Marriage Is Murder

by Nancy Pickard

  “Great,” I said.

  “They seem pretty interested,” she continued, “as long as we don’t offend any right-wing conservative groups who believe in a man’s God-given right to beat the shit out of his wife and kids. Personally, I can’t think of any groups I’d rather offend, can you?”

  “Not offhand,” I said.

  Then Kathy Ingram called to suggest’ a name for the coalition.

  “I thought of SAVE, for Stand Against Violent Encounters,” she said in her soft, precise voice, “but Henry says that implies a certain violence itself, so I thought of SAFE—for Spouses Against Family Enmity—but ‘that’s rather negative, and it does exclude the unmarried, so I thought maybe we’d do a survey.”

  “SAFE sounds great,” I said quickly, making a stand against expensive and time-consuming statistical encounters (SATE). “It doesn’t have to be an acronym, after all. SAFE is short, it’s meaningful and appropriate, and I hereby declare it the official name of the coalition.”

  “Don’t you think we ought to call a meeting and take a vote?”

  “No,” I said firmly.

  “Cain,” Smithy said when her turn came, “I’ve been thinking about the crisis hotline, and I think our volunteers could handle it.”

  “Sounds good,” I said, while thinking that I had certainly put together an odd sort of coalition to work on saving families—five single people out of eight, and only one parent among the lot of us. I wondered if maybe later I should add some other married folks and parents to this task force.

  By Thursday morning, I had managed to think of two people I knew who were happily married, and was trying to come up with a third name when Tommy Nichol called.

  “What about the police?” he inquired. “If they want that special training course, I could handle the section on dealing with perpetrators.

  “I haven’t heard from the police on that yet,” I admitted with regret. “But speaking of your counseling sessions, did Ernie McEachen show up last night?”

  “Yes.” Tommy chuckled; it was a merry sound that seemed weirdly at odds with his subject, but then, I supposed, in his line of work it paid to take the long view, and long views tend to contain some humor. “The other guys really let him have it when he got defensive, and that shocked him. He thought the other men would be on his side, but most of them are only on their own side. They can see his faults all right, just not their own.” He chuckled. . “I’d say we’re still in the ‘poor me’ stage with Ernie.”

  “What comes next?”

  He chuckled again, a mannerism I was finding vaguely annoying. “The pissed-off stage, I call it, Jenny,” he said. “That’s where he’s mad at them, and me, and Marsha, and God, and his parents, and every third person he ever knew.”

  “And then?”

  This time he didn’t laugh. “Then? Well, maybe a little grief, a little regret, a few apologies. And then, in that very brief moment when he’s seeing himself for who he really is, then we start to work. If we’re lucky, he decides he wants to change, and that makes all the difference.”

  “How often do you get lucky, Tommy?”

  “Not often,” he admitted cheerfully. I was changing my mind about Tommy again; he didn’t remind me so much of an ice-cream cone anymore as he did of a buoyant little boat, improbably bobbing on rough seas. Did he ever feel swamped? I wondered. He was saying, “But I have a feeling about Ernie.”

  “A hopeful feeling?”

  “Yes! If I can just get him past all his anger and resentment ...”

  “That’s a big if.”

  Tommy sighed, though he didn’t sound in the least discouraged. “You said it!”

  “Is Marsha in any danger from him now, Tommy?”

  “She will always be in danger, Jenny,” he replied, a shade dramatically, “unless the tiger changes his stripes.”

  That seemed even more unlikely with the next call, which came from Ernie McEachen himself. He told me that he got the interview at Port Frederick Fisheries, but not the job.

  “You told me,” he said accusingly. “You said—”

  “I said I’d get you the interview, and the rest was up to you, Ernie. What happened?”

  “They said they wanted somebody with experience.” He laughed bitterly. “How am I supposed to get the experience if I can’t get the job. You told me—”

  “I didn’t promise a job.”

  “Yeah, but. . .”

  “I didn’t promise anything but an interview. Did I?”

