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Stacey listened keenly, having fought her way out of a daze. When the children were in the hall after being made to clean up for bed, she heard Irene chastising them for going out without permission. She heard Irene order them into Shirley’s room and she heard Tami beg to see her. Irene told her that her mother was asleep. All this she heard through a haze, which cleared.
“And anyway, if she heard what you two did, she would be very angry, almost as angry as Gerald and I are.”
Stacey was tempted to shout to her to demonstrate that she wasn’t asleep. And what was this about their going out? Tami wouldn’t have wanted to go anywhere with that girl, especially at night. The child needed some reassurance that she hadn’t been deserted, and Stacey needed some reassurance that Tami was all right. But she didn’t call out because she didn’t want to do anything that might jeopardize her plan to escape. By now she was fully awake.
Who knew what that crazy woman would do if Stacey proved her wrong and demanded that Tami be allowed to come to her room? She might chain her other leg or she might lock the door again. That would make her flight from this insanity virtually impossible. No, she had to control herself. As difficult as it was, she had to be patient.
“Just a little while longer, Tami,” she muttered. “Just hold on a little while longer, honey.” She fought back her urge to cry. Being patient had never been one of her strong points, she had to admit. At this moment, under these circumstances, being honest about herself seemed important. Divine assistance wouldn’t come to a hypocrite.
How many times had David asked her to be patient, especially when one of his jobs called for him to be away a little longer or work a little later. She couldn’t help but wonder if she had been a good wife up until now.
Once, after a particularly bitter argument about his work and what it was doing to their marriage, he stopped shouting and sat down with a dazed expression on his face. She felt as though she had struck him between the eyes. Finally he shook his head and looked at her.
“If you’re not pulling with me, it’s going to be impossible. It’s hard enough to do battle out there as it is, but without your wife’s support…”
She couldn’t help but remember how her mother would comfort her father after he had had a particularly bad day at his office or in court. He was a highly successful attorney, specializing in insurance cases. But it was only occasionally that his work took him away from home for long periods of time. If her mother had any complaints, they were usually born of his taking his work home or spending all his time talking about it at parties. Regardless of how she hated that, though, her mother never failed to give him encouragement or compliments when he did succeed.
Stacey had to stop to wonder if she really had ever done that with David. When he told her about his winning an on-site managerial position, with all its lush accoutrements, the first thing she thought of was how much time he’d be spending away from home. She should have been happier for him; she should have been happier for all of them. After all, the promotion meant more money, as well as more prestige for David. Why wasn’t she more like her mother?
Her mother was often a good adviser. Her father wasn’t afraid to bring up a question concerning his work. In fact, he respected her mother’s advice.
Maybe that was the problem, Stacey thought. How could she ever get as interested in David’s work as her mother had gotten in her father’s work? He was involved with malpractice cases and dramatic lawsuits. There was real human drama involved there. David was a project engineer with a firm that specialized in sewer plants. Even though he made good money and was rising fast in the firm, she couldn’t find anything romantic about his profession.
Still, thinking about her mother’s temperament and ability to be a warm companion mitigated her own anger that day she and David had that particularly bitter argument about his new position. She softened when David looked defeated.
“I want to support you,” she said. “I want to do whatever I can to help us have a good marriage. I just want you with us more, that’s all.”
He nodded. He couldn’t argue against it.
“It’s not that I don’t want to be,” he said and, for the moment, peace was made between them; both felt guilty for arguing.
Maybe it was mostly her fault. Maybe it was because she was too spoiled to be patient. But her motives were good. She felt this way only because she loved him. Surely he understood and that understanding was the glue that kept them together. It was a good part of why she had been heading up to the Catskills to meet him.
Where would they have been tonight? she wondered. They would have had dinner. After dinner they would have taken Tami to the recreation room and watched her play some video games. When she was bored with that, they would have gone for a nice walk on the hotel grounds until Tami grew tired. Up in the room, she would have tucked her daughter comfortably and securely into bed and gotten the baby-sitter. Right now they would be entering the hotel nightclub to do some dancing. They’d meet people and have some drinks. Afterward they would make love quietly, so as not to wake Tami, and they would fall asleep in each other’s arms.
The fantasy brought tears to her eyes, but the sadness only served to harden her resolve. She would do something to save them; she had to. They had too much to lose.
It wasn’t long before she heard Irene go to her room. She had put the children to bed. The hall light wasn’t put out, but there was no more movement and no more talk. She lay there waiting and listening, and struggling to get energy into her sluggish limbs. Then she heard Gerald stomp upstairs. His heavy steps drove imaginary nails through her heart. She held her breath when he paused at her doorway. His shadow, like an evil spirit, darkened the entrance. She pretended to be asleep. He stood there for the longest time and then stalked down the hall to his own room.
