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The Good Kind of Bad

Page 12

by Rita Brassington


  What had it been, almost two months? Sixty days since I’d last seen Will and checked my senses in at the door? Now I’d been left, saddled, festooned with this brute. He was a man who thought nothing of slapping me, thought nothing of lying, the words kicking me like I was some kind of dog. I finally had to admit I was wrong: to the world, and to myself.

  I opened my mouth but only a whimper was expelled. Of all the expletives ready to burst from me, of all the screams, nothing emerged. It was like I’d sunk below the waterline, thrashing against my breath as my lungs drank too much.

  ‘I was watching that,’ I murmured.

  He glanced over from his TV chair with a look of disdain. ‘You want to know about hair loss?’ Joe snapped, settling on a repeat of Friends.

  When I did manage the right words, they weren’t half as hard to say as I’d imagined. ‘I know about your little slut. I saw you.’

  Nothing came in reply, apart from the canned laughter for Chandler et al. With a strained expression, he appeared to be thinking.

  In place of his own absent reply, I mimicked, ‘“Damn, baby, why didn’t you say? You mean the bitch I was making out with while my wife stood across the street?”.’

  ‘Oh. You mean her,’ he threw back.

  ‘Yeah, her! That’s all you’ve got to say?’

  He just sat, scratching his head like an ape. ‘What else do you want me to say? Cat’s out of the bag now. All right, you saw us. Slap the cuffs on me already. Big deal, baby.’

  ‘I’ll give you a big deal. George Bemo told me about your dad. He’s not playing chess with death. He’s playing it in a Skokie nursing home!’

  His stare lacked any humanity, his stance one loaded with venom and his body a hollow shell with a soul presently vacant. There was a scintilla of viciousness in his eyes, a genuine darkness. This, from the man I chose to marry.

  He rubbed a palm to his cheek. ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘What do I want from you? Where’s my husband for starters?’

  ‘Oh, you mean Joe? We got hitched a month ago. A month! And that don’t equal a whole gallon of time. I’ve had pisses longer than this so-called marriage.’ Climbing out of the chair, Joe began pacing towards me on the sofa, his arms wide and hands balled into fists. ‘How did you think it was going to be? Shopping sprees and evening walks on Navy Pier? You don’t know me at all. Damn, if you did? You never would’ve married me.’

  Then he grabbed my arms, pulling me up to standing until we were toe to toe, his gargantuan figure half a foot over my slender frame. His arms held a new threat, an unhidden violence. I knew I was no match for him, if it came to that.

  I didn’t show him, but every word crushed me a little more inside.

  ‘Open your goddamn eyes, girl. You want the truth? Your bitching bullshit drives me insane. Every word is about that damn office you work in and then you’re on my back, whining in my ear. Don’t be surprised I had to go someplace else. Oh yeah, and my dad’s in a wheelchair instead of a grave and I didn’t tell you, again with the big deal. I didn’t ask for this, didn’t ask for you. This wasn’t part of the plan. I thought you’d do my laundry, cook my meals and keep the frigo stocked up with beer, but no, I get this high-maintenance bitch from hell psychoanalysing the way I brush my teeth. Don’t you get it? Aren’t you listening to me? Someone to do the chores ‒ it’s the one and only reason I married you.’

  This was the man I was supposed to grow old with, the guy who’d tell witty anecdotes at family gatherings, like: Remember when I told you my dad was dead and I had a fake brother? That was a fun time.

  This was the real Joe, the one I’d glimpsed but ignored. Pretend Joe took me to restaurants and paid. He showered me with compliments in the sun-drenched park. He’d never have the audacity to check out other women and especially in my company, never mind grope them outside bakeries.

  I loved Pretend Joe, a Joe that never existed. The real version, however? Anything but.

  ‘You didn’t ask for me? Didn’t you ask me to marry you?’ I spat, looking up into his grimacing face.

  Then I saw something, from the corner of my eye, hurling towards me at great force. It was only then I realised it was his hand, becoming a fist, connecting with my face before the pain rippled out from the epicentre of my lip, over my cheek and across my jaw.

