by Abby Weeks
—I’m going to let you get some rest, Henry said. But if you need me, if you need anything at all, you just tell the nurse and she’ll come get me.
—Please don’t feel like you have to stay here because of me.
—Nonsense, Henry said. I’m not going anywhere, Janey. They know me here. I even have an office. If I’m not in the waiting room I’ll be in my office. You tell them to come find me.
She thanked him and watched him leave. It was strange to have someone older and wiser looking out for her. She wasn’t used to that. She’d never had anything like that in her life before.
She tried to sleep. When she couldn’t she flicked on the TV and let an hour or two of daytime talk shows pass the time. Twice, her nurse came by to check on her. The second time, she came with the doctor. The doctor assured her that everything was normal and that they expected her to be fit to leave the following morning. The nurse gave her some documents to sign. She saw that the bill had been fully taken care of by Henry Walden. It was over two thousand dollars! She and Ben had insurance but she doubted it covered places like this. She asked the nurse to bring her a mirror and she examined her face. It wasn’t too bad, just some light bruising like the nurse had said. She felt silly that such a small injury had led to all this fuss. The doctor also told her that the police would want to ask her a few questions. Her injury appeared to have been caused by an assault, possibly a domestic dispute, and the hospital had an obligation to notify the police. He told her that she should think about what she wanted to say.
She wondered what he’d meant by that. She supposed most women who came in with their faces bashed in by their husbands weren’t ready to tell the police who’d done it. Anyone woman was going to make that admission would want to give it some thought first.
It was just as well, because when the policeman came and asked her about the injury she told him she’d fallen before getting into the car. The policeman was overweight and friendly, a man in his thirties with a beard and prematurely graying sideburns.
—You’re sure it was a fall?
—Yes, officer.
—No one assaulted you?
—No.
—Who was in the vehicle with you before you became unconscious?
—My husband, Ben Carver.
—And why didn’t he seek medical attention for you?
—He must not have realized how badly I was hurt.
—Janey, the police officer said. Are you sure that’s what happened? We’re here to help.
Janey took a moment to think. She felt like telling the policeman everything. She felt she could trust him. She couldn’t really be in a worse situation with Ben as it was. If she was going to do something about her situation, get her life straightened out and move forward, she knew she would have to talk to someone in authority, sooner or later.
But she couldn’t do it yet. It wasn’t that she was afraid, it was that her marriage still meant too much to her. It had rapidly become an unhealthy relationship, a deeply troubled emotional place for both her and Ben, but it was still a marriage, and that had to mean something. If people let their marriages fall apart simply because things were difficult, life would be chaos. Certainly there’d been indiscretions, Ben’s affair, Suzy’s fooling around with her neighbor, the whole swinging incident with Luke, but their marriage was still sacred, still legally binding, and still valid, as far as she was concerned.
—I have nothing more to say, she said at last to the police officer.
He looked at her gravely before scribbling something in his notebook.
When he finally left, Janey burst into tears. She’d been so close to telling him what had happened. Ben had punched her unconscious and the police ought to know about it, she knew that. But she wasn’t ready.
II
AT AROUND FOUR IN THE afternoon, after watching several hours of daytime television and making small talk with the nurses, Janey asked her doctor if she could leave. She knew they wanted to keep her a little longer, and she actually didn’t mind being there. They were taking good care of her. But Ben wasn’t answering his phone and she didn’t know how she could get a hold of him other than by going to his office. She hoped Henry wouldn’t be upset with her for leaving early. He’d been so generous in arranging this treatment for her and she didn’t want to offend him. But she didn’t feel she could just lay in bed without getting in touch with Ben.
—I can’t keep you here, the doctor said, but I’d rather you stayed the night for monitoring.
—I understand, but I have urgent family business to attend to, Janey said. Would it be dangerous for me to leave?
—I don’t think so, the doctor said. Keeping you would only be a precaution.
—Ok. I want to leave. I’m sorry, I know you’re only looking out for my health but I have issues to take care of.
The doctor nodded and signed off on the paperwork. The nurse brought Janey’s clothes to her from a cabinet. Looking at the black dress and lingerie felt strange. She felt like those clothes belonged to a different Janey. It was a little ridiculous to be getting into that glitzy evening wear after all that had happened. She didn’t feel at all glitzy any more.
She said to the nurse, —Could you tell Mr. Walden I’d like to speak to him.
The nurse smiled faintly and left. When she got back, Janey was dressed in the heels and black dress she’d been wearing the night before. She felt utterly out of place. She was looking at herself in the mirror, gently touching the light bruising around her eye, when she heard Henry clear his throat. He was standing in the doorway.
—Come in, she said to him.
—They tell me you’ve been discharged.
—I don’t want to appear ungrateful, Janey said. It’s just, I can’t lie here any more and wonder what Ben’s thinking. I need to speak to him. I need to resolve this issue and find out where I stand with him. The uncertainty is driving me nuts.
—Have you tried calling him?
