For Better or Worse

by Donna Huston Murray

  "Anything broken? Do you need a hospital?”

  "No! No hospital."

  "What about Caroline? Is she okay?’

  An emphatic nod.

  Gin glanced up at the house.

  “Your husband still here?"

  “Ronnie’ll be right back. He just needed to calm down."

  "Get Caroline and come with me."

  "No! Really, Ms. B. I'm fine. You can go home. I don't need any help."

  Trying to diffuse her mother’s intensity, Chelsea tapped Gin's arm.

  “We'll go,” Chelsea assured Cissie, “but if you need help anytime, you come running, okay? Bobby and I are right here. Grab Caroline and come get us. Promise?"

  Cissie released a ragged breath. “Sure. Sure, thanks.”

  "Come on, Mom," Chelsea tugged at her mother. "Bobby and I can take it from here."

  Gin was close to tears herself, but she got it. Cissie couldn't be forced to do anything she didn't want to do. It was also possible outside interference would make the situation worse.

  "You should get out," the mother in Gin implored anyway. "Go somewhere safe."

  Hiding her face behind one hand, Cissie waved them away with the other.

  Chapter 26

  WORRYING ABOUT Cissie’s injuries kept me awake past 2 A.M. I found it impossible to understand how a man justified hurting anyone, let alone the woman he claimed to love. What kind of perverted worldview permitted him to cross that line?

  I’d been lucky enough to marry a kind and caring man, who, fortunately, stayed that way. Initially, Ronald must have been kind and caring, too; but since his sort of behavior required a woman he could overpower, control, and ultimately abuse, he must have deliberately selected a woman with insecurities he knew he could exploit.

  And what about his daughter? Would Caroline someday become his victim, too? The very thought made my skin burn.

  To comfort myself I fingered Fideaux’s fur as his ribcage gently rose and fell with sleep. Sadly, I knew much of his devotion was rooted in gratitude, for it was quite likely he had also been abused. While I will never understand, nor forgive such cruelty, one thought provided me with a thin hope. Fideaux had found me. With luck Cissie would find a rescuer, too.

  Perhaps she already had someone in mind.

  ***

  I AWOKE the next morning with Fideaux’s head on my foot and pins and needles in my toes. Through the open window I could smell dewy grass and sunshine.

  New day. New perspective. Life was made up of contradictions, I reminded myself. Highs and lows, flowers and children, sickness and Ronald Voights. Since Cissie had rejected my best advice, which she had every right to do, my only option was to back off and mind my own business. But, damn, it was hard.

  At least it was Friday, and I would be busy with Jack. He scarcely fussed anymore when Susan left for work, and my efforts to expose him to new things appeared to be paying off. I especially loved how his eyes sparkled with mischief when he was trying to make me laugh.

  Crossing the Dannehower Bridge toward Norristown, I noticed a wide stripe of jet stream spanning the soft blue sky. It had begun to separate into fluffy white clumps, but no one born after Wilbur and Orville Wright would have mistaken it for a natural cloud. For sure, George Washington would have been intrigued.

  "Jet exhaust," I imagined myself educating Washington’s ghost. "From above it looks black."

  A tilted white eyebrow.

  "From an airplane."

  Blank stare.

  Oh, right. "We have machines now that carry people across the sky like birds. Well, not exactly like birds. The wings are metal and they don't flap."

  Machines?

  Out of deference, I allowed George the last word.

  Now I was ready for a day with a toddler.

  ***

  I TOOK Jack to Produce Junction. Originally a regular grocery store, the gutted building was now open space where customers shunted past help-yourself tables of colorful, prepackaged vegetables. At the wooden checkout tables two vendors swiftly grabbed the rest of what you wanted from bins stacked behind them. Because of the bulk quantities, I hadn't shopped here for a couple of years; but I figured potatoes and onions would keep until I could use them up.

  "And leeks," I decided at the last second. I would make potato/leek soup. "And cilantro," for salsa I added, as the man behind me began to fidget.

  Jack held my hand, but he was itching to run. “No, no. Stay here," I begged. With a second’s head start he would be lost among the many shoppers.

