Five Women

by Rona Jaffe

“I love him.”

  Kathie never wanted to get married. What was the point of it? The nuns at school said you got married to have children, that marriage was a blessed union in the sight of God. When you had a baby it was called a blessed event. So how come her little brothers were subjected to their father’s beatings and rages? When the nuns started their nonsense, Kathie just shook her head and daydreamed.

  Something inside her was bubbling and simmering all the time, and frequently exploded. All she wanted was a peaceful home life, but she might as well have wished to live on a distant planet. Sometimes, when her father was so drunk that she could duck his huge fists, her mother would pour his liquor down the kitchen sink, but then he would only go out to the bars.

  “You stinking son of a bitch!” Kathie would yell at his retreating back.

  Her mother would cast her a look of fear. “Don’t call him that,” she would plead.

  “Well he is one.”

  A weaker man would have died already from all the poison he poured into his body, Kathie thought wistfully. There was something superhuman about him. His arm muscles bulged, ripe with veins; his legs were like sculpted wood. Brendan seemed indestructible, a force of evil that would never go away.

  At last, the police force suspended him. He wouldn’t be allowed to work as a cop again for two years. After that, if he had shaped up, well then . . . but if not . . . The family needed the money, so in a career move of supreme irony her father, who had no intention of shaping up, got a job as a bartender. Unfortunately, it was only during the day.

  “He’s with his own,” her mother said.

  Even though he wasn’t on duty, he still had his uniforms and his gun. The neatly pressed uniforms hung in his closet, and the gun went into a shoe box on the top shelf, a constant reminder of explosive death, even though it was not in sight.

  On occasional Saturday nights her mother went to the movies with some girlfriends from work. It was a kind of vacation for her, a respite from the constant tension at home. When her mother came back, she would report every detail of her evening—the plot of the movie, which of her friends was there, what they had said, their little jokes—in that sad and desperate way of people who have so few happy stories to tell. It was a recitation that would have been boring under other circumstances, but Kathie especially loved her mother on those movie nights, when she had come home from something that was good and all her own, her face radiant. Her mother had so few consolations: She didn’t even have the satisfaction of knowing her children were safe, although she could have saved them. At these times when her mother looked relaxed, like a normal person, Kathie tried to forgive her for being so weak, but it was still impossible.

  She thought her parents were lunatics, both of them.

  Sometimes Kathie wondered why her father never tried to hurt her. Despite his general rages, she knew she was special to him, that she traveled in a bubble of safety. It began to occur to her that it might be because her mother didn’t love her as much as she did her brothers, who were so timid. Her mother was always trying to protect them.

  Yes, her mother loved her, but not in the same way as she did Colin and Donal and Kean, because Kathie didn’t need her like that. She had her life outside the house, and she even had a job, baby-sitting for Mrs. Henderson’s kids down the street, and getting paid for it. The Hendersons were always kind to her, their house was nice and peaceful, and their children obeyed her.

  She was hanging around with a different crowd now. Her new friends were the tough girls, the wilder ones. Her friends’ mothers would let them congregate at their houses, which was not only fun but a sanctuary because it got her out on her own. While she was still eleven, her best friend, Mary, taught her how to smoke. They would stand around Mary’s backyard, posing like glamorous movie stars, their cigarettes in their hands, heads held back to exhale.

  “You’ve been smoking,” her mother accused her when she came home smelling of it. “It’s not ladylike, and you’re much too young.”

  “Go blow it out your ear,” Kathie said. It was her new favorite expression.

  Her mother didn’t know what to do so she did nothing. She just looked sad. She couldn’t physically hurt her own child, even with a slap; lecturing got her nowhere, and she was basically a mild and stolid woman. Kathie had never even heard her curse.

  Kathie knew that she was often disrespectful and mean to her mother these days, but she didn’t know why, or how to stop it. It was just that she was so angry, and her mother was the only person who would take it.

  “Why are you so fresh to me?” her mother asked once.

  “Fish is fresh.”

  Her mother just stood there looking at her, thinking. “Maybe it’s good for you to let it out,” she said, finally. “It’ll save you.”

  “Save me from what?”

  “From our life.”

  In Kathie’s opinion, what was going to save her was her own nonchalance. She had been working on not letting things get to her. She knew that in this respect she was like no one else in their family. It was possible to be both angry and happy at the same time, because she was both. There were plenty of things to enjoy. She was twelve now, and the boys at school were starting to like her and pay attention to her. She was studying hard and getting good marks, which made her feel proud of herself. Her mother couldn’t control her, so she could do anything she wanted, within reason. If only her father were different, but he wasn’t. . . .

  “You have to stop being so rude to your father, Kathie. It was cute when you were little and yelled at him, but you’re a big girl now and it isn’t cute anymore.”

  “Says you.”

  “You don’t understand just how crazy he is,” her mother said.

