Striking Back

by Mark Nykanen

Here it comes

  “. . . and this bi . . . this . . . she wouldn’t even touch it.”

  “It?”

  “My penis. And it’s about the only part of me that looks fucking right.”

  “Please.”

  “Oh, fuck, fine. Sorry.” He shook his head, angrily now. “I put up with that for months. Most she’d do is pat me on the back like I was some kind of pet. And only when I had a shirt on. I knew she was leaving. I’m not blind or anything. That ’til death do us part’ stuff is complete bullshit.”

  This time all Gwyn needed to do was raise an eyebrow.

  “BS? That okay?”

  “That’s fine.

  “There’s no ’til death do us part’ crap. Maybe in some Muslim countries, but not in California. It’s ’til death do us part, unless you become a monster.’”

  “The beating?” Calling it for what it was. So far he’d given her a pile-up of excuses. The best she’d ever heard, to be sure, but excuses all the same.

  “She started screwing around. ‘Screwing’ okay?” He was mocking Gwyn now.

  She ignored this. “Go on.”

  “With a guy she worked with.”

  “How do you know?” Gwyn hadn’t moved since the intake had begun, leery of upsetting Barr’s willingness to talk. He was a wonder of revelation compared to many of his compatriots.

  “How do I know? You really want to know?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “I saw semen dripping from her panties when she came home from work late. She’s taking off her clothes, and it’s leaking right down her leg.”

  A new one. A lot of these guys claimed they’d beat their partners because they were fooling around, as if that excused kicks, punches, even murder. But most of them, when you pressed the point, had little more than suspicion and paranoia to back them up. She found Barr’s readiness to offer such rank details persuasive. Not wholly, but given his horrible scarring, and his wife’s age, nineteen, the possibility of her having had an affair struck Gwyn as not only plausible, but understandable. Not touchy-feely nice, but real as life itself.

  “Satin,” he muttered.

  “Hmm?”

  “She was wearing satin panties to work. Pink ones. I bought them for her for Valentine’s Day just before I got burned. I guess you could say that was a clue.”

  “So you beat her.”

  “I slapped her.”

  “That’s all?”

  “I knocked her down.”

  “The floor?”

  “The bed.”

  “And then what?”

  “I choked her.”

  “What else?” Gwyn glanced at her notes.

  His eyes followed hers. “You know, so why do I have to tell you?”

  “Because this is how we get started.”

  “What else? Okay, I punched her. Punched her right in her . . . face.”

  She sensed that he was relishing the memory way too much. “Did you enjoy it?”

  He stared at her, and those lash-less eyes made her think of a lizard. She didn’t want to, but there it was: life serving up another shameless association.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I did. I’d been waiting forever to punch her face. I was so sick and tired of—”

  “How many times?” She’d give him points for honesty, but didn’t want him indulging that foul memory any further.

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t keeping track.”

  “Guess.”

  “Five, six times. I don’t know.”

  “What’d you do then?”

  Barr slumped back in the chair. “Beat up her face pretty bad, one of her teeth got loose. I guess I split her lip. She ended up getting some stitches in emergency.” He sat back up. “Let me tell you, she still looks a helluva lot better than I do.”

  “Was that the point? To make her look like you?” Power and Control. Gwyn could have made a huge headline out of what these guys were all about.

  “I wasn’t thinking about it at the time. I was just angry at her.”

  “Now?”

  “I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.” He was pointing to his face. “Not even her. She looks great now. I wasn’t joking. She went to a plastic surgeon, her dad’s got a lot of money, and you’d never know anything ever happened to her.”

  “Yes, you would.”

  “No, I’ve seen her. She looks almost perfect.”

  “But you put something in Vickie that’s never going away. You put the fear of men in her forever.” Gwyn spoke those words carefully, never a hint of the biting anger she felt over his violence. Funny how you can go all the way from sympathy to outrage, and back to sympathy in the course of a single hour.

  At the end of the intake, Barr limped to the door, stopped and turned toward her. She’d risen and stood by her desk.

  “It’s never going to happen again,” he said, not without feeling.

