The Stories of Richard Bausch

by Richard Bausch

  Some days, the car was still there when Kaufman came back past on his way home for lunch.

  “Lazy good-for-nothing,” he muttered, talking with his wife about it. “How can he get away with that? Nixx ought to have his head examined.”

  “Is she any better?” his wife said. “Mrs. Mertock said she saw her at Rite Aid in overalls and a T-shirt, buying beer and cigarettes at nine o’clock in the morning. Nine o’clock in the morning.”

  He shook his head. “Ungrateful little …” He didn’t finish the thought. He had spoken merely to punctuate his wife’s anger. “Well,” he went on, “I wish her the best. It’s her life now, and if that’s the way she wants it, so be it. Maybe she’ll come back when she grows up a little.”

  “This door is locked, if she does. That’s the way I feel about it. This door is locked.”

  “Caroline—you don’t mean that.”

  But her mouth was set in a straight, determined line.

  He headed back to work after these discussions with a roiling stomach, and when he passed the little garage, if the new Ford was gone, he would think of stopping. But then the fact of her neglect, the memory of her heartless treatment of her mother, would go through him, a venom entering his blood.

  They had opposed the marriage vigorously, it was true, having found it almost more than they could stand to watch the girl simply throw herself away in that misty-eyed fashion—quitting the university, discarding the opportunities they had labored so hard over the years to provide for her, in favor of someone like Delbert Chase. Delbert Chase. Delbert Chase. Kaufman kept saying the name, unable to believe any of it—this ex-sailor, who had a tattoo of an anchor and chain on his upper arm, and who had actually made several passing innuendos about having been with women in foreign ports, consorting with every sort of lowlife, as he had said, joking about it in that cavalier manner, as though his listeners would be impressed with the dissipated life he had led out in the world. And you could see how proud he was of it all even as he claimed to regret it.

  His arrival in their lives had been a trouble that came upon the Kaufmans from the blind side. But they had made every effort, after the marriage was a fact, had tried to smooth things over and to get beyond all the fuss, as Caroline had said to the girl once, talking on the telephone—more than six weeks ago now.

  “Why don’t you just call her?” Kaufman suggested one early afternoon. “Just say hello.”

  “I was the last one to call,” Caroline told him. “Remember? She was positively rude. ‘I have to go, Mother.’” Kaufman’s wife drew her small mouth into a sour, downturning frown, mimicking her daughter’s voice. “And she hung up before I could even say goodbye.”

  “What if I called her?” Kaufman said. “What if I just dialed the number and asked to speak to her? I could do that, couldn’t I? Hello, Fay. Hello, darling—this is your old father. How’s married life?”

  “You go right ahead. As far as I’m concerned, it’s up to her now.”

  They went through the spring and into the hot weather this way. He hated what it was doing to his wife, and didn’t like what he felt in his own heart. Things were getting away from them both. Each passing day made them feel all the more at a loss, filled them with helpless frustration, a strange combination of petulance and sorrow. Yet when he tried to talk about it, Caroline’s mouth drew into that determined line.

  “I showed concern for her welfare,” she said. “I gave a damn what happened to her. And that’s what I’m being punished for.”

  He went back and forth to work, drove past the little garage with the new Ford parked out front. He thought about Delbert Chase being in there with her.

  Every morning. Every afternoon.

  In August, Mrs. Mertock said she’d seen Fay at the Rite Aid again, and that there were large bruises on her arms. Mrs. Mertock had tried to engage her in conversation, but Fay only seemed anxious to be gone. “I took hold of her hand and she just slipped out of my grip, just went away from me as if I’d tried to take hold of smoke. I couldn’t get her to stand still, and then she was off. She seemed—well, like a scared deer.”

  Kaufman listened to this, standing in his kitchen in the sounds of the summer night. He had been drinking a beer. Caroline and Mrs. Mertock were sitting at the table.

  “He’s manhandling her?” Caroline said after a pause.

