Something To Be Brave For

by Priscilla Bennett

  “How could you think that? You know I would never—”

  “I stood in the front hall closet, and I watched you go back and forth, upstairs and down, as industrious as a little beaver, which of course is highly ironic, no? And you packed up all your best things, and all of Rose’s – the things that I bought you both, the things paid for with my hands, my skill, my talent! – and loaded them into your expensive luggage. You’ve certainly been busy. I admire you for that; really I do. And I guess the good news is that there doesn’t seem to be another man, unless you’ve been turning tricks to make money.”

  He came slowly around the bed. In a moment I’d be against the wall.

  “It would be a lot more juicy if you had. Mrs. Giraud, wife of the well-known surgeon, selling herself to collect money for her escape.

  “You’ve been planning this for some time, Katie; I don’t think anyone would call your actions impulsive. They’re purely premeditated, aren’t they? Don’t shake your head no. Because from my spot in the closet, of course, I witnessed the most essential part of all.”

  He leaned forward a little and whispered: “The money that you hid in the bookshelves.”

  My heart sank and my lights went out.

  “Poor little girl. Did you really think I thought you’d spent all that money I gave you for Nantucket? Didn’t you think I knew you’d emptied your savings account? And what a clever idea, using those books as a hiding place; I never would have thought of it. Where did you get that idea? Was it in one of those ridiculous movies that you and Gillian love so much? Gillian,” he said with contempt. “And she was so promising, too, just like you. But she gave up all her femininity to become an unsexed suck-up to your father, and now she’s stuck with him and goes home at night to her headshrinker, who she can boss around for the rest of their miserable lives together.”

  “Well, you’re certainly jumping to a lot of conclusions,” I said. “You pathetic son of a bitch.”

  I braced myself.

  “Not conclusions, facts,” he said, and to my surprise he tossed the cord onto the bed. But then he did something that seemed just as bad as yanking it around my neck: he pulled out the train tickets from the lip of the backpack. “Let’s see – Chicago and then San Francisco – that’s a nice trip, and it’s only one way, quelle surprise. Oh, and here’s a child’s ticket. Of course.”

  His voice was growing raspy, the way it always did before he snapped. I watched him slowly tear up my train tickets and toss the pieces in the air, where they scattered down over the bed and floor.

  And then he did something that shocked me much more: he began to tear up the money.

  He ripped up tens, twenties, fifties, hundreds as though they were pieces of scrap paper. He didn’t even take them and keep them; he wanted to destroy forty thousand dollars in front of me, to show me he didn’t care about money and didn’t care about me. That he wanted to rip me to shreds all over again.

  “No!” I shouted, and threw myself on him, going after him with my nails, trying to pull the money out of his hands. He grabbed me by one arm, shook me, then punched me down onto the bed and picked up another handful of bills. Pieces of bills pattered down onto my face like feathers. The room spun lazily, then stopped. Blood was running out of my nose. My life was being torn to bits. Claude continued decimating my money; the air around his hands was like a blizzard. When he was finished, he leaned over me with a last bunch of bills in his fist.

  “Open your mouth,” he said.

  “No.”

  He seized my jaws from underneath with one hand and squeezed hard, painfully forcing my mouth open, and then rammed the wad of paper in. He grabbed me, pulled me upright and off the bed as if I were a doll, then stiff-armed me over to the bedroom window.

  “This time you’ll learn,” he said as he shoved my face up against the glass. “You see the square down there?”

  I looked past the wrought iron fence at the tall elms and down to the marble statue of Aristides at the far end.

  “If you do anything like this again I will throw you right into it. Don’t ever doubt me.”

  I tucked my head down and pushed against him, trying to get my face off the glass, but he was grinding my face into the window. “You’re never going to leave me, Katie, and you’d better get that through your head. I’m doing you a favor; you’re not fit to be a mother, and no one else would want you, anyway.” He pushed harder, and I felt the glass give slightly under the pressure. In terror I pushed back as hard as I could, and then there was a POP! and the window broke apart. Jagged pieces of glass spattered down and smashed against the cobblestone sidewalk two stories below.

