“When he ‘lashed out,’ Beth, did he ever leave any bruises?” Beth looked down at her hands. “Dear God,” Barbara breathed again.
“It’s too late for prayer, Barbara Ann,” Sable announced.
“Be quiet a second,” Barbara demanded. “What was it that caused him to lose his temper this time?”
She didn’t raise her eyes. Large tears collected. “We had an agreement about having a family. I didn’t keep my part.”
“What? You’ve been trying to get pregnant for years,” Barbara Ann said, confused. Actually, she thought the bastard had beat his wife because she’d failed to get pregnant as instructed.
“No,” Beth said, shaking her head. “I wanted a baby so much, I lied about that. We weren’t trying. I was on the Pill. I’ve been on it since we got married. Jack doesn’t want any more children. He already has two children, from his first marriage.”
“He was married before,” Elly put in.
“Twice,” Beth explained. “He has two teenagers from his first marriage, living in Texas.”
“Jesus Christ, does any of us tell the truth about anything around here?” Barbara asked, dumbfounded.
“I just couldn’t stand it. I wanted a baby. I didn’t see how it mattered that much whether Jack did or not. Why should it? It’s not as though he was going to take care of it. Besides, I knew what Sable said about him was true. I know he hasn’t been faithful. He hasn’t been around much and he’s been in a nasty mood since Christmas, so I decided I was just going to go off the Pill and when I got pregnant, I was going to go home. Back to Kansas City.”
“Beth! You were going to get a baby out of him, then leave him?”
She shrugged. “I couldn’t see any other way to have a baby. I’m thirty-two and I’m not going to get married again. I don’t think I want to ever get married again! I come from a huge family where everyone has lots of kids. I have twenty-one nieces and nephews alone and it seems like there’s a new one every year. I love kids and I was aching for a baby.”
“There’s always artificial insemination, if you’re that determined,” Sable said.
“There’s only one way you get a baby in my family,” Beth said quietly. “I wouldn’t want to embarrass them. My brother’s a priest.”
Barbara Ann covered Beth’s hand with hers. “But Beth, do you really want a baby from this man who beats you? Even if you’re only going to leave him…?”
“That was my first plan,” she said. “But things started getting so much better with us. I don’t know what happened, really, but Jack was acting so sweet. I know you’ll never believe this, but Jack can be so wonderful when he’s in a good mood, when things aren’t going wrong for him. It’s only when he gets stressed out—with work, with his family. His father’s a big problem. Now there’s a mean man! But that’s always been the hard part. When he’s sweet, he’s the most wonderful man in the world and I love him so much. I decided it was worth one more try. I’d tell him about the baby and—”
“You’re pregnant?” they exclaimed in unison.
She smiled and nodded. It was a small, satisfied smile that even the bruise and her swollen eye couldn’t diminish. But the smile faded quickly. “I told him about the baby and he got furious. I should have lied, but when he asked me if I’d done it on purpose, I just blurted out the truth. I thought maybe, just maybe, he’d understand how much I really need to have a child of my own! But he didn’t.”
“Obviously,” Elly muttered.
“Does he know you’re here?” Barbara Ann asked.
“Oh no! I didn’t tell him I was leaving! I told him about the baby at dinner last night and he left at about eight o’clock for a midnight departure out of San Francisco. He’s flying to London. He won’t be back until Sunday night. I guess I could have just stayed at home.”
“No, you need to be here. With us,” Sable, the new housemother, proclaimed.
“What did he say? Or did he just coldcock you?”
“Oh, he said a lot. He screamed a lot, about betrayal and ungratefulness and sneakiness and jealousy and spite and— He had a lot to say. My mistake was yelling back at him. I just couldn’t take it anymore,” she said, beginning to cry. “If I’d just kept my mouth shut…”
“Beth, for God’s sake, if he can yell, you should be able to yell back without living in fear of a beating! How did this happen to you?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know. I can’t believe how I’ve failed! I’ve made a mess of everything! If I’d just thought of a better way to handle this, maybe we could have worked it out somehow!”
