Strange Fits of Passion (27 page)

"But it was Caroline's doctor's office put me onto you. I'd told a nurse in the office to give me a call if she heard from you, and she did. She called Monday morning. So I got in touch with Colin—you remember Colin—and he drove up here that night, and found you the next day, apparently. Didn't take him more than a day. I knew it wouldn't. Some guy in town—Williams, Willard: something like that—told him there was someone new in town staying at this house, so Colin put two and two together." He leaned forward in his chair. "Listen, I don't want a scene here. I didn't come for that. I just came to get you, and take you and Caroline home where you belong."

I watched the coffee begin to perk.

"Your mother was relieved when I called her," he said. "I told her yesterday I was bringing you home, and she was relieved."

I watched the bursts of coffee in the glass bubble at the top of the pot.

"Caroline's fine," I said. "The fever's gone now."

He shook his head.

"She wouldn't have had any fever if you hadn't had the
idiocy
to come up here," he said suddenly. I froze. "The nurse told me it was high,
life-threatening,
for God's sake."

I didn't move.

He must have seen that he'd frightened me. He opened his hands. "But we won't talk about that now," he said in a more conciliatory tone. "That's behind us. All that nonsense is behind us."

I wondered if by nonsense he meant my coming up here or the way that he had been just before I'd left.

"Look, I'll go into therapy if you want," he said, answering my question. "It won't ever happen again. OK, I was in the wrong. You had to leave. But now all that's behind us. We can be a family again. Caroline needs a father."

I turned off the gas under the pot. I brought the pot to the counter and poured coffee into a mug. I took the mug to the table. I put the mug in front of Harrold. When I did, he looked up at my face, took my hand in his.

I may have flinched. I wanted to withdraw my hand, but he held it tight. He began to knead my hand with his fingers.

"You look good," he said softly.

There were faint traces of the bruises still on my face, but I knew that he would not allow himself to see those.

"Sit down," he said.

I sat in the chair at right angles to his own. He let go of my hand.

"How long will it take you to pack?" he asked. I could see that he hadn't shaved in a couple of days. "I think it's best if we get out of this place as soon as possible. We can drive for an hour or so, stay at a motel. I don't think I can make it all the way home unless I get some sleep."

"How's the magazine?" I asked carefully.

He rubbed his eyes. He looked away from me. "Oh, you know. The same," he said. "I'm taking a few days off now."

He moved his hand in front of his face. I could smell stale liquor on his breath. He took a sip of coffee, winced as he burned his tongue. He blew over the rim of the coffee cup, met my eyes.

"So let's go," he said. "You want me to help you pack?"

I put my hands in the pockets of the cardigan, drew the pockets around to my lap. I crossed my legs, looked down at my knee. Around us there was silence, though not silence at all. There was the wind against the windowpanes, in the dormant beach roses; a drip in the sink. The refrigerator hummed behind me.

"I'm not going," I said quietly.

He put the cup down slowly.

"You're not going?"

I shook my head. "I'm not going," I repeated. I sat very still. I was waiting for the reaction. Instinctively, I had tensed. To ward off his raised voice, perhaps even a blow.

"Is there anything to eat?" he asked.

"What?" I thought I couldn't have heard him right.

"Eat," he repeated. "I'm hungry. Have you got anything to eat?"

I felt dazed, thrown off guard. "Eat," I said slowly. I thought. "Yes," I answered finally. "There's food in the refrigerator."

He got up from the table and went to the refrigerator. He stood there with the door open for a moment, looking at the contents, the light spilling out around him, and then he withdrew a bowl. He still had on his navy overcoat. Was this a tactical maneuver, or was he simply hungry? Was it possible that Harrold had changed while I'd been away?

"What's this?" he asked.

I tried to remember. "It's sort of a macaroni and cheese," I said.

"All right; I'll eat this, then."

He took the plastic wrap off the bowl and set it on the counter. He moved slowly, deliberately, as if he had to think about his movements in advance. He seemed whipped. He opened a cupboard over the sink and removed a small plate. He pulled out a drawer, looking for silverware, but the drawer contained pot holders.