  My head was out the window and blades of glass clinging to the glazing encircled my neck. Cold air rushed into my ears and eyes and across my head. I felt a worm of warmth on the top of my head and a little warm stream running down and pooling in my right ear. I spat the wad of money out, but I didn’t dare move.

  Suddenly, Claude released me.

  “No, you’re never leaving me,” he said in a normal tone of voice. “And now I’m leaving you to go operate, to do some actual work instead of wasting my day on all your nonsense – and I expect to see you back to yourself and back to normal by the time I get home for dinner.”

  I heard him crossing the room, then his steps on the stairs, and then the front door opening and closing. With great care I pulled my head back through the broken window, very slowly, so as to avoid slicing my throat.

  I dumbly surveyed the room, the wreckage of my plans, the clothes spilled, the paper, torn tickets, ripped-up currency. My whole life spread out, torn to pieces. I blinked, vaguely aware of feeling warm blood trickling down my cheek, dripping off my chin onto my white shirt. I ran my bloodied fingers across my face, my jaw, and my neck but felt nothing: no gashes, slits. The blood was coming from my nose and my head, and reaching up and probing gently with my fingers in the warm wetness of my hair, I felt the subtle, painful grinding of glass fragments.

  I picked up a tee shirt from the floor and pressed it gently to the top of my head and put my head back and pressed another tee shirt to my nose. After a moment, the room began slowly to tilt, and I sank down to the floor. Slumped in the midst of torn bills and scattered clothing, I began to tremble, then to shake and cry. Pointlessly, with a tee shirt pressed to my nose, I began to gather up bits of currency to see if any of it could be salvaged. Then I just let go and lay down with my cheek on the floorboards. The tears were over and the packing was over, and my dream of escape was over and I needed to rest.

  Then, realizing I was about to pass out, I roused myself. I found strength, pushed up onto my knees, fighting the lethargy that soaked me to the skin, and looked around again: the toppled bag, the shredded bills, the backpack and the clothes – and a strange, surprisingly peaceful sensation came over me: I realized that there was nothing left for me here – nothing left to do, nothing left to lose. It was over.

  My life here was over.

  Claude had killed it.

  I took a few steps to test my balance, and then holding onto the banister I made it down the stairs, one careful step at a time. I walked past Rose’s bag at the front door and walked out onto Lewisburg Square, where Claude had threatened to throw me, and now as I passed it, with the sun shining out of the cloudless sky above, I felt I was in some quaint village in the countryside, far from here, safe from harm. Was this a movie?

  I stopped and looked up: there was the broken window; there was where I used to live. It was so strange to picture it, a life in black and white, someone else’s life.

  sThe cold air rushed into my lungs, and I shivered and walked faster, gaining speed as I walked from Pinckney over to Cedar Street, passing by the Boston Flower Shop where I had never once bought flowers because Claude did all the flower buying. I thought I might go in there sometime. There were so many things I could try. Buying what I wanted, wearing what I liked. Friends. A tender kiss from a tender, loving lover.

  Wh
oops – a little dizziness there. Best pay attention.

  People wearing overcoats and hats were going in and out of the coffee shop around the corner, holding hot coffees in gloved hands, and when the door opened, God, did it smell good. I was parched and hungry. But of course I’d left the house without my coat and here it was the tail end of December, and I was in the street with a bloody tee shirt in either hand.

  Such a beautiful December day!

  A woman coming out opened her eyes wide when she saw me, and cautiously approached. I gave her a little smile and walked on.

  “Honey, can I do anything for you?” she asked, falling alongside.

  “Oh, that’s nice of you to ask, but no, I’m really okay.”

  I felt a little blood trickling down my neck, and I glanced at the blue tie-dyed tee shirt that I’d been using on my scalp and which was now full of blood and I thought, “Well, Dad always said the head bleeds a lot. Not as bad as it looks.”

  “Let me get you to a doctor or call someone for you.”

