Something To Be Brave For

by Priscilla Bennett

  My mother put her hands over her ears.

  “I simply won’t hear any more of this.”

  I remembered my father’s hands – so strong, the hands of a healer. How I loved to hold them when I was a girl, his little girl. He could do anything with them. Heal the sick. Cut out the disease. Push death away. Make people do what he wanted. And I remembered the blackthorn stick he kept in his study – a gnarled, tapered length of black hardwood with a knob at one end. So light, but so strong; when you held it, it was as though you could feel its cunning, inflexible will, and the whistle it made as it cut through the air was like the very breath of anger, and I remembered my mother’s cries behind the closed door and how, over time, it began to make sense to me that he used his blackthorn and not his hands because he had to preserve them – the hands of a healer – for the next day’s surgery.

  My mother had walked to the windows overlooking the street.

  “My obstetrician said I had a tipped uterus. And that’s all!”

  “No, Mama, it isn’t.”

  I glanced around the room: high sun-filled windows, beamed ceiling, art on the walls, silk-upholstered sofas and chairs. Wide gleaming solid oak floor, shelves overflowing with books. The whole luxurious panoply of lies.

  I took her arm and led her to the couch.

  “Mom, listen to me now,” I said quietly. “I have to get out, and I need for you and Dad to help me.”

  “Help you? What do you mean?”

  “If I leave Claude, either sooner or later, I’ll need a place to stay, and money,” I said. “I’ll need to have it ready.” I shifted gears mentally. “I want to be able to leave now, before something terrible happens.”

  My mother held her dressing gown closed at her throat, as if she was chilled. I plunged ahead.

  “After the wedding, you and Dad said Claude and I could have some money to put toward our home. We never took it. If you give it to me now, Claude won’t miss it. You could just give it to me in cash.” She began to shake her head vaguely and I rushed ahead. “Listen to me. I want to be able to take Rose away and have a place to go with her where we can start over. I can’t do it without money, Mom, and I don’t have very much of my own. It will take years to get what I need unless you help us.”

  “Oh, Katie,” she said. “I don’t know what to think. I have no say! Your father controls all the money. You’ll have to ask him.”

  She reverted to the placating tone.

  “I believe you that Claude can be temperamental, dear. But he’s an extremely distinguished man. You won’t meet anyone else like that, you know. They are few and far between – an esteemed surgeon who’ll support you and your child, give you everything you could possibly want?”

  For the second time that morning, the skin-prickly feeling of surreality washed over me. Could she really not hear what I was saying? She went on:

  “Goodness, your house is beautiful. Not to mention the house on Nantucket! My friends are always telling me how lucky I am that my daughter married a man like Claude. How lucky I am to have a daughter like you, who married so well.”

  I could picture her at lunch with her friends at some restaurant on Beacon Hill, receiving these “compliments” while picking at a plate of tarragon chicken salad. A successful marriage! A distinguished man! The envy of your friends! One of my mother’s closest friend’s daughter had gone to Miss Porter’s School and Wellesley but was now a lesbian in Seattle, living with her partner and making sculptures out of scrap metal. I had little doubt she was ever proudly touted over chicken salad and chardonnay.

  “You’ve got a child now,” she said. “You’re older, Katie, you’ve been married. Men want younger women, ones who don’t come with the baggage of a previous life.”

  I stared at her, unbelieving. “Really? So I’m a sale item at twenty-four and no other man will have me? Who cares? The last thing I want is another man!” I cried. “Rose and I just want to be safe, either here or somewhere else.”

  “He’s a catch, Claude is,” she said. The placating tone evaporated. “And don’t you forget it. But the main thing that you seem to be forgetting is that as his wife it’s your job to make things work. But instead, you’re trying to run away. You’re being a quitter.”

  “How can you of all people say that? I’ve tried and tried,” I cried. “Tried to be the kind of wife who wouldn’t make him mad – tried to change him and myself. But nothing helps.”

  “Perhaps you need to try harder.”

