Never said a word to Andrea. Certainly not to Mom.
Nor to Daddy who it seemed was watching me, waiting.
By this time, four years into the marriage and still living in the four-room bungalow off the Hunter Road, I understood that Daddy had forgiven me. Daddy had not a thing to say about my marriage. So much time had passed, maybe he was impressed I had not once asked him for money. In fact, Daddy had offered Pitman and me money at Christmas to buy a new car replacing the ‘88 Chevy Malibu but Pitman had his pride just as Daddy did, I knew to say Oh, thanks, Daddy! But no.
During the day Mom frequently called. A ringing phone and rayburn on caller ID meant my mother. Sometimes I picked up eager as a lonely child. Sometimes I backed off, sneering.
Oh, Mom was cheerful! Though cautious. An intelligent woman aware of mother-in-law jokes. She knew not to press too far with her questions. Asking how is Pitman and I told her Pitman is fine, you know Pitman. And I’m fine, Mom. What about you and Daddy.
Like a tick beneath the skin the idiot word fine had snagged in my vocabulary. Itchy as hell, hard to dislodge. There was always a beat, a moment when I might have told Mom more. And maybe Mom knew more. Probably yes she knew more. Au Sable Forks is a small town, word travels fast.
Mornings, afternoons! The slow slide into evening.
It was, as Pitman said, a shitty spring. Pelting rain, so much mud people laid down planks to walk on.
Cloudbursts, and a leaking roof. Like an animated cartoon figure I set out pots, pans, baking trays to catch the drips. Then the sky opened, there came blinding sunbursts. Truly, your brain is sliced open. In rubber boots I went tramping along Hunter Road, along farmers’ lanes and into fields. I hiked beside Au Sable Creek where the mud-colored water rushed like a speeding vehicle. This is a part of New York State, where the sky draws your attention. Not the mountains that are mostly covered in trees, but the sky forces your eyes to lift. Always there is the anticipation of seeing something in the sky you can’t name except to know you won’t see it anywhere else.
This was the season I sent away for catalogues from Cornell, St. Lawrence University, McGill University in Montreal. Hiding them in the closet beneath towels, bed linens where Pitman would never look.
Cornell was where I’d been planning on going. Before I fell in love with Pitman. Except maybe this wasn’t so. Maybe I’d fallen in love with him that day on the Hunter Road. The rest was just waiting.
You never think you will get old. Or even your face.
The happiest time of your life. Oh, Lucretia . . .
Mom was weepy, nagging. My senior year at Au Sable Forks High. That year I’d quit most of my “activities.” Cut classes. A blur in my memory as if I’d been riding in a drunken speeding vehicle. The landscape is beautiful but moving too swiftly past to be seen.
Think what you are giving up. For that man. It’s your body, Lucretia. Wanting to have babies.
I hit her then. I hit my mother. I saw my hand shoot out, I saw my mother wince, I never told anyone not even Pitman.
Didn’t want Pitman to know the meanness in my heart. His blond princess.
Daddy had ceased interfering. Daddy kept his distance, a gentlemanly distance, those final months. While I was still his daughter, living at home. Could not trust himself to speak to me.
Goddamn I’d vowed I would not cry. Neither of my parents could make me cry. I wasn’t their virgin-daughter, I was Pitman’s girl. I would be Pitman’s wife. You want to know if he fucks me, yes he fucks me. I fuck him, the way he’s taught me. I don’t cry for you now, I cry for Pitman. Of all the world only Pitman has that power.
The one thing Mom did, with Pitman in agreement, was arrange for a church wedding. An actual church wedding. Very small, and hurriedly arranged. Daddy threatened to stay away but was finally the gentleman, of course he came. Though stony-faced, force-smiling. Having to see how at the very altar Luke Pitman nudged his daughter in her silken white side and cast her a sidelong winking bad-boy grin.
I was repainting the bathroom, a better quality paint this time.
Smiling. I think I was smiling. Having to concede, when you’re in high school you can’t wait to get out, it’s like a prison you have come to hate, then when you’re out you look back, remembering.