  Silence, then a grudging, “I guess not. But what do I do now?”

  “Is Marsha home yet?”

  “Yeah.” He sounded happier. “It’s really great now. Or it was going to be great, until they didn’t give me the job. I don’t know what I’m going to do now.”

  The whining note in his voice made me turn brisk, verging on brusque. “Let’s back up a step, Ernie. Tell me again, what jobs do you have experience at?”

  “I don’t know,” he said listlessly.

  “Name two.”

  “Well, I don’t know, the last job I had, I sold magazines over the phone, and I’ve had a couple jobs in filling stations, pumping gas, you know, but they don’t pay nothin’.”

  “They must pay something, Ernie.”

  “With two kids?” He sounded indignant now.

  “Okay, I’ll see if I can get you a few more interviews. But Ernie, you can’t depend on this, you understand? You’ve got to try on your own, get down to the employment office, check the want ads, maybe put in an ad yourself for position wanted. I’ll help if I can, but that’s all.”

  “Right,”, he said, more agreeably this time. But then he added, as if I had not uttered any caveats, “See if you can get me something around seven bucks an hour, all right?”

  “Oh, Ernie,” I said, and sighed to myself. In addition to his employment problems, I had offered to see about getting work for his wife, not to mention child care. So when I hung up from talking to him, I put in a call to one of our town’s other major employers.

  “Lars,” I said to my brother-in-law, “it’s Jennifer.”

  “Here comes the bride,” he sang in a jovial bass. My brother-in-law, Lars Guthrie, was a man of simple needs: money, a beautiful wife, an immaculate home, obedient children, membership in a good country club, handball twice a week, and a spot on the board of his Episcopal church. Fortunately, a sweet nature and a juvenile sense of humor saved him from impossible stuffiness. “It’s going to be a bang-up party, Jennifer. Sherry’s really breaking her back to make it nice for her big sister.” Wryly, he added, “Not to mention breaking the budget.”

  “Budget? Sherry and budget? Now, Lars, you know those are mutually exclusive terms.”

  He laughed in the manner of a true but tried husband, To ease the sting, I lied, “But it’s nice of you, and I’m grateful. And I’ll be even more grateful if you do me another favor, Lars. Two, really. I know a young couple who are unemployed and who desperately need help. She could probably do light clerical work, and he could handle manual labor. Do you have any openings?”

  Lars Guthrie owned and managed Lars Brand Labels, the only discount clothing store in Port Frederick, the one whose $29.95 dresses put $299.95 dresses on my sister’s back.

  “You think she could do part-time sales, Jenny?”

  “I think she’d jump at it.”

  “Great. I like my employees to jump at my beck and call.” His chuckle came over the phone as an infectious rumble. “Send her in, Jenny. We’re about to lay off a couple of our full-time saleswomen, and I’m hoping we can take up the slack with somebody who’s only part-time. I’ll tell my personnel manager to expect her, what’s her name?”

  “Marsha McEachen. What about him, Lars?”

  “The husband? Can’t help you there, sorry.”

  “You’re a peach, Lars.”

  “Get to the party early, then, before I start fermenting.”

  He was still laughing at his own rotten pun when we hung u
p. I added the Guthries to my list of “happily marrieds”; maybe I couldn’t have lived with her, but Lars seemed contented enough, and I suspected Sherry, in her own weird way, was, too.

  Talking about employment and thinking about marriage made me think suddenly of Willie’s wife, Gail Henderson, who had also said she needed a job, now that they had moved away from the better-paying cop jobs of Boston. I started to call Lars back to inquire about other part-time openings, but then thought better of getting involved in yet another family’s private business. I wasn’t an employment agency, after all. Maybe I’d call Gail later, from home, and see whether she even wanted any help from me.

  Well, I thought then, maybe I had solved one of the McEachens’ problems. Or made it” worse? How would a man like Ernie McEachen take it if his wife got a job, and he did not? I sighed again and called them back to find out.

  But Ernie was not home when I reached Marsha.