Stacey was happy that they still left the hall light on. That would make it easier for her to find her way down and out of the house. In the darkness she could easily bump into something and wake them. She thought she heard them talking, although their voices were so low it was hard to distinguish any of the words. Soon they grew silent.
When she was confident that both of them had gone to sleep, she began to edge herself off the bed, taking hold of the chain to prevent it from jingling. The smallest sound was amplified by her fear.
After she had both feet on the floor, she waited, watching the opened doorway. All remained still; all was quiet. She knelt down beside the bedpost and studied the way the chain connected to it. It was a carved post; the chain had to be worked over the ridges carefully. Fortunately for her, there was enough slack in the chain loop. She could move it downward by working one end and then the other over the rises in the design. Even so, it seemed to take the better part of half an hour to get the chain to the floor. When she succeeded in doing do, she paused again.
Still kneeling, her legs aching from the tension and the pressure of remaining in such a frozen position for so long, she looked out into the hallway and listened intently for any movements. Good—she had gotten this far without either Irene or Gerald hearing. Her optimism grew. She was capable of doing something to save herself.
Yet the hardest part remained. She had to get the chain out from under the bedpost. That meant literally lifting the bed off the floor. She cupped the side of the frame in her hands and tried to stand, lifting at the same time. She couldn’t help grunting, but the bed barely rose a fraction of an inch and she couldn’t hold it up long enough to slip the chain out anyway.
She had to stop. The palms of her hands burned from the effort and she felt as though she had pulled a muscle in her lower back. Worst of all, she was sure her grunting had been loud enough to attract their attention. She waited anxiously for their appearance, but once again all remained quiet.
But what could she do? She couldn’t break the chain and she couldn’t pick open the lock. Getting it down to the floor of the post seemed useless. This bed was too heavy to lif
t. She was so frustrated and angry she felt like crying.
“That’s all you have to do, Stacey Oberman,” she told herself. “What do you think, you’re home with your father or your husband? Crying will do you no good here.” She realized that as soon as she uttered that first sob, Irene was sure to rush in to see what was wrong with her. If she were in good health, she could have fought her condition better, risen to the occasion, beaten the madman and his wife. But she was one of those women spoiled by her husband who worked hard to provide for her.
Oh God, she thought, I promise never to be that way again if I get Tami and myself out of here. I’ll never be selfish again. She paused as if she expected God to react to her tears as quickly as her father and husband usually did. The silence was discouraging. The task looked enormous. Her inflated confidence began to shrink. She considered the probability that she would have to crawl back into the bed. She would even have to jimmy the chain back to where it had been on the post so they, especially Gerald, would not realize that she had tried to effect an escape.
And then she thought about Tami trapped in bed beside that big girl. She imagined her lying there in the darkness, afraid to utter a sound, her little heart beating madly as she wondered why her mother or her father hadn’t come.
Such a vision infuriated Stacey. She seized the side of the bed again and pulled at it. She gave it a much greater heave but she was more awkward, pulling outward as much as upward, and wasted herself. The results were the same—the bed barely budged.
She didn’t want to surrender to it, though. They had made her feel like an animal by chaining her up like this. They had tapped feelings and thoughts she didn’t know existed within her. She believed she could claw that woman to death if she had the opportunity to do so. She wished she could bludgeon or hack that man until he was a mass of flesh and bones.
These images should have shocked her. All her life she had been opposed to violence of any sort. Sometimes she was so vehement about her opposition to the use of force that David kidded her and called her his “little Quaker girl.” She wouldn’t stay in the same room with him if he wanted to watch a prize fight or a football game on television; and she thought Clint Eastwood, Charles Branson, Chuck Norris, and especially Sylvester Stallone exploited the most primeval and uncivilized instincts in man. She had even become a member of the local chapter of M.A.V., Mothers Against Violence. They wrote letters to television networks and movie studios and picketed movie theaters and bookstores from time to time.
One of the things that had attracted her to David was the underlying gentleness in the man. Although he joked about her dedication to pacifism and antiviolence in film and literature, he was not a man who believed in or was attracted to aggressive behavior. He had never been a hunter and had no interest in guns. He had been an antiwar protestor in the sixties. They were pretty much on the same wavelength when it came to such things as toy weapons and physical violence on shows children watched. Despite his occasional jests, he supported her efforts and sympathized with her feelings.
Yet now, as she squatted by this bed to which she was cruelly chained, she could envision David armed to the teeth and rushing into this house. She could see him shooting at the man who had imprisoned and tormented his wife and child, pumping bullet after bullet into his body. In fact, she prayed for it.
This anger that had been born of the way she and Tami had been violated continued to grow unchecked. It was as if it had been festering there all these years, and now that it was permitted to expose itself, it did so emphatically. For a moment she thought herself to be a female Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
The Hyde part was vengeful. It had been denied its existence up until this time, and now that it was free to express itself, it would first get its revenge on the Jekyll part. It drove all reasonableness and understanding down so far that it was questionable such characteristics would ever return. Even though the voice she heard now came from within her, she didn’t recognize it as a part of herself. A stranger had been born, a latent part of her personality had been resurrected.
