by Anita Shreve
She was furious, wouldn't look at him.
He ran a little faster then and caught her hand. She whirled around and shook his hand out of hers as if it were a viper, a snake that she had found there. Don't touch my hand! she screamed, and walked away from him.
He followed her; he had nowhere else to go. I knew what he was thinking. He had to get her back. He had to make her like him again, or his entire world would fall apart.
He had on an old woolen winter jacket, a faded navy: a hand-me-down from an older brother? His hair was cut severely short, and his nose was running. He turned the corner after her, and I lost sight of him.
I bought my groceries and paid for them, and went out to the parking lot to put them in the car. Beside my car there was a dented station wagon, rusted here and there from the salt. The man inside was chewing on a cigarette. He had thinning hair that was greasy and dark sideburns that came almost to his jawline. He'd waited in the car while the woman and the boy I'd noticed were shopping. He was sitting in the driver's seat, listening to a story that his wife was telling him in fits and starts, with many hand gestures, some directed angrily to the boy in back. The boy sat sideways in the cargo area, his hood pulled up over his head. He was crying, sniveling, his face bent toward his knees.
The father screamed, Jesus fuckin' Christ! What's the matter with you, givin' the money to the boy. What are you, some kind of moron? Serves you right he lost it.
And then he gave a kind of hiss of disgust and put the key in the ignition.
The wife turned her head away, inadvertently in my direction. She didn't look at me; she was looking at the brick wall. But I saw it all on her face: that mix of anger and of resignation; a desire there to lash out and a desire to be left alone. She was exhausted, drained. She hated the man beside her, but she would never be able to tell him that. Instead she'd shower anger on the boy in back.
I used to think that, like that woman, I never would be free—that freedom was like that distant point on the tracks. You could never get there.
Harrold went to work on the fourth day, came home that night. I did not know where he had stayed, and he didn't tell me. Already I was learning to be careful, not to ask certain questions, not to use a particular vocabulary. He said that it would never happen again, and I believed him. He was contrite, and he explained it—to me or to himself. He said that just the idea of my being with another man drove him crazy. And he'd been drinking. He would cut down on his drinking, but he denied he was an alcoholic: not like his father, he said. He wasn't like his father.
And I must not tell anyone. I must promise not to tell a soul.
I did not go out on stories again. I made excuses at the office. I said that I got motion sick, could not travel well in automobiles or airplanes. I could do a job of sorts if I did not go out, but it would hold me back: I'd have to rewrite files, not report them. I wouldn't get the bylines.
He did not hit me again for several months, but there are levels of abuse, and some of it is not physical. The other violence was sometimes worse than being hit. It was more insidious, and he was very clever. I didn't understand it quite, and I don't think he did, either. It was something he could not stop himself from doing.
When you have been hit, it is almost a release. You have power then, because he cannot deny what he has done. He can only threaten you more, and he will, but he has lost a little bit of power. Because even though you never do, it is understood that you could now go to the police, or tell someone and say, Look at what he has done to me. But when the violence is invisible, no one knows. It is the violence that is more intimate than sex, that no one ever talks about. It is the darkest secret, the thing that binds you together.
There was a pattern to our married life. We would be close for a day or two or even a week, and I would have hope, and I would think the worst was over now and that we would be happy and have a family. And then, one day, because he had a story that was difficult, or because I had bristled or raised my voice, or because the ions in the air were crazed—I don't know—we would grow distant, and in the distance I would become afraid and tentative, and he would see that and would find that unattractive. Everything about me would suddenly be cause for criticism. I was growing shrill, he'd say. Or others thought me strident. Or I should learn to laugh a little more, loosen up. It didn't matter what it was—there were a thousand faults I had. My faults were legion, dizzying. It was because he loved me, he would again say when I asked him why. Because he cared so much.
And in the distances my anger would develop, so that what he said about me became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I was strident; I seldom laughed. The anger eroded joy, dissipated a life. It is a fallacy that anger makes you stronger. It is like a tide running out, leaving you depleted.
And that would be the ebb and flow of our days: the bait, the anger, his saying with derision, Look at you. The tears, my silence.
I told myself then that I would leave him. I tried to think of where to go and how to do it.
I tell myself now that I would have left him if I had not become pregnant.
I had the test in the morning but saved the news for the night. I had hope that the pregnancy would end the distances forever.
I had bought a bottle of champagne; we hadn't had champagne in ages. I made a dinner that I knew he'd like, put candles on the table. He knew at once, when he saw the table, that this was special, and he asked. He said, What's the story? And I said, We're going to have a baby.
He kissed me then and put his hand on my stomach. It seemed that he was happy. I felt a rush of giddiness myself: It would go well; I would call my mother after dinner. He opened the champagne, and we toasted babies.
I didn't want to drink much, so he had the bottle to himself. He said once, during the dinner, What about your job? and I said that I would quit when the time was right. He said, What about us? and I said, We'll be better now—babies bring you closer. I saw a darkening on his brow, but I thought that this was normal: It was only natural for a man to worry some when he had a family coming.
