Chapter 2
"Dammit," Judy said. "Why the hell do you keep defending him?"
"A fine broth of a boy such as William McGruff comes along once in a lifetime," Mrs. McPugh replied.
"Thank Jesus," Judy muttered. "Linus," Mrs. McPugh said to her husband, "give your daughter taxi fare back to Flatbush. That subway ain't fit for man nor beast at this hour of the night." .
"I'm not going back there," Judy insisted. "I know what'll happen. He'll wake up tomorrow and remember nothing, we'll kiss and make up and tomorrow night it'll be round four."
"Have it your own way then," Mrs. McPugh sighed wearily. "Lord knows yer sisters don't come running home every time their husbands take a poke at them, but I guess I can't deny me own daughter a place to sleep when she needs it. Yer can take yer old bedroom. I just changed the linens last week."
She shuffled off down the hallway and disappeared into the bedroom.
Mr. McPugh shoved the last of the sandwich into his mouth and drained the last of the Carling Black Label beer from the can, then crushed it for good measure, forgetting that it was a deposit can. He had retired from the force two years earlier and now worked as a security guard in the city on a part time basis, just to keep busy.
He rose from the chair and belched loudly. "Guess I'll be shufflin' along meself, Judith," he said to his daughter. "There's some stew in the icebox if you're hungry."
He started out of the kitchen, then stopped and kissed his daughter on the cheek.
"I know married life ain't all beer and skittles," Linus McPugh told her, "but try an" see it through all the same. Bill's still just a kid himself really, and the beatin' and hittin'll stop someday when he's older and not so angry at the world like he is now. 'Night, Judith." "Goodnite, Pop."
Two hours later, Judy lay awake on the bed she'd slept in most of her life and wondered what had gone wrong.
They'd married young. Perhaps too young. Judy had been a mere child of sixteen on their wedding day, while Bill had been barely twenty and a rookie on the force.
She'd known him practically all of her life, his family having lived in the same Brooklyn neighborhood. Indeed, their fathers had been cops together since God only knew when.
The prettiest of the four McPugh sisters, Bill McGruff had been attracted to Judy ever since their high school days, and they'd been married, at the request of both sets of parents, two days after Bill had joined the force. Judy hadn't even bothered finishing high school, as housewives weren't required to think, but to have babies, clean house and perform other wifely duties.
Judy certainly hadn't any clue to her husband's mean streak. That had come less than a week after the wedding, two nights after they'd returned from their honeymoon in the Catskills. He'd come home drunk. He'd come home angry. And violent.
Judy, no stranger to drunken husbands, [her own father and grandfather, for starters] tried at first to sober him up, but to no avail. Moments later, she felt the back of his hand, complete with high school ring and wedding band, strike her across the face.
But the worst was yet to come. Before she could react, or even open her mouth to protest, Bill was slapping her silly all over the cramped apartment they shared.
Moments later he was talking her over his knee, yanking her jeans down her shapely legs.
"Gotta be punished," he'd mumbled drunkenly, "gotta put you in yer place." And so he did.
The slaps against her firm asscheeks hadn't so much hurt as they had bewildered her; when her old man was on a toot and going after her mother, it was punches flying, never slaps, and certainly not on the bottom.
Whack! came the first one, making the spare flesh on her buttocks sting with pain.
Whack! came the second, then another, until her behind was numb.
She could feel Bill's erection against her belly as he pressed her torso down against him as he slapped her.
"Bill, stop it!" she had moaned, but to no avail. Bill was just warming up.
"Gonna whoop yer ass just like my Ma done to mine," Bill informed her, and followed it up with another round and harder, quicker strikes to her behind.
Bill's hand struck exposed flesh again and again, the sounds of rippling flesh filling the already noisy tenement.
Hot blood coursed through her behind as Judy felt the stinging slaps of Bill's powerful hands against her rump.
"Owwwwwwww! "Judy bellowed, but her screams of pain and protest only spurred her husband on to greater action.
"This one's fer Aunt Tillie," he cackled, and struck her butt again.
"This one's for Cousin Mike in the Bronx!" "This one's for my brudda Pete!" "This one's for my ...my..." "How about your sister Emily?" Judy offered, hoping it might appease him. It didn't.
"Shaddap!" Bill snapped, and stood up abruptly. Judy tumbled to the floor and noticed the huge bulge in her husband's pants.
Seconds later Bill McGruff was dragging his wife of one week down the hallway by her silky blonde hair, where he flung her onto the bed and descended on her.
The rest was a nightmare.
