Hiding Behind a Smile

By Suzanne Baughan

I think Suzanne has a great story and I am glad she's doing a book. —Liz Brody, contributing editor at O, The Oprah Magazine Hiding behind her smile, Suzanne portrayed a perfect marriage of love and honor rather than the distorted vows of deception, deceit, lies, cheating, and felonies. Suzanne, a broken-down housewife, shares a recollection of darkness behind the white picket fence, living a life of bondage to a controlling, abusive husband. Feeling she was a failure who could never escape the marriage of darkness. Through unbelievable, insurmountable challenges, an opportunity to reach for freedom presented itself. A riveting story of a quiet, battered housewife who found the strength and courage to face her greatest enemy—her husband. (Liz Brody featured a portion of Suzanne's story in Oprah's magazine, O, in October 2006.) Pulling no punches, Hiding behind a Smile paints a compelling portrait of abuse, betrayal, fear, and, ultimately, redemption. An exciting and timely look at survival and faith. —Peter Heyrman, author of The North Baltimore Stories

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781684568413

Book preview

Chapter One

Sometimes you receive the whole truth in a single envelope. It might come in a letter or maybe in a detail on a statement or a bill. You don’t necessarily expect it, and often you find yourself woefully unprepared. You take the stack from the mailbox, quickly ruffle through it, and pull out the obvious junk. You toss the half-dozen survivors on the car seat. When you have a moment in the car or at home in the kitchen, you look through those more carefully.

A couple are junk in disguise. They hit the trash. One might be a handwritten postcard (if your friends still send postcards when they’re off on a trip). Then there are the bills.

My truth came in a bill—a cell phone statement. I opened it in the car, just outside the post office. I’d driven our six-year-old son, Luke, to school. Now I was off on other errands: post office, bank, groceries, and whatever else was on my list on that damp February morning. I wasn’t really thinking as I opened the envelopes, not even when I got to the cell phone bill. But it jumped right into my line of vision: the number. That was when I knew the truth about my husband.

I’ve just said that you receive the whole truth in a single envelope. That’s a simplification. Before that can happen, the truth knocks at your door a few times—maybe plenty of times—and you don’t answer. That’s when you’re hiding in a room called Denial. That’s where I’d been for a long time, and I’d kept the door locked and bolted. Now the bolt was pushed back, and I’d turned the key. My best friend from high school, Betty Ann, tried the knob and got the door ajar for me. That happened when I called her a few minutes later.

You’ve been telling me about this for months, she said, probably way over a year. And I’ve been telling you what it meant. You just don’t want to believe it.

I know, I said.

I know you know, said Betty Ann. And I know it’s hard to face. You loved him.

Part of me still does.

I know that, but you’re loving a guy who doesn’t exist. That’s the Clay you want to see. The real Clay is poison, Suzanne. It’s time. You’ve got that number. Now you must take the bull by the horns. You’ve got to get away from him.

He’ll kill me.

No, he won’t.

Yes, he will. He’s violent. He’ll kill me, or he’ll hurt me badly. He knows how too. He could even get away with it. Clay knows every judge, every lawyer in the whole county.

Then you’ll go to another county. Clay doesn’t know that many people. He just makes you think he does. Besides, the ones that know him don’t always like him. A lot of them hate him and recognize all his chronic lies.

I don’t know…

Suzanne, it’s time.

I nodded, then thought of our son. Luke was six, and he barely even saw his father anymore. From the start, Clay hadn’t bothered to act like a father unless it suited him. Sometimes it seemed like he resented the fact that there was another male in my life, even if that male was his own little boy. Okay, you’re right, I said to Betty Ann. I know you are. It’s time.

You know whose number it is, Betty Ann said.

I don’t know for sure.

Yes, you do. It’s that woman—Wanda.

But how do I prove it?

I’ve been thinking about that. There are some ways we haven’t tried.

I sighed. Then I guess it’s time we tried them.

*****

This wasn’t the first time I’d begun to confront my denial. I’d started unlocking the door before, but something had always stopped me. Was it fear? Yes, but fear of what?

Clay for one. It was easy to fear Clay. He was well over six feet, with plenty of muscle—the kind of man you want to rely on. That was the picture I’d painted of him: Clay was strong. He would protect me. After Luke was born, that shifted to He will protect us. Denial is always built on fictions—things we make ourselves believe. That picture of Clay as protector was one of my fictions.