—A hundred times. He won’t answer.
—What about his office?
Janey thought about Suzy answering the office phone and shook her head.
—I’ve got a feeling he wouldn’t get any message I left for him.
Henry nodded.
—Well I guess you have to do what you have to do, he said.
—Thank you for understanding.
—Just promise me you’ll be careful, Janey. He left you in a bad way this morning. You could have had him arrested.
—I know, she said.
Henry walked her down to the front entrance of the hotel and hailed her a cab. He even opened the door for her and spoke to the driver. Janey saw him hand the cab driver a fifty dollar bill before letting them go. He really did seem to want to take care of her. It was strange, she thought. She’d never known anyone like that before. She wondered what it was about him that made her feel so safe and protected. Was it his age? He was about the age her father would have been. Or the fact that he was so wealthy? She wasn’t sure. The only thing she knew was that she was grateful for his friendship. She didn’t think she’d be able to get through this difficult period in her life without him.
Janey felt nervous as the cab pulled up outside the offices of Bauer and Hanson. It was a small firm, smaller than what she was hoping Ben would find in Albany, but it was still good. They handled fairly high value work, by Troy standards, and dealt with some pretty important clients.
The firm’s offices were located in an old brownstone on Second Street, not far from her old apartment on Ferry Street. She took a deep breath and tried to control her nerves as she stepped out of the cab and climbed the steps to the front door. The door was glass. Janey looked in through it to the reception. She’d only been there a handful of times before. She could see the back of a computer screen on the front desk but no one was there. She went in and closed the door behind her. There was a small electronic bell that chimed as she entered. The sound startled her.
In an instant, Suzy emer
ged from a room opening onto the reception. When she saw Janey standing there in front of her she froze. She couldn’t have looked more troubled if she’d come out to find a dead animal in the room.
—You? Suzy said, doing nothing to hide the surprise in her voice.
It was as if she hadn’t expected Janey to show her face.
—I want to see Ben, Janey said.
—He’s not here.
—Just call him for me, Suzy. I’m not here to fight with you.
Suzy didn’t move a muscle. She just stood at the entrance to the reception, staring at Janey like she was an intruder in the office. Janey wasn’t sure why Suzy felt such hostility toward her. She was the swinger! She couldn’t be upset with her for sleeping with Luke. It must have been guilt, Janey realized. Suzy must have felt guilty for sleeping with Ben even though he hadn’t told her. That wasn’t swinging, that was cheating.
—Call Ben right now or I’m calling the police, Janey said. They want to know what happened to me this morning and I’m beginning to feel like telling them.
Suzy stared at her for another minute before letting out an exaggerated sigh.
—Whatever, she said, and shook a curl from her forehead.
Suzy pressed a button on the phone on her desk. She must have been talking to Ben. The phone was cordless and Suzy gave Janey a malicious look before taking the phone into the back room to have a little privacy. It was as if she was staking her territory, showing Janey who was in charge of Ben, who controlled access to him.
Janey’s heart was pounding. It had taken a lot out of her to face Suzy like this, on her turf, and she wasn’t sure she had the strength now to face Ben too. She waited while Suzy spoke in hushed tones into the phone in the other room. Then she came back into the reception.
—She’s right here, Suzy was saying. I think she’s expecting you to see her.
Suzy looked up at Janey and acted like she was looking right through her. She spoke to Ben with great familiarity, as if Janey’s wanting to see him was in some way laughable.
—I know, but I can’t just turn her away.
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Then Suzy nodded as if she’d heard the message she’d been wanting to hear.
—Great, she said. I’ll bring her right up.
Suzy led Janey down a corridor and up a staircase to the second floor. The building had been a home in former times and still felt like one. The lawyers were all spread out around the house’s numerous rooms. It wasn’t open like a modern office. Plenty of opportunity, Janey thought, for Ben and Suzy to get up to mischief in private whenever they felt like it.
Suzy brought Janey to a door and knocked.
Ben’s voice came from inside the room. —Come in.
Suzy didn’t open the door. She went back down the hallway and left Janey where she was. Janey felt incredibly strange as she opened the office door. She was entering her own husband’s office but she felt like she had come to see a complete stranger. She knew that this was the very office where Ben had been screwing Suzy for months. It was like entering Ben’s second home, as if he had an entirely separate life here that didn’t involve her and didn’t welcome her.
Ben was sitting in his chair behind his desk and he didn’t get up to greet Janey. There were a couple of empty coffee cups on the desk, a mess of papers, a half-eaten sandwich. Ben had been typing something when Janey entered and after looking up at her briefly, he looked back at his computer screen and continued typing. Janey wondered if he was he going to ignore her. That would certainly be one way of dealing with the mess they were in.
—Well? she said.
Ben looked up from the screen as if she were disturbing something very important.
—Well, what? he said.
He looked angry. He also seemed to have aged in the past few weeks. She looked at him closely, taking in all the changes that she was noticing in her husband’s face, and he looked away from her.