  “I don’t know,” said Mrs. Mertock. “I just know what I saw.”

  “I’m going over there,” Kaufman said.

  “No, you are not,” said Caroline. “You’re not going over there making a fool of yourself. She’s made her bed, and if there’s something she’s unhappy about, let her come to us. For all we know she got the bruises some innocent way.”

  “But what if she didn’t,” he said.

  His wife straightened, and folded her hands on the table. “She knows where we live.”

  Since Fay’s adolescence, he had been rather painfully conscious of himself as being only an interested bystander in the lives of the two women; they possessed shared experience that he couldn’t know, and there had developed over the years a sort of tender distance between father and daughter, a tentativeness that he wished he could put behind him. Whenever he drove by the garage on Delany Street, he entertained fantasies of what he might say and what she might say, if he could bring himself to stop. If he could shake the feeling that she would simply close the door in his face.

  One morning, perhaps a week after Mrs. Mertock’s revelations, Fay showed up at his work. He was sitting at his desk, in his glass-bordered cubicle, talking on the telephone to a client, when he saw her standing at the entrance. His heart jumped in his chest. He interrupted the man on the other end of the line—”I’ve got to go, I’ll call you back”—and without waiting for an answer, he hung the phone up and hurried out to her.

  She stiffened as he approached, and he took hold of her elbow. “Hey, princess,” he said.

  “Don’t.” She pulled away—seemed to wince. “I don’t want to be touched, okay?”

  He looked for the bruises on her thin arms, but they were dark from time in the sun.

  “Can we go somewhere?” she said.

  They went out onto the landing at the entrance of the building. It was hot; the air blasted at them as they emerged. She pushed the silken dark hair back from her brow and looked at him a moment.

  “Do I get a kiss?” he said.

  This seemed to offend her. “Oh, please.”

  He stood there unable to speak.

  “I’m sure Mrs. Mertock’s talked to you,” she said. And then, as if to herself: “If I know Mrs. Mertock.”

  “Fay, if there’s something you need—”

  She looked off. “I feel spied on. I don’t like it. I can work things out for myself.”

  “We worry about you,” he said. “Of course.”

  “Okay, listen,” she told him. “It wasn’t anything. It was a little fight and it’s been apologized for. I can’t even go to the store without—”

  “Princess—” he began.

  But she was already walking away. “I don’t need your help. Tell that to Mother. I don’t want her help, or anyone’s help. I’m fine.”

  “Sweetie,” he said, “can we call you?”

  She had turned her back, going on down to the street and across it, looking one way and then the other, but not back at him. When she got to the corner, he shouted, “We’ll call you.”

  But Caroline would not make the call. “I’m not begging for the affection of my child,” she said. “And I won’t have you beg for it, either.”

  “We wouldn’t be begging for it,” he said. “Would we? Is that what we would be doing?”

  “I’ve said all I’m going to say on the subject. You were not on the phone the last time. You didn’t hear the tone she used with me.”

  She was adamant, and would not be moved.

  Even when, a few weeks later, he learned from a client whose wife worked as a nurse at Fauquier Hospital t
hat Fay had been a patient one night in the emergency room, claiming that she had incurred injuries in a fall. Kaufman learned this when the client asked about Fay—was she feeling any better after her little mishap? A chill washed over him as the client spoke of accidents in the home, so many—the scary percentages of broken limbs and lacerations in the one place that was supposed to be safe from injury.

  “Did she have broken bones?” Kaufman asked, before he could stop himself.

  The client gave him a worried look. “I think it was just cuts and bruises.”

  As soon as he could extricate himself from the client, he called Fay. “What?” she said, sounding sullen and half-awake. It was almost noon.

  “Fay, is he hitting you? He’s hitting you, isn’t he?”

  “Leave me alone.” The line clicked.

  He drove to the police station. No one had anything to tell him. One policeman, a squat, lantern-jawed, middle-aged sergeant, seemed puzzled. “You want to report what?”