"Where's the silverware?" he asked.

I gestured toward a drawer at the end of the counter, near where I sat at the table. He walked toward the drawer, bent down over it, one hand on the counter, one hand on the drawer. He was bent like that, rummaging through the drawer, when I stood up.

"So that's all right with you," I said.

"What's all right?"

"That I'm not going with you. That I'm not leaving here."

He stayed bent over the drawer. I could hear the rattle of cheap metal as he searched for a fork. I was thinking—what was I thinking?—that now was the time to say what had to be said, to say it all.

I was, in that moment, not afraid of him. Perhaps it was the curve of his back, or the domesticity of looking for a fork. I took a step forward. He looked tired, punished. I was thinking: I used to love him. We made a child together. We made Caroline, and she is as much his as she is mine.

I had a sudden brief vision of the bed in the apartment in New York City, the kitchen table there.

I put my hand out toward his back, withdrew it. I was thinking that we would simply get a divorce like other people, and he'd have visitation rights, and that would be all right, he would see that.

"I think you and I can work this out," I said, tilting my head a bit to speak to him.

The movement was swift and stunning. I did not actually see the arc of his hand, merely felt the rush of air, like an electric charge, then the shock of something sharp on my face. He'd straightened up in a flash, swung his arm around. There was a silver object in his hand. It was a fork. I put my hand up, looked at my hand. There was blood on my fingers. The tines had scraped my cheek just below my eye. He could have blinded me.

I whirled around to get away from him. He grabbed my hair. He snapped my head back, so that I lost my balance, staggered, but he was holding me up by my hair. He pulled me to my feet. He wrenched my hair tightly with his fist; his forehead was against the side of my head. He pressed the tines of the fork into the hollow below my neck. I thought: It's only a fork. What can he do with a fork?

But I knew that he could kill me with the fork. He could kill me without the fork.

"Did you really think you'd get away with this?" It seemed he hissed the last word. "Did you think you could humiliate me, take Caroline, get away with this?"

"Harrold, listen...," I said.

From the back of my head, he shoved me into the living room. I fell against the couch, regained my balance, sat down. I pulled the cardigan tightly across my chest. He held the fork in his fist, as a child would. He took his coat off, slipped the fork through the sleeve.

"Take your clothes off," he said.

"Harrold...,"

"Take your clothes off," he repeated. His voice had risen a notch.

"Harrold, don't do this," I said. "Think of Caroline."

"Fuck Caroline," he said.

The air around me billowed out, then in, like a sail that had filled suddenly with wind and then emptied. Nothing—nothing—Harrold had ever done or said up to that point was as palpable as those two words. They were words I'd have said a human being couldn't pronounce together, as if, in combination, they were unintelligible. But Harrold had said them.

I knew then that he was beyond reaching, that in the days I'd been away from him he'd crossed a line.

"Take off your clothes," he yelled.

I began to undress slowly, stalling for time so that I could think. There was a knife in the same drawer in which he'd found the fork. Could I get to it? And if I did, would that help me? What in God's name could I accomplish with a knife?

I pulled the sleeves of the cardigan from my arms. He stood across from me, watching. He looked impatient, annoyed with my slowness. I laid the cardigan on the couch, actually thought of folding it, crossed my arms to slip my other sweater over my head. I had the sweater up over my face when he grabbed my arm, pulled me toward him and onto the floor.

"You fucking bitch," he said.

He unsnapped my jeans, yanked the zipper down in thrusts with his free hand. I did not resist. This was not important to me, being raped by him; I had survived this before, though it hurt: His body was abrasive against mine, he tore at me, and he kept the fork pressed hard against my neck. It was only near the end, when in his frenzy he had the fork pressed too tightly against my skin and I thought that he would puncture me, that I tried to lift my shoulders, shake him off. He rose up over me then and slammed his free hand into the side of my head.

I was unconscious only seconds, I think, though when I came to, I lay still, did not open my eyes. I let him think that I was out cold. I did not have a plan then, but I sensed that if he thought I was out, he might loosen his grip.