—Don’t you want to know where I’ve been? she said.
Ben looked at her again. She knew that the bruising on her face wasn’t very bad. She didn’t look like someone who’d just been discharged from hospital. If it wasn’t for Henry Walden, though, who knew how much harm that concussion would have done her? She’d have had to sleep it off in the car in the driveway and deal with any complications by herself.
—I’ve been in the hospital, Ben.
That surprised him. She could tell by the look that flashed across his face that he’d been afraid of something like that. But what did he expect? He’d abandoned an unconscious woman.
—That’s right. I had a concussion. When you left me in the car I was unconscious. That’s serious, Ben. It’s very serious. They wanted to keep me overnight.
—Did they ask you what happened?
—Yes. Of course they did. The police spoke to me. They said my injury fit the profile of domestic violence.
—What did you tell them?
It was typical Ben. He wasn’t concerned about her at all, just about himself. He hadn’t even apologized for knocking her out. All he wanted to know was whether she’d told the police what had happened.
—I didn’t tell them anything. I said I fell.
—Good.
—Good? Don’t you have anything else to say, Ben? Are you sorry.
Ben breathed in deeply before speaking.
—Look. Obviously you shouldn’t have been in the hospital. It’s just typical, female overreacting. The only thing wrong with you was that you’d spent the entire night whoring it up with Luke. You asked for it. I can still see the look on Luke’s face when he came out of that hotel room. You’re a slut, Janey, and you had it coming.
Janey couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Ben had put her in hospital. He’d been the one who’d arranged the swinging session with Luke and Suzy. It had all been his doing. She’d had no control over the situation at all. She’d thought he was going to apologize to her, but all he was doing was blaming her for everything.
—I can’t believe this, she said at last. I don’t even know who you are anymore, Ben.
—I’ll tell you who I am, he said. I’m the guy who’s about to become the youngest ever partner at Bauer and Hanson. I spoke to the other partners this morning.
—While I was in the hospital?
—They said it’s all good to go. If this deal comes through, fifty grand a month, I’m going to be made a full equity partner. That means big things for me and I won’t let you jeopardize it with your slutty ways. I’m going to get you on a leash and keep you on it.
—Ben! What are you saying?
—Shut up and listen. None of this is about you anymore. It’s about me. It’s great for me. I’m going to finally have what I deserve and I won’t have to put up with your shit any longer. You won’t be able to run around and make a fool of me ever again. I’m going to put you in your place.
—Like you did today when you knocked me out.
A mean smile slid across Ben’s face then. He looked so different from the man Janey thought she knew that she honestly couldn’t even recognize him anymore.
—Exactly like that, he said.
Janey was shaking her head. She couldn’t believe how Ben was acting. She couldn’t believe that this was the man she’d been married to for five years. She’d thought she knew him. She’d been wrong. Things had come too far for her to go on. She had to get away from him. She knew that now. There would be no saving this relationship.
—Come over here, Ben said to her.
There was a harshness in his voice, a gravelly roughness that made her obey him. She was afraid not to. She came over to his desk and stood in front of it.
—Look at you, Ben said. Still dressed utterly like a slut. Have you even washed Luke out of your cunt yet?
Janey didn’t think about the fact that Luke hadn’t used her cunt. She was too frightened by the anger in Ben’s voice to concentrate on anything else. She stood straight and still by the des
k and didn’t move when Ben stood up from his seat.
—You’re lucky all I did was knock you out, Ben said. Next time you might not be so lucky.
Ben was standing by her side, intimidating her with his very presence. He obviously felt strong and secure in this setting. This was his real home, this office, and he’d just made partner. He felt like a king here. This was where he was powerful and dominant and where she was the weaker one. This was the world he controlled and she’d walked right into it.
He stepped around her and went to the door of the office. There was a key in the lock, a key that Janey imagined him using when he fucked Suzy, and he turned it. The lock clicked.
He came back over to her. Before she could fully grasp what was happening she felt his large hand on the small of her back, pushing her toward the desk roughly.
—Ben, what are you doing?
—Shut up and bend over, Ben said.
—No, she said. Ben. Stop it.
She resisted the pressure of his hand on her back. He was trying to force her to bend over the desk. She wasn’t going to let him do this to her. She wasn’t going to allow herself to be reduced to this. He was out of control, off the rails, and if he wasn’t careful he was going to end up in trouble soon. The police were already talking to her.
—Bend over, he said again, more forcefully than the last time.
—Ben, think. What are you doing? I’ll tell the police.
Janey was crying. She was crying for herself but also for Ben, for the man he’d become. It seemed things had gone so far wrong for the two of them. She didn’t know how they’d arrived at this point.
She could hear Ben opening the belt on his pants and felt them fall to the ground around his ankles. He was pressed up against her back. He put his full weight on her back, forcing her to bend over the top of the desk. She gritted her teeth. How was this happening? How had things gotten so violent, so ugly.