My father gave her a dark look, then ran his fingers across my face so gently it could have been mistaken for a loving gesture, and who knows – maybe it was.
“No real harm done,” he said. “Lots of blood, of course, that’s typical of a head wound, but now that’s stopped; a few stitches and you’ll be fine.” His tone shifted and he said, “I just can’t believe Claude would do anything to hurt you, let alone something like this. I just can’t.”
The rage I felt well up was almost, but not quite, beaten down by the fatigue that was overtaking me.
“Dad, look at me. Look at me and tell me how else you think this could have happened,” I said. “It wasn’t a car accident; my face didn’t go through a windshield. I didn’t brain myself with a rolling pin. Why would I lie, Dad? Remember when I came to you and asked for help when Claude was beating me, and you said it was my responsibility to make my marriage work, and if it wasn’t working, I was doing something wrong and should fix it?”
“Steady,” Gillian said. “Stay steady, now.”
“Well, I tried, over and over, Dad, and this is the result. So look at me. I’m lucky to be alive. I’m bloodied and beaten, and you really can’t believe it?”
He didn’t reply but backed slowly away.
Gillian and I turned to the unmistakable sounds of creaking leather and the gentle clink of police belt implements. Two officers approached and, seeing our group, knew the call was mine. They stopped in front of us.
“I’m Officer Timmins,” one of them said, “and this is Officer Burns.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” I said.
“Are you Katie Giraud?” Timmins asked.
“Yes, I am.”
“We’re responding to your complaint. Did you call nine-one-one from this hospital?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Yes, she did,” the security guard said.
“What complaint is this?” my father asked, upright again and imperious.
“And who might you be, sir?” Officer Burns asked, taking out his black leather pad and a pen.
“I’m Dr. Jack Callahan, head of plastic and reconstructive surgery, and I’m also this young lady’s father,” he said. He turned toward me and said, “Katie, surely there must be another way of handling this. Even if… It’s a private affair, a family matter. I don’t think you realize what you’re doing. This kind of thing,” – he let out a kind of dreadful chuckle – “it’ll be all over the papers. You don’t want to be responsible for possibly ruining your husband’s career and reputation. He’s the father of your child.”
“Claude’s behavior isn’t my fault or my responsibility. Jesus, you really just can’t…” My strength was rapidly running down. I turned to the policemen. “I want my husband charged, and I want him arrested.”
As if on cue, Claude came striding down the hallway, the tails of his white coat flapping behind him as if he had been summoned to an urgent case.
“There’s my husband – arrest him,” I said.
One of the officers moved in front of me while the other turned and put his hand up as Claude approached. Claude stopped and his eyes flicked over all our faces.
“Don’t let him near me! He tried to kill me – arrest him!”
“Good morning, everyone,” Claude said in an easy voice. “Is everything all right? Katie, you look a mess, what happened?”
“Are you Claude Giraud?” Officer Timmins asked.
Claude smirked. “And to what do we owe the pleasure of this visit from the constabulary?”
“Doctor, you can answer my questions here or we can go down to the station and you can have the pleasure of answering them there. Are you Claude Giraud?”
Claude’s expression cleared. “Yes.”
“Then to answer your question, Doctor, your wife called nine-one-one and said you punched her and put her head through a window, and from what I can see, that is very likely what happened. If not, we’ll see. But she is charging you with domestic violence assault and we are here to investigate that.”
“What did you say?” Claude asked.
“You heard me.”
“You heard him,” the security guard said.
“There’s been a big mistake,” Claude said.
“Is that so?”
“My wife’s lying; she’s mentally unbalanced, she made it all up. It’s what she does, I’m afraid.”
“So what happened, Dr. Giraud?” Officer Burns asked.
“The window – for God’s sake, this is ludicrous – the window was already cracked! She wanted to… to air out the room. She’s a fresh-air fanatic. And when she opened the window, it broke and she got cut. I didn’t realize it at the time or I never would have left.”
Timmins said, “So, to be clear, Dr. Giraud, you are saying your wife looks like this because there was a cracked window in your home that, when she opened it, it broke and pieces of it fell on her head?”
“Yes, that’s more or less right.”
“Because we got another call, Doctor, about half an hour ago, from a pedestrian on Lewisburg Square who said he heard glass breaking and saw a man and a woman at a second-floor window, and that the woman’s head was out the window.”
Claude said nothing.
“Was your wife punched by the window, too, Doctor?”
Claude’s color slowly rose.
“Okay,” Timmins said. “So something happened, and then you left her looking like this?”
“I told you: I didn’t realize what had happened.”
“This is unbelievable,” said Gillian. “Jesus, Claude, just listen to yourself. You’re not even making any sense.”
“No sense at all,” the security guard said.
Timmins held his hand up and the focus returned to him.
“Dr. Giraud, we’re taking you into custody.”
“Do you know who you’re talking to?” Claude said, straightening up as if he could add an inch or two to his height. “I am Dr. Claude Giraud.”
