He had been beating her for almost ten years now. For a long time, she thought it would get better, but now she knew it never would. It had gotten significantly worse after Daphne was born. She wanted to leave him, but she saw no way out. She hadn’t worked in eleven years since Will was born. Andrew didn’t want her to. So she had no money to go anywhere or escape. She couldn’t ask her family for help. They needed what they had for themselves and their children. And the only money she had was the allowance Andrew gave her for the house. She had looked into safe houses for women once or twice, but without a job she would have had to go on welfare, and she couldn’t do that to the kids. With Andrew, they lived in a nice house and went to private schools. They had extracurricular activities, and a future. He would pay for college one day in the not-so-distant future. She told herself she would leave him when Daphne left for college in eleven years, if she was still alive by then.
Her family was poor and couldn’t take her in. Her two brothers made a decent living as a plumber and electrician, but one had four kids, and the other six. And her sisters were both single moms and worked as maids to support their kids. She was their success story, married to a rich doctor. He wasn’t rich, but to them he was. He made a healthy living, and having grown up poor himself, he saved every penny he could. He accused Tyla of coming from scum, of being shanty Irish, of being stupid, a bad mother and sleeping with other men, which she never had. She had never cheated on him, even once, and wasn’t sure the same was true of him. But whether he did or not, he was brutal with her. He had never laid a hand on the children, or she would have left him, poor or not, but she was sure that they suspected what he did to her. They knew. But she stayed with him to ensure their future. It never dawned on her that a college education and private school weren’t worth it. He was damaging all of them. She couldn’t believe that he had the guts to beat her while they were staying at someone else’s house. He pulled her off the floor by her hair, and threw her on the bed, and didn’t care that her nose and mouth were bleeding on the sheets. He gave her one more hard slap across the face, and then went to let the kids out of the bathroom. He was laughing when he did, as though something funny had happened.
“Your mom fell over the rollaway,” he said, “and bumped her nose. Isn’t that silly?” Both children saw that she was bleeding and she hurried past them into the bathroom to wash her face.
Will looked panicked. He had seen her that way and worse, many times before. “Are you okay, Mom?” he whispered when he came to stand next to her at the sink with a heartbroken look.
“Your mom is fine,” Andrew said, and dragged him out of the bathroom by the neck, as Daphne stared at them with wide eyes. Tyla had washed the blood off by then, and tried to act like nothing had happened, but she needed ice to put on her face and nose and didn’t have any. She didn’t want to go downstairs and get it, in case someone was in the kitchen and saw her. She had splashed cold water on her face instead. She could see a bruise starting on the side of her cheek when she looked in the mirror. She’d have to cover it with makeup. She had become an expert at that.
She put the children to bed and there was silence in the room. Andrew went to take a shower, and while he was gone, Will whispered to her from the rollaway. “Are you really okay, Mom?”
“I’m fine,” she said in a steady voice. “I just tripped.” One day, she would tell him. She had to, so they knew never to let it happen to them, especially Daphne. She was clinging to her dolls, and lay in bed with a sad expression.
“Does your nose hurt, Mommy?” she asked her.
“No, sweetheart, it’s fine,” she lied to them, as she had all their lives. And now she had to lie to the people at Meredith’s house too.
When Andrew came out of the bathroom, she locked herself in and took a hot shower. She wanted to get clean of him. He made her feel dirty every time he beat her, and even worse if he made love to her afterward, or raped her, which he did sometimes too, but not in front of the children. He called her a whore when they weren’t listening. His mother had cheated on his father when he was a boy, and then ran away when Andrew was seven, and he had a profound hatred of women. Tyla always wondered if his father had beaten Andrew’s mother too, if that was why she had run away with another man. Andrew had never forgiven her for leaving him. They had never heard from her again, and if Andrew was anything like his father, she didn’t blame her. She hoped to do the same one day, and run away, but not with another man. She would never leave her kids, and especially not with him. Her children were growing up in a house filled with hate and terror, but she kept telling herself it was the sacrifice she had to make so they could go to private school and get a good education.
