Louis, after all, is gone four out of five nights a week attending all sorts of meetings. I wanted a change. I wanted something that was my own. I had no idea what to expect from the group, but what I found was a lot of discussion in which these women told one another everything about their lives in startling detail. And in between the meetings, we read the same books. At first I was better at the reading than the talking. We chose books about finding our paths and our true selves. I came to realize that I had spent my life trying to be what everyone else wanted me to be: a good daughter, a good wife, a good mother. I had done nothing to feed my soul, nothing to set myself free. I mentioned once or twice in the group how frustrating it was to be trapped in the life I had built up around me, and how I craved my own space. After one of our meetings a woman offered me this room. She is from a wealthy family that owns, among other things, a string of motels in northern New Jersey. The Fairmount Motel was not doing particularly well and was never full, so she lets me rent this room for a low monthly fee.
I have had a lot to learn, and to accept. Most of my life I have just lived a moment and then done my best to throw it away. But in this room I have sifted through those moments, through my childhood and my marriage, through those times that got me here. I am a different person today than I was when Louis and I were married. No one ever tells you, when you are young, that your entire personality can change—will change—as you grow older. The twenty-five-year-old Kelly McLaughlin is a completely different woman from the fifty-six-year-old Kelly Leary. My behavior is different, my needs are different. When I was young I needed someone to take charge of me, to take me a few steps away from my family.
When I graduated from college it was my father who told me that despite my high test scores, a woman could only pursue one of two careers: nursing or teaching. I didn’t have the patience for teaching and I couldn’t stand the sight of blood, so I got a job as a salesgirl at Bloomingdale’s. I was bored all day long at work, and then at home every night I listened while my father abused Pat and ridiculed me. I watched my mother hurry from one task to another, one child to another. She appeared deaf to what was being said. To the damage that was being done. I met Louis at Bloomingdale’s. I helped him pick out a suit for a friend’s wedding. I liked how physically large he was—I am five foot nine, but I felt petite beside him. His personality was warm and light. He told a lot of silly jokes and laughed at the punch lines along with me. We went out for coffee, and then dinner, and then suddenly we were an item. I was quiet on our dates, letting him do most of the talking. One night, while driving back to New Jersey from seeing a show in Manhattan, we stopped at a red light and I pointed out a house I liked. This small comment caused Louis to bang the steering wheel with his hand and yelp like a dog. I couldn’t understand what he was saying at first because I was so surprised by the clatter of words. “I have been waiting since we got in the car forty-five minutes ago for you to say one word. I promised myself that I wouldn’t start this conversation—you were going to have to. It was a little test. But forty-five minutes! Jeez, Kelly. Didn’t you have anything you wanted to say about the show, about anything?”
I know that I smiled at him at that moment, amused. I know that I didn’t find my voice until after we were married and I had moved one town away from my family and quit my job at Bloomingdale’s. When, shortly after the trip home from New York, Louis told me that he knew I was the one for him and that we were meant to be together, I chose to believe him. We were married a few months later and I moved from my father’s house to my husband’s