Judy lay passive as her handsome but violent husband stripped his clothes off and attacked her young, trim body greedily. She felt his massive, strong hairy legs rubbing against hers, his muscular body engulfing her completely, smothering her as he started humping away.
He pierced her twat with his mammoth schlong, ramming it deep into her quivering pussy, his huge testicles swollen and harder than two meatballs.
Bill grabbed her still developing breasts and squeezed them to the point where Judy was howling with pain.
Bill ignored her cries of anguish and continued pounding his mighty meat into her, banging away with everything he had.
She could not bring herself to face him, much less look into his eyes. When she finally did, she | saw a man she did not recognize, certainly not the young handsome Irish stud she'd known as a kid, the same one who hung out on the corner in front of the newsstand with his buddies and leered suggestively at her.
No, this Bill McGruff, the one who could polish off a bottle of hooch at one sitting, was a complete and total stranger to her, one she didn't want to meet again.
"Jesus help me," she'd moaned as Bill continued slamming his pulsating rod deep into her.
"Nobody can help you now," Bill managed to gasp, and came with such force that Judy's thighs quivered, her insides quaking like a plate of jello.
Bill rolled off of her and seconds later began snoring.
Her pussy was swollen for two days after that first episode, one in a series of many that were to follow, sometimes on a nightly basis.
Somehow, after that first incident, Judy had known the honeymoon was definitely over.
Afterwards, the attacks came more frequently and with more ferocity. He'd come close to breaking her arm on more than one occasion, and no amount of makeup could conceal the black eyes, split lips and welts that accompanied the beatings.
Still, there were the good times when Bill went on the wagon, but they never lasted for more than a week at a single stretch. When he was sober, Bill McGruff was capable of being tender, sometimes romantic and never violent. The last time he'd fallen off the wagon however, some sixteen months ago, he'd never gotten back on, and was rarely sober for more than the time his shift lasted.
As sleep finally overcome her, sometime around three in the A.M., Judy wondered what had gone wrong and even more, wondered if life had anything better to offer than a husband who walloped her and a cramped Brooklyn apartment.
"Judith, wake up."
Judy stirred slightly, trying to ignore her mother, who was attempting, with little success, to arouse her. In that brief moment between sleep and the first stirrings of consciousness, Judy was sure her mom was trying to wake her up for school.
"Wake up, girl," Mrs. McPugh ordered, shaking her more firmly now.
"Mummpphh," Judy gurgled, opening her eyes to a room bathed in sunshine. "What time is it?"
"It's after one in the afternoon, and time to wake up," Mrs. McPugh told her."There's someone on the phone from the precinct wants to talk to you."
"Has Bill been here?" Judy asked.
"He came by early this morning, sheepish as a first time sex offender," Mrs.McPugh explained. "Yer father sent him on his way, said you be back by the time he finished his shift."
"Pop was lying," Judy said, stretching.
"Yer Pa don't never lie," Mrs. McPugh said.
"Now hurry and get the lead out and answer the phone."
Judy slipped on her faded terrycloth robe and padded into the kitchen, where the receiver lay on the table.
"Hello?" she said, picking it up.
"Mrs. McGruff?" said a strange voice. "Mrs. Judith McGruff?"
"Speaking."
"My name is O'Bannon from N.Y.P.D. Public Affairs office," said the harsh sounding voice on the other end of the phone.
"Yes?"
"Um...Mrs. McGruff, it is my sad duty to inform you that your husband, Patrolman William McGruff, was killed in the line of duty at approximately nine-forty-nine this morning..."
Judy's mouth hung open, but no words would come. She felt the same way she had when she'd bit whacked on the back of the head by a frisbee in eighth grade.
"What...how...."Judy stammered.
"Apparently," O'Bannon continued, trying to keep his voice steady, "your husband and his partner were in pursuit of a purse snatcher on West fifty-first street..."
"My husband was killed by a purse snatcher?" Judy managed to ask, her throat dryer than sandpaper.
"Well, not exactly," O'Bannon said. "The purse snatcher got away after your husband ran into the bus."
"Bus?" Judy croaked.
"I believe it was the M-104, or perhaps the M-106 Broadway local."
"My husband was killed by a bus?"
"Well, that and the three taxicabs he bounced off of," O'Bannon replied.
"Dead..." Judy muttered. "My husband is dead..."
"Mrs. McGruff, it is with the deepest regret that..." O'Bannon droned on, but Judy wasn't there to hear the rest as the floor came up to greet her and she stretched out on it for an hour or two.
"So what are your plans, darling?" Mrs. Rabinowitz asked Judy at the wake three days later.