I’d stood at the door more times than I wanted to think about. The rumors about Clay and other women—including one woman—had been there for years. Betty Ann had told me.

Betty Ann knew people on the Rosemount County Police Department. That’s where Clay worked. He’d been in law enforcement for most of his working life. He knew all the cops, and they knew him. He reminded me of that whenever we argued.

I know the cops, the lawyers, and the judges, he would say. He would say it when he was angry, but there was smugness too. I know them all. I’m a cop, and I’m the guy they pay attention to. They like me, and they owe me. If you get any ideas in your head, think about walking out, or any of that, just remember, you won’t have a thing. Lawyers, judges, cops—we are the law. I’m one of them, and they are my friends. They’ll be on my side. They’ll help me keep what’s mine. That includes Luke.

That was the closest Clay ever came to sound as if he might have any real concern about his son; he would cut Luke off from me, supposedly saving our son from the misery and destitution Clay had in store for me. Other times he just threatened to kill me. Those threats came when he was angrier, but they sounded just as real.

Denial: when you’ve locked yourself in that room, you can seal out almost anything, even the truth about a man like Clay.

Now I had a phone number in front of me. I’d seen it before. It had peppered our cell phone bill for nearly a year. There had been daytime calls, nighttime calls, ones from days he worked and from days he was off though Clay seemed to be working every day lately. He’d changed jobs, shifting from the police to the sheriff’s office. It was officially full-time, but in fact, he didn’t have to devote many hours to it. It was the kind of job that allowed him to do what he really wanted to do: go heavily into the real estate game. Just how heavily was anyone’s guess, but that seemed to be where he was putting in the hours—at least that’s what he said.

I’d mentioned the phone number before.

It’s Billy, he said, the guy who’s helping me with the big deal with that farm, the one the developers want. That’s going to be a lot of money.

And you call him in the middle of the night? I asked.

Yeah, I call him in the middle of the night. He works for a living, just like the rest of us. He’s busy all hours. Billy has work of his own, you know, plumbing, handyman, all that. Then he must get together with the farmers who are going to sell, talk to them for me, get ’em to meet me. Sometimes he must go looking for them, meet people at the lodge, that kind of thing. So late at night is the only time he can talk. This is work we’re doing, and it doesn’t stop for the clock. You would know what I mean if you were out there sweating out deals. But you don’t have to do that. All you must do is sit there and look pretty. So quit riding me before I get mad.

So I would quit riding him until the next bill came. And maybe I wouldn’t say anything even then. I didn’t call the number. I had to assume it had caller ID, and why would Clay’s home number, or my own cell number, be showing up on Billy’s little phone screen? Because Clay was calling. And Billy would want to know why. Then he would call Clay back, and…

I didn’t want to think about that.

So I looked at the calls and said nothing.

Then Clay’s dad died.

I had liked Miles Preston, and in those last months, I’d spent a lot of time with him. I was sitting there at his bedside near the end, and if he’d had any last words, they would have been for me. He’d said something. I’d been right there, and he’d looked directly at me. Though his heart, mind, and soul might have been getting ready for eternity, a part of him was still in that room with me. And he said something. It was no more than whispers of breath, but his lips moved with purpose. I tried to hear but caught nothing, only the rattle of exhalation. He had tried. I would never be sure what he’d wanted to tell me. He’d never uttered another word.

That had been the previous October 2005.

The day after his dad died, back at our house, Clay said, You and Luke come down for the service and the funeral, but then I want you to bring Luke straight back up here.

Right away?

Yes.

But what about the reception?

What about it?

Shouldn’t we be there? Your family, your dad’s friends, won’t they expect us to be there?

I don’t want Luke to have to go through all that. He’s just lost his grandfather. They’ll understand.

But, Clay, going through all that is part of how we cope. It’s that way with little boys too. He’ll want—

He’ll be better off coming back here, Clay said. His voice had a violent undertone. And you’ll be the one who brings him.

All right. I said it, but I didn’t agree with it. It made no sense at all.

It made even less sense later when we’d gone down there and stood by the open casket.

Give your grandpa a last hug, Clay told Luke.

I looked at Luke, and I saw the fear in his eyes. This was something neither my son nor I had expected. Luke had never even seen a dead body before. I imagined that was scary enough. He doesn’t have to do that, I said.

