Just Between Us

by Rebecca Drake

  “We’re just concerned about you,” Sarah added, and that was the end of any pretense that this was just a regular girls’ night.

  “What is this?” Heather asked, still in that quiet voice, but there was something in the way she looked at us—anger? Agitation? I couldn’t read her expression, but her eyes were alert and very focused. “Why are you asking me this? I told you things are okay with Viktor.”

  “It’s obvious that they’re not okay,” Sarah said, with her usual directness. She downed the rest of her glass of wine as if it were a shot.

  Heather stiffened, but before she could respond, I asked, “Did Viktor have issues in his first marriage?”

  “Issues?” Heather sat back in the sofa and crossed her arms protectively across her chest.

  “Did he have anger-management issues back then, too?”

  “I don’t know. Obviously, I wasn’t married to him then.” She sounded annoyed, but she was repeatedly and unconsciously pinching her forearms, that pale, perfect skin turning pink, then red.

  “Did Viktor, um, that is, did he get a divorce?” Julie asked as if we didn’t know.

  Heather gave a single, brief shake of her head. “No. His wife died.”

  “How?” I asked, coming too fast on the heels of what she’d said.

  She was clearly startled, her eyes widening, but after a moment she said, “It was an accident.”

  “Car accident?” Sarah asked.

  Heather shook her head. “She fell. She was home alone with the baby—” She stopped, realizing what she’d revealed, and for a moment nobody spoke. “Daniel is my stepson,” she continued in a low voice. “His mother, Viktor’s first wife, died when he was about six months old. Daniel doesn’t know, not yet at any rate.” Her face was flushed and she looked at all of us with her chin jutting forward defensively. My heart, already hurting for her, ached even more.

  “She was home alone with the baby…” I prompted softly.

  “She was home alone and Viktor was at the hospital,” Heather continued. “Janice was upstairs, exhausted from caring for an infant, and they think she must have slipped coming down the stairs. She fell two flights. Cracked her skull.”

  “How awful!” Julie said.

  Heather nodded. “I think Viktor was the one who found her.”

  Sarah and I exchanged a quick look. I asked, “Was there an autopsy?”

  “I don’t know; it was an accident.” She relaxed just a little, leaning forward to pick up her wineglass, but she twirled it by the stem without taking a sip. “It was sad for Viktor.” She looked up at us when she said his name.

  It was easy to picture it, Viktor hitting his exhausted wife and her either falling or being given a shove over the edge of the stairs, tumbling head over heels, cracking her skull against the sharp edge of a stair or a hard floor. I suppressed a shudder, picturing him standing by and watching her bleed out, knowing precisely how long he had to wait until calling the police. Obviously, nothing had happened to him; the police had just accepted his story that his wife had fallen when he wasn’t home, leaving Viktor free to play the mourning widower and move on to another vulnerable woman.

  “Do you think he had anything to do with her falling?” Sarah asked the question we were all thinking.

  “Of course not,” Heather said, but her voice lacked conviction. She huddled deeper into the couch. “He loved her.”

  “Just like he loves you,” I said. “Yet he trashed your kitchen the other day.”

  “He was upset,” Heather said. “He’s been under a lot of stress at work.”

  “And he’s grabbed you so hard he’s left bruises,” I said.

  “He just doesn’t know his own strength,” she said, her voice pleading.

  “Has he ever hit you?” Julie asked. I could tell just from looking at her that she was hoping against hope that the answer was no.

  Heather hesitated, and then she broke, her placid expression crumbling and a single sob escaping before she brought up her hands to hide her face.

  Julie moved first, leaping up to embrace her. “It’s okay,” she said in her most soothing motherly voice. “It’ll be okay.”

  “It’s not what you think,” Heather said, the words muffled behind her hands. “He doesn’t mean to hurt me.”

  “How big of him,” Sarah said darkly.

  Heather accepted the tissues that Julie offered and sat back, swiping at her face and blowing her nose. “There’s so much pressure in Viktor’s job and he says he needs to come home to a clean, quiet house. He can’t handle mess or arguing—he gets so much of that at work.”