Her own father had been a drunk and died when she was three years old. She didn’t remember him. He had died driving home from work drunk in a snowstorm, and left her mother a widow with five children. She didn’t know if he had ever beaten her, but her mother never said much about him. She had supported them all by being a domestic, as Tyla’s sisters did. It was odd how history repeated itself. But she didn’t want her history to repeat itself for Will and Daphne. Tyla had learned to live with terror, for their sakes.
She lay awake for a long time that night, staying as far away from Andrew as she could in the bed. He had to be back at the hospital again at six the next morning. She was glad she wouldn’t have to see him when she woke up. And hopefully, one day, she’d never have to see him again at all.
Chapter 5
Meredith got up early the next morning, and was surprised when she saw Daphne sitting in the hall again. This time, she was wearing a pink nightgown, and was holding all three of her dolls in her arms.
“You’re up early again,” Meredith said with a smile. Daphne nodded and didn’t say anything. She didn’t look as happy as she had the day before. “Are you hungry?”
“A little. Can I have cereal?”
“No pancakes?” She shook her head. “Do you want to get slippers?”
“I don’t want to wake Mommy. Daddy went to work. Mom and Will are still asleep.” Meredith took her hand and they walked downstairs to the kitchen. No one was up yet, and it was peaceful, as Meredith got out a bowl and filled it with cereal, and then poured milk into it. She folded a napkin, put a spoon next to it, and Daphne ate the cereal, as Meredith made herself a cup of coffee.
“My mom fell down and got a bloody nose last night,” Daphne said out of the blue, and Meredith looked at her, wondering what part of it was true.
“How did she fall down?” Meredith asked, trying to sound casual. She didn’t know why, but she didn’t believe the story, not all of it.
“She fell over Will’s bed and bumped her nose.” Daphne said it as though she didn’t believe it either, and expected Meredith to question her about it. She wasn’t sure if she should, or what the right protocol was if a child was seeing her mother abused.
“That must have hurt.” Daphne nodded, her little face serious. She seemed so small in her nightgown.
“She falls down a lot,” Daphne added, her eyes never leaving Meredith’s, and then when Meredith least expected it, Daphne’s voice dropped down to the merest whisper. “Sometimes he hits her.” She looked down into the bowl then, and neither of them said another word for a minute. It confirmed what Meredith had been thinking and was afraid of.
“I’m very sorry to hear it,” Meredith whispered back. “Does he ever hit you?”
She shook her head. “He shouts at us, he doesn’t hit us. He only hits Mommy.” Meredith couldn’t imagine what that must feel like to a child, knowing that their father hurt their mother, and not being able to stop it. How terrifying it must be for them. Meredith wasn’t sure what to do about it, but she knew she had to do something. She couldn’t call Child Protective Services because he wasn’t hitting his children, “only” his wife. Meredith went to sit next to her, and pulled Daphne onto her lap and ju
st held her, her arms around her, holding her tight. She could feel Daphne relax in her arms, and hadn’t realized how tense she was.
“If you’re a good witch, can you fix it?” Daphne asked her, and it brought tears to Meredith’s eyes.
“I’m not sure I’m that kind of witch. But I can try.”
“Will you put a spell on him?” Daphne liked the idea.
“I have to think about it.” Daphne nodded and got back in her own chair, and then looked seriously at Meredith again.
“Why do you only have a girl, and you don’t have a boy too?” Daphne asked her, and Meredith felt as though she had been hit in the solar plexus. “Like me and Will,” she explained. Meredith decided to tell her the truth.
“I had a boy too, but he’s with the angels.” Daphne’s eyes widened and she looked at Meredith.
“Did he get sick? My friend Stephanie’s grandma is with the angels now. She got cancer.”
“No, he had an accident.”
“That’s very sad,” Daphne said solemnly.