How long did I lie there? A minute, five minutes, ten? At first I felt the full weight of him, and then he seemed to slip to the side, to roll over onto his back.

I didn't move; I was completely limp. This, at least, I did well.

I listened for sounds of Caroline awakening, but I heard nothing. In the distance a dog barked.

After a time, I felt Harrold get up from the floor, heard him pull up his jeans. He walked away from me, but I didn't open my eyes. There was the clink of something metallic on the table. Then it seemed that he had opened the door, and he was gone.

I lay still and listened. I thought. He hadn't taken his coat. That meant he would return. There was no point in leaping up, grabbing Caroline, and making a run for it. I wouldn't get past the door.

I was careful not to alter my position on the floor, though I was exposed—my jeans were down below my knees—and that exposure was painful, as though a spotlight were aimed at me.

The door opened, and he came in again. I felt his eyes on me. I heard him walk to the couch, sit down. I heard the slosh of liquid in a bottle, heard him take a swallow.

Was he concerned that I hadn't come to yet? If he was, he didn't show it. He didn't bend down over my body, or pull my jeans up, or speak to me, or slap my face. He just drank, almost rhythmically, with a minute or two between the swallows. I knew it was whiskey. I could smell it, and I knew he'd never drink gin straight as he might whiskey.

How long did I lie there then? Twenty minutes, forty-five? Sometimes I imagined that he was waiting for me to twitch, to make the slightest move, so that he could pounce. But that was just my imagination, wasn't it? What he was doing was drinking himself into a stupor.

Eventually I heard the sound that I'd been waiting for. It was faint at first, then heavier, deeper. He was snoring.

I moved just a foot, then a hand. Then I pressed my teeth together for courage and rolled over, away from him. The snoring didn't stop.

I sat up, turned my head, dared to look at him. His mouth was open, his head was leaning at an angle against the back of the couch, the bottle was in his lap. A bit of the whiskey had spilled out onto his thigh.

I pulled my jeans on and zipped them up. I stood up. How much time did I have? A minute? An hour?

I thought: If I get Caroline and run to the car with her and drive away, he will find us again.

I thought: If I run up to the blue Cape and call the police, they will arrive and see that a husband has come to reclaim his wife and his child.

I thought: If I tell them that he has raped me, they will look away. A husband cannot rape a wife, they'll be thinking.

I walked to the silverware drawer, opened it as quietly as I could. I removed a long kitchen knife with a black wooden handle. I held the knife in my hand, tested, its weight. I put the knife behind my back and walked toward Harrold. He was lying on the couch, still snoring. I brought the knife from behind my back, held it in front of me, not two feet from his chest. I said to myself,
Do it, just do it,
but my hand didn't move. Instead I found myself wondering if the knife would go through the sweater and the shirt. And if, when I got to the skin, I'd have the strength to push it through.

I looked down at the knife. It seemed preposterous in my hand.

In the end, it wasn't so much a question of strength as it was of physical courage. I didn't have the courage to thrust the knife forward. Perhaps if he'd awakened and lunged toward me, and I'd held my ground, I might have gotten the knife into him, but short of that, I knew, I couldn't do it. I lowered the knife. I eased back into the kitchen, put the knife silently back in the drawer.

I put my head into my hands.
What,
then?

I lifted my head up.

I had it.

Because I had my boots on, my progress was slow and clumsy on the smooth round stones of the pebbled beach, and several times I had to catch my balance to prevent a fall. I had put my coat on, but I felt the cold air, like the sting of dry ice, on my hands and face and through the cotton of my jeans. I was not cold inside, beneath the coat, however; I was trying to run, and that kept me warm.

I abandoned the south side of the point for the sand beach. Because I was running, the heels of my boots sank and caught occasionally in the sand. It was low tide, I could smell it, though it was so dark I couldn't see the tideline. A layer of cloud had pasted itself over the moon. I moved more by instinct than by sight. I was bent over a bit, my knees in a slight crouch, my arms extended in front of me, in case I should suddenly hit a dinghy or a rock or a large piece of driftwood.