I didn’t drop out of school, finally. Attended my graduation with the others. My last term was the worst in all my school years, not a single A. If I hadn’t broken his heart marrying a man my father considered low-life Adirondack trailer trash I’d have broken his heart getting such rotten grades.
Painting the bathroom ivory. Not hearing the phone ring.
The anonymous calls came in the evening or middle of the night when Pitman was out. Whoever it was knew Pitman’s schedule. Or knew from the driveway that Pitman’s car was gone.
Or it was Pitman. One of his games.
Sometimes I drifted to the phone waiting for it to ring. And it rang. And I saw unavailable on caller ID and I smiled thinking You can’t. You have no power over me. I am not afraid of you.
I never answered. I erased the answering tape without listening.
Well, maybe I listened. Maybe once, twice. The voice was as I’d remembered it: husky, Canadian-sounding. I had to wonder if it belonged to one of Pitman’s fellow deputies. One of Pitman’s relatives. Someone Pitman had made an enemy of. Gotten under the skin of. It was no one from my life, I knew.
“Hey, I know you’re there, baby! Know you’re listening. Whyn’t you pick up, baby? Afraid?”
Pause. Breathing wetly into the mouthpiece.
‘“Lady of the house, Ms. Pitman.’ Pigman? Standin’ there all alone.”
Another pause. (He’s trying not to laugh?)
“Maybe not alone enough, eh? Baby?”
It wasn’t Pitman’s way of speech, I thought. The broad Canadian vowels, the quirky eh? Still, this might be a trick. Pitman might be there beside the caller, listening.
~ * ~
After the calls when Pitman came home there was a strangeness between us. I think this was so. I don’t think I was imagining it. Pitman was waiting for me to acknowledge the calls. (Was he?) But it was too late now. There had been too many. And if the calls were made by someone else, Pitman would be uncontrollable, so furious. I had to acknowledge, he might blame me.
I’d had boyfriends, a few. In school. But only just boys. And nothing sexual. Pitman knew this but possibly he’d forgotten. He was likely to be jealous. Suspicious. Why hadn’t I told him after the first call? I could not tell him But maybe it was you.
He’d snag on a word sometimes. A word would snag on him. I wondered was this a thing that happened to drinkers.
Face, for instance.
Baby-face, he’d call me. Angel-face.
Or, “Just don’t get in my face, Lucretia.”
Or, “Want me to break your fucking face?”
~ * ~
Burdock had been a relative, in fact. He’d garroted his estranged wife, blew himself away with a shotgun. Not from Pitman did I learn this of course. Pitman never spoke of any of his relatives. His mother was still living, I think. He had an older half-brother in Attica serving a sentence of thirty years to life.
Like shrapnel working its way outward through tissue, Pitman’s fury was surfacing. Pitman! Crazy guy. That admiring way men have of speaking of a friend who’s cracking up. Bringing Pitman home falling-down drunk and the Chevy Malibu left behind as far away as Tupper Lake, in the morning I’d have to drive Pitman back to retrieve it. In June, Pitman pursued a drunk driver west out of Malvern on Route 3 resulting in the young man (twenty, from the Tuscarora reservation) crashing his vehicle into a bridge and shearing off part of his skull. The St. Lawrence County sheriff defended his deputy (publicly) but reprimanded him (privately). Pitman spoke of quitting his job. He spoke of reenlisting in the navy. He seemed, in his indignation, unaware that he’d become a man in his mid-thirties and was no longer a brash young kid of eighteen. A ring of flesh around his waist, his t
ar-colored hair streaking with gray and thinning. No longer could Pitman stay up much of the night drinking and rely upon three or four hours’ sleep to restore his strength, his clarity of mind, and his willingness to face the next day.
From the cruiser Pitman would call on his cell: “Hey, baby, this is a fucking long morning. It ain’t even noon?”