  “That’s why you’re in the group, to make sure it never does.”

  “No, I’m doing the group because it beats going to jail, especially when you look like this. But I’m never going to hit another woman as long as I live, because there’s never going to be another woman who will be with me. I know that, and so do you. The whole . . . ”

  She saw him trying to hold back.

  “. . . goddamn world knows it.” He slammed the door hard enough to rattle the framed photographs on the wall.

  Gwyn straightened the photos—ocean shots: waves, a sunset, and the water’s edge nibbling at footprints in the sand—as his limping steps faded down the hallway.

  So he blames his violence on the fire. Nothing new in that. They all blame it on something. Or someone. But that fire was only a trigger, his gun had been loaded long ago.

  You ought to know, more than anyone.

  Chapter 3

  Gwyn checked her phone messages, surprised to hear the voice of Lupe Sandoval, an old friend and one of the great treasures of Gwyn’s life. Lupe had given Gwyn an internship in graduate school, when she’d been co-leading a group in Santa Monica. Lupe had pulled Gwyn aside on her first day to ask if she was ready to meet “a real live celebrity wife abuser,” parodying the voice of a game show host. Turned out it would have been OJ Simpson, but his lawyer had found a loophole to keep him from having to attend the court-mandated sessions, the first, but by no means most important, legal victory for the future murderer.

  Lupe now ran groups in Oceanside near the marine base.

  Gwyn’s mother had left a message, too. Mommsa—her daughter’s odd endearment—took priority, but even she was going to have to wait till Gwyn made it back down to her CR-V so she could head out to Pomona for her group.

  The skies had cleared as quickly as they’d clouded over, and the roadway puddles now steamed under the searing August sun. As she floored the teensy-weensy SUV to merge with the rabid traffic on the 10, she dialed her mother in Santa Barbara

  “How goes it?” she said into her headset.

  Her mother’s reply was so soft Gwyn had to ask her to repeat herself. But a quick glance at the clock raised a different question entirely. Would she even make it to Pomona on time?

  She sighed as her mother’s interminable despair drizzled through the stratosphere, even as she assured Gwyn that “Everything’s fine, just fine.”

  “Any sales?”

  Her mother carved women’s faces out of tightly grained hardwoods, had been doing it since Gwyn’s stepfather died twenty-three years ago. (Before his death she’d been carving snakes, but that changed in a hurry. Boy, did it ever.) His life insurance had bought the “bungalow” (four bedrooms, four baths, vaulted ceilings, two gas fireplaces, kitchen outfitted by Jenn-Air, pool, deck, Jacuzzi, three car garage, and a loft studio overlooking the ocean. Thanks, “Dad.” You beast.), and his substantial portfolio had kept the other bills paid. Cashing the checks had been a kind of day job for Mommsa while she worked in relative obscurity, which ended in 1999 when Art in America gave her a major review.

  “I sold two of them.
”

  Was that actually glee Gwyn detected in her mother’s voice? Had she really jump-started a . . . smile?

  Gwyn leaned on her horn to keep a laundry truck from spilling her across three lanes of traffic.

  “But it was through the gallery, so . . . ”

  So what? Gwyn wanted to ask. It was pathetic the way Mommsa could mine even the deepest vein of happiness for a single prized nugget of gloom.

  Is she on her meds?

  Don’t ask, a cautionary voice answered. You’ll set her off again. Remember? “They’re for crazy people,” according to her mother.

  Right, Mommsa. Wouldn’t want to take anything that might actually lift your spirits.

  “So they take a percentage. Big deal. You’re selling. That’s the point.”

  “Eighteen thousand. That’s what I’ll get.”

  “But for each of them, right?” Gwyn said, trying to argue sense and happiness—in this case they were almost synonymous—into a woman who possessed little of either. Like she needed the money. It wasn’t about that anyway. Mommsa wasn’t a miser. She donated twenty percent of each sale to Californians United to Fight Spousal Abuse.

  “Yeah, apiece.” Mommsa said, as if a confession. For her, maybe it was; life not as bad as she’d made it out to be.