  “Yeah, well that’s called real life,” Sarah said. “He doesn’t get to live in a bubble at home—life is messy and noisy and life with children just means double the chaos.”

  I wouldn’t have put it that way, but Sarah was right. We are always trying to order our lives—writing to-do lists and making schedules, perpetually watching the clock and breaking time into tidy segments—but there are always interruptions and disruptions to our carefully made plans. A child’s sudden fever as you are on your way to a party, a bill that you thought you’d paid that somehow slipped past, the flights delayed, the jobs lost.

  It was clear that Sarah didn’t know what it was like to live with someone who couldn’t tolerate any deviation from the schedule, someone who refused to accept that interruptions and disappointment were a natural part of life. I knew what that was like. I pressed a hand against my forehead trying to push back the memories. “Sir, step away from her right now!” Blood spattered and sticky on linoleum. I blinked rapidly to clear the images. As Heather sat there, damp eyes wide and doe-like, I thought of that purpling bruise on her arm, of the large welt on her side, and wondered what had happened when she’d gotten them. Had dinner been late? Had she paid too much attention to Daniel and not enough to Viktor? Had she dared to contradict him when he’d told her that she didn’t work hard enough to make things easy for him?

  “He doesn’t mean to hurt me,” Heather said. “He’s a good man—he is!” She directed this last at Sarah, who’d snorted when she said it.

  Were Julie and Sarah wondering, as I was, what marks this “good man” had left on Heather’s body that morning? She wore a loose, long-sleeved blouse with a sweater and jeans. It was easy in the winter to cover up the evidence of abuse, but what about in the summer? I tried to think back and remember when she’d worn too much or acted differently, and I suddenly recalled how many times Heather had begged off, last minute, on get-togethers. How often had we planned things only to have her cancel? It all made sense now, and I regretted having been annoyed with her for being so distracted.

  From the outside, Viktor, Heather, and Daniel appeared to be the perfect family. The successful doctor, his beautiful wife, and their precious child in their lovely house on the hill. I should have known better.

  You never know what happens behind closed doors.

  “Viktor needs to get help,” Julie said. “He’s got to realize that this isn’t right.”

  “Heather is the one who needs help.” I stood up and fetched the papers from their hiding place, handing them to Heather. “You need to leave him—I compiled a list of different agencies and safe houses that can assist you. And, of course, we’ll help you.”

  “I can’t leave,” she said.

  “I know you’re worried about Daniel,” I said, “but if you go to the police they could help you, arrange for you and Daniel to go to a shelter, and then you could try and fight for custody.”

  Heather shook her head. “You don’t understand,” she said. “I can’t leave. Not now.”

  “You’re the only mother he’s ever known,” Sarah said. “We’d testify on your behalf.”

  “It’s not just Daniel,” Heather said. “I can’t leave Viktor.”

  “Has he threatened you?” I said. “You can file a restraining order.”

  But Heather was shaking her head. “It’s not that.”

  “What t
hen?” Julie asked.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  chapter nine

  SARAH

  There are certain moments in life that you can remember with all the clarity of a photograph—where you were and who you were with and how the place looked or sounded or smelled. I can see us just as we were, the four of us sitting in Alison’s living room, Heather hunched over on the sofa, hands cradling her midsection as if holding a child, Julie in the chair closest to her, unconsciously tearing a napkin to shreds in her lap, and Alison, so startled that she’d stopped talking, her mouth falling open. Everyone so shocked by what Heather had revealed that for a long minute the only noise you could hear in the room was the faint hiss and pop of logs burning in the fireplace. These are the things I remember with perfect clarity: The slight smell of woodsmoke, the taste of cabernet, dark and dry, the table lamps casting shadows on the walls. The light from the fire illuminating the wine as I refilled my glass, a gush of liquid splashing, deep red, like blood pouring from a wound.

  “Well, congratulations,” Julie said at last, voice faint and smile forced, but at least she’d thought to say it.