  “Beatings. My daughter.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Home.”

  “I’m sorry—your home?”

  “No. Where she lives. Her husband beats her up. I want it stopped.”

  “Did she send you here?”

  “Look. She’s been beaten up. Her husband did it.”

  “Did you see him do it?”

  “He did it,” Kaufman said. “Jesus Christ.”

  “I have to ask this,” the policeman said. “Does she want to press charges?”

  “I’m pressing charges, goddammit.”

  “Calm down, Mr. Kaufman. Is your daughter going to press charges?”

  “Look, I came here to press charges.”

  “Let me get this straight here. You want to press charges?”

  He spent most of the afternoon there, talking to one officer and then another. No help. The law was unfortunately clear. Virginia was not yet a state with provision for such cases as this: if Kaufman’s daughter would not press charges herself, then nothing at all could be done.

  “I’m sorry about it,” the officer said. “Why don’t you talk to your daughter? See if you can get her to press charges?”

  He chose instead to talk to Delbert Chase. He drove to the car dealership and walked into Delbert’s little grotto of an office. Delbert sat with his feet up on the desk, talking into the telephone. When he saw Kaufman, he said, “Guess who just walked in here?” Then seemed to laugh. “Your old man.”

  Kaufman waited.

  Delbert turned to him. “She doesn’t believe me.” He offered the handset. “You want to say hello?”

  Kaufman took it, held it to his ear. “Princess,” he said.

  “If you say anything or do anything—” she spoke quickly, breathlessly. “Do you hear me? It’ll only make things worse. Do you hear me?”

  “What’s she saying?” Delbert wanted to know.

  “Your mother’s fine,” Kaufman said into the phone.

  “I’ll bet she’s so happy,” Fay said, low. “If you say anything—please. It just needs to calm down. He doesn’t mean it—” She was crying.

  “Fay,” he said. “Princess.”

  “Please, Daddy. I have to hang up. Put him back on. Please don’t screw this up.”

  “I’ll tell her you said ‘Hey,’” he said. “You take care.” He handed the phone back to Delbert, who called Fay “lover” and said goodbye. “I won’t be late getting home,” he said.

  Kaufman sat down on the other side of the desk and put his hands on his knees.

  “So,” Delbert said, hanging the phone up. “To what do I owe this honor?”

  “We have a friend,” Kaufman said, “who told us she saw bruises on Fay’s arms.”

  The other man was silent.

  “Fay doesn’t know I know. Do you understand me?”

  “We had a couple of knock-down-drag-outs,” Delbert said evenly. “You never had a fight with your wife? I’ve promised it won’t ever happen again. I was very sorry about it. I felt like all hell.”

  “Just so we understand each other,” Kaufman said.

  “I said I’ve promised it won’t happen again.”

  “Good,” Kaufman said. He stood. He felt almost elated. An unbidden wave of goodwill washed over him. “Let’s try to get beyond all this bad feeling.” He offered his hand, and Delbert stood to take it.

  “Okay by me,” he said, smiling that boy’s bright smile. “I always try to get along with everybody.”

  “Maybe we’ll get the women back together, too,” Kaufman told him.

  On his way home, he felt as though he had accomplished something important, and he told his wife, proudly, that she could expect a call from Fay any time.

  But Fay didn’t call, and Caroline was adamant that it should be their daughter who made the first move.

  “This is ridiculous,” Kaufman said. “I’ve called her. I’ve seen her and talked to her. She’s got a hardship neither of us ever wanted for her—we’ve got to take part here, don’t we?”

  “She’s too proud to admit she was wrong and I was right.”

  He looked at this woman, his wife, and decided not to say anything.

  “You don’t see that,” she went on. “Well, men don’t see this sort of thing. Women do.”

  “What are you telling me?” he said.

  “She’s getting mistreated, and she won’t do anything about it because if she does it’s an admission. You don’t understand it. I understand it.”