  Kathie ignored that. Her own adolescence had become the most interesting thing in her life. She was glad to find she was beginning to look more like a teenager than a child, and next year she would actually be a teenager. She knew she was pretty. Everybody told her so. She had silky red hair and very white skin with a cute sprinkling of freckles across her nose, and a tiny waist to show off the little bumps that had finally turned into breasts. Suddenly there were as many boys as girls in their group of friends. The boys had started hanging around at her house now, willing to take the risk, and suddenly their behavior was self-conscious and show-offy. Her father took it the wrong way immediately.

  “What are those damn boys doing on my porch?” he would scream at her mother. “I don’t want my daughter turning into a slut.”

  “Go blow it out your ear,” Kathie muttered to herself. Since at the moment she was thinking of being a nun when she was old enough, she had no fear for her virtue, and besides, the boys were harmless.

  “Get the hell out of here, you little shits!” her father would scream at the boys, lumbering out to the porch with his fist raised. “Kathie, you get in here!”

  “We’re going to Mrs. Cavanaugh’s house,” Kathie would scream back, and then she and her friends would stampede away.

  “You don’t understand anything, do you, Kathie,” her mother told her. What was there to understand?

  Her father didn’t like boys, he didn’t even like his own sons, he didn’t want anybody to be happy. What else was new? But there was always something, just when she thought she had seen it all.

  This time it was an event that changed her life.

  It was St. Patrick’s Day, a holiday Kathie both loved and dreaded. She loved it because of the parade, which some of her girlfriends from school were allowed to march in, and because the holiday celebration seemed to be the first real sign that spring was finally going to come again. She dreaded St. Patrick’s Day, too though, because there was so much drinking afterward, and it was an official chance for her father to get drunker than ever.

  She had gotten to the parade route early to secure a good place to stand in the front just behind the
wooden barricades so she could see everything. People were wearing green carnations in their lapels, green hats with white shamrocks on them, green clothes, and waving small Irish flags they had bought from street vendors. The big brass horns went oompah, the drums were banged loudly, the bagpipes wailed, and the onlookers raised their voices again and again in cheers as they saw people they knew in the parade. The police in their uniforms marched proudly in thick and formal lines, each group carrying a banner that announced the district it represented. It was very raw and chilly out, and the young drum majorettes who pranced in their short pleated skirts had bare legs, their knees red from the cold. Kathie didn’t know how they could stand it. She herself was all bundled up. She waved at her friend Mary and several other friends from school, a few yards down the line on the barricade, who were watching with their families. Everyone was out on the parade route; parents had even brought their babies. Kathie was sorry her mother wasn’t there for the fun, but her mother was too tired and had too much work to do at home.

  “Your father,” Mary mouthed, pointing. Kathie rolled her eyes. Since her father’s suspension he could not, of course, march with the police officers, but he was marching with his social club, an organization he only attended because it was another place he could drink. She could see Brendan was drunk already.

  Suddenly her smiling father scooped a baby from its mother’s arms and held it aloft, taking the infant with him as he marched. The mother screamed. The baby, astonished, wailed. Kathie’s stomach turned over. The crowd of onlookers: Her neighbors, her friends from school, total strangers, did not at first seem to know what to think. Brendan, benevolently bouncing this child in the air, seemed only to be in good spirits, perhaps even exuberantly affectionate. But Kathie knew better. He could go crazy in an instant.

  “Hey, there,” a man cried out to her father. “Don’t drop that kid, there.”

  The baby’s mother, white faced, had ducked under the wooden barricade and was running to catch up with Brendan and save her child. “Stop!” she screamed.

  Kathie’s father was no longer bouncing the baby the way a normal person might; he was tossing it in the air like a ball. The crowd watching him had gone abruptly quiet now, realizing that something was not right. Kathie screwed her eyes shut, afraid to look.

  Aaah . . . A collective sigh. Then the laughter of relief. Kathie opened her eyes and saw that the mother had snatched her frightened child from Brendan’s arms and was holding it again, comforting it. The laughter trickled away. People were murmuring uncomfortably among themselves because it was very clear that the infant’s mother was sobbing. Then friends and relatives reached out to her and she was drawn back into the crowd, and Brendan’s lodge had gone by, and it was all over. Except for Kathie, who was left with rage at her happy day being spoiled and humiliation because everyone—not just a few neighbors and school friends—but everyone had seen. She hated him.

  When she went home Kathie told her mother about the latest incident. “Someday that bastard is going to kill somebody,” Kathie said.

  “Just be careful it’s not you,” her mother said quietly.

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you.”

  Kill her? She couldn’t believe it. When she had said her father would kill somebody, she had only meant it would be by accident, and she had never thought it would be herself. Maybe she was stupid, but he had never touched her. She was his favorite, she was charmed and safe.

  That night he came home drunk and caught her smoking, just as she was grinding out her forbidden cigarette on the sidewalk in front of the house. “You stink from cigarettes,” he said.

  “And you stink from booze.” The minute she had blurted it out, she knew it was a mistake.

  “What did you say to me?”

  “Everybody in Boston saw you throwing that baby around today,” Kathie said. “When are you going to stop embarrassing me in front of my friends?”

