by Joy Fielding
It was answered after three rings.
"Hello?"
"Beth”
"No, it's Lisa. Is this Jill?"
"Yes. How are you, Lisa? How's your mother?"
"My mother's just fine, thank you. It's the rest of us that are falling apart."
"Oh, Lisa—"
"I take it you heard the news about her confession."
"Yes."
"And what she's saying about my father."
"Yes."
"Well—what do you think?" There was a slight tinge of hysteria beneath the young woman's voice.
"I—I don't know what to think."
The girl's voice went suddenly very low and quiet, as if she did not want to be overheard. "She's saying that he beat her, hurt her, and abused her, ever since they got married. She's saying that my father was a maniac. A monster that had her in constant fear of her life. Jill," she pleaded passionately, "it's impossible! I lived here in this house for nineteen years. How could I possibly live under the same roof as a monster and not recognize him for what he was? How could any of us grow up here and not have been aware of what was going on, if even a tenth of what she's saying is true? It's impossible. Three kids were brought up here. None of us witnessed anything she's claiming took place! I never heard one cry in the night, never saw my mother covered with bruises. Nothing. All I saw was a warm and loving husband and father who never even spanked us when we were bad. And let me tell you, there were times when we were really rotten. He never even lost his temper with us! God, Jill, what she's saying is absolutely impossible!"
“Is it easier for you to accept that your mother is lying?" Jill asked.
The cry was one of pure anguish. "No!" the girl despaired. "I don't know why she's saying these things unless—"
"Unless she's crazy," Jill said quietly.
"She has to be crazy," Lisa pressed. "There's no other explanation. I know my parents. My father was no more capable of beating my mother than—" She broke off abruptly.
"Then she was of killing him," Jill said, finishing the sentence.
"Unless she was crazy," Lisa concluded tearfully. "And I just can't believe that she's crazy! I don't know. You live with people, you think you know them, think that you know everything about them, and then you find out that you don't know a goddamn thing! Nothing! Zero! Zilch! And what does that say about you? About your life?"
"What does your mother say?" Jill asked.
"Why don't you ask her?" Lisa said numbly. "She just walked in the room."
Jill heard the phone being transferred. "Jill?" Beth's voice inquired.
"I didn't realize before how much you sound like Lisa," Jill told her.
"I guess we do." Jill could feel Beth smiling. "How are you?"
Jill laughed. "Me? I'm all right. How are you?"
"Never better," Beth answered. "But the fur's really flying, I'll bet."
"You do have a way about you."
"At least I gave you some advance warning."
"Thanks a lot."
Both women chuckled ruefully. "Well," Beth began, "what do you think? Am I crazy? Or am I lying?"
Jill could feel Beth's eyes directly on hers. "Why does my gut tell me you're neither?" she asked.
Beth's answer was immediate. "Because you're my friend," she said.
"I'd like to listen if you feel like talking," Jill offered.
"How about tonight?" The swiftness of the invitation caught Jill by surprise. "If you're busy, of course, we can make it some other time. It doesn't have to be tonight."
Jill took a second to sift through her thoughts. David would be working late. He wouldn't be home before ten. There was no reason to stay home except for her fear. And what was she so afraid of? Whatever Beth had to say couldn't hurt her. "Tonight's fine," Jill said.
Chapter 21
The front door of the Weatherby house was already open when Jill pulled her gray Volvo into the driveway. She climbed out of the car, pulling her sweater around her shoulders. In the last week, a chill had abruptly descended on the city like an unwanted house guest, suitcase firmly in hand, prepared for a lengthy visit. Jill ran up the walkway to the front entrance. Beth stood waiting for her just inside the doorway.
"God, I’m glad to see you," Beth said, her arms reaching out to surround Jill.
Jill kissed Beth's cheek. "You look fine," she told her.
"Every time I tell someone I feel fine, they get that peculiar look in their eyes like that's definitely not what Tm supposed to say. Anyway, come on in." Jill entered the front hallway as Beth closed the door behind her. "Lisa's in the living room waiting. She's made some tea." Beth winked conspiratorially. "Tea must be the Wasp answer to chicken soup. One sip and all your problems go away."
"Wouldn't that be nice?"
"How's David?" Beth asked, leading Jill to the living room, where Lisa immediately rose to greet her.
"He's working late. Hi, Lisa. How are you doing?"
"Okay," the girl shuffled.
“I understand you made us some tea." Lisa nodded. "I'd love a cup."
Lisa moved immediately to the antique coffee table where she'd set up the tea service. "How do you take it?"
"Black. I'm trying to diet."
"Good God, what for” Beth asked.
"Oh, you are a friend," Jill laughed. Lisa handed her a cup of tea.
"Mom?"
"Sure. Milk and sugar, sweetie."
A minute later, they were all sitting down in much the same positions they had occupied the previous week—Jill and Beth on the sofa, Lisa on the chair across from them. Do I look as nervous as Lisa does? Jill wondered, trying to concentrate on Beth.
