mixing bowl.

I pick up Jamie’s ring finger with a shaky hand. It’s slick with blood and the wedding band slides off easily.

“My God, Mary!” Jamie sobs and curls his body around his wrecked hand. “What are you doing?”

I pull my wedding band from my pocket and slip it back on.

I push his ring onto my middle finger and flip him the bird. “Erasing this timeline,” I say.

My stomach lurches.

The kitchen falls away and I plummet through harsh white space. I tumble, heavy, accelerating too quickly.

A bright, searing pain behind my eyes.

The sharp scent of burning hair.

A ripping sensation as twenty years of life are shorn from me, layer by layer: Jamie, Annabelle, love, fear, guilt, resentment. Every beauty and every horror equally excruciating as they tear away.

And then — weightlessness. Humming warmth. I shut my eyes and savor the slow, steady beat of my heart.

My feet find the earth. I open my eyes and take back my life.

1.

I finish my story. The sun is starting to set over the tulip garden, and the cool breeze prickles my arms. I imagine the truth I’ve loosed skimming across the rows of purple flowers and vanishing over the horizon, free. I should feel relieved, but a tight, stuck feeling hardens in my chest. I’m not ready to look at you, but I can hear you breathing beside me, steady and even.

“Bit much for a first date, huh?” I ask with a strangled laugh.

You don’t say anything, but you also don’t leave.

I extend my hand and peer between my fingers to watch the colors shift over the horizon from soft pink to flaming orange. My two gold rings shimmer in the sunset glow.

And then you catch my hand and lace your fingers through mine, running your thumb across the rings. My pulse quickens at your touch, same as always. My need to hold you, to have you is an unbearable ache, but this has to be your choice.

My eyes find yours.

“So, what happens next?”

Host Commentary

This is an important story, today, dealing with a topic that’s rarely, if ever, broached in genre—that R rating for coercive control up top is not for a passing reference to the topic. It feels more vital than ever to get stories like this out into the world, which is why I’m very pleased to say that our end-of-year fundraiser through December 2024, with its matching fund of $7,000 from some very generous longtime supporters, managed to pull in… $7,158, which meant we got everything we could out of that matching fund. Thank you so, so much for your support, whether you signed up through Patreon, chipped in with a one-off donation through Paypal, or even just spread the word on anti-social media; getting this shot of funding is ESSENTIAL, particularly as all our careful plans to start taking advantage of US federal grants through our still-fresh non-profit status have, uh, had to be thrown out entirely thanks to certain cultural wrecking balls making sure there’s not a single dollar headed anywhere except the billionaire class.

And if you wanted to help us spend some of this new found shiny treasure, then we’re open to submissions right now, till the end of March—both for general submissions, and still for our special Disability Pride & Magic call, which are separate queues if you can submit to both. Check our website—podcastle.org—for all the details you could ever need.

…aaaaand welcome back. That was “Redo” by Brigitte Winter, and if you enjoyed that then check out her website brigittewinter.com includes not only a link to the anthology this story debuted in, with fiction from her fellow Viable Paradise 23 alums as well as Elizabeth Bear and Daryl Gregory, but also some TTRPGs she’s been involved in writing.

For Redo, Brigitte sent us these notes:

As a 90s kid who grew up on Quantum Leap and Back to the Future, I have always been fascinated by stories about time travel and redemption. These stories pose a seductive question: What if I could change the past to make the future better?

But better for whom?

Who decides what needs fixing? And what if everyone hasn’t opted into that change? Do we ever have the right to change someone’s fate without their consent?

When the time travel trope is reframed in this way, the genre suddenly slips from fantasy to horror. And that erratic genre slipping can mirror the experience a person often faces when they live through intimate partner violence.

I wrote Redo because I was interested in using time travel to explore themes of agency and breaking cycles of violence.

That’s why it felt so important to end the story with a question. Like Mary, you are invited to consider this narrative, to be moved by it or not, and to decide, “What happens next?”

[pause]

Thank you, Brigitte. That was… that was a lot, delivered as beautifully as it could be, but like a scalpel under the skin nonetheless. Coercive control is such an awful thing to do to someone else, and it’s so pernicious and slippery that it’s only been a crime in the UK for 10 years. Were this story told from Jamie’s perspective it would absolutely present him in the way he sees himself—noble, heroic, bearing more years and heartbreaks and efforts than anyone should, taking it all on his shoulders and bearing it alone, for the sake of his love, to make Mary happy—while begging the question, of course, of whether she can actually be happy with him. The telling line is “I’ve learned from my mistakes and grown into a better man because of you.” He means it to justify his actions, as a compliment to how wonderful she is, as a way to show that it was all worth it and isn’t she proud? And he, being so entirely wrapped up in his own bullshit, is oblivious to the truth he’s actually delivering: you are only a prop to my own emotional journey.

Though to be fair to him, virtually every piece of media from the last hundred years and every recorded act of history from the last four thousand has taught him that this is the natural order of things. That only men truly have agency, have a destiny; that women are the sideshow, the decoration and motivation, the afterthought but never allowed to think for themselves.

At risk of potentially sending you down a TVTropes rabbit hole—if you know, you know—you should look up the phrase “Women in Refrigerators” if you’ve not heard it before.

I hope I should not have to point out to you that this is all bullshit of the rankest order, and fundamentally another example of contemporary mainstream masculinity being in many ways indistinguishable from adolescence and the self-centred world-view of that half-developed brain. I am aware I am being gender-essentialist here, but this is a behaviour permitted and encouraged by the way in which the male gender is socialised right now, and besides, am I wrong? Honestly? There are certainly counter-examples, but how many?

You do not get to decide for someone else. Never. You do not get to do the big awkward public proposal to socially pressure someone into accepting. You do not get to decide something “for their own good”. You do not get to think you know better than they do, and do anything without their knowledge, their buy-in. And you damn well better not dress it up as a fucking kindness.

Because sometimes the most hurtful, awful part of a coercive control situation is when they convince you it is what you want after all. Pernicious and slippery indeed.