“That’s nice. And here I thought you were just a common wife beater.”
He reached behind his back and took the handcuffs from his belt.
“I should be careful what you do with those, Officer, because if you make a mistake, I know the police commissioner personally, and you will be history.”
The two officers laughed, and several of the onlookers cautiously joined them.
Timmins said, “You didn’t just threaten me, did you, Dr. Giraud?”
“Of course not,” said Claude. He looked at my father and said, “You’ll vouch for me, Jack, won’t you?”
My father looked from me to Claude and then back to me again.
“No, Claude,” he said quietly.
“Come on, Jack, what are you doing? You know I’d never hurt your daughter, even though she’s not the most stable person in the world. Well, I only mean… this will all blow over, but I need your help now. Jack, please, Jack!”
“Pathetic,” Gillian said.
Claude lunged at Gillian, but the officers were on him in a second and put him face first against the wall as the rest of us quickly backed away. Officer Timmins took Claude’s arm, deftly pulled his other arm back, and we all heard the click of the mechanism. They turned him around. Timmins took a card from his pocket and began to read. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to consult an attorney…”
Officer Burns took me aside, but Gillian came with us. She looked for an orderly, but the security guard was a step ahead of her and rolled a wheelchair over, then helped me into it. He patted my shoulder, then straightened up and surveyed his hallway.
“Mrs. Giraud,” Burns said, “we should never have let that happen – I’m sorry. Are you all right?” When I nodded, he said, “We’ll need you to come down to the precinct station to formally press charges, fill out some papers, and we’ll want you to get an order of protection.”
“Yes, of course,” I said.
The world was getting very soft and dreamy.
“Before any of that happens, she needs immediate medical attention,” Gillian said. “She’s in shock, among other things.”
“Are you her doctor?”
“Yes,” Gillian said. “Goddamn right I am.”
“Okay.” He glanced at her name tag and made a note. “We’ll send someone in to document the medical findings, Dr. Beckerman.”
Timmins took Claude down the hall, and Gillian and Officer Burns and I followed, the security guard wheeling me. Before Burns rejoined his partner at the elevators, he said, “Looks like you’re in good hands here. You take care, Mrs. Giraud. You did the right thing.”
The two policemen walked Claude into the elevator, and then they all turned to face the front of the car. In the interminable time it took for the doors to slide together, I looked into Claude’s eyes, and he seemed to return my gaze; it appeared as if he were being held there especially for me to look at him, to really see him clearly for the first time. He looked so diminished, so one-dimensional, like a life-sized cut-out struggling to be seen as real, standing between the blue-suited men with their clear, impassive faces. Claude’s face was white. His blue eyes were on me, but what was he seeing? Maybe, I thought, as the doors finally slid toward one another, severing our lives, he had really seen me for the first time.
14
After the charges were filed, the prosecutor, Lynn Davis, a woman with big hair and a bigger smile, took me into her office, sat me down, gave me a cup of coffee, and asked me three questions: Did I love him? Was I going to go back to him? Did I want to see him convicted?
No. No. Yes.
And then: Was I absolutely sure about my answers?
I was.
“Good. That’s what I like to hear. Makes my job so easy, I hate to take a paycheck. We’ll get you set up here, and then we’ll go get him.”
The trial took place two months later. Claude swore to tell the truth, then testified that he had never beaten me. He repeated what he’d told the police on the day of his arrest, that the window in our room was already cracked and that what had happened was an accident. He didn’t try to account for my bloody nose (which was broken after all). His high-powered lawyer portrayed Claude as a minor god and painted me as a spoiled, highly-strung, accident-prone woman who’d hindered more than helped her well-known, well-loved husband. However, the defense’s attempt to bring in a bevy of character witnesses nose-dived, so to speak: Claude’s biggest fans turned out to be far from willing to put their good looks out in front of this particular public. Most important, though, while my father wasn’t expected to support Claude in any way – putting Jack in an awkward position from all kinds of perspectives – the prosecution made good use of him. Yes, he said, he had examined me, albeit unofficially, on two occasions, at my request and yes, there was credible evidence on each of those occasions that I had been manhandled, at the very least. I looked down at my lap and wept when he said no, he had not reported it, and no, he had not confronted Claude, and no, he could not explain why he had failed to do either.
Gillian’s testimony – as a doctor, mainly, not as a friend – and the arresting officers’ testimony was heard, and then it was my turn.
It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but nervous is just not the word: I was trembling with fear. Then Lynn Davis walked up to where I sat in the box, smiled big, and said, “Katie, how are you today?”
“I’m well, thank you.”
“Good. Katie, has your husband, Claude Giraud, ever strangled you?”
“Yes.”
“Has he ever punched you?”
“Yes.”
“Did your husband kick you out of your bed onto the floor when you were eight months pregnant?”
“Yes.”
“Would you tell the court about that, please?”
I did.