“Yes, it was very sad. His name was Justin. And my daughter’s name is Kendall. And I have a granddaughter named Julia.” As she said it, she realized that Kendall was almost the same age as Daphne’s mother. Kendall was forty, and Tyla was thirty-eight. It was odd how women the same age as her daughter kept coming into her life. Like Debbie too.
They sat quietly together for a while, thinking about their confidences to each other, and then Will and Tyla walked in. Will looked very pale, and Tyla was exhausted. She had on makeup, and if you looked closely, you could see that her nose was swollen, but only slightly. Her son looked worse than she did. Tyla went to make him some tea, and said that he had a stomachache.
“He gets really bad stomachaches sometimes.” Meredith could guess why, but didn’t say anything, and Daphne shot her a glance, which Meredith pretended not to notice.
“Should he stay in bed?” Meredith asked solicitously.
“No, I think he’ll be okay in a while.”
Tyla made him a piece of toast, and Peter and Arthur came in after that. Arthur promised them another piano lesson. When Ava and Joel came to breakfast, the three women agreed to go to the shelter again. All three of them had loved it, but Meredith looked questioningly at Tyla.
“Are you sure you want to go? I got the feeling Andrew wasn’t too pleased about it.” Tyla looked her straight in the eye, and there was something determined in her face.
“I’m going. They need us there,” Tyla said firmly.
“Yes, they do,” Meredith agreed.
“I think it’s wonderful,” Arthur commented. Peter was going back to volunteer at the OES, and Joel said he was going back downtown. They were still shoveling broken glass, computers, and parts of the ceiling out of his office. He didn’t comment about Ava going to the shelter.
“You can come with me if you want,” Joel offered Ava, but she shook her head and said she was going back to the shelter in the Marina, they needed her more, and he didn’t argue with her, but didn’t look happy about it.
The others all went upstairs after they’d eaten, and Arthur lingered for a few minutes. “I hardly know you, but I’m proud of you,” he said to Meredith. “I know you’ve been hiding behind your walls for a long time, but maybe this is what you needed. The world needs you.”
“I needed some time to myself for a while, but I think I stayed that way for too long. My husband left me for someone else, and I didn’t expect it. And my son died a few months later. It was all too much to deal with at once, so I folded the show, gave up my career, and I’ve been hiding for a long time. Too long.” She realized that now her life was suddenly full of people she barely knew, but who needed her. Kendall had shut her out for so long that she had forgotten what it felt like to be wanted.
“It’s a lonely life, being alone like that,” Arthur said gently. He felt able to say it to her because of his age, if nothing else, and he had grown fond of her in a few days. He could tell that she was a kind, generous, honorable woman, just from the fact that they were all staying with her, and she was taking good care of them.
“I wasn’t alone. I had Jack and Debbie here with me,” she explained to him and he shook his head.
“I have my housekeeper, Frieda, and Peter. That’s not the same thing. They work for me, and that gets complicated. You need meaning and purpose in your life, and friends. You gave up a career that must have been rewarding and gave millions of people enormous pleasure. I’m much older than you are, and I had a wonderful marriage. I have those memories to keep me warm, and I don’t mind being alone now, as long as I still have my work. But you’re too young to do that.”
“I’m not that young,” she said, thinking about it.
“If you’ll allow me to say so, you’re too young to lock yourself away forever. You need to come back into the world in some way that means something to you, whatever that is. It’s never too late to start over.”
As he said it, Peter and Ava arrived back in the kitchen at the same time. He had a thick stack of papers in his hand, and handed it to Ava. It was his manuscript. She had promised to read it, and ran back upstairs with it to put in her room. He left for the OES office a few minutes later, and Arthur smiled at Meredith. They were friends now, and she took seriously what he’d said to her.
“I may be blind,” he said softly, “but I smell romance in the air,” he said, referring to Peter and Ava, and she laughed.
“You could be right. I don’t disagree with you. But she and Joel seem quite involved. I’m not sure how that would work out.”
“You never know with people. He never lets anyone read his manuscript.”