  I felt the blood dribbling down my chin, down my neck, while Joe paced above me. I was on my knees, hands held out as if in prayer to shield me from the next blow, the next hit. I thought about fighting back, but from above he only smiled, like he knew what I was thinking.

  As he backed away, I watched him swagger around the room, this time drunk, and this time it wasn’t lust I felt or glee or delirious rapture.

  ‘You need to learn when to shut that mouth.’ Looking across at me, his eyes shone with disgust before he stormed back over and reached out his hand – not to stroke or caress my hair, but to snatch a clump of it instead.

  Joe shot Anton in the arm, and only because he missed the bulls eye. He’d raised a gun to him, not only a hand to me. What did I think was going to happen? That we’d spar off with words for the rest of the night? Call it a day once I’d used every adjective under the sun to put him in his place? Joe wasn’t about the pacifism. Even the television remote knew that. I thought I’d had it: the power to beat him down because he deserved it, and because it was right.

  Now I only had one thing left. My new best friend: indomitable fear. I was just a girl. Five foot seven, eight and a half stone, and for all my pre-wedding gym pilgrimages back in London, I had paltry muscles at best.

  We remained in the dimly lit lounge, tussling in the glow of Friends as I let out a cry. I caught only a hint of an arm, a snatch of hair, a shard of tooth until, forcing back my head, Joe’s fingers enclosed the skin of my neck, like crab pincers severing the oxygen. I shook in terror as we stood locked in the alien embrace for what felt like hours, Joe smirking as his head rolled, considering me; choosing how to even up the canvas with the next spoiling blow.

  His free hand encircled my wrist before he muttered some odious insult. Then came the second punch to my mouth, bone on bone as I felt something crunch.

  Even before reaching out to break my fall, I knew it was done. Me, him, Joe, us . . . no sob stories of dead brothers and seedy police cover-ups would fix this. My smarting jaw was arrests and charges, holding cells and jail time.

  My body screamed at me to run, to scramble and flee the danger. I had to call the police, and while I still could.

  ‘Hey, where you going?’ Joe spat down to me as I scrambled over the floorboards.

  Side-lining the pain in my jaw was becoming almost impossible.

  Still on the floor with my face aching like I’d been smacked in the mouth with a cricket bat, I reached up and snatched my jacket off the edge of the dresser, my phone inside the pocket. Feeding my arms through the holes as Joe still towered above me, it was only when I saw the trail of blood mark the leather that I realised how much I was bleeding. Wiping my face with the back of my hand, it was smeared with a fresh coat of claret while above me Joe limbered up for round two as I sat dazed on the floor. I could never hope to match Joe’s strength, but a verbal assault on his appersonation? I had all the ammunition I’d ever need.

  ‘You know, you swagger around here like you’re some kind of god.’ I winced, not only at the thought of the next wave of pain, but at the physical ache of forming the words around my battered jaw and bitten tongue.

  ‘You’re lucky, you know.’

  ‘Lucky?’

  ‘To have me. You’re lucky I took pity on you.’

  ‘Lucky for being hit? For walking on eggshells in case you lose your temper? This isn’t a life. Tell me, Joe; why would I slum it with a guy who has to hit me to prove he’s a man? Go on, tell me!’

  ‘You about done?’

  Lifting his leg, he brought down his foot with monumental force, his boot striking me clean in the face like he was kicking a foo
tball. I’d never given thought to what it felt like, being kicked in the face; the sole of his biker boot imprinting its mark with an incarnadine laceration, the snap of neck tendons and the plethora of blood and screams to expel. That was, until Joe showed me. Again, and again.

  I couldn’t think, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think about breathing. The pain was a faint-inducing smack to my temples, the throbbing like someone had taken a jackhammer to my head. Clutching my face as if to soothe the wounds, upon drawing my hands away I found them coated in blood.

  It took a minute for my caterwauls to turn hoarse, for Joe to draw back the bedroom shutters from where he’d retreated and cancel out my screams with some of his own.

  ‘Quit it, bitch, you’re giving me a headache.’

