Chapter 17
Amy Jarrell sat on the bottom step of the stairway and waited. The house was too quiet without the children. She wished they were in the house again, as noisy as ever. If they were in the house again, she wouldn't tell them to be quiet like she'd always done. She'd let them make all the noise they wanted, let them turn on the television as loud as they wanted.
She heard Bob come through the kitchen door and she heard the dishes breaking. She heard a heavy sound as if he'd overturned the kitchen table, other sounds as if he'd picked up the chairs and thrown them against the wall. He came into the hallway and, without looking at her, tore the mirror off the wall and threw it against the floor.
He picked the vase of artificial flowers from its stand and threw it against the scattered fragments of the mirror and then-as if she were one more thing in the house to be picked up and broken-he came to her and slapped her across the face.
He hit her in the stomach-not with all his strength but with a force that took her breath away. She rose, clutching at her stomach, and he slapped her again, rocking her head from side to side, bringing tears of pain to her eyes, the stickiness of blood to her mouth. When she collapsed to her hands and knees, he kicked her arms from beneath her so that, without their support, she sprawled forward across the hallway rug.
She felt the tip of his shoe pressing against the nape of her neck and forcing her face against the rug. The pressure increased until sparkles of light danced before her eyes, until she thought he would break her neck, then he lifted her from the floor and held her against the wall. He shook her as if she were a rag doll and when he took his hands away, she had to lean against the wall. The hallway seemed to spin and his face blurred before her.
She waited for him to speak. She closed her eyes and in a few minutes she heard the kitchen door close. She opened them and stared at the empty hallway. Bob had left. No accusations, no threats, no discussion.
She went to the closet and got the broom and dustpan. She swept up the fragments of mirror, the fragments of the vase. She remembered they had bought the mirror as a wedding anniversary present for themselves, buying it jointly to decorate the house instead of buying separate gifts for each other. She'd forgotten....
And the vase. She remembered now. That was another wedding anniversary gift they'd bought.
She dumped the remains of the mirror and the vase into the wastepaper can in the hallway. When she went into the kitchen, she remembered they'd bought the dishes as an anniversary present one year to replace the older ones. The table had been another anniversary gift and the chairs another....
He had broken all the dishes but the table and the chairs were undamaged. She swept up all the broken dishes, straightened the table and the chairs.
She went to the hall closet and touched her coat. She leaned into the closet and buried her head in the coat, pulling it tight around her head and sobbing into the furry warmness. She wanted to put on the coat and leave.
She couldn't.
She was tied to Bob. Bob was tied to her. The children were tied to both of them. There were too many knots and they were all prisoners tied together by the knots of children and the years they'd lived together.
Maybe that was what Bob had wanted to tell her by breaking all the wedding anniversary gifts. Maybe he'd wanted to tell her they couldn't break their marriage just because she'd cheated. Maybe he'd wanted to tell her they had gone too far to get a divorce. Maybe he'd wanted to tell her he wanted to erase all that had been and start over again.
She pulled the coat tight against her ears to deaden the sound of her sobbing. She realized Bob would never ask for a divorce. She knew him. He was gentle on the surface but there was an undercurrent of violence just beneath-maybe it was that undercurrent of violence that had made him become a policeman.
She knew she had one more chance. As she had swept up the pieces of the mirror, the vase, and the dishes, now she had to sweep up the pieces of their marriage and try again. Bob would never ask for a divorce. No. She knew him.
If she ever cheated again and if Bob ever found out, he would kill her. She knew that.
She trembled with a new kind of fear.
Bob loved her. If she ever cheated again, Bob would kill her because he loved her....
When Stan heard the knock at the door, he knew it would be Bob Jarrell. He had been waiting ... sitting and studying the Luger. He had toyed with the idea of ending everything with one bullet.
And realized he had too much courage to take that abrupt end.
Suicide was a coward's way, an easy way.
He jammed the Luger behind a cushion.
He opened the door.
"Come in, Bob. I knew you were coming. I've been waiting."
He stood aside as Bob came into the room. He watched as Bob closed the door and when Bob turned toward him, he hardly saw the blur of the fist. He moved his head but his reflexes were too slow and a fire spread from the side of his jaw.
He had almost fallen. He stepped backward and rubbed his jaw.
"Bob, I want you to know it's all my fault. You can't blame Amy. She was lonely. I took advantage of-"
He couldn't breathe. He was suddenly doubled up, clutching at his stomach. He looked down at the tips of his shoes and while he watched them he felt the new burst of fire in his jaw. He heard the splintering of his teeth and he rolled backward over a chair.
