Warning: This story series contains descriptions of physical abuse.

by Defendant Rising

It was 1995. Nate’s grandmother’s basement was orange. It was wallpapered in a fifties motif with little vinyl record albums. My husband, the newly minted Christian attorney, had been in this basement on his laptop computer, hooked up to the internet, for six months.

I sat and looked out the basement window, the bottom of which was level with the dirt, and begged Nate for the thousandth time to disconnect and spend some time with his wife and three babies. Nate would come out of the basement only for food, sex (I had the wrong lingeré still), evening TV, and excursions to the grocery store. And to sleep.

Nate’s grandmother seemed perfectly content to have her beloved grandson remain in her house, eating and procreating and tying up the phone line, for the remainder of her natural life.

Nate would not get off the computer. He would not get a job. We lived in his grandmother’s house, sponging off his grandmother, for most of Moriah’s infancy. I nearly went mad with boredom and loneliness. Even my usual job of waiting on Nate hand and foot had been usurped by Grandma. Nate left his dirty dishes by the computer and television and Grandma cleared them away.

Nate was depressed for weeks at a time. Then, it was as if aliens had kidnapped him and injected him with super-caffeine. He would talk me to death long into the night, night after night. He had a brilliant idea that would make him millions of dollars—“wait until you hear this, baby”—building cool cars! No, he would write a book about true Christian faith, setting down once and for all proper biblical doctrine, the book of theology to end them all, and it would be called. . .”