I was drying dishes in the kitchen, thinking of how I would tell my mother, when I saw him standing in the doorway. He had changed into a T-shirt. He was drinking something else now; he had finished the champagne at supper. He said, Come to bed.
I didn't want to go to bed; I had other things to do. I was full of news and plans and wanted to tell more people. But I thought: He needs attention now; I can call my mother later.
I sat on the edge of the bed and began to unbutton my blouse. I felt tender toward myself. You will laugh at this, but I was thinking of myself as a fragile vessel, thinking I should take care now. It was a delicious feeling, that I was something special, and I was savoring it, unbuttoning my blouse slowly, in a dreamy way, thinking then not of Harrold but of babies, of having them inside you.
And then I looked up, and he was standing over me. He had his clothes on still, but he was furious. His eyes were black and glassy. I put my hands behind me on the bed, moved away from him, but he grabbed my blouse, stopped me.
I won't tell you what he did to me; you don't need all the details. Except to say that he pushed my face to the side with his hand, as if he would erase my face, and that what he did he did ferociously, as if he would shake the baby out of me. When he was finished, I curled up on my side of the bed and waited all night to lose the baby. But (strong girl) she didn't leave me.
In the morning, he wrapped me up with blankets and his arms, and brought me tea and toast and said we'd call my mother now, and what grand way could we break the news at the office?
There were other times, four or five, when I was pregnant. I didn't know then, and I don't know now, why it was that the pregnancy angered him so—angered him even as he was denying it, saying that he had never been happier. Perhaps it was that he felt replaced or that he was losing control over me for good; I don't know.
He would come after me only if he'd been drinking. He'd come home late from the bar, and I would b
e afraid of him. I'd be careful to stay away, but sometimes that would backfire. Somehow, sometime during the evening, I would say a word or a sentence that angered him, and he would hurt me when he took me to the bedroom. Later he would always be contrite, solicitous for my well-being. He would bring me things, make me promises.
I believe he couldn't stop himself. I had opened a door for him that he was unable to close. I think that sometimes he wanted desperately to close it, but he couldn't. In wanting control over me, he lost control over himself. He denied it, or he tried to. He was like an alcoholic hiding bottles in a closet; he suppressed the evidence. If you couldn't see the bruises on my face or arms or legs, he hadn't done it. It was how we lived. Once, when he saw me stepping from the shower in the morning, he asked me if I'd fallen.
I started taking sick days when I couldn't go into the office. Then I used my pregnancy as an excuse and did not go back at all.
In February I was five months pregnant. When I went to the doctor, he said, What is this? It was black, a swath of blue-black paint, on my thigh. There was another on my buttocks, under me, but he couldn't see that one. I said I'd fallen on the ice, on the steps of my building, and he looked at me. He said that if I fell, I should call him straightaway. To check the baby. After that visit, I did not go back for a while. I didn't see how I could tell him that I had slipped again.
Toward the end, Harrold didn't touch me. I grew big, I put on lots of weight, and I think he found me frightening. It was the only time I was ever safe from him, for those two months. I wasn't working then; I stayed inside. Or I walked in the park and talked to the baby. Mostly what I said was that I didn't want the pregnancy to end. Stay inside me, I would whisper. Stay inside me.
Harrold was distant, busy. He was gone for days, and then for weeks. He would say he shouldn't go, that he should be around for when the baby came. I knew I was safer without him, and so I said, I'll be OK, I have friends to help me.
I went to a psychiatrist. I told her what was happening. But I was veiled, cautious. She said, You have longings.
I looked at her.
That was it?
She didn't speak. She waited for me to say something.
I asked a question: Are longings wrong?
I started labor in the night, in June. It was a sultry night, soft and sweet-smelling, and I had all the windows open to the air. Harrold was far away, in London for a story. I got my watch and counted pains, and waited until morning so that I could call the neighbor who lived in the apartment next to ours. She came at once and summoned a taxi for me and went with me to the hospital. I knew her only slightly, just in passing, but I'd been saving her for just this day. In the taxi, she held my hand, this woman I hardly knew, and shouted at the driver to take it easy. She said to me, Are you all right? I thought she meant the baby, so I nodded.
And then she said, I have sometimes thought—
I looked at her.
She stopped and shook her head.
At the hospital, my neighbor said goodbye. I told her I would call her. She said, What about your husband? I said, He's on his way.
There was a woman in the next cubicle, but I have told you that already.
My labor was not too long. Twelve hours or thirteen. They say that that is average. When my baby came, they laid her on my chest, and she looked up at me.
When I came back from the hospital, Harrold seemed at first a changed man, and I had hope. He was calmer; he didn't drink. He came home early from the office. He held the baby and fed her from a bottle, and sometimes sat just watching her. When she woke up in the night, he would walk the floors with her until she'd fallen back asleep. I think he felt that she was his—another possession? He would sometimes say that— my daughter—but I understood it differently then, that he was filled with love and pride.