You could get addicted to it. The anger. The taste of it on his mouth like hot acid. I never believed that Pitman was crazy. He was too shrewd and methodical. Just this fury in him. It was more than Reed Loomis dying. Those little mountain towns dying. Pitman himself dying. He’d sweat through the bedclothes groaning and grinding his teeth after the boy died on Route 3, Pitman insisted he had done nothing wrong. He had followed procedure. He’d used his siren, his lights. The kid had outstanding warrants which was why probably he’d accelerated his speed to almost eighty miles an hour on that sharp-curving highway in the mountains, narrowing to a single-lane bridge. Drunk kid, thumbing his nose at the law. Pitman said fuck, he had no regrets, wasn’t going to lose sleep over this one. One Sunday afternoon lying with me on our bed gripping me in his arms as if we were drowning together. Not releasing me for forty-five minutes and only then when I begged him insisting I had to pee, did he want me to wet the bed?
“You would not ever betray me, Lucretia? Would you?”
~ * ~
In the cruiser calling on his cell. These were not unavailable but wireless caller so I could pick up if I wished. Calling me Baby, saying he loved me he did not ever mean to hurt me, I was the only thing he loved in this shitty life he hoped to Christ I knew that, he’d make it up to me. Saying it was a hard time for him right now, he was begging to be forgiven. Saying I was his princess, I was never off his radar.
~ * ~
Phone rings. Impulsively my hand lifts the receiver, “Yes? Hello?”
It’s like striking a match. That quick, unavailable isn’t prepared for a living voice. I hear him draw breath. I’ve surprised him. Maybe I’ve shocked him. It takes him a moment to adjust.
That low, gravelly mock-courteous voice, “The lady of the house, Ms. Pitman?” and I hear myself say, “Who’s this?” and he pauses not expecting this, either; doesn’t expect a female voice that isn’t intimidated.
“Your friend, Lucretia. This is your friend.”
There’s excitement here. The way he pronounces Lu-cre-tia. It’s no way I have heard Pitman pronounce my name. These past few months Pitman has not called me by any name at all only Baby. Or you.
This is the first time I’ve heard my caller’s living voice since that pelting-rain night in April. And it’s late August now. And Pitman is away. I’ve been watching local TV news out of Canton, Watertown. Surfing the channels. It’s nearing midnight. Old movies, Law & Order reruns. Final ten minutes of a rebroadcast of a performance of Tosca, one of Daddy’s operas. Lying on the jiggly-jangly brass bed. The handmade quilt, fraying-soft from many washings, is neatly folded at the foot of the bed. I’m in a silky champagne-colored nightgown, also fraying-soft from many washings, Pitman bought me when we were married. Still warm, flushed-feeling from my bath. And still with some makeup on my face. Pitman doesn’t care for washed-out female faces, I know from remarks he’s made. I try to look good for Pitman, it’s a habit. Whether he sees or not. Whether he’s here or not. In my hand a juice glass of Parrot Bay Puerto Rican rum I stole out of Daddy’s teakwood cabinet last time I visited the house on Algonquin Avenue. The type of liquor Daddy never drinks, the near-full bottle pushed to the back of the cabinet.
I’m not drinking to get drunk, like Pitman. Only to make the sharp edges of things softer.
Saying, in my scratchy voice, “My friend who? Who’s my friend? I want a friend, friend. I’m needful of a friend.”
This is daring! My toes are twisty, twitchy. Wish I could see this guy’s face, the surprise in it like someone has grabbed him between the legs.
Now it begins. Now, like Ping-Pong. He’s asking me why I need a friend and I’m saying ‘cause I’m lonely, that’s why. He’s asking why a married woman is lonely and I’m saying that’s what I’d like to know, too. He asks what am I wearing, and I say, Ohhh, this outfit with just one button I got for my birthday. So funny, I’m laughing to make the brass headboard jiggle. I’m laughing, the plumy-dark rum near about spills on my belly. My caller, my friend he calls himself, is laughing, too. Saying oh baby he wishes he could see that birthday suit. I say actually I just got out of the bath. I’m all alone here just out of the bath. And he says, D’you need help drying, and I say, Noooo. Maybe. And he says, First things first, honey: your titties. Start with your titties, honey-baby. Your nipples. And I’m feeling my breath come short. And I’m laughing so it hurts, like a knife blade in my side. Being called honey, baby: it’s so sweet. It’s funny but so sweet, I know that I am making a terrible mistake like accelerating on black ice but I can’t stop. He’s saying more words, I can’t hear for laughing. Throwing your life away, oh Lucretia, your precious life, my mother had wept. It’s my life to throw away, God damn my life. It’s my life not yours leave me alone. And I’m thinking This is Pitman, he is testing me. He will murder me.