  Gwyn could still scarcely believe that her mother’s bizarre masks had become so highly prized that they fetched upwards of thirty thousand dollars. One had even gone for forty in a charity auction. But since that Art in America review almost every art journal in North America, and a few in Europe and Asia, had given their highbrow blessings.

  In describing her masks, most reviewers used one or more of the following words: macabre, disturbing, unsettling, sometimes horrifying, provocative (de rigueur), and a host of other associated adjectives generally listed under “disconcerting” or “alarming” in a thesaurus.

  Gwyn’s personal favorite was “upsetting,” because it spoke clearly and simply of Mommsa’s . . . well . . . complicated life.

  There was no doubt the carved faces moved people. A Hollywood producer had contacted her last month about designing masks for a thriller he had in development.

  “In development means nothing, Mommsa,” Gwyn had counseled patiently as they walked on the seaweed-strewn sand by her house. “Everything down there is in development.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, dear. Should I send back the check?”

  The check? “What check?”

  “The one he FedEx’ed me for fifty thousand dollars. It was with the contract.”

  That’s when Gwyn, to put it bluntly, shut up, though she was certain, on that occasion if on no other, that Mommsa had sneaked a smile. Her mother’s career continued to surprise her, and today’s update proved no different.

  “The Feldstone says they want a show for November.”

  “November? That’s so soon.” Three months away, but this was the art world, which moved at glacial speed. Although, even as she thought this, Gwyn reminded herself that glaciers were now shrinking as fast as cheap linen in a hot wash.

  “That’s what I told them, but it is the Feldstone.”

  “Wait, I read that Bangles Macey was having her show in November.” Plexiglas cubes. So retro it was utero (as in . . . the future).

  “Not anymore,” Mommsa droned. “She backed out. I guess she couldn’t be ready in time.”

  Horn again, the same friggin’ laundry truck. What’s he doing, stalking me? “That’s great. But can you be ready?” Exiting as she spoke and leaving the laundry truck to the lunacy of the passing lane, Gwyn spotted the steeple of the Lutheran Church where the group met.

  “I already am. Touch Wood’s all done.”

  Now those masks were creepy: normal women’s faces that opened upward, like a knight’s mask, to reveal (why, but of course) looks of grinding horror. Her mommsa—got to give her credit—could do terror better than anyone outside of Al Qaeda. The freak show she carved out of wood could make concrete quiver.

  “You’re really set then?”

  “Just one thing, hon.”

  Hon? Uh-Oh. She needs something.

  “I could use some help with the house.” Mommsa was expanding her studio, essentially doubling the size of it. “And these men, they won’t listen to me. Nobody ever does . . . ”

  Gwyn parked in front of the church.

  “. . . so do you think,” morose mom continued, “you could talk to the contractor? Nobody ever fucks with you.”

  Gwyn had to stifle a laugh. Her mother rarely used an expletive, much less that one. “Sure, Mommsa.” It had been two weeks since her last visit. “When?”

  “How about Saturday?”

  “It’ll have to be in the afternoon. Two o’clock?” She had that surfing date with Harken in the a.m.

  “Okay, I’ll make sure he’s here.”

  “The contractor?”

  “Right.”

  “What’s his name?” Gwyn would check with the California Contractors’ Licensing Board for his list of complaints. They all had complaints.

  “Ralph Biggers, but I just call him Mr. Huffy Pants.”

  “To his face?”

  “Well, I’m not talking to his butt, dear.”

  Gwyn laughed and parked, hurrying to descend an exterior staircase on the sun-blighted side of the church. The storm hadn’t made it out to the San Gabriel Valley, and she felt baked by the brittle heat. Three steps after dipping below the parched brown lawn, she stood in the shadow of the retaining wall trying to open a rickety green door. She finally had to wrench the key to the right to get the lock to give.

  The lights didn’t do much to alleviate the gloominess down here, and the smells –must and mildew and urinal disinfectant—were strong enough to make her savor the smog she’d just left outside. Damp, too, like a dungeon, which is what the stone walls brought most clearly to mind. She thought the dampness should have provided at least the illusion of a few cooling degrees, but triple digits in the valley had left the basement stewing in a steamy foul funk.