  My father came down the stairs and into the living room.

  “Well, well, who do we have here?” he said. “Little Rosie with her mother – what a surprise!”

  “Oh, I’m so glad you’re still here, Daddy.” I gave him a tight hug.

  “Why, is everything all right? I wasn’t supposed to be home, but my first case was canceled.” He ruffled Rosie’s hair, and she giggled, clinging to his leg.

  “Katie’s had some sort of spat with Claude, and she wants our help,” my mother said.

  “Really? What’s all this about, Katie?”

  “It’s not a spat. Claude’s been,” – I glanced down at Rose and then lowered my voice. “Claude’s been hurting me, and I want to leave him. I didn’t want to bother you, and I haven’t told anyone else, but I’m afraid. I’ve been hoping he would change, but last night he almost strangled me – look,” I said, showing him the bruising on my neck.

  “Let me see.”

  He pulled out his bifocals. “Not torn or broken… nothing too serious. Swallow. Again. Seems to be just some swelling,” he said as he palpated my windpipe.

  “Daddy, I—”

  “Katie says she wants to take Rose and leave Claude. She says she needs the money we promised her as a wedding present.”

  “Mother, please stop speaking for me What we need—”

  My father sighed. “It was Katie and Claude we promised it to, and if we were to give it to you alone, Katie,” he said, turning to face me, “then it would mean that we agreed with you, that we felt using this money to leave Claude was a rational act. And frankly, from what I’ve heard so far, it just doesn’t sound all that rational to me. For heaven’s sake – we gave Claude his office, don’t you recall that?”

  “Of course, but that’s not—”

  “I’m certainly going to feel relieved when you assure me that you haven’t spoken to anyone else about this. Have you considered counseling? As you know, I’m not a big believer, but I think there’s a time and place to talk things out with a professional, and this just may qualify. Or better yet, have you considered going away for the weekend without Rose? Your mother can watch her. You and Claude could spend some time in Nantucket alone. ‘Restart your marriage’, isn’t that what they say on Oprah? My patients are always telling me the brilliant things that Oprah says.”

  He chuckled. Then he looked at me the way he had when I mentioned his mistake outside the operating room.

  “Well? Is the answer to all these questions no?”

  “You’ve always taken such good care of me, Daddy,” I said. “But now, what about that money? The wedding present money. You said I could have it, and I’ve never asked for it; I barely even remembered it until now.” I couldn’t stop the tears now, and I was furious at myself for crying and more furious at my father’s granite expression. Rose had caught onto the tone of our talk, if not the meaning, and had come over and was clinging to my leg and fussing.

  “If you don’t want to give it to me, just let me borrow it. I’ll pay you back as soon as I can. Daddy, please, I have nowhere else to turn.”

  My mother suddenly took my hand and squeezed it. “Please, Jack,” she said softly. “Maybe… maybe this is the right thing to do.”

  “Forget it,” he said, his voice cold. “The discussion is over. That money was never meant to go to something like this. It was to further your life with Claude, not without him. You’re married to my colleague, an outstanding medical man with a fine mind. He’s like a son to me. Y
ou only had good things to say about Claude until now, and suddenly there are problems. What is it, Katie, postpartum depression?”

  “What? I’m your daughter, Rose is your granddaughter, doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  He shook his head, as if weary of dealing with a simpleton.

  “Of course it does, but the fact is, women get very emotional during and after pregnancy,” he said. “The solution surely isn’t to give or loan you a lot of money or to let you stay here and allow you to dismantle the beautiful life you have with your husband and child. No, I cannot release any money so you can run away from your life. I would not be acting in your best interests, or Claude’s or Rose’s, for that matter, if I did.”

  “Claude’s interests are irrelevant here!”

  He gestured for silence and moved smoothly into the father-knows-best part of the speech.