Meredith escorted Arthur to his room after Peter left, and as soon as she got back to her study, Debbie appeared with a somber expression and said she had to speak to her.
“Is something wrong?” Debbie nodded, with a devastated expression, as though the world had come to an end. She had been unusually dramatic lately, ever since their unexpected houseguests had arrived. Both she and Jack had been acting strangely and bordering on rude with them. It was the first time she had had any guests in fourteen years, and Meredith had been startled by their behavior.
“I was cleaning in the main living room this morning,” she began, and Meredith was certain she was about to report on some treasure that had been broken in the earthquake. “I don’t even know how to say this to you, but the heart-shaped pink enamel Fabergé box is missing.”
“Missing or broken?” It was something Meredith had paid a fortune for years before and had always loved. It had diamonds and pearls on it, and an inscription inside from the czar to his mother. It was an extremely valuable collector’s item, and it was too large for someone to slip into a pocket.
“I hate to say it, but I think one of your guests must have taken it. I saw the sex bomb looking at it a few days ago. I don’t know if it was her or one of the others. I know it’s very valuable and how much you loved it.” None of their day workers had been able to come to work since the earthquake, so it couldn’t be one of them, and they had worked for Meredith for years, and were trustworthy.
“When was the last time you saw it?” Meredith asked her, trying to sound calm about it, although she would be sad if it had been lost.
“I was in the room the afternoon of the earthquake and saw it, and now it’s not there. I looked everywhere for it, in case someone picked it up and set it down in the wrong place. It can only be one of the people staying here,” she said solemnly, and Meredith looked shocked, but something felt wrong about the story. She wasn’t sure what. “Do you want me and Jack to search their rooms if they go out today?” she asked hopefully.
“Certainly not! They’re all respectable people with fine homes of their own. They don’t need to steal valuable objects from me. I just don’t understand it. It will probably turn up.
”
“Not if someone plans to sell it. Should we call the police?”
“I’m not ready to do that yet,” Meredith said.
“I think you need to ask them to leave, if you don’t want to search their belongings.” Debbie looked disappointed. She and Jack had been sure she’d be willing to do that for the Fabergé box, with a bunch of strangers in the house.
“And where would they go? None of the hotels are up and running, half the city doesn’t have power yet. I won’t send them to the shelters. From what Colonel Chapman tells me, most people have earthquake victims staying in their homes.”
“But not people they don’t know.”
“It can’t be one of them,” Meredith reasoned with her. “Andrew Johnson is a respected physician, his wife is a lovely woman. Arthur Harriman is one of the most famous musicians in the world. Peter may not be rich, but he seems like an honorable young man. Joel Fine has made a half a billion dollars on his two startups. He certainly doesn’t need to steal a Fabergé box from me. He could buy his own.”
“And his girlfriend?”
“I just can’t believe that,” Meredith said firmly.
“Who do you suspect then? Jack and me?”
“Of course not. You’ve worked here for fifteen years, and been the best friends I’ve ever had. I don’t know where the box is, but it’s here somewhere. Maybe someone put it in a drawer so it wouldn’t get broken in an aftershock and forgot to tell me. I’ll ask everyone tonight. These people are friends now, Debbie, and I just don’t believe they’re stealing from me.”
“You’re being naïve,” Debbie said angrily, “you’ve been isolated for too long. You’ve forgotten what people are capable of. One of your new friends has stolen something valuable, while staying in your home. If you had any sense, you would throw them all out, before they take something else.” Meredith was angry at the way she said it, and the presumptuousness of telling her what to do. The boundaries between them had dissolved a long time ago, and Debbie had forgotten that she was an employee and did not call the shots. Meredith didn’t like her tone. She stood up to indicate that she wanted her to leave the room. The conversation was over. Meredith was not about to throw her new friends out of her home. If anything, she wanted Tyla to stay longer, until she could figure out how to help her with Andrew. After what Daphne had told her, she was seriously worried.
Neighbors Page 9