  “Yes, that’s wonderful,” Alison said, and I echoed her, both of us trying to summon an enthusiasm we didn’t feel.

  “How far along are you?” Julie said.

  “I just found out a few days ago.” Heather’s cheeks were flushed; was she hurt by our muted reaction? Had she planned to surprise us tonight and instead we’d surprised her?

  Alison was the one to ask, “Does Viktor know?”

  Heather shook her head, giving a tremulous smile. “I haven’t told him—not yet.”

  She desperately wanted us to be happy for her, for them, I could hear it in her voice. “But don’t you see, this is even more reason that you’ve got to leave,” I said. “It’s not safe for you to stay with him, not for you or your baby.”

  “He wouldn’t hurt the baby.” She must have seen our skepticism, because she shook her head, insisting, “He wouldn’t. And he’s never going to hurt me again—I know he won’t.” Her voice quavered, but she met our eyes, her own wet, but sparkling with some unspoken emotion—anger? Defiance?

  In the silence that followed, there was a sudden and insistent buzzing sound. “That’s my phone,” Heather said, standing up and swiping at her eyes as she tracked the noise to her purse, which was sitting in Alison’s front hall. The phone stopped ringing before she finished rooting through her bag for it. We watched her check it, as another buzz announced the arrival of voice mail and then two pings, text messages arriving, one on top of the other. Insistent sounds. Someone demanding her attention. I wasn’t surprised when she said, “I have to go.”

  “Don’t leave,” Julie said, getting up, too. “Not like this.”

  “I have to get home for Daniel,” Heather said. “I promised him I’d be home in time to read him a bedtime story and it’s already after eight.”

  I don’t think any of us believed that it was Daniel she had to be home for, but we didn’t argue. We took turns embracing her at the door, and all of us were tearful by the end. In a shaky voice, she said, “Promise me that you won’t tell anyone. About the baby, but especially about Viktor.”

  “You have nothing to be ashamed of,” I said. “It’s not your fault.”

  “But I am ashamed,” Heather said, fresh tears in her eyes. “I can’t deal with other people knowing. You have to promise not to talk about it, not to anyone.”

  “It’s okay,” Julie said, rubbing her back. “You’re our friend, of course we won’t.”

  “No one,” Heather said. “Please. Not even your husbands. No one knows. Promise me?” Her wide-eyed, desperate gaze fell on each of us in turn.

  “All right, we promise,” I said in a gruff voice, and Julie made a quick cross over her heart.

  “Of course we promise,” Alison said after a minute, caught up in the moment, desperate like we all were to stop her tears. “It stays just between us.”

  * * *

  The hardest person for me not to tell was obviously Eric, but in some ways he was the easiest, too, because my husband really never asked any questions about my friends. I don’t think he gave a thought to them at all, unless I talked about them or he could tell that they had upset me in some way. If Eric noticed anything different about me, it was easy enough to tell him I was tired or not feeling well or was just experiencing PMS—the surefire way to get any man to stop asking questions. It wasn’t difficult, in that respect, to keep a secret from him, but it was hard on me emotionally.

  One evening, about a week after Heather told us, he came home late from a faculty meeting to find me hunting through old law books in the living room, my laptop open on the coffee table with six different legal websites pulled up in a browser. “What’s all this?” he said, padding around the piles of books and a meowing Hansel to drop a kiss on my head. “Taking up the law again?” His hair was damp from the snow, the first flurries of the season, and icy drips fell on me, as if I were standing under a tree after a storm.

  “Trying to help a friend with a question about domestic abuse and child custody,” I said, hoping he’d follow that up with some question of his own so that I’d have an excuse to talk about the situation, even if only obliquely.

  “That’s nice,” he said, distracted and already moving away from me toward the kitchen. “Kids upstairs?”

  “Yep.” They were playing in their rooms and I had one ear attuned for periodic thuds or faint yelps from above. I heard Eric open the refrigerator and the cats heard it, too, Hansel abandoning me for the kitchen as Gretel, our black Burmese, came padding silently down the stairs, nose lifted as if she could already smell something good. Moochers. I heard rustling sounds as Eric searched through cupboards, annoyed enough to not offer any assistance until he appeared again in the living room to ask sheepishly whether the kids and I had eaten dinner and if there were, perhaps, any leftovers.

