by Rona Jaffe
“How can you even ask that by now?” her mother said.
Her mother went home to finish recuperating and Kathryn didn’t think she had anything to be concerned about. Her brothers Donal and Kean were working in other cities now, but her little brother Colin, who was sixteen, was still at home, and of course there would be the nurse’s aide. Between taking care of the two babies and her job Kat didn’t even think about it.
Then, in the afternoon, Colin called her. His voice was high with fear. He told her he had come home from school to discover that her father had taken the money her mother had given him to hire a nurse’s aide and had not hired anyone. They didn’t even know where he was. Her father had also not bothered to get her mother the painkiller she was supposed to have, and her mother was helpless and out of her head with suffering. She couldn’t walk or even get out of bed to go to the bathroom or get food or water, the slightest movement caused her agony, she was screaming and moaning, and he didn’t know what to do. Kathryn grabbed her kids and rushed over, wild with rage at this latest betrayal.
“That bastard!” Kathryn kept saying between her teeth. She wished her father was dead. She called her mother’s doctor, who wrote out another prescription for painkiller, and also some Valium, because her mother was now so agitated, and Colin ran out and got it.
Kathryn stayed by her mother’s bedside, trying to make her sip juice for her dehydration and weakness, holding her hand until the painkiller and tranquilizer kicked in. It was frightening to see her mother reduced to something so elemental and vulnerable. Somehow it was worse than the beatings, or the household violence, because this time being a victim was not her choice. In fact, she had prepared not to be one.
“This time you’ve got to leave him,” Kathryn said, although she wasn’t sure if her mother could understand her. “Leave the man. Don’t think about it anymore, just do it. You deserve a decent life.”
Her mother looked at her. It was hard for her to speak, but anger gave her strength. “This time I will,” her mother said.
It was a long recovery. Then, when her mother was able to walk again, Kathryn and Ted went with her from lawyer to lawyer trying to get one to take her case. She told them about the bullet holes in the walls, about the beatings through all those years, the violence, the abuse, about Brendan not getting the nurse, how he was trying to drive her crazy, how she was convinced he was going to kill her. She told them about the woman who had been calling the house every day, calling her husband, asking to speak to him when his wife answered, without any shame. She was sure it was his girlfriend, that he finally had one now. Who else could it be? Her mother said she was sure he was going to kill her or leave her now that he had another woman, and take the house that she had worked so hard all these years to help pay for, and she wanted a divorce so she could keep what was hers. None of the lawyers would take her case.
They all said she needed proof of adultery or desertion. She was so upset when she told them these terrible stories that most of them thought she was unhinged. One of the lawyers was even afraid of Brendan, because he knew him and what he was capable of. Kathryn was getting an education in the way women were treated under the law. There was no help emotionally either. When her mother went to her priest he told her if she got a divorce she would go to Hell. She was trapped on every side.
Since Kathryn was not afraid of Hell, she decided to pursue her own divorce from Ted. She did it in the only way she now knew was open to her within the restrictive, archaic laws of their state: deviously and with lies.
“I need some time to be by myself,” she told him. “I have to be alone to think. So many things have happened so fast that I don’t know who I am anymore. Why don’t you stay with your parents for a while, just a couple of months?”
He felt sorry for her and he understood her stress, although it took her a lot of convincing to get him to agree to leave. When he did, he offered to take the babies with him if it would make this period easier for her, but Kathryn said no, she could handle them.
When Ted had left and moved in with his parents, Kathryn hired a divorce lawyer and sued him on the grounds of desertion. Since he had been such an exemplary husband and father, there was no one who would or could testify to his alleged mental cruelty, so she had to give her lawyer an additional five hundred dollars to hire “witnesses” to lie. She thought the whole thing was unjust and corrupt, she knew what she was doing to Ted was unfair, but she blamed the laws and the men who made them, not herself. She was a victim too. All she wanted was to be free. She did not ask him for a penny in alimony or child support.
When Ted was served with the papers he was stunned and devastated. It was all over before he even knew it had started. Kathryn had obtained an interlocutory decree, a six-month cooling-off period, and after the separation they would be divorced and there was nothing he could do about it.
“How could you do this?” he kept asking. “I don’t understand. I thought you loved me. Why can’t we work it out, whatever it is?”
“I just don’t want to be married to anyone,” Kathryn said. “We can be friends. You can see the babies as often as you want. You’ve been a good husband. It’s not you, it’s me.”
Ted finally gave up trying to reconcile with her, but he still mourned his lost love. Kathryn was relieved by their new relationship, as she’d known she would be, but she hadn’t realized how difficult it would be to pay her bills without the help of his job too. And even with babysitters, everything was twice as much work without Ted around. He was over at her place every weekend to see the kids, and took them out with him for the day, but when he brought them home the two little boys would cry all night. “Daddy!’ they would sob bitterly, “I want my daddy!” She had not realized that they had become daddy’s boys. She could see that the older one, who was a toddler now, understood what had happened and resented her for taking his daddy away from him. In many ways this was worse than her marriage had been, but she knew she would just have to live with it.
