Page 86 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
“You are right,” he says. “I accepted a great deal of wrong. I accepted it because it was what I grew up with, but I never wanted to lay a hand on you like that. I only wanted to make you feel good. That’s all I ever…” He drifts off again, like he’s lost in a memory. “But for a very long time I wanted to be his soldier. I hated that my mother was gone. She was…” He winces. “I remember her slapping me across the face. But I was a difficult child. She was unhappy. She… My father was very bad to her. It wasn’t her fault that she couldn’t be patient with me.”
I’m horrified by this. There is not one happy place for him in his childhood. There’s not one good thing to grab onto. He has no idea how a parent should look at their child, how they should treat them.
“My parents were so good to me,” I say. “I remember how much effort they put into the holidays, even though we never had a lot of money. It was never about the presents, it was about being together. About going up to the snow to get Christmas trees, and telling stories by a campfire outside even though it was freezing cold.”
My memories, all that happiness, rush through me now. It’s my foundation. It’s the truth of who I am, of how I was made. It never occurred to me that he had been forged in a very different fire. How could we ever see things the same?
“They came to all of my school events,” I continue. “They told me that I could be whatever I wanted. I never quite felt good enough. But that was me. They were so proud of me, and I just wanted to live up to their faith in me. They’re practical people. My dad works a difficult, physical job. But they supported the idea I had of being an artist, as long as I could get myself there. As long as I was taking the practical steps and making plans instead of just daydreaming. And so I did. Sometimes that felt difficult. Sometimes it felt like I was rolling a giant boulder uphill, but I always had support when I needed it. Help when I needed it. You didn’t have anything. And that…” I shake my head. “You didn’t tell me. In fact, you actively refused to tell me anything about yourself so I couldn’t have known. Except, I wish I had guessed. Really. Because I held you to a standard that wasn’t fair.”
“How does my terrible childhood change what you deserve? It doesn’t. You deserve to be treated the best, regardless.”
It’s such a clear, concise statement, and one that cuts through to the heart of everything. He isn’t wrong. His words are a revelation in some ways, and yet I’m still lost in my previous realizations. I treated him like the knowledge of how to be a good husband was innate to him. Why would it be? No one ever showed him how.
“Marriage is a partnership,” I say. “I deserve to be loved like you’ve never been hurt. But you deserved to be cared for in a way that considered you had. I should’ve been more patient with you.”
“I don’t know about that. I don’t know that I deserve patience of any kind.”
“The things that you’re describing are so horrendously abnormal. Truly. They are not just or fair. They’re not anything that anyone should have to go through. And I… I expected you to know things that you couldn’t know. You were born speaking Romanian. I was born speaking English. I would never be able to speak Romanian the way that you do, just as you have an accent, even though your English is excellent.” I add that last part because I know comments on his accent irritate him. “It isn’t your native language. Just the same as this sort of life, this sort of connection, it’s not your native language. I treated you like it was. Like it should be. Like there was something wrong with you because you didn’t understand what I wanted. But it’s… Conjugating verbs you don’t even know.”
“No, I think you might be going a little far to absolve me.”
“What made you decide that you didn’t want to be like your father?”
He looks up. “I didn’t decide that. I am my father.” He looks at me, and his eyes are so blank and cold they terrify me into my soul. “I am, my Cassandra. I grew up to be him.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Dragos
I’M DRIVEN INthat moment to go and search the closet. That room filled with so many files. Because it holds a key, though I’m not certain what it’s a key to. If it’s a key back to a life I even want. All of my childhood has come back to me. It feels like knives have lodged themselves in my gut, and every breath drives the blades in deep.
I’m having a difficult time even explaining everything to Cassandra. And it’s funny that she mentioned English and Romanian. Because my memories are in Romanian, and there is a disconnect, a difficulty in taking that native language and simplifying it into English. Trying to explain these meanings. Or maybe that’s just trying to explain the crooked foundation of my life.
Because that is certainly part of it.
She’s not wrong.
I was raised believing that up was down, and black was white. As simplistic of an example as that is.
I was raised to believe that ruthlessness was the only true virtue. That a heavy hand was the only hand that could ever be respected.
As I said to her, my father made the rules, made the mold, and told me that fitting it was the only option. I did.
I don’t know what that means, not in its entirety. But I feel a darkness in me, and heaviness. And I’m not sure if I’m racing to that darkness or away from it as I stand up from the bed and head back to my office.
Cassandra follows me, and I almost want to tell her to go back. But I promised her this. I promised her the opportunity for us to do this together. For us to learn who I am at the same time.
Of course, that was before.
Before the starkness was little more than a creeping suspicion.
But the visceral rage I feel in my memory for my dead mother has told me something about myself that I wish I didn’t know.
It never occurred to me what a blessing the loss of memory might be.
To never know that at one time I felt a sort of acrid hatred for a helpless woman.
He made you feel that way.