My mother came to visit and said how lucky I was to have both Caroline and Harrold, and I thought when she said it: Yes, that is how I feel, I have my family now, and we will be all right. The past is over, and I don't have to think about that now.
Caroline was six weeks old or seven. It was August, very hot and humid. Harrold had been home for three days. It was his vacation, but we hadn't gone away; we'd said it would be too soon to travel with the baby. There was a fan in the window, revolving slowly, I remember, and he'd had a drink, a tall sparkling one with lots of ice, and then another, in the middle of the afternoon. I thought: It's his vacation after all; if we had a cottage, we might be having summer cocktails.
But the drinking put him in a mood. We hadn't been together for several months. He said, It's all right now? and I nodded. I thought that I was ready and that I needed him. He inclined his head in the direction of the bedroom, and I went in there. We had the baby in a bassinet in the hallway, and she was sleeping.
We began slowly, and he was careful not to hurt me, and I was dreamy, languid, thinking: Babies let you start again; this will be a new beginning.
And then she cried.
I sighed and said that I would have to go to her. I started to sit up, but he held my arm and told me no.
Let her cry, he said, ignore her.
I can't, I told him. It isn't right. He held my arm tightly and wouldn't let me go.
She was wailing now, and I said, Harrold.
He was suddenly angry, furious with me. The baby, baby, baby, he said. It's all you ever think about.
He wouldn't let me go.
It was worse than all the other times, worse by far. Because all the other times, there was only me, and I could stand it if I had to. But this time there was the baby, crying in the hallway, crying, crying, crying, and I couldn't go to her. There is no way, ever in my life, that I can explain to you what that felt like.
We disintegrated after that. My voice grew shrill, everything I said was shrill. I remember standing in a doorway, shouting out, I hate you, not caring about the consequences. I had the baby in my arms, and I was thinking: She is hearing this.
He became immensely jealous; he thought that I was seeing men while he went to work. He drank heavily every day; the drinks would start at lunch with martinis, and he would go to bars after work. He couldn't bear to be wakened in the night, and if the baby cried, I had to silence her at once—I was afraid that he might hit her too. I began to hope that he would travel more, that he would go away for weeks, so that I could think, could clear my head, but he traveled less than ever. He was convinced that if he left, I would run away with another man. I began to hope that he'd die in an air crash. Are you shocked? Yes, it's true; I prayed for a crash. It was the only way I knew of to get free of him then.
Perhaps because of the drinking, or because he was in more trouble than even I knew about, his work began to suffer. A story he was working on was killed, and then he lost a cover. There was a new fellow in the office, who seemed to be the favorite now. His name was Mark; perhaps you know him. Sometimes Harrold would talk about him with derision, and I knew that Harrold was threatened by this man.
All his life, writing had been effortless for Harrold, but now it seemed that he had lost his way. He blamed me for this; he said that my constant nagging was destroying his concentration. He said that the broken nights were exhausting him, ruining his career.
Oddly, despite myself, I felt sorry for my husband then. It was coming apart too quickly, and he was powerless to stop it.
In October, there was unrest in Quebec, and Harrold had to go to Montreal. He had whittled the necessary traveling down to two nights, but he had to go. I saw this as my chance. I was nice to him all the week before. I had to make him go, I had to make him believe that I'd be faithful, that I wouldn't run away. I was girlish that week, girlish and sweet and pliant, and as sexy as I could muster. You'd think that might have roused suspicions on his part, but he believed that one day I would come around, turn the corner, and he was always watching for that moment. Perhaps he thought I'd given in after all, that I'd seen the error of my ways. I kissed him when he left, and said to him, Hurr
y back.
When he had gone, and I felt certain he was on a plane to Montreal, I packed a suitcase and got a taxi for myself. I bought a ticket at the airport, and I held the baby on the plane all the way to Chicago. There I boarded the train for the journey to the town where I'd grown up. I carried Caroline and my suitcase up the narrow street to my mother's bungalow.
When my mother came home from work, I said to her, Surprise! I said I'd had a whim, had come home for the fun of it. I said that Harrold was on a story and I was tired of staying alone. She believed me; she had no reason to doubt me. I couldn't bear to have my mother think that all her dreams had turned to dust.
What was I thinking then?
Perhaps I believed that in a day or two a plan would come to me. Or that in a day or two I would be able to tell my mother that my husband and I were having difficulties and that I needed time to think. I don't remember now. In retrospect, it seems naive to have chosen my mother's house to run to. Where else would I logically go? And he knew that. Knew it at once, knew it when he opened the door to the empty rooms.
He called. My mother answered the telephone. I could not tell my mother not to answer her own phone. Her voice was full of happiness and light, and she said to me, It's Harrold!
I took the phone from her.
I think I had hoped that he would go to the apartment and see me gone, and take some time himself to think. That he might somehow welcome this reprieve. I had acted, extricated myself, released him from our terrible bond. Perhaps he would be grateful.
His voice was ice, full of clarity and intent. He said, If you don't return at once, I will come and get you. If you run away, I will find you. If you ever take my child away from me again, I will not only find you, but I will kill you.