It was deep winter now. It was cold, it snowed, it rained, the wind howled, it seemed they never saw the sun. Kathryn’s mother called. “I’ve talked to the lawyer who got you your divorce,” she said. “He told me if I can find out who that woman is and where she lives, he can make her the correspondent and can serve them both with proper papers. Then I can finally get my divorce.”
“How are you going to do it?”
“I’ll just have to follow him,” her mother said.
“How are you going to do that? You’re no detective.”
“I’ll find a way.”
Kathryn went to sleep early that night, as soon as the babies were asleep. On the nights that she could stay home and didn’t have to go out to work she was exhausted and glad for the rest. She was twenty-one years old and part of her felt like a kid who didn’t know anything, while another part of her already felt ancient with responsibilities. The rain was peaceful outside her windows and her comforter was warm. When the bedside phone shrilled in her ear she was disoriented at first, and even more so when she looked at the clock and saw that it was one o’clock in the morning.
There was a woman on the phone, a voice Kathryn did not know. “Your mother’s in trouble,” the woman said.
“Who is this?”
“She’s at the Roxbury police station.” And the woman hung up.
Kathryn fumbled for the light and turned it on. She called the Roxbury police station, a number she knew well. “My name is O’Mara,” she said. “My mother is being held there. Sheila O’Mara. Can you tell me what this is about?”
“Hold on.” A pause. “Nobody here with that name,” the cop said.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Kathryn hung up. This was so weird. Who was that woman anyway? Was this some kind of practical joke? She wondered what kind of trouble her passive, law-abiding mother could possibly be i
n. Now she was wide awake. Maybe she should call all the police stations, but the woman had clearly said it was that one. Kathryn put the radio on to soft music and tried to figure out what she should do now, if anything. She knew the one thing she wouldn’t do was sleep. The song ended and there was a news flash.
“A Boston police officer was brutally gunned down tonight outside the Avalon Ballroom. Officer Brendan O’Mara was killed in his car while off duty. The suspect is his own wife. She was taken into custody and brought to the Roxbury police station for questioning. More news later.”
“My God!” Kathryn said, and jumped out of bed.
She dressed and ran upstairs to the neighbors, the Fiorentinos, whom she knew slightly, and leaned on their bell and banged on their door. Finally Mr. Fiorentino appeared, his face crumpled with apprehensiveness and sleep. “Please will you take my kids for a couple of hours,” Kathryn said, “My mother’s in trouble.”
She left her babies with the Fiorentinos and drove as fast as she could to the Roxbury police station. On the way she finally realized, for the first time, that her father was dead, and that she felt nothing about her father’s death; not remorse, not grief, only—if anything—relief. Her mother should have killed him years ago. But the one she was concerned about was her mother.
“That’s O’Mara’s daughter,” one of the cops said. They knew her family, of course. She wondered if the woman who had called was her father’s girlfriend, and if she had known about the murder even before her mother got to jail. Her mother had said she was going to follow them. Just follow them . . . something had obviously gone wrong.
Her mother was sitting in a room, at a desk, surrounded by four people in uniforms. The two men were cops, the two women were police matrons. Her mother looked as if she was in shock. Kathryn felt sick. She stood at the doorway and watched as a cop shoved a paper at her mother to sign a confession; her mother signed, and the matron grabbed it and tore it up.
“Don’t sign anything until you get a lawyer,” the matron said.
“I killed him,” her mother said dully, “and I want to die.”
The cop gave her another piece of paper, and again her mother signed it and the matron tore it up. It was obvious to Kathryn which sides the men and women were on in the case.
“I took his gun with me,” her mother said, “because I was afraid he would kill me. I thought the safety was on. I only wanted to find out who his girlfriend was.”
“Don’t say any more,” the matron said.
“You stalked him,” the cop said. “You hid under the back seat of his car. You shot his head off. There was a woman witness in the car who escaped, and she saw the whole thing.”
Her mother covered her face with her hands then and her shoulders shook. “I want to die,” she said again, but this time she was sobbing. Kathryn knew she meant it. Her mother had killed her father and was suicidal, and the only lawyers she knew handled divorces. Her mother would need someone good.
“Mom, I’ll call Uncle Brian,” she said. She turned to the cops. “You know my uncle, Captain Brian O’Mara, don’t you?” Of course they did, they all knew her uncles, she was just reminding them that she came from strength and authority, that she was one of theirs. “And Captain Patrick O’Mara, and Sergeant Michael O’Mara?” She was pulling as much rank as she could. Her uncles, powerful and feared, were the only ones she could think of who could help. “Don’t sign anything, Mom, until they get you a lawyer,” Kathryn said. “They’ll know what to do.”
But would they do it? Her mother had killed their brother. They would not be able to forgive that so easily and help her—Kathryn was sure of it.
Maybe her uncles, too, would want her mother to die.