The McPugh apartment was wall to wall people, friends, relatives and fellow officers filled the place, drinking, eating cold cuts and generally having a good time despite the tragedy.
Judy sat on the living room sofa, dabbing her eyes and nose with a soiled Kleenex. To her right sat Mrs. Rabinowitz, munching on a roast beef sandwich, while her older sister Beth sat on her left.
"Judy's still in the mourning period," Beth offered, sensing her sister didn't feel much like talking. "She hasn't really decided what she's going to do next."
"I understand completely," Mrs. Rabinowitz gushed, "it's like my Murray always says, 'you only go around once, so grab for all the gusto you can.'"
"Isn't that what they used to say on the beer commercial?" Beth wanted to know. "Could be," Mrs. Rabinowitz replied. "My Murray never had an original thought in his entire life."
"Excuse me," Judy said, rising from the couch. She made her way into the bathroom, where she splashed some cold water on her face. Her left eye was still slightly blackened from Bill's last beating, which seemed to ease her grief every time she looked at it. He was no angel, her late husband, but to Judy, better than no husband at all.
The funeral had been something else. Nearly a thousand of New York's finest had turned out at Our Lady Sings the Blues for the service, and Bill was given a twenty-one gun salute, which inadvertently brought down a dozen bullet-riddled pigeons all over the casket. Father McGuire had delivered a stirring eulogy, praising Officer William McGruff to the hilt. Of course the good Father, Judy thought with a tinge of irony, had never been on the receiving end of one of Bill's left hooks.
Now, with the apartment filled with people, many of whom Judy had never even met, she sat down on the toilet for a little peace and quiet and reflected on her life.
She had no idea what the future held, but she did know that it was time for a change. She would get a job. There was rent to be paid, food to be bought, a stack of bills higher than the Chrysler Building and best of all, a two thousand dollar tab from Bill's bookie, Louie the Gook, who despite his expressed sympathies at Bill's demise still expected to be paid.
Judy's sister Beth knocked on the bathroom door and stepped inside. She was two years older than Judy and not quite as pretty but had hooked a husband at seventeen nonetheless. She and Judy had been close once, but the strains of married life and children had separated them. "How ya' doin'?" Beth inquired. "Alright, I guess," Judy replied. "Quite a turnout, huh?"
"You said a mouthful," Beth replied. "Half the people here I've never seen before. I think they crawl out of the woodwork whenever there's free booze and food flowing around."
"You always were a cynic," Judy said, managing a small grin.
"So what happens now?" Beth wanted to know.
"I dunno," Judy murmured. "Find some gainful employment, pay some bills. Louie the Gook wants his money, said he was sorry Bill got himself dead but life goes on. He said he would pray for Bill's soul and that if I didn't pay up, I'd be wearing a cement overcoat."
"Don't worry about that sleazeball Chinaman," Beth soothed. "Some of Bill's buddies are gonna try to persuade him to erase the debt."
"That's a relief."
"Did he beat you a lot?" Beth asked suddenly.
"Well," Judy mused, "it seems like only once, now that I think about it, starting in July of 1981 and stopping in February of 1985."
"I'm sorry Bill's dead," Beth replied, "but try and look at all of this as a new beginning for yourself. You're footlose and fancy free. I mean, shit, you're only twenty, you're hot looking. You can go out and find yourself a rich stockbroker, or a doctor maybe. You can go to discos and parties and have yourself a great time."
Two nights later, despite the protests of her parents, Judy did just that.
"Imagine," Mrs. McPugh snorted as she watched her daughter primping herself in the bedroom mirror, "goin' out on the town two nights after yer late husband's wake! It's disgraceful, that's what it is, downright disgraceful."
"Oh, Ma," Judy sighed, spritzing a little Chanel No. 9 behind her ears. "It's just a little party, a few friends."
I don't give a tinker's cuss what it is," Mrs. McPugh retorted, her Irish brogue becoming heavier as she grew angrier. "It don't look right, yer goin' out this soon after Bill's death. What are the neighbors to think, for the love of Mike, and for that matter, what'll Bill's family think when yer too tired to show up at Mass tomorrow morning. What'll I tell them?"
"Tell them I'm too grief-stricken," Judy replied. "Or tell them I didn't feel well."
"I'll do nothing of the kind," Mrs. Mcpugh replied, grimacing as she watched her daughter squeeze into a pair of skintight designer jeans. "You'll never be able to sit down in those pants."
"Don't worry," Judy told her. "Bill beat my butt so hard last time I couldn't sit down if I wanted to."