  “No, I’m all right. My husband put my head through a window. That’s why I look like this. But don’t worry, I’m on my way now. I really am.”

  I walked on up the street and turned right on Grove. One block to go. An old Checker cab pulled up slowly and the driver leaned across the front seat and said, “Hey, lady, can I give you a ride to the hospital?”

  I smiled because his fat cab and handlebar mustache were like relics from the past. “No, thanks, I don’t have any money,” and then I thought: no money.

  Could I survive without money?

  I knew, as certainly as I knew that I was starting to feel the cold, and the pavement was beginning to swish and sway a little beneath my feet, that all I wanted was a life without stuff, without things, without money. It made sense: a life with Rose, nothing more. She and I would be airless, weightless, stuffless. We could drink sunshine and eat air, and at night, if I had no picture books to read to her, I would make up stories about a princess who lived in a magic land far up in the clouds who came down to earth at last and took off her blood-red crown and began to live.

  Well, of course, I’d need something to live on. Who doesn’t?

  The world seemed different to me now – its edges harder, more defined. I stumbled a little as I passed a tire shop, then a drugstore, where I thought I might need to go later for pain medicine and bandages and stuff; but at the moment, what amazed me was that I felt no pain at all.

  I had almost reached my destination. I saw the stainless steel letters of Boston General’s sign as I walked past the yellow barriers marked AMBULANCE ENTRANCE ONLY. Patients in wheelchairs were being picked up or dropped off nearby, and I walked on until I reached the metal canopy with MAIN ENTRANCE painted in white across its front.

  It was so warm inside!

  At reception, a middle-aged woman looked up and said, “You need the emergency room, it’s that way,” and she pointed.

  “I’m Dr. Jack Callahan’s daughter and the wife of Dr. Claude Giraud. I want to call nine-one-one, so may I please have the phone?”

  She stared at me.

  “The phone,” I said.

  She mutely handed me the phone. First I dialed my mother and left a message with her housekeeper that I would not be picking Rose up until the afternoon, and then I dialed 9-1-1.

  The dispatcher asked me what my emergency was, and I said, “My name is Katie Giraud. My husband punched me and put my head through our bedroom window, and – oh, a closed window – and I am at Boston General, and so is he. He is a doctor, Dr. Claude Giraud. I want him arrested. I am bleeding. I will be on the fifth floor.”

  I hung up and told the receptionist I’d be meeting the police on the fifth floor and to please page Dr. Gillian Beckerman and have her meet me there.

  “Okay,” she said. She picked up the phone.

  My mouth was so dry now, I could hardly speak. My hands were sticky with blood. I ran my tongue over my cracked lips and looked down at my white shirt, taking note of the shades of red and purple and brown smeared across it – blood in its various stages of drying and decomposition – and hoped the rest of me didn’t appear as strange and horrifying as, say, the Willem de Kooning that Victoria owned and that I had catalogued, and for which I’d written an elaborate description, emphasizing the painting’s savage brushstrokes. My nose hurt a lot.

  The large, deep hospital elevator was empty. As I pushed the button for five, I hoped the car would go straight up to the fifth floor without stopping – I didn’t want any delays. The button lit up like a lucky number, the doors shuddered to a close, and the elevator began to move.

  More than three years had passed since I’d come in to watch my father operate. Back then I could have filled up the whole operating theater, the whole world, with my happiness and optimism. I remembered the night Claude took me to Tosca, and asked me afterward if I would die for love, and I’d immediately said yes, because I really believed I would give up my life for his love. I valued my own life so little; without him, I believed I had no life at all.

  And I had done just that: given up my life for his love. But now I was going to live again.

  If I didn’t bleed to death first.

  The elevator doors slowly slid aside, and I stepped into the corridor.

  The euphoria and energy I’d felt earlier were rapidly dissipating. The quiet, insulated warmth of the hospital corridor was a thousand miles away from the coffee shop and the wind whipping in the street, the deep blue winter sky, the cabbie with his big mustache and worried eyes. I heard a sticky, sucking sound and looked down. Some of my own blood had spattered down onto my shoes. I turned too quickly, getting a jolt of dizziness for my trouble, and saw a ragged pattern of bloody footprints following me.