*
Claude was given a six-month sentence for assault and battery. The judge went to some lengths to explain that he would have given Claude a longer sentence, but because this was his first documented offense, that was the maximum term he could give. He said he hoped that Dr. Giraud would learn from his jail experience. In addition, he ordered Claude to participate in counseling. I thought about all the offenses Claude had committed over the last four years. In my opinion he deserved a lifetime of lock-up. Maybe the therapy would unlock him.
Claude looked beaten; cuffed and with his head hanging under the glaring lights, the police escorted him out of the courthouse. One reporter shouted, “Claude, is there anything you’d like to say to your wife?” to which Claude – undoubtedly grinding his teeth at the familiarity he so despised – only sank lower as a policeman pushed him into the squad car.
I felt safe knowing Claude was locked up, and Rose and I began to adjust to our new life. My newfound freedom was bewildering at first, and I found myself looking around for someone to give me direction, to tell me how to behave, to answer the simplest questions. But before long, with the help of friends like Victoria and Gillian and Anne Marshall, and Gillian’s no-longer-boyfriend but fiancé ,Cooper, I began to reclaim my life.
*
Rose, of course, wanted to know where her daddy was.
“Gone away, Rosie. Daddy had to go to jail.”
She looked at me with the wise and devastated eyes of a child who has seen too much too soon. “Was Daddy real bad?”
“Yes, Rose, he was.”
She considered this. I held her hands, and she flicked at my fingernails. She asked softly, “When will he come back out?”
“Daddy’s not coming back, Rose. Well, not to us.”
“Why?”
“Daddy and Mommy can’t live together anymore. It’s hard to explain, sweetheart.”
I braced myself for the next Why? but instead Rose simply nodded.
She missed him enormously, but her reserve made me wonder if she didn’t also feel relieved. How much did she remember? How soon – if ever – would she forget what she had seen and heard? After a while, and after she’d cried for him for several nights running, she stopped asking about him as often, and then even less. I took her for a few sessions with a child psychologist, Linda Robbins, whom Cooper recommended, and she was reassuring: Rose wasn’t exhibiting significant signs of stress or anxiety now, but I should be prepared: a child’s reactions to this kind of trauma could have a long, silent ground swell before the big waves began rolling in.
“She knows what Claude did,” Dr. Robbins said. She tapped her forehead. “She knows it here. It will take a long time before she works it through here.” She tapped her chest.
“How long?”
“Years,” she said. “I can guarantee you it will take years. But don’t look so dismayed. This is how it works. You can help her. You’ll have to. And what about you?”
What about me? During the day, my mind alternately raced and froze up, and I couldn’t seem to settle to anything; at the slightest glitch in my routine – a sudden shift of schedule, a kid’s sharp shout – I’d flutter up like a startled bird. My nights were filled with sweats and nightmares of Claude’s hands creeping up around my throat. I’d have difficulty swallowing the next morning.
Finally, I gave in to Gillian’s entreaties and began seeing a therapist to try and figure out what happened. Telling what happened didn’t take more than an hour or two. Figuring out what my part in it was took a lot longer as together we cut down through the skin and nerves and muscle and got to the bone.
As soon as Claude was released from prison, he was brought up before the medical board, which ruled with all speed. Claude’s license was revoked; he could no longer practice medicine in the state of Massachusetts.
After a review of the case, I was granted a divorce with full custody, visitation requirements to be worked out at some future date, and an equitable distribution of our property. I was no longer the desperate wife under the piano; I was a functioning woman, on her own for the first time, with a three-year
-old daughter.
And no more “Katie”. I’m Kathryn Callahan.
I soon began to daydream again about a life in California, far from the lavish but restrictive – not to mention frightening – world Rose and I had known with Claude, so far away that he would never find us.
Or would he? Would he even want to? On my worst days I believed I would always walk with fear right behind me, beside me – or in front, bearing down on me. I surveyed the world with great care, waiting for the crack in my fragile peace: his voice on the phone, a shadowed figure moving into my peripheral vision, a sudden pounding on the door. But these never came. Claude seemed to have disappeared.
On one of my good days, I got in touch with my two old classmates, Beth and Isabelle, the girls I’d thought about rooming with after college. We met at a little bar near the Fogg Museum, where they’d both landed jobs. To my surprise, I felt less envy on learning of their good fortune than I’d imagined I would, even though stepping with success into the saturated art world was no mean feat. I looked across the table at two girls I’d known a long time ago in a much different world. They seemed younger than me, greener, and, yes, innocent. Good for them. And they didn’t mention Claude at all, though he – and all that had happened, it was all very public – was there in their eyes.
I sipped my wine, smiled and relaxed.
“Well, Katie – oops! Kathryn – you did fall off the face of the earth for a while, but don’t we all?”
“I guess,” I said. “I’ve often wondered how different my life would have been if I’d roomed with you two instead of getting married.”
“It would have been way different – ramen for dinner, cheap wine, shared rent!” Isabelle said as she bit into a mozzarella stick.
“And a job.”
I told them about working for Victoria Langley and her modern and contemporary art collection, and how I wanted to learn more and eventually, maybe, open my own gallery.
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