M
arie couldn’t wait to get home. Although the weekend was very relaxing, with great accommodations and delicious food and wine, there was something not gelling about Jeff Babcock. She couldn’t put her finger on it. But she felt like she was wasting her time. For one thing, he wasn’t very protective of her. She was a little put off that he didn’t stop serving her wine sooner. Like coffee was going to keep her from getting a DUI. Yes, she was an adult, but he was pushing it on her and then telling her she needed to get on the road.
What was his hurry?
A real gentleman would have insisted she spend the night and leave for work early Monday morning. She thought of his phone ringing, the eagerness he had to get back in the house to answer.
Was he double dating?
Finally, the lights of the city appeared below her. Merging on the Henry Hudson, she thought how lucky she was to have such a great apartment. Then she reminded herself that she was being schizophrenic. She hated her apartment! Anyway, she would love it tonight because it wasn’t upstate. What she really hated was anything old and moldering, like that “new condo wannabe” Jeff lived in, with its fancy plumbing fixtures attached to ancient old plumbing. He had said to her at least fifty times, “Don’t flush more than six sheets of toilet paper down at a time.”
Huh? You’ve got to be kidding me!
Face it, kiddo
, she thought to herself,
no one is going to be able to replace Jack
. She wondered how Pam did it. Sure, Andy was nice looking, and he was obviously head over heels in love with Pam. But he was no Jack. Jack was so smooth. He was larger than life. Jeff Babcock was a nobody. He had two nice vacation homes, but they weren’t that nice. And he was a fabulous cook. However, it wasn’t the greatest selling point for an anorexic. She wondered if they would be together long enough for that lovely fact about her to be revealed. She pulled into her parking garage and parked the car. It felt so good to be home.
Dragging her suitcase into the elevator, she pushed the button to her floor. When she stepped into the hallway, a fleeting sense of gratitude overcame her. She unlocked her door, and the lighted vista of New Jersey was the first thing to greet her. It was so beautiful. The sun had just set, the lights from Weehawken were starting to come on, and the red reflection on the Palisades…Well, it was breathtaking. She could afford to be grateful, just for a second. “Thank you, God. Forgive me for being miserable,” she said to the ceiling.
Anne Smith was in trouble.
What the hell am I going to do?
She never thought she would get caught cashing Pam’s checks. The truth was she didn’t see anything wrong with it, so what was there to get caught? She stuck to her story that she thought the money was for her use while Bill was incarcerated. So they could take her to court, and she would prettily cry her way out of trouble. It was that absolute asshole of a husband of hers who was to blame, and she was going to make sure he paid.
Around lunchtime on Sunday, Tom Adams came into the precinct to finish up some work. On top of a pile of papers on his desk was a copy of a refusal to hear William Smith due to lack of evidence.
“Fuck,” Tom said out loud. This meant Bill would be released today. It had been almost twenty-four hours since they brought him in. Now time was up, and the judge was refusing to hear the evidence that he broke parole by causing a disturbance. It had been a slim chance to get him back to Rikers, but they wanted to take it, mainly to keep him from harassing Sandra Benson.
Well, he had exactly twenty-four hours, and Tom would wait until thirty seconds before the time was up to unlock the cell door. Smith’s attorney hadn’t tried to have him released earlier; there was no sign that he had even called his attorney. Tom guessed there was a money issue, but in that case, a public defender would have been provided, and it looked like he refused. Either Bill Smith had given up or was avoiding going home.
For the second time in two days, Anne Smith received a phone call from prison, telling her she could come pick up her husband. The previous night, when he didn’t come home from his mother’s, she didn’t even bother to call there. She didn’t care. Her boys had a wonderful Saturday with their mother, and she didn’t see any reason in hell to disrupt that. So when the call came Sunday to come pick Bill up downtown, she simply told the caller to “drop dead” and hung up. He could get his own fucking ride home.
She fixed lunch for her boys and then asked a neighbor who had babysat for them yesterday to watch them again. She wasn’t going to hide what was going on or pretend that everything was okay. “Bill spent the night in jail again and is coming home today. I don’t want him upsetting the boys.”
Her neighbor was more than happy to help out if it would keep her son’s playmates safe. The screaming and sounds of flesh slapping flesh had reverberated through the neighborhood before.
It has been so peaceful this summer while that prick was in jail
.
“Feel free to call 911 if you hear anything suspicious,” Anne whispered as she walked out the door, waving goodbye to her sons.
Around 1:00, Anne heard a cab pull up in front of their brownstone. She didn’t have to look to know who it was. She wondered how he was going to manage to twist this around to be her fault.
Did he know about the check thing yet?
He didn’t have a key, but she decided to let him knock to get in. She wasn’t going to greet him at the door.
He knocked. She opened the door, trying as hard as she could to keep her face expressionless.
At least he has the decency to be contrite
, she thought as she stepped aside to let him pass. He was trying to keep the expression on his face neutral, too. She imagined them going at each other, beating with their fists and rolling on the floor. Or if she had a gun, putting the barrel right up to his nose and pulling the trigger.
Bill threw his belongings down on the chair and went right to the dining room table, pulling out a chair. “What’s for lunch? I’m starving.”
So typical of him
, she thought.
No hello, no attempt at hugging. How have I stayed with him all these years?
She went into the kitchen and dished up the leftovers from her sons’ lunch. She placed the plate in front of him.
“Yum! What’s this? Boxed macaroni and cheese! Hot dogs! I’m home!” he yelled to the air sarcastically.
Anne wanted to pick the plate up and smash his face with it, but instead, she said, “Yes, it’s what the boys had. I’d have prepared a gourmet meal for you if I had known you were going to visit your family today.” She tried to keep the sarcasm out of her voice; it would hold up better in court that way.