“Do you want to feel sorry for those two maniacs?” the new voice asked her. “Do you pity them for the loss of their child? Do you understand why they’ve become what they’ve become and do you sympathize? Maybe after this is all over, you won’t even press charges. Get them help, you’ll say; get them mental help.”
“Spare me your liberalism. Go picket and pray for these poor souls while they keep you chained to the bed like an animal and drive your daughter into the terror and darkness of the worst nightmares to come.”
“No,” she muttered. She clenched her teeth and dug her fingers into the floor. She was still squatting, only now she went to all fours, looking more like a wild cat. She could feel the blood pulse in her ears. She lowered herself even further and set her shoulder against the side of the bed. Then, reaching deep into the anger and the hate, she pressed herself up against the board.
The wood cut into her back, but she didn’t feel the pain. She pushed up with her arms and her legs and her shoulders. The bedpost began to rise. When it was sufficiently high, she pulled the chain loop out from under it and then lowered herself to the floor, keeping her body curled to set the bed down quietly.
For a long moment, she lay there gasping, not realizing herself what she had done. It was as though she had lost her memory. Then the bruise on her back and the pain in her legs and arms reminded her. Fatigue swept over her. She looked at the freed chain and then quickly and anxiously looked out the door into the hallway. It was still so quiet that the sound of her own heavy breathing seemed thunderous. She pressed her face against the side of the bed to dull whatever noise she made until she evened her breathing.
It was still all right; there was still no sign of either of them. She had done it. She had freed herself from the bed and the door was open. Escape was only minutes away.
David could actually make out the rim of the well above him. The realization that the end of his upward journey was near excited him. He felt himself tremble and a new panic engulf him. What if he slipped just before he reached the top? He had to be calm; he had to get a good hold on himself before he groped for another rock.
He pressed his face against the cool stones and closed his eyes. The nightmare of the past few hours struck him. He was enveloped in darkness; he was in great pain, and the anguish was so great, he thought if he opened his eyes again, he would find himself home in bed alongside Stacey.
Yes, that was what would happen. He’d awake with the nightmare still clear in his memory. Seeing that everything was all right, he would reach over and stroke Stacey’s hair. She’d awaken and look at him with confusion, but with a glimmer of happiness stamped on her face.
He fantasized their conversation.
“What is it, David?”
“I had this terrible dream.”
“Something happened to me?”
“To all of us.”
“Oh, you poor dear,” she said, reaching up for him. He took her hand and kissed her fingers and then they embraced. He never held her so tightly. She felt his anxiety and returned the affection. Soon passion carried them away. Their lovemaking freed him from the nightmare and made the memory of it so distant and vague he barely recalled dreaming it.
It was a good fantasy. It warmed him and relieved the pains shooting from every extremity of his body, especially his leg. He was so tired from the struggle and the wounds, he wanted to sleep for a few moments…just to regain some strength.
He caught himself before he passed out. He had nearly lost his grip on the rocks, teetering so precariously high above the well floor. A greater fear drilled into him. He straightened up as best he could and gulped a deep breath. It was time to go on.
He slid his hand along the rocks, searching for just the right hold. When he found it, he closed as tight a grip on it as he could muster and risked lifting his good foot from the rock below. As before, he dangled dangerously until he found a new stone a bit
higher up, secured himself, and slid his hand over the rocks to find another. Again and again he went through the steps until he was about to reach for the very ledge of the well.
Just before he did, another fear flitted to mind. What if that madman was waiting for him above? What if he had seen him start his ascent and what if he had decided to let him just spill over the ledge before he pounced? It was just the kind of thing some sadist would do.
For a moment David was reminded of the myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus was the King of Corinth who had helped Asophus, the river god, and incurred Zeus’s wrath. As punishment he was placed in Hades and forced to try forever to roll a rock uphill, a rock which forever rolled back upon him. He’d get it almost to the top only to have the rock spin and go back. And then he would have to go back down again and repeat the action.
If Gerald was waiting up there for him to put his hands on the well ledge only to pound them and send him reeling back down to the murky depths of the well, that would be his fate, too. Could he even think of attempting another escape? He imagined he had already been cursed and doomed to some eternal punishment. But for what? What had he and his family done to deserve such terror and pain?
Had he been too ambitious? Had he been ungrateful for the gifts and rewards he had received? Was he being punished for not being religious enough? His grandfather believed in a God of retribution, a God who punished man for the smallest infractions of the Holy Law.
He recalled that Yom Kippur when he sneaked out of the house and rode his bike. He was only ten at the time, but he was away for hours before he returned; when he did, there was his grandfather waiting with the wrath of God stamped on his face.
“Do you know what you’ve done, David? Do you know how sacred this day is for us?”
The Maddening Page 17