  "Zat?" he asked, pointing.

  “Red peppers,” I answered as I collected my change.

  "Zat?" This time rutabagas.

  "Rutas," he repeated. And so it went all the way out to the car—me carrying my heavy box of vegetables and naming everything at Jack's eye level.

  What I’d really come for was a flat of white impatiens, but that involved another line outside. When that purchase was settled into my trunk, I freed one of the three-inch seedlings from its plastic compartment to show Jack the roots.

  "See these little white things? When it rains, they drink the water and send it up the stem to the leaves and flowers. It's like you drinking with a straw."

  Jack grinned. "Again," he said, so I obliged.

  "Again," he repeated, and so I did. This was the good stuff of our day. That and the cuddling while I read him his favorite picture books—over and over.

  After a lunch of noodles and peas, I began to carry him upstairs for his nap.

  "Oo-ett," he said as he played with a strand of my hair.

  "What's that kiddo?" I'd been daydreaming, a sign that I could use a nap, too.

  "Oo-ett."

  "You're wet? Wow! What a smart boy you are." Throughout the diaper change I reused the word and praised his burgeoning brilliance. I could scarcely wait to tell Susan about the breakthrough.

  Yet when Jack's mother arrived home, twenty minutes late, she wanted to share doctor's-office gossip. Jack woke during a juicy tale about somebody's date gone wrong, so Susan gestured for me to follow her upstairs. A hasty reunion hug and kiss as she finished the story, then the young mother finally fell silent while she changed her son.

  "Tell Mom what you told me," I urged the boy.

  He met my eye but held his tongue.

  "Wet," I whispered.

  A flash of recognition. "Oo-ett" he responded with a giggle.

  No reaction from Mom.

  "Did you hear that?" I hinted.

  "Hear what?"

  "Jack said ‘wet.’ He knows when he needs a new diaper." Now that it had been pointed out, surely Susan would recognize how precocious her child was. Surely she would praise him to the sky and back.

  "Um hum. Mike is talking about moving again. Do you know anything about that?"

  Thrown by the abrupt change of subject, I stepped back and folded my arms across my chest. "About your moving? Why would I know anything?"

  "Oh, I don't know. Mike's been acting strange, and sometimes he asks about you."

  "Asks what about me?"

  "If we talk...what we say when we talk..."

  "But we don't. This is more than we've said to each other in two weeks."

  "Yeah, I know. Sometimes Mike's a little paranoid."

  I thought of the day George and I saw a black Chevy like Mike's driving slowly past the dairy farm and rubbed down the hair on my arms. Only yesterday I got spooked by a sleeve disappearing behind a tree. When I'd indulged my curiosity about the Swenson's various moves, all I'd learned was that they had made peculiar, potentially suspicious, choices. Yet if Mike really was running from something and viewed me as a threat...

  But why on earth would he think that?

  Jack securely on her hip, Susan fixed me with a loaded expression.

  "You're not like, interested in him, are you?"

  "Romantically?" I nearly choked on my laugh. The age difference alone made the thought laughable. "Is that what you mean?"


  Susan smiled, but without mirth. "I didn't think so. I mean, you look really young, but...but what do I know? Stranger things have happened."

  I placed a reassuring hand on the woman's shoulder. "Let's sit down and think this through."

  With Jack in his high chair occupied with a handful of Cheerios, Susan and I settled across from each other at the kitchen table.

  "Mike isn't the least bit interested in me, nor I in him," I stated, because it had to be said. I might have added, 'perish the thought.' "But lately I've felt that someone’s been watching me. Does that sound like Mike to you?"

  Susan rolled the corner of a paper napkin between her fingers. "Maybe. Like I said, he can be a little paranoid."

  The way my pulse raced, I had to work to sound unaffected. "Really?"

  "Yeah, that's why we've moved so much."

  "Because he's paranoid?"

  Susan nodded, and auburn hair bounced against her cheeks. "His ex-wife is a real bitch. He's terrified she'll find us."

  "How come?"

  "Money, of course. He owes her a bunch, and we just don't have it." Susan glanced around the room. "Hard to imagine living any tighter than this."