“Well, this is just delicious, thank you so much!” He ate the food without any further comment.
Anne stood in the kitchen doorway, arms folded across the front of her body.
Bill looks like hell. But that was his doing
, she thought.
“Where are my sons?” he finally asked.
“Next door. We need to talk, and they are scared enough of you not to expose them to any more fights.” She knew she had, once again, crossed that invisible boundary with him.
“The only reason my sons are afraid of me is because of the garbage you fed their heads while I was gone.”
“Whatever, Bill. I’m not fighting with you. Tell me what we are going to do next. I understand that we are ruined. It was lovely of you to go away for the summer and leave me with sixty dollars in the bank.”
“Right! Let’s talk about that. So you were forging my mother’s checks? Did I hear that correctly?”
“You did. But that isn’t anything for you to worry about. You will do time for your own fun and games. By the way, what took you to jail yesterday? I can’t wait to find out.”
“Actually, I scared the shit out of my late brother’s girlfriend.” He smiled up at Anne, knowing that would piss her off.
“I figured as much. Well, Bill, it’s obvious we can’t stay together. You are going to have to kill me before I let you near the boys, unless someone else is here to referee. The neighbors are ready to call the cops if they hear anything over here, even a knock on the floor. So don’t get any ideas. The only reason I let you in today is so you can get your clothes. Go to your mother’s.” Anne went to the back of the house, where there was a small office. She closed and locked the door behind her. She had her cell phone all ready with 911 on speed dial. She wasn’t taking any chances.
She heard Bill get up, the legs of the chair scraping on the wooden floor. He walked across the room, and then there was the sound of cutlery and china being placed in the sink. It amazed her, once again, that his wrath rarely came out against inanimate objects. He didn’t throw things. She remembered he may have thrown his keys at her once; she had a small cut under her left eye that had required stitches, but she wasn’t sure if it was the keys or his hand that had done the damage. Although she had never come right out and called the police on him, the neighbors had intervened enough times and the police had seen enough handprints on her flesh to know that she was being victimized. At least her hope was that they did.
From where he stood at the end of the hallway, Bill saw the closed door of the office. He examined his choices at that point. He could give in to what he wanted to do, which was to fly down the hall, bash the door down, take Anne by her scrawny throat, and squeeze the life out of her, or go upstairs to their room and pack a bag to take to his mother’s. If he gave in to his first choice, he would end up in jail again. He thought of his father, which he didn’t do very often. He didn’t have to; Harold’s acts were emblazoned upon his brain. But, at this moment, he thought specifically of the devastation the man left in his wake.
Do I want that same legacy for my boys?
Walking into their living room and sitting down on the world’s most uncomfortable chair, Bill leaned over to pick up a portrait of his children. It was over a year old, and they had grown from babyhood to preschool in that time. He traced the lines of their faces with his finger. They were so innocent. Both of them were a perfect combination of he and Anne. Had his father ever looked at his sons the same way? Or had he planned on brutalizing them from the beginning?
He wished Jack were still alive. Then he could finally talk to him about their childhood. He knew Jack had tried to protect him, that he had threatened Harold. The only time the two of them ever talked about what they experienced was when Jack got that lawyer to write up a false document charging Harold with sodomy and child rape. He only did it to threaten the old man. There were no legal grounds to charge him; the acts had taken place forty years before. Harold dropped dead of a heart attack shortly after receiving the document; Jack didn’t even have the luxury of seeing the man squirm. At the time, Bill was in
such denial that he was angry with Jack, accusing him of trying to humiliate the whole family, to ruin the business. Of course, it was already ruined.
His father did not love him; it was impossible. A man cannot rape his son and love him at the same time. Bill had been able to separate what was happening to him, the reality of the act, the pain, from his conscious mind. He often had the sensation that he was leaving the room where his father was raping him. When he was thirteen, he had braces put on his teeth. His father held his hand across the boy’s mouth to keep him from screaming. The first time Harold raped Bill after the braces were put on, the entire interior of his mouth was lacerated, blood pouring from him like a faucet. He had no awareness of it. When Harold was finished with him, he threw a towel at him and told him to clean his mouth off. He went into his bathroom and turned the light on. When he saw himself, saw the blood all over his face and the stream of blood coming from his lip, he gave an ear-splitting scream. But then something awful happened. He continued to scream and was either unable to stop or had no awareness that he could. What was supposed to be one burst of fear turned into a long, pulsating yodel of screaming that could be heard throughout the house, out into the courtyard, and down to Columbus Circle.
Bernice was in a drunken stupor in her room, and Jack was in the courtyard with friends of his, waiting for Harold to coach their soccer practice. The horrible screaming reached Jack’s ears, and he knew what it was. He dismissed his friends, telling them to leave and that practice would be canceled. Then, shooting his father a
look of death, he ran up to his brother’s room. He grabbed the boy and cradled him, whispering to him that he would be okay, that he would be fine, that nothing like that would happen to him again as long as he was able to protect him. Of course, that turned out to be impossible, until Jack realized he could expose his father’s deeds to the world. The only thing that kept him from doing so up till then was pride, but he no longer had pride or hope. Harold would continue to attempt to harm his boys in this way, but would not succeed. After this particular incident, he could only beat them. The rape and sodomy was over.
Bill, now in the present, lowered his head and began to sob for the third time that weekend. Everything about his life had been one big lie.
P
uttering around her apartment, unpacking from her trip to Jeff’s, and getting ready for work the next day, Marie Fabian thought about her life. She had wanted to write as a young person. But Jack, in his infinite wisdom, told her that she wouldn’t be able to support herself if she wrote the way she thought of writing.