As with all things, some things hit to close to home. This chapter was incredibly hard to write. Mary needed a backstory, so I gave her mine. Writer’s write what they know right?
Chapter 3
Mary Thomas moved through the world with a quiet gentleness; a demeanor forged from a difficult life. She was born and raised in the heartland of America. In the suburbs of a small city where her parents, both chemists at the local U.S. Department of Agriculture. For a brief time, their economic advantage, education, and perseverance provided a sheltered existence for Mary and her older brother, Luke. They attended a private Lutheran school, had a housekeeper and kept up with the neighbors in style, volunteerism, and grass height.
This fragile stability shattered when Mary was five. Her father left, immediately remarried, and started a new family. While her mother collapsed under the weight of becoming a single parent. Succumbing to severe depression, Mary’s mother spent her days within a haze of benzodiazepines and binge eating. Luke, then thirteen, rebelled, transforming into the popular “bad boy” to escape the misery that was now home. The perfect nostalgic family had been broken.
This left Mary in charge. She became a small adult, shouldering the majority of the housework, the cooking, and, by age ten, the role of primary caregiver for her mother. The family home, once orderly, became a place of instability, marked by her mother’s depressive bouts, frequently empty kitchen cabinets, and a pervasive sense of shame.
Mary’s salvation was the public library. When no babysitter was available, her mother would leave her there for hours. By the third grade, Mary was on a first-name basis with the staff, who became her silent guardians. They saved books for her, rescued treasures from clearance sales, and, noticing her hunger, quietly offered sandwiches and snacks. Long after the need for a babysitter passed, the library remained her sanctuary. It was the only place she felt truly at home. She was a voracious and eclectic reader, devouring stories of heroines and heroes, histories, philosophies, and art. These books were her escape from a sweet crushing naivete, feeding her deep persistent longings for a proper family and a safe haven.
Growing up in the Bible Belt, Mary was steeped in a culture where Christianity and patriarchy dictated the social order. For young women, the script was limited: teacher, nurse, or housewife. Very few broke free from this cycle of religious and societal expectation, and Mary, feeling lost and desperate for stability, found herself following the path laid out for her.
In college, she met Nathaniel, “Nate”. A pre-med student. She was in nursing school. They dated through their junior and senior years. Mary didn’t so much love Nate as she clung to the future he represented. He was safe. He was the embodiment of the American dream: a little house, two children, full cupboards, and a predictable future. After graduation, Nate started medical school, and Mary began working the night shift on a geriatric ward in their local hospital.
The first strains of Mary’s dream world appeared during Nate’s second year of medical school. Struggling with the workload, he began using stimulants to keep up. He grew dismissive of Mary, believing her only use was to maintain their apartment and have food waiting for him, even if it meant waking her the moment she returned from an overnight shift. Despite this, the illusion held. With Mary’s savings and help from Nate’s parents, they bought a small three-bedroom home in a quiet neighborhood. The first time he hit her, she acquitted him immediately, unwilling to shatter the perfect life she had worked so hard to build. By the time their two sons were born, the violence was a common practice, her bruises meticulously concealed under makeup and long sleeves.
Nate’s descent continued through residency, adding heavy drinking to his stimulant dependency. It was a miracle he survived into his fellowship, and Mary stood by him, as was her nature. His anger and bitterness over his career not meeting his expectations, he didn’t land his dream job, were relentlessly turned on her. She was never supportive enough, never worked hard enough, always demanded too much attention for their children.
Mary was carrying the entire family, working full-time and part-time jobs, to help pay the school loans. When she came home, she did all the housework, all the cooking, and all the parenting. Her only lifeline was her next-door neighbor and best friend, Emily, a stay-at-home wife whose children were the same ages as Mary’s. Emily provided crucial childcare and repeatedly begged Mary to leave.
Nate was rarely home, but when he was, he was drunk or high on some substance. Mary stayed, paralyzed by the fear of being alone and the desperate need to hold onto the illusion of safety. She arranged her grueling work schedule around her children’s lives, driving them to school exhausted from 12-hour night shifts, never missing a practice or a school function.
Her own health was the final sacrifice she spent to maintain the facade. A long-delayed checkup resulted in a trip to the emergency room, emergency surgery, and two weeks sedated in the ICU. She awoke to a body tethered by tubes, lines, drains, and wound vacs—to the dreaded diagnosis: colon cancer. Though caught early, the battle was brutal. Four surgeries left her unable to walk or use her left side. She was finally discharged to begin chemotherapy, a shell of herself, dependent on home health and the kindness of friends.
The day she started chemotherapy was the day Nate moved out. He did not take the boys. He left Mary, broke, broken, and fighting for her life, utterly alone with two children. In a moment of pure, unadulterated despair, Mary confessed to Emily the truth she could no longer hold on. She wanted to not survive this. But she did and she fought hard to stay and not leave those boys to the man who betrayed all of them.
Mary took three years to recover. She went to physical therapy and occupational therapy four times a week. Her boys encouraged her to get up and move and took her walking each day after they got home from school. Eventually she regained her mobility and her determination. She was beyond grateful when her oncologist announced they could begin the five-year count for cancer free. She was in remission. Standing with her walker, in her Oncologist office, she proudly rang the bell while her boys cheered and cried in happiness.
Unable to physically maintain working as a nurse, she decided to go back to school to be a professor. She enrolled in her local community college deciding to leave medicine behind and studied history. After transferring to a four-year university, she found her passion in Chinese philosophy. It wasn’t long before she graduated. She had somehow managed to convince the University she could start her master’s program senior year. After that she sailed through graduate school and started looking for opportunities to teach anywhere even in other countries.
She wanted to make a new life for her and the boys. Nate had not seen the children since the day he left. During the divorce he requested no visitation. She put out numerous applications. One day an email arrived. Three days later a large Manila envelope arrived. She carefully read the contents. Making her choice.
At dinner that night she looked over the table to her sons.
“Boys, we are moving to Beijing.”
Please forgive any misspellings, I wrote this quickly.
I feel as though “Nate” is not longed for this world, and “Mary” is destined for great things.
Mary’s whole arc feels like watching someone build a lighthouse out of rubble — shaky at first, but by the end she’s glowing so fiercely you kind of sit back and whisper wow. The way she crawls out of every collapse and still chooses a bigger life for her boys? That hits deep. And ending on ‘we are moving to Beijing’… I swear I felt a tiny cinematic wind blow through my room.