  He endured the hot end-of-summer days. There wasn’t anything he could do to alter the situation as it stood. Driving past the little garage, he would slow down, his heart racing, and once he even saw Fay washing the car. She looked all right. She wore a scarf and a sweatshirt and jeans—a young woman with this practical task to accomplish, out in the good weather.

  In early October, she called him at work. “It’s me,” she said.

  He held the phone tight and felt his own hope like a pulse in his arteries. “Hey, princess, how’ve you been?”

  “I’m great.”

  “We’d love to see you,” he said. And then remembered to say, “Both of you.”

  She was silent.

  “Everything’s all right?” he asked. “Just fine.”

  “Why don’t you call your mother. I bet she hasn’t eaten lunch.”

  “I’m calling you. I wanted to ask you something.”

  “Shoot,” he said, hoping.

  “Did you ever mop up the floor with Mommy?”

  He couldn’t bring himself to say anything for a few seconds. It came to him that she had been drinking.

  “Tell me, Daddy, did you ever hit Mommy?”

  Something buckled inside of him. “Princess, let me—if you’d let us help.”

  “You can come in like the police. Right? That’ll be great. You can tell him to be a good boy and stop waking up the neighbors banging his wife’s head into the walls. Tell me how you hit Mommy when you were pissed, Daddy.”

  “I never—Fay. Please.”

  “Tell Mother she can tell everyone I got what I deserved.” The line clicked.

  He sat at his desk with his head in his hands, in plain view of everyone in the office, crying. When the phone rang again, it startled him. “Yes,” he said.

  It was Fay. She sounded breathless. “I was just mad,” she told him. “It wasn’t anything but me being spoiled and mad. I’m fine. Delbert’s fine. He’s keeping his promise, really. He is. Keeping his promise.”

  “Fay?” he said. “Baby?”

  “I’m fine,” she said quickly. “You take care, good-bye.” And she broke the connection.

  “She sounded terrified,” he told his wife. “Terrified.”

  “He wouldn’t really hurt her,” Caroline said. “When a women is getting treated like that, it’s always partly her fault. You know that.”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t know that. Jesus Christ, Caroline.”

  “We’re here,” she said. “Aren’t
we? We haven’t moved to India or anything. We’re six miles away. If she really wanted to and if it was all really that bad, she could come here and we’d take her in.”

  “Would we?” he said.

  And Caroline began to cry. “How could you suggest that I would be so hard-hearted. Don’t I love her too? I love her so much, and she repays me with silence.”

  “She asks how you are,” Kaufman said, convincing himself that it was true.

  “If she’d only call and ask me that. Is it too much to ask? Is it, Frank?”

  He put his arms around her. “I’m scared, Caroline. You see, the thing is, I’m—I’m just tremendously scared for her. And I don’t know anymore—I have to do something, don’t I? I have to make it stop some way, don’t I?”

  They rocked and swayed, sitting at the edge of the loveseat in their bedroom that she had made to look oriental, with its paintings and the white rug and deep red hues in the walls, and delicate porcelain dolls on the nightstands.

  “What did we do wrong?” Caroline said. “I don’t understand where we went wrong.”

  “I hate this,” Kaufman said, getting up and pacing. “I’m going over there in the morning and bring her home.”

  “She won’t come with you,” said his wife.

  “I’m telling you I’m not going to let it go on.”

  She shrugged, standing slowly—someone with a great weight on her shoulders. Her eyes were moist, brimming with tears, and clearer than he could ever remember them. “There’s not a thing in the world we can do.”

  He went to see Delbert again. Walked into the showroom at the dealership and asked for him. It was a preholiday sale, and the showroom was crowded. Delbert came in from the bank of offices in the back hall and stopped a few feet away. “Yeah?”

  “Delbert,” Kaufman said, in the tone of a simple greeting.

  “Unless you’re here to buy a car,” Delbert said, “I’m kind of busy.”

  “I wanted to ask if you and Fay want to come over for Thanksgiving.”

  He seemed genuinely puzzled.