  Yet many people do, I might have said, but I desperately needed to leave this woman's house before I snatched up her delightful, thoroughly unappreciated son and took him home with me.

  "Oh, look at the time," I remarked to grease my exit.

  I gave Jack's cheek a loving pat and reached for my purse.

  Chapter 27

  FIVE DAYS LATER I returned to my daughter's house, this time for a casual dinner to celebrate Marilyn Alcott's birthday. I’d assembled my good-enough-for company meat loaf at home, a glorified cheeseburger, really—and presently it was in Chelsea's oven along with roasted red potatoes and a something involving corn.

  When all the guests had drinks, Bobby lifted his glass, "To my mother, may she have a happy year and many more."

  Marilyn's hazel eyes beamed at her son while Didi, Will, Eric from next door, and I all clinked glasses and murmured birthday sentiments. Chelsea emerged from the kitchen in time to kiss her mother-in-law and add her best wishes. "Just a couple more minutes on the meat loaf," she said as she sat down.

  Eric turned toward me. “You left a note and some books for Gram the other day,” he said. “That was nice of you.”

  Never happy living with an ill opinion of anyone, I’d visited the hospital with some paperbacks for Maisie hoping to erase my doubts about her grandson. With luck she would be lucid enough to share more details about her fall. For instance, where had Eric been when it happened—upstairs or down?

  Since my agenda hadn’t been completely altruistic, I swallowed a dose of guilt along with a sip of water.

  “Unfortunately, your grandmother was so sound asleep I didn’t get to talk with her. How’s she doing?”

  "Not as good as yesterday." With his lowered brow and stiff demeanor, I couldn’t quite gauge how Eric felt about that.

  I murmured my regret about Maisie’s downturn.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  Again, that little pin prick of distrust, which I forcefully brushed aside. This was a birthday party, after all, not an inquisition.

  After dinner was served, I took the opportunity to ask Chelsea if she'd spoken to Cissie since the incident.

  "I've seen her in the yard with Caroline a couple times,” my daughter replied. “She didn't seem hurt or anything, just unhappy. I can't imagine what it must be like to be her." She made a point of addressing the latter to Will, the psychologist in our midst.

  Compassionate guy that he is, he took the bait. "What's your neighbor’s problem exactly?"

  Chelsea explained, then redirected her sympathy toward Eric. "He knows," she said with a gesture. "Ronald attacked him, too."

  Will’s professional countenance invited honesty, and Eric responded without hesitation. He waved his head in wonder as he said that Ronald had accused him of "being with" his wife.

  "But we just talked," Eric insisted with obvious frustration. "I know it was stupid to go there. I wish to heaven I hadn't, but my grandmother was in trouble, and..."

  "...and you didn't want to be alone." Marilyn patted his hand. "We believe you, darling. Don't blame yourself. Bullies like Ronald Voight will use any excuse to throw their weight around, isn't that right, Will?”

  "Yes, actually, it is," Will agreed. "Abusers are a rather interesting sort. Not at all what most people think." He peered at the bit of potato on the end of his fork then popped it into his mouth.

  I leaned toward him from across the table. "Why aren't abusers like most people think?"

  Will sent a glance around the group. "First, I'll tell you what an abuser is not," he began with practiced timing. "He is not mentally or emotionally ill. He was not necessarily abused as a child, although he may have learned from such an experience. Alcohol doesn't trigger the violence...”

  Marilyn's mouth dropped open. "Then what does?"

  Will contemplated the valance over a window before meeting her eyes. "He simply gives himself permission to lose control."

  "But...?"

  "Why?" Will asked back, gesturing with his fork. "Because the man is entitled, don't you know? His desires are the only ones that count, and everything he does is calculated to make the world deliver the privileged life he is absolutely positive he deserves."

  "That's why he hurts his spouse?"

  Will nodded so hard his sandy hair flopped onto the top of his glasses. "Since he's so superior in every way, anything that goes wrong for him must be her fault. If he loses his job, it was because her nagging distracted him. The car runs out of gas? She didn't fill the tank. He'll even twist her complaints around until he convinces her she’s to blame for them, too."