  My first instinct was to run. My second? That he’d kill me if I didn’t. I stumbled forward, frantic, finding the front door through a mess of light and shadow. Blood and tears masked the stairwell as through the churning deafness, I listened for his footsteps. He’d let me go, watched me meander to the door in resplendent torture, but there were no other feet; at least, not yet.

  The blood in my eye painted the street red, the reality of the Chicago night like an express train to the senses; the waves of unconsciousness threatening to snatch me from the present until I succumbed to the dark.

  I staggered on, hurting and breathless as, looking down, my dress was wet to the touch. As a truck hurtled straight for me in the middle of South Evergreen Street, the warning tones blasted while it skidded to the kerb, the rush of air like I’d lingered too close to the platform edge. I jumped backwards, my aching eyes startled as my pulse jumped to treble digits.

  Across the street, I made out a lone figure darting along the building fronts. I wasn’t quite bleeding to death but I couldn’t tell the difference. It hurt, a lot, and I needed help.

  My raspy voice called out, but I was given a mere passing glance, the guy’s step soon quickening. He didn’t see me. I wasn’t there. Bastardo numero dos.

  Retreating to the pavement, on the side of the street my river of blood still flowed. Placing a hand in my jacket pocket and exhaling relief, I pulled out my phone and dialled Nina’s number, blindly punching at the keys.

  It rang and rang. No answer. Crouching on the floor to save my shaking legs, I next tried her apartment, but the line diverted to voicemail.

  Although I punched in 9-1-1, I couldn’t press the call button, recalling my desperate self-promise about the clinic. Police meant ambulances and ambulances meant hospitals. I couldn’t do it. My wounds would heal and I’d wake tomorrow with nothing but a sore head.

  The unwanted tears were caustic as my legs failed and my consciousness faded with each flicker of the streetlamp. Now my foundation had collapsed like a sinkhole, I was more than ready for the darkness, the sorrow too much to bear of all I’d abandoned for this.

  Then came the lights. Bright lights. Startling lights. I heard the screech of a vehicle’s tyres as a car pulled up beside me.

  A door opened and then someone was beside me, quite close. Someone was calling my name.

  Forcing open my one good eye, I tried to talk, though I spoke only in whispers. I felt myself being shaken and juddered and jerked before what felt like a blanket was placed over me and I was scooped off the street and carried to the back seat of a car.

  Then the door shut, my eyes closed and we started off into the night.

  THIRTEEN

  I found myself on a sofa, a leather one, spread out like a starfish. There was a folded green blanket and glass of water on the low table beside me and I could hear something crackling, like my father’s old turntable. I realised it was a fire, off to the left, set back within a pure white alcove.

  Every limb ached. Moving to sitting, I felt the panic sweep up from my toes. Glancing around the foreign room for Joe, for any sign of him and his fists, I found myself alone, but it didn’t stop the terror blistering my skin like poison ivy as a glimpse of the floor sent me back, to the apartment, and to Joe’s boot hitting me head on – a phantom trickle of blood trailing down my cheek, a handsome trail of claret, salty and sharp as it met my mouth.

  From behind the floor-to-ceiling glass, the muted sound of the city penetrated the room, though this wasn’t South Evergreen Street or a hotel suite; there was too much square footage for either. No. I was in someone’s home.

  Fighting the migraine that’d pounded my head since waking, I let my confusion slide. The air was thick in the shadowy room, like I could reach out and grab a handful of it. I was still in the city, the one thing I did know; behind the glass Chicago was painted like a life-size canvas, the twinkling lights of downtown and an orange brushstroke of the dawn breaking beyond.

  My rescuer hadn’t been Joe, and now I was somewhere else; not a dream or elaborate fabrication, but an apartment straight from the pages of the Architectural Digest. Looking up, I saw the expanse continued on to a mezzanine level and through the far door there was possibly a corridor.

  The lofty heights comforted me, if only for the absence of Joe. This was not a world of leftover scraps, fire bucket ashtrays and icy showers my stubbornness put up with; of a boy I didn’t love who liked to hurt and hit and pummel and shout. Though wherever I was, the last thing I wanted was to stay.