“Beth, my God,” Barb attempted. “Honey, it’s not up to you to handle—”
“I called him a cheap, lying, cheating cocksucker. I told him I didn’t need him, and if he didn’t want our child, that was fine with me. He could go fuck himself.”
There was a moment of shocked silence in the kitchen. “Let me get this right,” Barbara finally said, pausing to rub her temples. “When you decide to yell back at this Neanderthal wife-beater, you call him a cocksucker and tell him to fuck himself?” Barb turned around and looked at Sable. Sable simply lifted her thin, washed-out brows, a contrite look on her face. “Did he hit you anywhere else? Could he have hurt the baby?”
“No, I’m all right. This one knocked me off my feet, but I had a soft cushion to land on. I really didn’t have to panic. I could have taken my time packing. I could have followed through on my original plan. I was going to load my computer and some of my favorite things—my things that I bought or got from my family—into a rented truck and drive back to Kansas City. I have a lot of brothers and brothers-in-law there who wouldn’t let anything happen to me. But I can’t let them see my face. It would kill them to think I let myself be treated like this. And even though he’s going to be gone for a few days, I just had to get out of there as fast as I could. He was so threatening.”
“Did he say he was going to hurt you again?” Barbara asked her.
“Not in so many words. He said that he would expect me to arrange for an abortion and hopefully have that taken care of before he got back. Or else, he said. So,” she said, her voice rising in what was sure to be a whimper, “I guess that’s that. It’s over.” And then she laid her head down on her folded arms and wept.
Barbara Ann rubbed her back. “You go ahead and cry, sweetheart, it’s going to be all right. We’re all done with that cocksucker.”
“But I love him so much,” she wailed, not lifting her head.
“Aren’t women amazing,” Elly said, leaving the table to get a fresh cup of coffee.
“Beth, the man is unfaithful, physically and emotionally abusive, and he ordered you to abort the baby you’re carrying. It is impossible for you to love him,” Barbara Ann said.
“I know,” she cried. “But I do.”
Barbara Ann glanced over her shoulder at Sable, who responded by taking a deep, frustrated breath. Barbara turned back to her weeping friend.
“Beth, dear, I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re so fucked up, you’re starting to make Sable look stable.” She giggled suddenly. “Stable Sable,” she said again. “Beth, how long has this been going on?”
“Since the beginning,” Sable answered for her. She brought her own coffee to the table and sat down, gently stroking Beth’s shoulder, speaking for her. “Seven years. Since this twenty-five-year old girl met and married Mr. Smoothie. This sort of thing usually runs in families, but she’s a genetic throwback. There’s no abuse in her family. The worst she ever got growing up was a swat on the rear with her mother’s wooden spoon. And that, according to Beth, hardly ever happened.”
“What about your father, Beth?”
“Daddy never laid a hand on any of us. Not that he didn’t want to, he said, but Mama would have had the priest at our house every evening for the rest of his natural life. My whole family is in love. They’re all happily married…even John, whose bride is the Church. I’m the only one who hasn’t been ab
le to make it…work.”
“Come on, Beth, no one’s that perfect. Surely there are a few marital problems in your family?”
“I don’t think so. If anyone could spot it, it would have been me. I’m the only one—”
“Dysfunction like this doesn’t always run in families,” Elly said. “When there’s no gene for it, it can be accomplished with lots of practice.”
“I always suspected this,” Sable went on. “He’s been knocking you around for years. Some of those trips you took with him, those last-minute decisions to go with Jack to Amsterdam or Madrid or New York? It was because of the bruises, wasn’t it? You’d hide in your town house and pretend you weren’t there. Right, Beth?”
She slowly raised her head and nodded. “And I knew you knew. I thought that if I could make it look as though my marriage was good, it would be good. I always knew it wasn’t. I knew the first month and I know it now. But if Jack walked in the door right now and said how sorry he was, how much he loved me and wanted our baby, I’d want to give him another chance. Because—”
“Because this time it would be different,” Eleanor said. “I think you’d better go home, Beth. You’re not ready to leave Jack. It’s not bad enough yet.”