  We all expressed outrage until Will held up his hand. "And," he continued, "although the problem has nothing to do with his feelings, the woman will go overboard trying to make him feel better about himself. She'll walk on tiptoe to keep from setting him off and worry obsessively about what he'll do next. It's diabolical, really. The abuser has her fixated on meeting his needs first and foremost. Then to obscure his egocentric motives, he deliberately keeps her off-balance."

  "Like how?

  "Large ways and small. He demands dinner promptly at five. Then when it's ready, he goes out to mow the grass. He demands sex whenever he wants; but if she initiates it, he's not interested. Most likely he's cheating, but God forbid if she does. The woman literally can't win."

  I had to whisper over the lump in my throat. "Why does Cissie stay?"

  Will's voice softened. "Because her husband's dramatic apologies and spates of good behavior are extremely convincing. And before you ask, yes, it’s all been calculated to avoid any inconvenience to him.

  "He also goes to great lengths to make sure everybody else sees him as a swell guy. That way, if his wife ever works up the nerve to tell the world what a bastard he is, nobody will believe her."

  To put the topic to rest, Chelsea stood. "Anybody want their dinner reheated?"

  The microwave was employed, the main course consumed. Much to everyone's relief, the conversation traveled far from the minefield of domestic abuse to topics like interest rates and how to grow tomatoes.

  Bobby stuck multi-colored candles—one for each guest rather than for each of his mother's years—into the ice cream cake. Then lights were lowered and "Happy Birthday" sung as he carried it to the table.

  Chelsea and I had been looking forward to everyone else's amazement when they heard Eric Zumstein’s voice; but he simply folded his hands and listened.

  What's that all about? my daughter’s raised eyebrows inquired, and I answered with a shrug.

  When the singing stopped, Bobby instructed everyone to make a wish then choose a candle by putting their ring around it, if they were wearing one. "The person whose candle burns out last gets his or her wish," he explained.

  Marilyn blew out the seven flickering flames, and one
by one the orange wicks blackened. Eric's ringless one held out longest, and the rest of us clapped and cheered over his impending good luck.

  "Don't tell the wish," Marilyn warned, "or it won't come true."

  Eric flicked her an uncomfortable glance. In spite of Will's cautionary "cheating" remark, the young man's desires were transparent. I believed him when he said his friendship with Cissie Voight had been platonic—so far; but how long that would last depended on willpower and prudence, two very unreliable virtues when hormones are involved.

  I tagged Will to help clear the dishes; and when we were alone in the kitchen, I returned to the topic that preyed on my mind.

  "Is it typical for an abuser to withhold sex?" I wondered. Cissie's confidential complaint seemed to be at odds with the behavior he’d described earlier.

  The psychologist nodded as he set a plate in the dishwasher. "I'm afraid so," he said. "It's another power play, another way to assert control and insure the woman's best efforts."

  With my lips in a grim line, I covered a bowl with plastic wrap. "It started when Cissie was pregnant."

  Will nodded again. "Some men have a mental ideal, and when the woman's body no longer matches up..."

  I closed the refrigerator hard. "How do you convince a woman to break away?"

  The psychologist rinsed another dish. "It's easier when the relationship is new," he said. "After a while the pattern becomes so entrenched it's almost as if she's a prisoner."

  "So much for Women's Lib."

  "Preaching to the choir," Will murmured sadly. "Reasonable men got it. The others prefer not to."

  Chapter 28

  AFTER BIDDING FAREWELL to her mother-in-law at the train station Tuesday morning, Chelsea found herself in her front vestibule wondering which way to turn. She considered tackling the wedding presents in the second bedroom, but they could wait awhile. Instead she poured herself some iced tea, picked up the newspaper, and strolled into the backyard.

  Parking herself on the uncomfortable plastic chair the previous owners left behind, Chelsea stretched out her long legs.

  Summer! No classes. No meetings. A giddy laugh burst out of her, and she glanced around self-consciously before realizing she was quite alone. Cissie had been hiding for days, and Eric seemed to be either cleaning out his grandmother's house or visiting her in the hospital.