  “I understand that you want me to get involved, but it wouldn’t be appropriate. This is between the two of you. Remember, there’s no divorce in our family, Katie. Your mother foolishly threatened it a few times during our marriage, but we worked it out, and I know now that she considers those threats to be some of her biggest mistakes. Don’t you, Amelia?”

  He pulled his goose quill toothpick out of his jacket pocket and twisted it between his crooked teeth and looked at my mother.

  “Yes, I do, Jack,” she said in a small defeated voice.

  Her threats? Yes – the end of your being your father’s best little girl at fourteen when they asked you which one you would rather live with, and you said your mother because she looked like she would die if you said otherwise. And now she seems to have died in some respects anyway.

  “Go back to your husband and make it work,” my father said. “Everyone deserves a second chance.” He checked his watch. “Well, I guess I’ll be getting on along to the hospital for my next case – cancer of the parotid – tricky stuff involving the salivary glands. What are you and Rosie up to for the rest of the day?”

  I choked back a sob and pulled Rose against me. “I don’t know. I don’t know! We’ll figure it out as we go,” I said.

  *

  But what did I think I’d figure out? When we left – if we did – what would we live on, and where would we live? Escaping was one thing; surviving was another. The future seemed to stretch out in front of me – a gulf. I had no profession, not even a first real job that could lead to something substantial. But this was make-believe. Claude would never let me go. He’d track me down, claim that I was unbalanced, that I was unfit, and everyone would agree with him, everyone except Gillian.

  And then he’d beat me to a pulp.

  “I know I promised we’d do finger painting at the museum today,” I told Rose. “You can pick your favorite blue and we can make a big sky filled with sun and birds, but first we need to go to the bank. Okay?”

  Rose gazed at me, “Kay.”

  “Maybe someday you’ll be an artist or have a gallery, but right now Mommy needs to get some money, and then we’ll go home and have some lunch.”

  My whole body ached; I needed one of Claude’s Tylenol with codeine. I needed ten of them. I needed to die was how I felt. Then I glanced down at Rose, who looked up at me with a tight, anxious little smile that broke my heart. No, never – I’m here for the long run.

  Was I? I was afraid to be on my own and afraid to go to Gillian. She would be horrified by Claude’s actions, and it wouldn’t stop there. She’d want him in jail, and maybe she’d be right. She’d offer to help, but I was afraid of what her helping me might result in. Between them, Claude and my father could destroy her and her career, never mind what they’d do to me and Rose, so I would never ask, just as I would never ask her for money.

  As we approached the bank, the morning’s events caught up with me; I felt woozy from all my scattered, conflicting thoughts. A gust of wind hit me and my feeling of fear spiked. And then as if a switch had been flipped, I began to think that maybe my parents were right about trying harder to make my marriage work – about not giving up. I could do that here or I could do it—

  Yes! I’d take Rose up to Nantucket early. Give myself time to think things through, work out what I needed to do.

  And get away.

  “How would you like to go to the country with Mommy?” I knelt down. “We could go to the beach and make big sand castles and plant flowers and read books.”

  Rose smiled. “Beach!”

  “Daddy won’t be coming because he has to work, but he could come up later and join us. We can get the house ready and play and do things together.”

  Rose hugged me tightly enough to let me know that she was happy and relieved, and then hung on to let me know she was still a little scared, and my heart cracked. But yes, I thought again. This could work.

  As we walked, I began to organize. I’d keep a journal like the one I was writing to chronicle Rose’s progress, but only write down the worst that had happened and keep track to see if there was a pattern – an explanation for Claude’s behavior. I’d start with last night’s playpen incident. Or no, maybe I should start with last week when Claude shoved me against the stove after I’d cooked a “bad” meal; or three weeks ago when he slammed me into the bathroom wall for… I couldn’t remember what for.

  In any case, there was no harm in taking my money out and keeping it close, just in case I had to escape. I’d need more, but what I had was a good start. I needed to have it on hand. In the middle of the night I could reach for it, and it would be there.

