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yourself from his violence, in a way?" I always try to validate the woman's choices. They have to begin to see themselves as someone who has choices again. "So it doesn't escalate?"
    "I never thought of it that way."
    "Does it work?"
    "Depends on how much he's had to drink. That night was the worst. My daughter heard us, she came downstairs, and he started in with, 'Get over here, Sarah, I want you to see what a whore your mother is.' He calls me these terrible names—my own husband." She put her head in her hands and wept in earnest now.
    Whore. In my experience abuser epithet choice number one.
    Danielle looked up, bewilderment on her face. "There was this man at our club, it was five years ago ... I just needed someone to talk to ..."
    So then. She believed she deserved whatever he dished out. And the poor woman was too terrified, too conditioned by years of abuse, too humiliated to even call the police. No one could know what was going on in her life.
    Shortly into the session, she began to defend him, of course. He'd apologized, sent her flowers, he was just having a hard time at work, things were going to be better now. Classic cycle: tension building, violent incident, honeymoon. In college, I'd slid briefly into a spectacularly abusive relationship myself, complete with all the rationalizations, the "yes, but all he needs is my love to straighten him out's." Almost died because of it.
    I thought I could help Danielle, and wanted to work with her. But first things first. We reviewed her options if and when it happened again, which it would, and worked out a plan for her safety. I spent the rest of the hour getting her family history, which not surprisingly included a verbally abusive father, made an appointment for the following week, an appointment I didn't keep as it turned out, and told her to call if she needed me.
    She thanked me and left. I returned a few calls, did some paperwork at my desk, then left to meet my friend Becky for lunch. It was very cold outside, with a bright, blue sky and a strong winter sun that glistened on the sidewalks and streets. I drove over to Main Street, the tres chic Westport drag where you could pick at a four-course lunch at Cafe Christina, pick out a $600 decorative pillow at Lillian August, pick up a $28 Gap T-shirt better left to your daughter, an $800 little black skirt from Henry Lehr.
    I found a parking space just as I turned the corner off the Post Road, and spotted Becky right away, gazing at a black silk sheath in the Henry Lehr window. She's hard to miss, this tall, exotic-looking mother of three. She's always reminded me of a movie star from the 1920s named Louise Brooks, partly because Becky also wears her ink-black hair in a short swingy bob with cropped bangs. She was skeptical until I dug out a film book and showed her Louise Brooks in Love 'Em and Leave 'Em. We had a good laugh over the film's title, and Becky agreed there was a certain resemblance.
    "I'm buying," she said as we walked to Cafe Christina. "I actually made a sale today. Just a condo, but the commission is thirty-five hundred."
    I congratulated her, then teased her about the bite that little black number at Henry Lehr would take out of the $3,500. While we munched on our grilled veggie salads, Becky complained about her daughter's new boyfriend.
    "He comes to pick her up last Friday," Becky said, "and he's got an earring in his eyebrow and a skull tattoo on his arm. Jennie swears he's a good student, but I thought Mark was going to lose it." She grinned. "Hey, maybe you could make a column out of it."
    I laughed. "I could call it 'What to do when Satan shows up at your door for a date with your daughter.'"
    I'd begun the column on a lark, really, to amuse myself during my difficult pregnancy with Elijah, which had me spotting until the sixth month, fighting world-class nausea all the way through, and feeling utterly bovine. I'd been a chunky kid with a mother obsessed with thinness. Bovine was not a