Yes, he does. Come on, Clay growled, taking Luke’s hand, then lifting him over the edge of the casket. Give him a last hug.

Luke did what he was told, but as Clay set him down, our son looked as if he was about to cry. There might have been a little boy’s grief in that expression, but there was also a large dose of terror. I pulled Luke to me and looked up at Clay, but he had already turned away. He was scanning the other mourners.

Some of Clay’s friends from the police force were there. Several had come in uniform. We got into the church before they did, but Clay was hardly in the door before he said, You go get our seats. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes. With that, he was out the door.

Luke and I went up to the pews reserved for the family. Clay’s mom, Bertie Preston, was up by the casket. I wondered if she were praying or simply saying some last thought to her husband. We sat down, but Luke started to fidget. I knew what that meant, and I wasn’t surprised when he said, I need to go potty.

The bathrooms were back near the church entrance. Luke wanted me to go that far with him, but at five years old, he could do the rest himself. I waited. After a few seconds, I stepped outside to see what Clay was doing.

There, down the church steps, he stood with a half-dozen uniformed cops. One was a blond woman who was laughing as if she’d heard a dirty joke. She shut her mouth and gave me a look that seemed more like a challenge. I’d seen her before. I even thought I knew her name: Wanda. Clay hadn’t noticed me yet. He leaned in close to Wanda, whispering in her ear. She laughed again.

Then he saw me. He walked straight toward me, saying, Why are you out here? Didn’t I tell you to get our seats?

Clay, he’s your father. There are pews reserved for the family. No one’s going to take your seat.

But I told you to go sit down, he said, his voice low and menacing. What are you doing out here?

Luke had to go to the bathroom. I walked him there, and now I’m waiting.

Well, get back in there and wait then. He’ll come back out, and nobody will be there.

He won’t get lost, I said. I glanced at Wanda one more time, then went in to get our son.

A few minutes later, we were all together in the same pew. I stood close to Luke. Clay moved as far away from me as he could. I looked at the space between my husband and me. It was only a few feet, but it felt like miles. The same held true later by the grave. As we listened to the eulogy and looked at the coffin, Clay kept his distance. I tried to understand why, but I simply couldn’t. The whole situation seemed too bizarre to believe, and a part of me refused to accept that it was even happening. Afterward, I hoped he had changed his mind about us staying.

Maybe we should come to the reception just for a little while, I said.

No. I don’t want you to. I don’t want Luke to go through that.

I was beginning to nod my assent when Bertie Preston approached us. Suzanne, you can drive me over to the community hall, can’t you?

Of course, I said. Clay’s mom, the grieving widow, was our only way into the gathering. We started toward the car.

I don’t think Clay wants us to go, I said.

So what? said Bertie. You’re driving me there.

Bertie could be a very pushy woman, and usually she acted as Clay’s ally and protector, but in this instance, she was a godsend.

Still it wasn’t that easy. The reception was in the community hall two doors from the Prestons’ house. We were halfway there when my cell phone rang. I saw Clay’s number and answered.

What do you think you’re doing? he snapped.

We’re taking your mom to the reception.

Then drop her off and go.

Clay, we can’t do that. We’re going in for at least a few minutes.

No! The word exploded from the phone. I looked at Bertie. She’d heard.

What’s wrong with him? she growled.

You’re dropping her off, then you’re driving straight home. Do you hear me? he shouted.

Clay, we’ll talk about this later.

Much later, he snapped, because you’re going home.

I want you at the reception, Bertie said, loud enough for him to hear.

Bertie wants us there, I told him.

I don’t, he shouted, then he hung up.

I looked at the phone and turned it off. He’s angry, I said.

I don’t know what’s gotten into him, said Bertie.

I felt as if I must be hitting bottom, but I wasn’t. We got to the Prestons’ house. Inside, I went in the bathroom for a minute and found myself crying. I came out, and we walked the two doors to the community hall. Just as we got there, I looked off to the side and saw someone running. It was Wanda, still in uniform. It seemed odd to see a policewoman running in that time and place. She was practically bouncing, as if she was celebrating something. Where was she going? It occurred to me that she was headed straight for the Prestons’ house. I took Luke’s hand, and the three of us walked in the door.

Inside, I smiled and nodded. I knew that everyone could see I’d been crying, but what did that matter? After all, it