"I told Lisa that you were coming over tonight to listen to my version of Life with Father. She's heard most of it before but she insists she wants to hear it again. Certainly she hasn't heard it in the kind of detail I'm about to tell you. I wanted to spare her." She paused. "But I've been doing that all her life. And she keeps telling me that she's a big girl now, so I guess it's time she heard the whole gruesome story." She looked around. "Brian is upstairs. He doesn't want to listen to any of this. He prefers to believe I'm crazy." She looked back at Jill. "You're sure about this now?" she asked. "You really want to know?"
"I want to know," Jill replied.
"I'll start right at the beginning, twenty-eight years ago when I first met Al," Beth Weatherby began. "Some of this you've already heard, Jill. You'll have to excuse me if I repeat myself, but I find it helps to keep things in pretty strict order, to incorporate all the little trivial details." She paused, taking a sip of her tea and then returning the cup to her lap. "I was very young when we got married, as you already know. I had just turned eighteen. Al was twelve years older.
We met at a bank. I was a teller. He was a customer. He used to come in once or twice a week, always very nattily attired. I thought so anyway. I noticed him right away. He was so friendly to everybody. Always smiling. Everybody liked him. That never changed. Everybody always liked Al." She stopped, taking a deep breath. "I liked him, too. I used to sneak smiles over in his direction when I thought he wasn't looking, but one day he turned around and caught me at k, and from that time on, he always came to my window.
"I was crazy about him. Right from the beginning. He was just so appealing, I thought. And, of course, he was older. And a lawyer. God, I was so impressed when he told me that. And he seemed to be interested in me. That was the really amazing part of the whole thing. Me—who'd never even finished high school. AI was always ashamed of my education, or lack of it, but my family needed the money and working seemed more important than school at the time. After we got married, I thought I could go back to school, but the babies came along so fast and Al—well, we told everyone that I'd gone to school part-time when the children were very small, till I finally got my B.A. It was what Al wanted. He didn't want anyone to think I was stupid, and I wanted him to be happy, and since it seemed so important to him, I went along with it. But I always
worried about it. I was afraid somebody would ask one too many questions that I wouldn't be able to answer, and I'd be uncovered—a fraud with barely a high school education. So, I made it a point to read just about every book that I could get my hands on, and I kept myself well informed about current affairs. Anyway—" She paused, knowing she had jumped too far ahead of herself. "We started going out together," she began again, returning to the beginning of her story. "I couldn't believe I was so lucky. The only one who wasn't happy about any of it was my mother. When we got married, she was very upset. When she died, Al wouldn't even let me go to her funeral! My brothers haven't spoken to me since. Not even now.
“I don't know. Maybe she knew. Maybe she sensed the violence, the cruelty inside him. Me—all I saw was this cute guy, full of confidence, always happy, even-tempered and easygoing. Wow! So much for first impressions.
"We got married. It was a small wedding. My family didn't come. Al had no family left. A few of his old school friends were our witnesses. Afterward, we went out for dinner. Nowhere fancy. I remember I was surprised because I'd figured Al would go all out. But it didn't matter because I was Mrs. Alan Weatherby and I was thrilled. It didn't matter about my family or the restaurant or even that we weren't going to have a honeymoon. I was married to the man of my dreams, as we used to say, and that's all that was important.
'The violence started on our wedding night.
"I was a virgin, of course. I'd hardly even dated before Al. But he was the one who kept insisting we wait until after we got married. I didn't care. I would've done anything he asked. He wanted to wait, so we waited. I don't know what I was expecting, but I guess I was like any other young girl. I thought it might hurt a little, but that mostly it would be wonderful. We'd hug and kiss a lot and he'd be gentle and understanding, and very loving. But he wasn't any of those things. And there was no hugging or kissing or even the slightest show of tenderness. It was awful. It was like I was in bed with a complete stranger. He was so different than he'd been even an hour before. He didn't smile. He wasn't tender. He was rough, even mean. He kept pinching me, hurting me, and when I'd try to squirm out of his grasp, he'd just do it some more. Harder. There was no tenderness. He just pushed into me until he was finished, and then when he was through, he turned me over and spanked me like a little girl. Hard, ugly slaps. They hurt and I cried, trying to get away from him. That made him angrier, so he twisted my arm until I thought he'd break it. When I pleaded with him to tell me why he was doing these things, he screamed that I'd lied to him, that it was obvious I'd been with a lot of guys. I tried to reason with him. His answer was a slap across the face. I didn't know what to do! I felt—I really felt—like it was all my fault that it was happening. That somehow I had brought it on myself. I started to apologize. I was always the one who apologized. It got to be something of a ritual.
"Every time we made love—funny term—he would strike me. At first it always took the form of a spanking. He'd use his hands. Gradually, he advanced to hairbrushes and then belts. After we had the children and they were old enough to recognize their mother's cries, he'd put a gag in my mouth, tie my hands behind me. He was always very careful to make sure he'd hit me where the bruises wouldn't show. Unless he could make it seem like an accident, of course. He was very good at arranging accidents. I became 'accident-prone,' as they say. I was forever walking into things, burning myself. I was usually sporting one bruise or another somewhere, but people don't remember that now. I mean, everyone has an occasional bruise. Most of them, you can cover with clothing. If you have to be somewhere, like an exercise class," she said, looking directly at Jill, "you show up already properly uniformed. That way there are no questions asked that you can't answer? Anyway, I did such a good job of joking away any mysterious bruises that did turn up, that I got to be a bit of a joke around Weatherby, Ross for a while. What happened to your leg? Someone would ask. Oh, you know me, I'd answer merrily. I tripped again.
