After the Reunion by Rona Jaffe

you!”
    He stormed into her closet and began to pull her clothes off their hangers and rip them. “Look at these things,” he said with disgust. “Who could get aroused looking at a woman who dresses like this? You’re a dowdy old housewife, a frumpy old bat with cottage cheese for thighs and a fat ass and saggy tits.”
    Automatically Emily glanced at her thighs and ran her hands over them. “I’m not!” she cried, “I’m not twenty, but I’m not disgusting either! Let go of my clothes.” She was so angry she wanted to choke him, and so terrified that she wanted to run away, so she just stood there like a rabbit frozen in front of headlights. Ken was ripping her things to shreds; her beautiful silk party dress that she’d worn only once, her favorite white linen suit, all her at-home robes; tearing them with his drug-crazed strength.
    And then he rushed to his night table, and took from the drawer his gun—the gun that was supposed to protect his beloved family from burglars and intruders—and pointed it at her.
    At her .
    Her heart was pounding so wildly she thought she was going to faint. She tried to run but Ken stepped between her and the bedroom door, still holding the gun aimed right at her. She glanced from it to his eyes, trying to read some sanity there, but all she saw was hate.
    “They’re not your clothes,” he said. “They’re mine; I paid for them. I give you money and you buy ugly, sexless, hausfrau clothes to humiliate me. Is this what I worked for so hard all my life—to come home to something like you?”
    She felt cold again now, calculating, wondering if she could distract him and make it to the door before he shot her. She had never been devious or clever. Nothing in her life had given her any training in anything but trying to please. But apparently everything she had learned had been for a different Ken, one who had vanished in a puff of white powder.
    “Please let me go …” Emily whispered.
    “Let you go?” Ken said.
    “Please …”
    “Nothing would give me more pleasure,” he said. “Get the hell out of here and don’t come back.”
    She ran down the stairs, trying not to stumble and break her neck, praying he wouldn’t shoot her in the back. Her car keys were in the little silver dish in the kitchen where they all left their car keys, and she grabbed them as she ran. She fled out the door and into her car. The brightly moonlit night was chilly and she was shivering and sobbing with fear. Her hand was shaking so badly it took a few moments before she could fit the key into the lock. She locked the car doors. The windows were already up, but a bullet could go through a window. Oh, start … start … Then the engine turned over with a welcome growl, and Emily careened down the narrow winding road without even putting on her seat belt, something that ordinarily she would never omit. Glancing into the rearview mirror, she looked back at her house, and Ken wasn’t anywhere in sight.
    She had no handbag, no money, no credit cards, not even the key to her own house. No, not her house; Ken’s house. California community property laws or not, he thought it was his house, just as he thought those were his clothes he had torn up. As for her, she never wanted to go back there again. Tears were streaming down her face and she could hardly see. Then she realized she had forgotten to turn on the headlights. She could easily have been killed … Ken would be so glad.… The thought made her cry harder. She hadn’t the faintest idea of where to go in the middle of the night in such a state, with such an embarrassing story. Even now, shocked and terrified, almost hating him, she couldn’t hurt Ken’s practice. The scandal of an incident like this could do irreparable harm. Let him destroy his own life, but she wasn’t going to do it.
    Without having realized it, she discovered she was heading toward Westwood, to Peter’s apartment. Her calm, calculating, stable son. Even if he