Chapter Eighteen
THE FOUR FRIENDS were having their usual weekly dinner at Yellowbird. That winter, the winter of 1995, had been unusually warm, and because tonight was one of those rare evenings with damp and chill and the hint of snow, they had decided to drink red wine instead of white. Kathryn, impatient for dramatic weather, was trying out the designer Eskimo outfit she had bought for a trip to Scandinavia, but after the first glass of wine she started to peel it off. The others were in New York black, a color that went with everything else in your closet and didn’t show the grit that flew through the city air and settled on everything. As always, the conversation came around to the subject of men.
“What is it about us and men?” Felicity asked. “Why do we give them so much control?”
“It’s the social system,” Kathryn said. It was the first sign of anger any of them had ever seen her show. “Women have children to take care of and support, they have to work, they’re at the mercy of men. I would never have gotten married if I didn’t need to. I didn’t love any of my husbands. Well, one.”
“But I give away my own autonomy for love,” Felicity said. “I did it when I was young and I do it now when it has nothing to do with economics. I have no children and I make a big salary.”
“I used to give it away too,” Gara said. “I needed a very strong man, the sense of power that would be on my side, because I felt vulnerable. I thought Carl would save me . . . and actually, in a lot of ways, for a lot of years, he did. I look back and I seem like such an idiot, but love makes idiots of most people. When I met Carl I thought he looked like a lion, the king of the jungle, and I told him so.” She smiled wryly. “The Lion King.”
Felicity gasped. “When I went out with Russell on our first date I told him he was like a king! I did! I thought he was going to save me too. No wonder you and I are friends.”
“I would admit a man was a king,” Eve said, “only if he was a real one, with a country.”
“Right,” Kathryn said, and they all laughed.
“I would never give up my power to anybody,” Eve went on. “Man or woman. My power is what makes me always win.”
They ignored that.
“But Russell fooled me,” Felicity said. “He fooled me on purpose, he wanted to. He was actually a despot.”
“Maybe that was what you wanted,” Gara said.
“I didn’t want it. I was a naive kid. Whatever was wrong I thought could be fixed.”
“When are we going to learn we can’t change anybody?” Kathryn said. “It’s enough trouble just trying to survive.”
“The next person I’m going to try to change is me,” Felicity said. “I’m tired of being miserable.”
“Hear, hear,” they all cheered. But they had heard her say it before.
* * *
Felicity was twenty-five years old now, and she was working in a law firm in New York as she had dreamed she would; she had her own apartment, she had a life of her own. Her firm, Friedland, Jordan and Samm, was small enough to give her a degree of autonomy, she was making decent money, and she was able to work with authors. Her apartment was a one-bedroom in a doorman building on the East Side, and she often gave Sunday brunches or Saturday evening cocktail parties there for the many single friends she had met in the city, both black and white (although more were white), all young, upwardly mobile professionals.
Her college militancy had gone the way of her afro and dashikis. She worked in a white law firm. She lived in a white apartment building, although she had a few black neighbors who were just like her. She wore corporate little suits now, with high heels to show off her good legs, and her hair was long and pulled back for work in a ladylike bun. On weekends, when she went out with her friends or gave parties, she dressed to look sexy. Finding men was not a problem; finding one she would like to see twice was.
She thought about love all the time, although she had very few lovers. Everyone she knew worked harder and longer than they wanted to, went to the gym faithfully after work, went out on pathetic blind dates, and nearly fell asleep in the cab home because they were so tired. Her younger sister Theodora, who was living in Cambridge, had already had her first c
hild of the planned four, and was working too, doing something or other with statistics. It was the era of the over-achiever.
Felicity met Russell Naylor at a cocktail party given to raise money for a black political candidate. He was there with a beautiful young woman. He was older than any of the men Felicity had ever been out with, but not too old; just sophisticated, she thought. He had a presence: the look of a man who enjoyed his success, and also of a tough guy who had come up the hard way, smoothed off the rough edges, and never forgotten his warrior heart. She knew he was a self-made millionaire building contractor because she had heard of him and read about him in the newspapers, but she had never thought of him as a possible romantic interest, just a role model. But now that she had met him she was fascinated. She liked him right away. This was what she wanted—a pillar of the black community with pizzazz.
She watched them carefully. She knew he wasn’t married, so the beautiful woman was just a date, or, at the worst, his girlfriend, although he hadn’t treated her like a girlfriend. Felicity spoke with him for a few minutes and she made sure he knew where she worked . . . just in case there was some chance he liked her.
The next morning at the office she looked him up in Who’s Who and was interested to discover that he had apparently never been married and had no children. She remembered then that Russell Naylor had always been known as quite a ladies’ man. Of course he would be; he was a catch. Why would he want to settle down? She let herself fantasize about him a little.
One reason he would want to settle down, she thought, was his age. He was forty-five. It was time. She was twenty years younger, at the prime of her fertility, innocent enough to be influenced, attractive and intelligent enough for him to show her off. But then her lack of self-confidence took over and she decided he wouldn’t want her anyway. Why would he want her when he could have anybody? She doubted if he would even call.