"I tripped over Al's outstretched foot; I burned my fingers when he held my hand down over the toaster; I cut my hand when my husband ran a knife across it after I missed a grand slam one night at bridge—"
Jill gasped, lowering her head in shame. Somehow, she had always known. Her fear had been that she would hear these exact words and know them to be true.
"When I found out I was pregnant with Brian," Beth continued, "I got very excited. God knows why. Maybe I thought it would calm Al down, give him the son I assumed he wanted. I guess I also thought the beatings would stop. He wouldn't hurt a pregnant woman. He wouldn't hurt his baby.
"The worst beating I ever got was the night I told him I was pregnant. He went into a rage. I don't even remember the things he said. Just the blows. Most of them to my stomach. He even threw me down a flight of stairs as a sort of grand finale. I really thought he was going to kill me that night. I think I hoped he would.
"I don't know how Brian survived that pregnancy. Somehow, we both did, even though the beatings kept up as fierce as ever. A few years later, Lisa was born. Five years after that, Michael came along. I lost a few in between. Altogether I had four miscarriages.
"Now the story gets a little monotonous. Twenty-seven years of abuse is twenty-seven years of it, and what you've heard is pretty much how it continues. Al’s business began to grow. He became extremely successful, just the way he always said he would. We moved into increasingly bigger homes each year. Everyone thought he was some sort of miracle worker; they thought I was the luckiest woman alive.
"That part always amazed me about him. That he could be Dr. Jekyll one minute and Mr. Hyde the next. The nicest man you'd ever want to meet in public. I knew how much everybody adored him; I remember how much I’d adored him. He was so strong—you wouldn't have believed how strong he was, being so slight. But he lifted weights, you know. It made him very strong." She stopped short, and laughed abruptly. "That's what it all boils down to. The root of all our problems, all our fears. The fact that men are simply physically more powerful than we are. Even the weakest man has little trouble pinning down the strongest of women. And that's where all the injustices start and where they lie. Equal pay, better jobs, equal rights—all of it, everything women are fighting for—what we're really fighting against is sheer masculine strength. Everything else springs from that." Beth cleared her throat and returned without further digression to her original train of thought.
"It got so that I always dreaded whenever Al would be nice to me in public. The nicer he was, the worse the beating would be when I got home. The more solicitous he was, the meaner he would be later on. You remember how he laughed about that chain letter I sent out? Well, he didn't think it was so funny in private. No, not funny at all.
"I got a real working over for that one. He wouldn't let me have any friends—you were the only real friend I had, Jill. I could relate to you instantly. It wasn't like we had to see each other a lot or speak to each other every day; we always seemed to pick up where we left off. Al couldn't do anything to stop that. And I think he sensed it would be dangerous to try.
"I can't begin to tell you what it was like all those years the kids were at home, the kind of fear I lived in that they'd find out what was going on, that he'd stop being satisfied with just beating me and turn on them. I never uttered a word against him all those years. I was desperate to protect them. I never so much as disagreed with Al in front of them. If I ever did, you can just imagine how I would have paid for it later. I centered my life around my husband, and so, of course, that's what they remember now. Why Lisa and Brian are having such a hard time believing the truth." She stared at her daughter's tear-streaked face. "I'm sure Lisa told you, Jill—her parents never disagreed, let alone had the kind of normal fights all married couples have. And she's right. I never dared disagree—our fights were never normal." Beth paused, for an instant lost in thought. "Except Michael," she said. "I've always suspected Michael knew something about what went on. I don't know what. I’m not sure I’m right. But I always wond
ered if that wasn't at least part of the reason he left school and joined that group—” She cut herself off abruptly.
“It was a mixed blessing when all the kids were finally gone, I’d encouraged them all to get out of Chicago, quietly, of course, without Al's knowledge. He'd have killed me if he'd found out. But I wanted them as far away from him as possible. I wanted them out of this house. At least I didn't have to worry about them anymore. Of course, it gave Al a freer hand, so to speak. He didn't have to time his outbursts anymore. He was like a teenager who'd had his curfew lifted. It was open season at the Weathersby’s'."
Jill opened her mouth to speak. Her words came out of Beth's mouth instead. 'You're going to ask me why I didn't leave him, I know," she said. Jill nodded. “Everyone asks that. It's a perfectly natural question. God knows I asked myself that a hundred times. Maybe only another woman who's lived through that kind of terror can understand. But you have to remember a few things—first, I was so young when we got married, and so confused. I thought the sun rose and set around that man. In the beginning, I thought maybe that's how all marriages were. That women accepted abuse as a natural course of events. I thought sex was like that for everyone. And I had so much pride! How could I admit my mother had been right? How could I go home after all the fuss I'd made? He swore he'd find me anyway, if I ever tried to leave. Find me and kill me. By that time, I was absolutely terrified of the man!