  “Oh, thank you!” she gushed when I told her.

  “What about the children?”

  “I guess Ernie could watch them until he finds a job,” she replied, although she sounded doubtful about it. I wasn’t too crazy, myself, about the idea of their violent father caring for them alone. Without telling her the reason behind my concern, I promised to help her find other arrangements. Then I wished her good luck, hung up, and began to call all over town, trying to trade in my chips for interviews for her husband. Everyone I talked to was sympathetic, but nobody had anything to offer. Finally, I played the last ace.

  “Detective Bushfield,” he answered the phone.

  The sound of his voice triggered an unbusinesslike current of desire through my body. As usually happened when he had a major case to solve, we had not been seeing much of each other, the very male sound of his voice reminded me that I missed him, and in what specific ways.

  “Geof, I know you don’t like to get involved in your family’s business, but I need a favor.” His family owned Bushware, Inc., one of the largest hardware and plumbing supply companies in the Northeast. Although the rest of the family and the company headquarters were located out of state, there were branch stores in our area. “Would you call around and see if any of the stores needs a salesman, or somebody for manual labor?”

  “I thought you loved your job.”

  I laughed. “This is for the husband of a woman at Sunrise House.”

  “Who, Jenny?” He sounded distracted, as if he were reading reports while he talked to me.

  “Ernie McEachen’s his name.”

  “McEachen.” Now he sounded more alert, as if he had put down the reports to concentrate on putting a face to the name. “Wait a minute. Scrawny little guy with a short fuse and bad skin? Lives in a converted Victorian with a pudgy wife and a couple of kids?”

  “That’s the one.”

  In the background, I heard the loud creak that his swivel chair emitted when he leaned back in it. “He’s a nasty piece of work, Jenny. If you’d seen what he did to his wife a couple of months ago, I don’t think you’d want to be doing him any favors.”

  “I’m not doing it for him. Besides, she thinks that will stop if he gets a job.”

  “That’s what they all say.”

  “You sound like Smithy Leigh.”

  He laughed. “You could accuse me of worse things, but at the moment I can’t think what they could be. Don’t you ever wonder why Smithy hates men so much? I mean, I’ll grant you she sees the species at our worst, but hell, I’ve seen a truckload of worthless women in my job, and I don’t hate the rest of you.” The chair creaked again, as if he had sat up straight once more. Before I could reply to what was evidently only a rhetorical question, he said, “Well, all right, I’ll call the area manager and pull rank for you. But you’d better understand that I’m going to tell him the truth about Ernie McEachen, Jenny.”

  “But tell him that Ernie needs one more chance, too.”

  “I’ll tell him you told me to say that.”

  “All right!” I smiled at the phone. “It’s all I ask.”

  “Why are you getting involved with them, Jenny?”

  “Actually, I’m trying pretty hard not to get any more involved with them. It’s just a favor for Sunrise House, that’s all. Smithy challenged me to put my business connections where my mouth is and help out one of her battered women. What’s new on the Hanks case, Geof?”

  “Still no confession.” He sounded discouraged, a bad sign, since it was still fairly early in the investigation. “No witnesses, no direct evidence. And no other suspects, either.”

  “Geof, would you mind if I talked to her again?”

  “To Mrs. Hanks? Why?”

  “For our task force.”

  “Your task force.”

  “Whatever. I was thinking we ought to have a victim advocate, and while it probably wouldn’t be Eleanor Hanks, I’d still like to talk to her.”

  “Same question: why?”

  “I want to ask her, from the perspective of her own experience, how she thinks we might help other families.”

  He was quiet for a moment, obviously thinking it over. “I don’t know, I guess it can’t hurt. Sure, talk to her. But stay off the subject of murder, Jenny, so we don’t run into legal problems if there turns out to be a case against her.”

  “I do so solemnly swear.”

  “That’s the way—practice those vows.”

  “Oil that chair,” I retorted.