“Elly!” Barbara barked.
“It’s not,” she shrugged, unperturbed. “Beth hasn’t reached the bottom yet. She’s got a lot more bruises in her. She might even be willing to sacrifice the baby to this jackass.”
“We’re not letting her go back to him!” Sable proclaimed.
“Beth, tell Elly you’re not going to go back to him, even though it’s tempting,” Barbara insisted.
Beth didn’t exactly comply. “I wouldn’t ever let Jack hurt the baby, Elly. Surely he wouldn’t hurt a child!”
Barbara groaned loudly and put her head in her hand, tousling her own short, curly hair in utter frustration. Sable pressed her hands flat to the table, closed her eyes tightly and ground her teeth, but Eleanor looked at Beth squarely.
“Beth, did I ever tell you how it was I decided to stop drinking?” she asked.
“I…I don’t think so,” she stammered, instinctively knowing she was in for it.
“Gin or beer is what I liked, unless there was only wine—or bourbon or vodka. The only thing I’d hate to be stuck with was scotch. I hated scotch. I knew I drank too much. Most alcoholics do. I’d had mishaps. I woke up one morning to find myself asleep on the couch and a cigarette had burned a ten-inch-diameter hole in the rug. I wonder why I didn’t just go up in flames, I was so soaked in gin, living in that paper trap of mine. I had a couple of accidents. I hit a parked car once, rear-ended someone another time. I fell off my chair at a faculty dinner, tipped over a punch bowl at a function to welcome freshmen, and, of course, I mooned an entire class. I fell asleep—a kind term for passing out—in the middle of a student’s oral exam. You know, little upsets here and there. Embarrassing, but survivable.
“The president and the dean of students confronted me. I’d known these men for years. They were real clear about one thing—they knew I hadn’t been drunk a lot in earlier years, but from what they could see, it was getting worse and worse. I was offered a choice—my job or my gin. The president’s sister was a recovering alcoholic—so he wrote down her name and phone number for me. I was quite insulted, but I took it. He suggested three options—I could leave the college then and there, I could take a leave and go into a hospital treatment program, or I could go to AA. The bastard didn’t allow me the option of just giving him my word that I’d do better.
“I thought I was capable of it, you know. I thought I could control my drinking, make a conscious decision to drink less gin. I don’t know anyone who has more willpower than I do. So, I made an independent decision to drink less gin. I had to go along with him to some degree. I didn’t have parents to bail me out, a husband, a savings account or a trust. All I had was the college.
“So, I went to AA meetings and brought my administrator little signed chits saying I’d been there. It wasn’t easy, but I went to a meeting after work when I was at Berkeley or here on my days off. I liked the four o’clock meeting because I could get out of there by five. I did this very successfully for almost three months. I had no mishaps, I was alert during classes and student appointments, and I quit tucking my dress in my panty hose. I was happier than I’d ever been. I’d finally found a way to manage my drinking so that it wouldn’t get me into trouble. And the president was very pleased. He wished I had called his sister, just to have a friend to talk to about this, but overall, he couldn’t complain.
“There was only one problem with that four o’clock meeting—I had to drive home during rush hour. With my two-hour commute, it was a long time till I could get to that first drink. So, I found a little bar way off the campus where I could have one or two small ones. It took the edge off and it was much easier to wait until I got home where I could have a real drink. There was no chance anyone was going to see me for no one from the college would be there. It was in a seedy part of town, but I only stayed for a little while.