He struggled to his hands and knees, shaking his head to clear the fuzziness, he saw the shoe swing under his head and up beneath his chest. The point of the shoe caught him squarely in the chest and lifted him up from the floor. Needles jabbed into his heart and lungs and he rolled across the floor.
When he stopped rolling, he came up fast and caught Bob with a long upward swing that started at the floor. He put all his weight and strength behind it as he came up, aiming for the chin but instead saw his knuckles plow squarely between Bob's eyes. He felt the cartilage of nose break and his knuckles were sprayed with blood before he could withdraw his hand.
He tried to swing again but Bob came in close, blocking the swing and jabbing at his stomach. His stomach felt brittle. Then it seemed to fall apart. He slid to his knees and, while he tried to stand up again and strike back again, he felt the punches at the base of his neck.
He collapsed to the floor and was vaguely aware that Bob had rolled him on his back, was sitting across his legs and making carefully calculated blows at his chest. His ribs creaked. Bob was a dim shape far above and it seemed he wanted to hit every rib and see if he could bend it without breaking it. When he saw Bob standing above him, his chest was a mass of agony as if every rib had been broken.
He saw Bob lean forward. Blood had streaked from the broken nose, across his lips and down his chin. Globules of blood dripped from his chin and his bloodied lips twisted into a smile.
"You should leave, Stan. You should leave this crummy shack, you should move somewhere else. If you stay here-if you stay here in this crummy shack and I know you're here I'll be tempted to visit you again."
He closed his eyes and when he opened them again he saw that Bob had left. He rose to a sitting position. The movement caused a knife of pain in his chest and he wondered if Bob had broken a rib. Breathing became difficult. He concentrated on breathing and felt the pain grow sharper when he inhaled. That could be a broken rib. He felt the spot carefully with the tips of his fingers.
The slightest touch made the pain sharper but he could not feel the outline of a broken rib. Maybe a fractured rib, he decided. Just a fractured rib. What's a fractured rib? Nothing. See a doctor, get a little tape on it, in a few days you'll be as good as new.
He went to the bathroom and washed his face. For a moment the pain crushed his chest and he couldn't breathe. He felt his legs weaken and he leaned on the sink for support. If I black out, he told himself, I'll push myself away from the sink as soon as I feel it coming. I don't want to fall down on the sink and hit my chin.
Breathing came easier. He realized he was learning to inhale shallowly and quickly, barely moving the rib cage because he wasn't expanding his lungs fully, lessening the pressure on the damaged ribs, lessening the pain.
He studied the face in the mirror and he decided Bob was right. He should move out of this house, he should move out of the state. Maybe to California. There wasn't anything here. Not any more. This is a small state with a lot of opportunities-but with a lot of men to meet every opportunity. A small pond with a lot of fish. Everything is crowded. There are a few farms, few forests, few parks. They build more and more factories, they build more and more houses. But there is nothing here. It is a wasteland of factories. Your father told you a long time ago there were better places to live. He didn't move because he was too old and when you get older it's harder to tear up all the roots and plant them somewhere else. Take Bob's advice go somewhere. California....
He wondered if Ellen would go with him and the thought startled him.
But ... why not? Maybe she would. She had been planning to divorce her husband. She had told him that. She liked him. Maybe you couldn't call it love, but she did like him. She had willingly and eagerly made love with him, she had asked if she could sleep with him.
She had no reason to stay in Trenton with a husband she hated. He could let her leave this house, he could let her return to her husband and she would, sooner or later, leave that husband. Maybe she would go with him ... to California.
He went to the cellar and unlocked the door. "Janie is dead," Ellen said. "They found her at the-"
It happened too quickly. He realized that Ellen had heard the news over the radio and although he had expected Janie to be found sooner or later, the sudden announcement stunned him. Irene had moved near the door. He saw the swing of her arm, saw the red shoe in her hand. He saw the pattern of the lizard skin and then the pattern became lost in the red blur of the shoe itself.
Pain cracked into his skull and as he brought the Luger upward and pressed it against the softness of Irene's stomach, he knew she had struck him with the heel of the shoe. He would kill her. Without hesitation. Pull the trigger. Send a bullet tearing through that soft woman-belly....
But his arm was strangely numb. The gun seemed too heavy to hold, the trigger too hard to pull....
Irene was shouting at him but the words seemed hollow and far away. He saw her arm swing again and again he saw the red of the shoe come toward his head. The shoe looked different and he knew it looked different because now there were two shades of red on the shoe-the new red was the red of his blood.
He felt the impact of the shoe against his head again and suddenly he was leaning. He leaned too far and he was falling. He felt his face against the round softness of Irene's breasts, but she stepped aside and then he was falling a great distance toward nowhere....