Might’ve said, “Pitman! I know it’s you. Damn you, Pitman, come home, I’m lonely.”
Instead, I slam down the receiver. I’ve been staring at my toes. Narrow waxy-white feet. Haven’t polished my toenails in years. Last time, Pitman failed to notice. In fact, my feet look like some withered old-woman feet, not a young girl’s any longer.
~ * ~
So help me God is a way of speaking. You might laugh at such a desperate way of speaking until it becomes your own.
~ * ~
It was to keep him from hurting me. It was to keep him at a distance. Just to frighten him off. I knew that I deserved to be hurt by my husband but I was terrified of the actual hurt. A man’s fingers closing around my throat. There is nothing so terrible as strangulation. He would thump my head against the wall. Thump — slam!— my head against the wall. I seemed to be remembering this, it had already happened. Unless it was the brass headboard he’d shoved me against, jangling and creaking.
You would not ever betray me, Lucretia. Would you.
Whimpering to myself like a frightened child, a guilty child fumbling in Pitman’s gun closet. Overhead the light bulb swings on a chain. This closet I have avoided, never open. Disliking and fearing Pitman’s weapons. Repugnance for Pitman’s weapons. But now I need the rifle. Have not seen Pitman’s deer rifle in years but I recognize it on the shelf at eye level: the long sleek blue-black barrel, polished wooden handle Pitman so admires. Loaded and ready.
Safety lock off.
You have been so reckless. You have made a mistake. Drunk reckless mistake. Others can forgive, but not Pitman.
The rifle is much heavier than I expect. You think of a rifle as a graceful weapon unlike a shotgun but this rifle is awkward in my arms, and so heavy. I’m not drunk but I feel faint, sick. My heart is beating like a crazed thing inside my rib cage. My breath comes so fast and ragged, I’m having trouble focusing my eyes.
Trying to see where the trigger is. How my fingers should fit.
He’d wanted to teach me. He’d taunted me, I was Daddy’s little princess, content to have others do my shooting for me.
I love him! Want him to forgive me.
I will beg him I didn’t mean it, I was only pretending. I knew it was you, my friend on the phone. Pitman, I knew!
Seems like I have already told him this ... Then my head thump-thumping against the wall.
It’s a bad sign, Pitman arrives home early. Lately he’s been staying out until the taverns close at 2 a.m., doesn’t get home before 2:50 a.m. but tonight his headlights swing into the driveway at just 1 a.m.
So I know. I can’t not know.
I am waiting for him, hiding. I think that I am starkly sober as a creature that has been skinned alive but still my hands are shaking and my teeth are chattering and I’ve been crouched so long m
y knees are beginning to buckle.
Ask me why I did not run away, I am that man’s wife. Nowhere for that man’s wife to hide. He would find me if I ran to hide with my parents. He would hurt my parents, too.
Pitman enters the house through the back door, into the kitchen. Making no effort to be quiet. Stumbling, cursing. In the bedroom where I am crouched behind the bureau, amid a smell of spilled rum, animal panic, perfumey steam...from the bathroom, the TV is on, muted. The phone receiver is off the hook. Only the bedside lamp is burning. At the foot of the brass bed, the quilt of lavender and purple squares has been neatly folded. In the night Pitman kicks the quilt off, in the morning I haul it up, spread it back over the bed neatly. Pitman has acknowledged, yes, the quilt is “nice.” Like other things I’ve brought into the house. If “nice” things matter.
The heavy deer rifle I’ve laid across the bureau top, aimed toward the doorway. This could be an intruder, any night a woman is alone in a house in the country is a night of danger, risk. I think it must be a child’s desperate strategy. A hope that magic will intervene. I don’t know how to shoot a firearm except to aim, shut my eyes, and pull the trigger. Thinking it might be a Pitman trick, what if the rifle isn’t loaded?
The Best American Mystery Stories 2006 Page 34