“I was leaving the place at about six-thirty one night. I’d gone about three blocks when I hit a woman. She was suddenly right in front of my car. I had no idea where she’d come from. I couldn’t have fallen asleep. I couldn’t have been drunk, at least, I couldn’t imagine that at the time. But suddenly there was a terrible thump, a squeal, a crashing sound. By the time I realized what had happened, she was behind my car. She was a bag lady who’d been pushing a grocery cart full of all her worldly goods. The cart was way on the other side of the street and she was lying there, twisted and wounded and moaning. She began vomiting in the street. Another motorist came along right away and went for help. The police were called, the paramedics and the ambulance. I gave them all my ID and credentials, told them I’d been visiting a used-book store in the neighborhood, and was allowed to leave the scene. I wasn’t even cited for the accident. And the reason I didn’t get into any trouble was that the paramedics said the woman reeked so badly of gin that they assumed she had careened into the street in a drunken stupor. They were all making faces and fanning their noses. They couldn’t smell it on me because she had fouled the air. I had only had two drinks, was certain I couldn’t have been under the influence, but I didn’t even smell it!”
Six eyes watched Eleanor as she closed her story. Everyone knew she was a recovering alcoholic, but only Gabby had been around when she was actually getting sober. She didn’t tell her drinking stories to this group. In fact, Eleanor might not have told them at all except that part of recovery was unloading that stuff. She’d learned from the stories of others and told her own, but she’d never become a zealot outside of her AA circle. After sixteen years of sobriety, meetings were just a way of life and she rarely mentioned them. She went by rote, to keep a green memory, as they said.
“What happened to the woman, Elly?” Sable asked.
“Broken femur and dislocated hip. I’d have paid her hospital bills if she hadn’t gotten good care, but they took better care of her than I could have. I easily could have killed that woman and the only thing that saved me was she was more pickled than I was. I called the college president’s sister, at long last, and she became my first sponsor.
“Beth, addiction crosses all lines. Smart people, dummies, rich people, poor people. I don’t care what your addiction is—booze, food, sex, domestic abuse, drugs—it doesn’t matter. You are in denial at least as fierce as mine was. Understand this—the consequence is always death. Sometimes it comes real fast, sometimes it kills you slowly and by degrees. You need to end the denial and beat the addiction or someone will die—and it could be someone you love, like your child. You can kid yourself all you want, but you’re done fooling me. I’ve met you before.”
The women were quiet for a moment, then Beth weakly spoke up. “I feel so helpless.”
“Then ask for help. There are dozens of agencies in the phone book. You have friends who will help you, and famil
y. You have options. You can have your child and a good life, but the minute you say ‘this time it will be different,’ you have signed a death warrant. And I give you notice. That’s when I withdraw my support. I will not be a party to suicide or murder.” Eleanor stood up. “I’m going to get to work.”
When Eleanor had walked out of the room, Sable reached across the table and covered Beth’s hand. “Me, too. I’d do anything for you—whatever you need—but if you give him another chance to hurt you or the baby, I’m out.”
“Oh, Sable, I won’t just let him—”
“Me, too, Beth,” Barbara said. “I’ll only help you if you’re willing to be helped. You have to give up the abuse, once and for all.”
“But what if he…what if he…” She got a panicked look in her eyes as they darted between Sable and Barbara Ann. What if he what, Beth? she asked herself. What if he’s sorry, as he’s been before? What if he promises? What if he begs? What if he slaps the baby? Her eyes focused on Sable’s and she almost gasped in sudden realization. Large tears were rolling out of Sable’s funny eyes—funny, because without makeup and brows she looked so much like an inmate rather than her beautiful, chic self. And it hit her then; this wasn’t the first time for Sable. She was reliving it through Beth. Perhaps Sable had nurtured the same denial for just one day too long.
“Just in case you’re wondering if it can really happen,” Sable said, “let me tell you, it can. It has.”
“Oh God, it can. Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Help me.”
Barbara Ann grabbed Beth’s hand, Beth grabbed Sable’s and Sable grabbed Barbara Ann’s. “Okay,” Barbara Ann said. “First things first. We get all your stuff out of your town house and store it in the garage here. You might be entitled to the house but it’s too risky for you to stay there and deal with him. Sable, can that security guy of yours get us a truck of some kind?”
“He can do anything,” she said proudly.
“I’ll call home and ask if any of the boys are available to help, but if not, we’ll manage. You’ll supervise, we’ll lift and carry.”