  “How could he be so oblivious? Didn’t he wonder who I was talking about?” I complained to Julie and Alison when I next saw them, although I was quick to point out that if Eric had asked I wouldn’t have broken our promise to Heather. From the slightly guilty look I saw Alison exchange with Julie, I knew that I wasn’t the only one struggling to keep it.

  Perhaps to compensate for our inability to tell anyone else, Julie, Alison, and I now talked about it obsessively, whispered conversations as we huddled on the sidelines at the kids’ soccer games, or at the coffee shop if Heather wasn’t there, or during long phone conversations with one another that consisted mainly of endlessly reviewing our futile efforts to get her to leave.

  Every time I saw Heather now I’d surreptitiously check her for injuries. What was that shadow on her collarbone? Was she limping? Did that sweater hide a midriff covered in welts? If she seemed to have more makeup on than usual, I automatically assumed that she was covering something, searching her face for evidence of a bruise or a black eye.

  We decided to take turns doing daily check-ins, so our conversations usually opened with that. “Have you heard from Heather today? No? Okay, I’ll call her.” Or we’d drive up to her house to check on her in person, trying hard, initially, not to make it seem like we were expecting the worst so she wouldn’t get offended and shut us out.

  It turned out we needn’t have worried. Now that she’d finally shared her secret, it was clear that Heather had been desperate to tell somebody about life with Viktor. It took little prompting for her to reveal the latest horrors happening in her marriage, and they were devastating.

  “It was my fault—I forgot to send his shirts to the dry cleaner,” she said one afternoon, when the scarf she wore slipped and we spotted a cluster of purple spots on her neck.

  “Jesus,” Alison breathed, leaning forward to look more closely, her face pale. “If you won’t think of yourself, think of your children.”

  “Oh, he wouldn’t hurt Daniel. And he only grabbed my throat,” Heather said, as if this were somehow b
etter. “He didn’t hit me.” Like Viktor should get a medal for showing such restraint.

  We were at Julie’s house after school, the four of us sitting around in her living room, while the kids were off playing in the toy-strewn family room, tucked out of sight down a hall.

  “What did Dr. Banerjee say about the mark?” I said, mentioning the ob-gyn I’d recommended.

  “She didn’t see it.” Heather readjusted her scarf so the bruises were covered again.

  “Didn’t you have an appointment yesterday?”

  She hesitated, before saying in a light voice, “Oh, I canceled.”

  “So she wouldn’t notice?” Alison said.

  “She would have reported it,” I said. “You should let her see because then it wouldn’t be you telling anybody, it would be her—she’s required by law to report abuse.”

  “How would that help me?” Heather said. “If Viktor’s arrested, he could lose his job and then how would I support myself?” She spoke as if she’d be destitute and I wondered if this was something Viktor had threatened to keep her quiet. “There’s just a lot of pressure at work right now, but it won’t last forever,” she said. “He’s promised he’ll cut back on his hours.”

  “Then at least move out until your due date,” Julie suggested. “What about your parents? Can’t you go stay with them for a while?”

  “God no,” Heather said, giving a bark of laughter. She shook her head, clearly adamant. “I am never going back there.”

  We knew Heather came from a small town in West Virginia, and once, maybe two years earlier, her parents had come to visit for Easter. I recalled running into them along Broad Street. They were in their early sixties, but had seemed so much older. They’d looked out of place, too, her father wearing a clip-on tie and a cheap sports coat as if someone had told him the town had a dress code, and her mother, a husk of a woman with traces of the looks that she’d passed on to her daughter—those cheekbones, the pale, catlike eyes—but the beauty obscured by a tight home perm and frumpy dress. I hadn’t seen them since and Heather didn’t talk about them much. Was she ashamed of them or was their absence from her life Viktor’s doing?