"Still an' all," Mrs. McPugh said. "It don't look right, 'specially the way yer dressed. Lord knows I tried to raise my girls as good girls."
"Life goes on, Ma," Judy told her. "I can't spend the rest of my life sitting shiva." "Sitting what?"
"Sitting shiva," Judy replied. "That's what Mrs. Rabinowitz did when her first husband died. She said that's what Jewish people do when someone close dies. You sit around and feel bad for the deceased and say some prayers."
"Thought the only thing THAT tribe prayed for was money," Mrs. McPugh sniffed.
Minutes later, Judy was on the Manhattan bound B train on her way to the Village, where her friend Bambi Lipshitz lived with her boyfriend, an older dude Bambi'd met at her job.
She and Bambi went back to the second grade together at P.S. 114 and were undoubtedly the prettiest chicks there. Bambi, Judy thought as the train lurched and screeched down the tracks, had done pretty well for herself, but then, she'd always been the smart one.
She'd graduated at the top of her class at Midwood High and had gone to Brooklyn College for two years following that, managing to get her BA in half the time. Now she worked at some hotshot advertising agency on Madison Avenue, though Judy was unsure as to just what she did there.
Bambi, who like other young Manhattan hopefuls, moved around a lot. her latest address was somewhere in a neighborhood known as SoHo, where all the trendy people lived. To Judy's surprise, it was a somewhat dilapidated former warehouse on an equally dilapidated street somewhere very south of the neighborhood she'd known as the Village.
The party was in full swing as Bambi met Judy at the door of the spacious loft she shared with her boyfriend Steve, a fashion photographer whose work was plastered all over the walls among the hanging plants and artsy-fartsy paintings.
"Judy, Judy, Judy," Bambi said, throwing her arms around her friend and doing a God-awful Cary Grant. 'Tm so glad to see you!" "Ditto," Judy said, hugging her back. "I'm really sorry about Bill," Bambi said, swaying a bit. Obviously, she'd been partying for some time. "Sorry I couldn't make the funeral. I saw it on the news."
Judy's eyes widened. "It was one the news? What channel?"
"Eleven, I think," Bambi said above the booming Springsteen.
"Shit, and I didn't even know the news people were there," Judy fumed. "Did you get to see me?"
"Shit, yeah," Bambi squealed delightedly. "You looked like a million."
"Did you like the dress? I got it at Bloomies. One hundred percent polyester-slash-cotton."
"It was super," Bambi told her. "Shit, but's it good to see you. Jesus, get in here."
She dragged Judy in the door, where some strange looking people and a lot of Yuppie types were milling around with drinks in their hands and smoking some very sweet smelling marijuana. Judy hadn't smoked that stuff in years, and the aroma conjured memories of early teenhood that seemed a million miles away.
"You know," Bambi said, leading Judy through the maze of people toward the kitchen table that was now doubling for a bar, "it's a damn shame we never got together much once you tied the knot. I mean, shit, you were a baby faced little kid when you got married. Too young, Judy."
"I knew that two weeks after the wedding," Judy agreed.
She smiled at Bambi, who looked younger and prettier than ever. A shaggy haired brunette, Bambi had a beautifully rounded pair of boobs and a tight, fully packed ass that drove men into instant heat. The horn rimmed glasses she wore only seemed to enhance her beautiful brown eyes.
"Steve Crapanzano," Bambi said to a handsome dark haired dude standing at the bar, "I would like you to meet my very bestest friend in the whole fuckin' world, Judy Alice Margaret Ann McPugh McGruff, and Judy Alice Margaret Ann, this is my bestest boyfriend in the whole fuckin' world, Steve...what's your last name again?"
"The pleasure's all mine," Steve smiled, displaying the cleanest, straightest teeth Judy had ever seen. "Bambi told me about your husband.
I'm very sorry."
"Don't be," Bambi said, pouring wine. "He was an asshole."
"Bambi!" Steve snapped.
"Well he was," Bambi said."He was a Brooklyn melonhead with an I.Q. below that of a smoked salmon. I'm sorry to make all these terrible food jokes about your dead husband, Jude, but you're better off. You realize of course, I had to get drunk to say this to you and you may hate me forever for saying it but...fuck it, sure, it would've been easier to divorce him instead offending up a widow, even with all that religious guilt they lay on you, but now that it's over, I'm glad you're free."
"I don't hate you for saying what I've been thinking for four years, Bambi," Judy said, hugging her friend.
"Great," Bambi said, hugging her back, a little tightly than Judy remembered. "Now that we got that shit out of the way, let's party."
"I'm with you!"