  I walked on down the hall toward the operating rooms and had almost reached them when a plump, middle-aged nurse and a young hospital security guard stepped out of the nurses’ station and hustled over to meet me.

  “Honey,” the nurse said. “Where do you think you’re going? You need to go to ER, right now. Come on, we’ll take you down.”

  “Don’t you touch me!” I yanked my arm out of her grip and staggered back against the wall. Just then Gillian and my father rushed out of one of the operating rooms in their green scrubs and hurried toward me. I struggled to stay on my feet.

  “Oh my God, Katie!” Gillian said. “I was just on my way to pick you up when I got the page. What’s happened to you? He did it again, didn’t he? Yes, I can see,” she said, rapidly appraising my condition as she spoke. She turned to the nurse. “Nurse, get me some large gauze pads, antiseptic, and pressure bandages.” She turned back to me, steadying me with her hands on my shoulders. “Look at me – right at me. Okay. Don’t worry, Katie. You’re going to be okay. Now you should sit down.”

  “I don’t want anyone to touch me until after the police see me,” I said. “I don’t want to destroy any evidence. There’s also probably evidence of older injuries. Bruises, marks. You stay away from me,” I said to the security guard, who hitched up his belt and said, “Very good, ma’am.”

  “Thank God you called the police,” said Gillian, and she eased me down and we sat together against the wall. My father stood over us, just staring, white-faced and silent, and I saw something in his eyes I’d never seen before: fear.

  “Hello, Jack,” I said.

  Gillian said, “You’re very brave, Katie. It’ll all be over soon.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t say that,” I said.

  “Say what?”

  “ ‘It’ll all be over soon.’ Jesus, I am not dying.”

  “No, of course you’re not,” she said soothingly, holding my hand. “But you were brave. You are.”

  “I know that,” I said, and some tears came. The last time she’d called me “brave” was when I’d made it through watching my father’s bloody surgery. But that cutting, that bloodletting – that was nothing. Now I had something to be brave for: myself, Rose, our lives
.

  The nurse hurried up with the bandages and antiseptic and Gillian went to work, snapping on gloves and gently taking my bloody tee shirts from me and handing them to the nurse. She then probed my scalp gently, lifting away loose pieces of glass. I wouldn’t let her wipe my face. Other nurses and doctors, and a few patients, had begun to gather, and this seemed finally to animate my father.

  “Katie, what on earth… What happened to you? And what’s this about the police?”

  “Claude put my head through a window. I was running away with Rose to California.”

  “Good heavens, have you lost your mind?” he asked.

  “No, Jack, I haven’t lost my mind. I would have been – ouch, damn it, that hurts – I would’ve been gone by now except Claude discovered I was leaving, and that’s when he punched me and put my head through the window. Oh, and he stuffed money into my mouth.”

  “You must be mistaken,” my father said. “It can’t be.”

  Laughing even a little made the skin of my face and scalp contract and sting. “That’s what you’ve always said,” I told him.

  With Gillian’s help, I got to my feet.

  “I never know what I’m doing, isn’t that right? And if I don’t agree with you, then I’m crazy. I’m either an idiot, or I’m insane. Maybe both: a dumb crazy person.”

  “Katie, that’s not true,” said my father. “Your mother and I have only wanted the best for you. Here, let me have a look, too,” he said, examining my face. “My, my, you’ve had some mishap, clearly; looks like it could have been an automobile accident.”

  “You mean like one out of your heads-through-windshields series?”

  “Oh, not that bad,” he said, as he tilted my head from one side to the other.

  Gillian said quietly, “Nurse, would you take notes? There’s a gash up here on the crown and some pieces of glass, but it’s stopped bleeding, for the most part. Her nose may be broken, and I want a sinus X-ray series. We still need to do a full exam, and not out here in the hallway. There are also scratches, scrapes, and bruising.”