  Everything was fuzzy in my shadowy haven, until I caught sight of the blood. It felt like I was drowning in it. Meandering trails of red and clumps of dried blood clung to my dress and arms. I didn’t want to cry over Joe. My abuser, the source of my terror, would never deserve my tears, but still they came and still I wiped them clean.

  I’d married a man I didn’t know. How could I have expected anything less? Because I used to believe in fate? That I was meant to leave Will, board a plane and meet Joe? That’s how it happened in the movies ‒ the true-love couple that took a chance and sixty years later were still insanely in love. But this wasn’t a movie, this was real, and this was the last time. I was done.

  I’d been carried to this sofa and laid with white sheets, dressings for the dying, dead and mentally unhinged, but I’d survived the attack. I’d been removed from the danger, though still couldn’t form the thoughts. Trying to recall the day, my choice of breakfast or the morning headlines was a blur, one big red blur.

  As it turned out, I was worth more than other people’s approval, was worth more than blood in my eye. My wounds would heal in time but it was something deeper, something indefinable tainting my aura.

  ‘My god, you’re awake.’

  As the whisper cut the silence, my heart leapt. I looked towards a tall figure, silhouetted against the flames in the alcove. He turned and walked across to me, kneeling by my side as I scrabbled up the sofa to nowhere.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ I nearly screamed.

  ‘Wow, calm down. I’m here to help.’

  ‘I don’t want your help. Leave me alone! I have pepper spray!’ I didn’t, but he didn’t know that ‒ or maybe he did. I wasn’t wearing my jacket. He could’ve taken it and searched the pockets, taken my phone, locked me in. I could be his prisoner, one too weak to fight back.

  I didn’t recognise the voice, and as a hand reached out I flinched before I let my head fall away, the intimacy and closeness reserved for those better acquainted, or acquainted at all. Surely sensing my unease, he mumbled something before leaving the room.

  As the door closed with a clunk, I used all my strength to rise from the sofa, though my arms were soon defeated. Shutting my weary eyes, I prayed only for my dreams.

  It was already sunset when I next awoke. Stealthily checking for my visitor, I found myself alone once more. Sitting too quickly, I felt faint and shot a palm to my brow, but was surprised to find my head had been dressed. The bandages burned like battery acid before I tore them away, allowing my fingertips to trace the new contours of my face. The skin had swollen like a poisoned bubble, while my shirt dress still clung to me, dirty and cheap, infecting me from the inside out.

  If on
ly Mother could see me now. Swelling with pride, for sure.

  I couldn’t stay in my mystery man’s house, languishing in my private dystopia. Feeling stronger and a little hungry, I began staggering and teetering around the rooms, soon finding the sizeable apartment devoid of life, and, like the fish fountain house from Mon Oncle, unbearably clinical. It didn’t look like anyone was home ‒ make that ever ‒ anyone with any personality. It was like a television set or a show home at Summer Pier, as if I was wandering through some opulent IKEA dressed with all the finest fittings.

  Stepping back into the lounge, I pulled a book from the white colonial-style bookshelf, a well-thumbed copy of Rear Window, just to check it was real. Scanning the shelves, he appeared well-read. The bookcase overflowed, in an extremely ordered way: Atonement, Shutter Island, Fight Club and Cliff’s Police Sergeant Examination Guide.

  In bare feet I stumbled on until I found the bathroom, on my journey passing several closed doors and the entrance to a terrace. I’d already tried the front door but it was locked, and from god knows how many storeys up I wouldn’t survive the jump from the window. Checking for a house phone, I couldn’t find one, and my jacket was nowhere to be seen.

  I was all out of options. I needed an escape plan. I had to clean myself up, and devise a plan.

  Back in the marble bathroom I squinted at my face, my right eye barely opening around the swelling. I was tinged with the deep red of burst blood vessels, the stench of violence.

  I looked out of a face I didn’t recognise. Long would I wear the scars of the attack, and the worst of it? Knowing it was for nothing. I hadn’t fended off a rapist who’d stalked me in the dark. I hadn’t fought away a mugger. I couldn’t tell people why I had a face full of bruises, though ironically I knew my silence would hold the answer.

 

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