  He hit her on the side of the head with a force she had never imagined in her life. Her ear was ringing from the brunt of the blow, and she tasted blood in her mouth where her tooth had cut the inside of her cheek. In that one instant the bubble of safety in which she had spent her childhood suddenly burst, leaving her exposed and vulnerable. She was not Kathie anymore, the Kathie who could handle everything: She was someone she hardly knew. As her father raised his fist to hit her again, she screamed and ran.

  She ran until she was in an entirely different neighborhood, a place of warehouses and abandoned buildings and rats and possible murderers. She stayed there for an hour until she was more afraid to be there than at home with her family and then she went back. Her father had drunk himself unconscious. Her mother took one look at her face and started to cry.

  And so it was that in the middle of the spring semester, by dint of a special dispensation for the emergency of the situation and her own good marks, Kathie found herself being driven by her mother in the family car from Boston to the Lancaster School for Girls in Little River, Vermont, where she would live and study for the next four years, except for vacations. It was night when they finally arrived there, to a lawn and a stand of trees, and an ugly gray cement building that looked like an air raid shelter, where you would hide if someone dropped the atom bomb.

  Kathie’s mother helped her take her suitcases out of the car. As soon as her mother had seen the depressing building, she had started crying again.

  “Don’t forget to say your prayers,” she kept saying, as if that would protect her. It was obvious her mother didn’t want to leave her there, but she had no choice. This safe haven was what she had really been saving her money for, all those years inspecting fabric at the factory at night.

  Kathie had known about the Lancaster School for years. Not being a Catholic school, it would never have been her mother’s first choice, but it was the only one that would take Kathie at such short notice. It was where the spoiled, rich girls went. They were the ones with the nice clothes and parents who could easily afford an expensive education. She was a little apprehensive, but not scared. She had never dreamed she would be here in such a fancy place. She was thrilled and excited and happy, and she could hardly wait for her new life.

  Chapter Seven

  “HAPPINESS!” FELICITY SAID, raising her glass of wine. They were in Yellowbird and everybody was glad to be there.

  “Happiness,” they all agreed, toasting to what they wanted or, in Kathryn’s case at least, what they already had. It was crowded in Yellowbird tonight, with many of the regulars plus one large table of people they had never seen before. Billie seemed in a good mood; she loved money. On the sound system Janis was singing. “Down on me, down on me . . .”

  “Oh, I wish,” Felicity said, laughing, and they all laughed.

  Gara knew Felicity was bubbly tonight because she had seen her “friend.” Tomorrow he would call to tell her how wonderful their meeting had been, and then she would have another week in which to obsess and imagine he had forgotten her. As for herself, she was glad to unwind after what had been a depressing day. She felt she should always be on the patients’ side, since they trusted her, but sometimes it was hard.

  She thought about the attractive young man, Conrad, who had been her last patient of the evening. For two years he had been trying to figure out why he couldn’t find a woman he liked enough, and he had finally thought he’d found the right one. She was thirty (three years younger than he was), she was beautiful, bright, interesting, warm, had a great job in his own field . . . he was in love. They hadn’t even been to bed together yet; he had spent time getting to know her, which was progress for him; but the sparks had definitely been there from the beginning. He had decided he wanted to marry her.

  “At last,” he told Gara.

  He had taken her to dinner at a romantic restaurant. That would be the night he would make love to her, he would tell her he loved her, and then afterwards he would propo
se. He invited her to his apartment and they both knew what that meant. But in the restaurant she said she had something she had to tell him before they went any further. She’d had cancer, she told him; she was fully recovered, but she had a colostomy bag. He laughed so hard when he told Gara that it took a few moments for him to control himself.

  “Wasn’t that just my luck?” he said. “And I loved her!”

  “Loved?”

  “Well, obviously I can never see her again.”

  She hated that he was laughing. It was tragic; that poor girl, so young, in a marriage market that was so competitive that it was almost hopeless for the women with only ordinary flaws. With none! What would happen to her? Gara knew she shouldn’t be thinking this way; she should feel what he felt, and of course she did, something like that was hard to take, she didn’t blame him for being squeamish; but she identified desperately with the young woman too, having to reveal her secret and be rejected. She wondered how often she had been rejected and thought it had been a lot.

  “Why were you laughing?” Gara asked.

  “It’s so funny.”

  “Why is it funny?”

  “Just my luck.”

  “Just hers, too.”

  “You don’t expect me to have to deal with that. It’s disgusting.”

  “It’s tragic,” Gara said.

  “Are you blaming me?”

  “Of course not. It’s just a comment on our lives.”

  “That’s what I’ve said all along,” Conrad said. “There’s nobody out there. It’s a tragedy.”

  “So you’ll have to start looking again.”

  “I know. I have six blind dates lined up for this coming week. I’m going to throw myself into it. No time to get depressed.”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  Gara sighed and looked at her friends at the table in Yellowbird. It was a good thing she’d given up on men. She was middle-aged, she’d had her life. That young woman would find someone some day, she decided, and hoped that in the meantime she was as happy as she was just to be healthy and alive.