  I withdrew the entire $5,380 from my savings account – money that had been there for years, courtesy of gifts from relatives and pay from summer jobs. I’d planned to use it when I first moved into an apartment with my friends after college, but of course that had never been necessary.

  After we got home, I made our lunch and we ate. Then with my mind still running the money hamster wheel, I took stock: Where would I keep the cash I now had on hand, and the money I intended to get my hands on one way or another?

  In the living room it hit me: the books. On a high shelf sat the eight-volume Comprehensive History of World Art that my parents had given me for a college graduation present. It was the safest place in the world. Claude would never think to pull out one of those books and flip through it. He’d moved far away from any interest in anything aesthetic except the contours of a perfect female nose or the collagen-injected plumpness of a perfect female mouth. Our gallery-browsing days were long over.

  I’d call it Katie’s Rainy Day Fund, no donation too small.

  I slipped the envelope into volume one: Prehistoric to Romanesque.

  8

  Nantucket

  Spring 1997

  Gillian called the day before I left for Nantucket. Though I still saw her from time to time, I wasn’t able to tell her anything truthful anymore. For a long time she had been the one with the impossible schedule; getting together usually had to be on her timetable. But after a while I was the one who could never get together. I feared her finding out what was going on, even as I secretly wanted her to know.

  “Hey, Katie, I really miss you. Can we meet in the afternoon for a movie again soon? Gaslight is playing – you know, where Charles Boyer is trying to drive Ingrid Bergman out of her mind to get her aunt’s jewels.”

  “Yes, and he almost does. Well, darn, we know how it ends!”

  We laughed, and I felt how much I’d missed her company.

  “Thank goodness for Joseph Cotten,” I said. “How do you have time for a movie in the middle of the day? Aren’t you supposed to be incredibly busy?”

  “For you, Katie, I’ll always make time.”

  “I wish I could,” I said, “But I’m leaving tomorrow for Nantucket.”

  “Nantucket? But… it’s only spring, and it must still be cold over there. How come? I’m surprised Claude’s even letting you go,” said Gillian.

  “He’s not thrilled about it, but there are so many thing he wants me to have done before t
he summer season begins.”

  “Like?”

  “Like having the broken pipe in our bathroom fixed, painting the laundry room, adding bookcases in the bedroom, other stuff. Decorating and gardening. It’ll start warming up soon.”

  “Maybe I’ll get a break and come up,” she said. “We can check out the sailing school and maybe even catch a movie at the Starlight.”

  I didn’t answer – it was either yes or no, or another equivocation. And whoever said lying was harder than telling the truth was right.

  “Okay, then,” she said, shifting gears, “there’s something I’ve wanted to ask you, and here goes. Is everything okay with you and Claude?”

  “Why do you ask that?” I said. I felt my heart accelerate. Why was she so persistent? There was nothing she could do to help.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s just that you seem kind of distant. I mean, really, more than kind of. Different from the way you used to be. And now you’re going up to Nantucket this early for the summer?”

  “No, I’m fine,” I said. “Everything is fine. I just want to get away with Rose. We love it on the island, and there’s so much to do – things I couldn’t do last summer because Rose was just a baby. I guess I’m older now, Gillian. I’m a mother,” I added, as if motherhood rendered me more wise than I had been when I was childless and far less able to go see a film in the middle of the day. I would have given anything to go to the movies with Gillian, to sit beside her in a creaky old seat and eat popcorn and not think about my unhappiness.

  “I see… Well, I miss you, and I’m concerned,” she said. “Now listen to me—”

  “Gillian…”

  “No, just listen! I have a colleague who’s a therapist – excellent reputation – and she is kind and supportive. She specializes in women’s issues, and she’ll give you a free consultation. Sometimes talking to a professional is helpful – it gives you a different point of view. I’d like you to see her. Please, just think about it, okay?”

  “Thanks, Gillian. I will think about it, but I don’t have the time right now. And I miss you, too. Listen, I’ve got to go,” I said. “Claude will be coming home soon, and I have to have dinner ready.”