  A compact TV and video player hunkered on a round table in the far corner. She expected it to prove useful during the educational half of the two-hour session.

  Three full-size couches were grouped in a wide U, and an assortment of mismatched chairs were lined up against a wall.

  On other nights the basement was used by Alcoholics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous (etc., etc., etc.) and Gwyn thought that if these walls could talk the first thing they’d do is recite the Twelve Steps.

  She unloaded a shoulder bag full of notebooks and pamphlets on a desk and waited for her co-leader, Renata, to breeze through the door; but when it opened a few moments later, Lupe Sandoval strode in, all smiles before wagging an admonishing finger.

  “You didn’t call me, girlfriend. You get my message? I’m your girl tonight. Renata, she got herself a sick mama, so you got me. But hey, am I the one?”

  Lupe opened her arms, gave a belly dancer’s roll of her hips, and Gwyn hugged her.

  “I am so sorry. I totally spaced your call. My mom called, and after I called her back I was rushing around and—”

  “Oh, you forget it, girlfriend. I’m here. Everything’s cool. We’re gonna teach these bad boys be good, or we gonna give them a good spanking.”

  For all her sass, Lupe was serious whenever clients were around. For the past few years she’d been running those groups down in Oceanside, mostly marines from the base, reputed to be the toughest cases in southern California.

  “You do attendance, take the money, okay? You know your guys. You play lead, I’ll take rhythm. We gonna give them a little Los Lobos action. Renata, she says you’re doing some TV news video about the sex trade for the ‘educational portion of this evening’s program.’” This time it was Lupe’s eyes that rolled. “Like these guys need us to show them how to hire a hooker.”

  “I think it’s more—”

  “I know, teach them em-path-y. You ever wonder
if we just making ’em better liars?”

  Gwyn put aside the control logs she’d been sorting and stared at Lupe. The laughter had left her old boss’s voice. “You’re serious?”

  “I don’t want to be, but I am.”

  “Sometimes I wonder. Yeah, I have to admit it. Especially since Croce.” She shook her head after saying his name, synonymous now with murder and the most grievous of memories. Since the shooting, she’d lightened her case load considerably, tried to create distance from the blistering image of all that blood, and give herself time for other pursuits. She’d even seen a counselor and thought she was ready, despite a few emotional tics, to resume a normal schedule. But Lupe’s skepticism resonated with her own misgivings. “I’d like to see some data—”

  “That’s just it, there’s none. All these years of doing these groups and not one bit of data showing it works, but we sure got our Croces.” Lupe snapped her fingers and pointed to the logs Gwyn had just laid on the desk. “I got lots of guys down there doing these things, and they write these great accountability letters, ‘Dear Puss ’n’ Boots, I’m so sorry I smacked your face and knocked out your eye and choked you half to death, but I got it together now, muchacha. I’m down with you, baby.’ You know that bullshit, and they go back to the base and cut her open like she was a can of sardines all squirming to get out. I swear, they’d be even better liars if we gave them another chance.”

  “But we have lots of guys who get it together for real.” Those reassuring words didn’t come easily to Gwyn, not with the stains Croce had left behind.

  “I know. Maybe I’m just on a bad streak. These marines,” she shook her head, long ringlets of lustrous, gray-streaked hair jiggling like Slinkys, “it’s like breaking bricks getting them to –”

  Cut off by the door opening, Chuck barreled in, stocky as a boxcar and about as communicative as one, too, at most rumbling when he talked.

  Before the door could swing shut, Frank, Sean, and Jesse arrived. Gwyn was glad to see them. The fatality rate had been alarming of late. First, Alfred Croce’s tragic implosion. Then, in this new group, a heroin addict named Rick Santini had OD’d two weeks ago. Supposedly in recovery. So she could stand an absence, even an unexcused one—they were all permitted two of them in the year-long program—but she’d prefer they not die on her. Where there’s life, there’s hope, and all that good stuff. Not that she could always bring herself to believe it.