  I hung up thinking that he was a fine one to talk about vows, having sworn twice before to “take this woman for as long as you both shall live.” Maybe that was an unreasonable expectation? Or maybe, with all that practice, he’d get it right this time.

  * * *

  I called Sunrise House to make an appointment with Eleanor Hanks. As I waited for someone to answer the phone at the shelter, I gazed longingly at the piles of work on my desk and hoped she would agree to an evening appointment.

  “555-7532.”

  “Hello. May I speak to Mrs. Hanks?”

  “This is an answering service,” a female voice replied. “I don’t know if there is a Mrs. Hanks residing at the number you called, but I will be glad to take your name and phone number so that she can call you back, if there’s anyone there by that name.”

  I had forgotten: They never divulged the identities of women at the house. The business about the answering service was, in fact, a lie designed for confidentiality and security.

  I left my number. Eleanor Hanks called back within five minutes.

  I explained to her, vaguely, that I was heading a task force dealing with families. “And as part of our research, I’d like to get the opinions of women who have been residents of shelters like Sunrise House. May I come over and talk to you sometime soon?”

  “Well, normally, I’d be at work, but I haven’t gone back. Uh, I’ve just put the baby down for a nap.” She sounded tired and distracted, but pleasant. “And the other two kids are at school, so this would be about the only, free time I’d have. Could you come over now?”

  “Sure.” I averted my glance from the piles of work on my desk. “I’ll be right there.”

  11

  AS I PARKED AT SUNRISE HOUSE, A FAT BLACK WOMAN IN a yellow print tent dress—Mrs. Gleason—was loading five children into a station wagon. An elderly white woman, most likely one of the volunteers, was the driver. After she got the children in, Mrs. Gleason crammed a battered suitcase into the back of the wagon, and then maneuvered her own bulk into the front seat. If I had been closer, I imagine I might have heard her grunt. She might have been only twenty-five years old as Geof had said, but she moved like a sixty-year-old charwoman.

  I reached the front door as they drove off, the children looking still and serious in the rear of the wagon. Their mother propped her vast, pendulous right arm on the rim of the open window on the passenger’s side, and faced straight ahead. She didn’t look back, but the children did. One of them waved.

  Smithy, who was standing in the doorway,
waved back.

  “She’s going back to him again.”

  “Why?”

  “For the children, she says.” Smithy’s voice was bitter, ironic. “And because her preacher says it’s her duty.”

  “What do you say?”

  Her eyes narrowed as the station wagon turned left at the corner. I thought suddenly of the stone house waiting to take them in again, and I wondered if the malevolent fat man was still sitting on the stoop, hungry for the final feast. I shook away the image as Smithy replied, “I say the husband should drop dead along with the preacher, but dead is too good for either of them.” With a jerk of her head, she invited me into the shelter. I felt strongly the aptness of the word. Shelter.

  “Eleanor’s waiting for you. Is this for the task force?”

  “Yes.” I stepped in, leaving her outside.

  “You should have checked it out with me, Cain.”

  “She’s a grown woman.” I fought my annoyance. “She can make her own decisions.”

  “They haven’t done her much good so far.”

  Annoyance won. “Why do you hate them all so much, Smithy?”

  “Who? Men?”

  I nodded.

  “You would, too, if you saw what I see every day, Cain,” she said condescendingly. “Like your boyfriend said, it’s the result of accumulated evidence.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, feeling goaded. “People accumulate evidence to support the opinions they want to prove. Maybe you’ve just managed to find a line of work that allows you to rationalize your feelings.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “A person could accumulate evidence to prove the opposite,” I insisted, although I was already regretting that I’d let her prick me into striking back. “And you could start by collecting the names of men like Geof Bushfield, Tommy Nichol—”

  “You think Tommy’s different?” She looked at me and laughed; it was the cold, victorious laugh of the fighter who has just seen the light between your glove and your jaw. “He’s just as violent as the rest of them. You ask sweet little Tommy sometime about how he decked Lanny Gleason’s husband one time when he got out of line at one of those counseling sessions.”