The Edge of Sleep

by Wiltse, David

  “We’re divorced.”

  “I know. Still, it’s not unheard of. You made no effort to get away from her, after all. You’re still living in the same little town.”

  “Clamden’s my home.”

  “I know. I’m just asking. Sometimes husbands think their rights continue after divorce, you know. Sometimes they keep coming around and try to resume relations.”

  “What did you do?” Becker asked.

  “I didn’t say it happened to me,” she said.

  “How did you handle it?”

  “With aplomb and diplomacy. I kicked him in the nuts. He didn’t try again.”

  “The man’s a quitter.”

  “I call him a fast learner. I only had to explain to him once.”

  “Amicable divorce, was it?” Becker asked.

  “Do we have to talk about it in bed? Couldn’t we discuss politics or something else cheerful?”

  Becker spoke in a serious tone.

  “What did he do. Karen?” He felt her body tense against his.

  “Let’s drop it.”

  “I mean during the marriage.” he said.

  “I know what you mean.” She rolled away, turning her back to him. “Let’s not spoil the night, John.”

  “It would have made your life easier if you had given him more frequent visits. You could have had more free time without Jack, but you didn’t. What went on?”

  He put a hand on her shoulders in the dark and felt her tense against his touch.

  “Was it something he did to you?”

  “You’ve just ruined a great fuck,” she said coldly.

  “Or was it something he did to Jack?”

  Karen started to get out of the bed but Becker held her. He put his arm across her belly and pulled her back so she spooned against him. Her body was stiff but she did not struggle.

  “Let go of me, Becker.”

  Becker held on to her and pressed his body against hers from behind. Karen grunted once and tried to jerk away but stopped when he tightened his grip. They both knew she was trained and skilled and could make a good battle of it if she chose to fight.

  “What did he do to Jack, Karen?”

  For a moment Becker thought she really was going to make a battle of it. Her muscles tightened as if she were going to spring. He would let her go if she really wanted to get away, of course, but he did not think she wanted to.

  She was quiet for a moment and both of them were coiled and poised, but then she slowly relaxed. Becker continued to hold her tightly for both self-defense and support. If she was going to kick back into him, it would be when he eased up in response to her; but he sensed that she had given in and was releasing something from inside and his grip helped to show her he was there for her.

  “He beat him,” she said, her voice breaking with emotion. “The son of a bitch beat my sweet little boy. I should have killed him. John, I should have killed him.”

  “No.”

  “I should have, I should have.”

  “When did it start?”

  “When Jack was about four. Suddenly Carl seemed to blame Jack for everything that went wrong. Not just around the house, anything that went wrong in his life. And there were a lot of things going wrong in his life. Me, for one. I should never have gotten married in the first place. I’m too selfish.”

  “We’re all too selfish,” said Becker. “But we all do it.”

  “First it was just spankings, then worse. He started to hit him with things—belts, a hair brush—usually when I wasn’t around. I’d be at work and I’d come home and Jack would have a bruise and Carl would tell me he fell off his trike or tripped while running or ... And Jack wouldn’t deny it. He was so afraid of Carl he wouldn’t even tell his own mother. What kind of mother does that make me?”

  “Don’t blame yourself. You weren’t the one who was doing it.”

  “But I didn’t stop it. I figured it out eventually, but even then I didn’t stop it right away. Not as soon as I should have. Carl called it discipline and I just, somehow, I just couldn’t believe he was doing it in the way he was doing it. I tried not to look it right in the face, John; I even told Jack to be careful and not enrage his father. I blamed Jack.”

  Karen stopped. She heard Becker’s hard breathing behind her. He sounded as if he was engaged in a fight with himself that he would not win; but he made no comment.

  “I’m not fit to have a son,” Karen said. “I just could not admit to myself that it was happening. Even in court, even when we were fighting for custody, I couldn’t bring myself to come right out and say it. I just couldn’t believe it was happening to me. I don’t deserve that wonderful little boy, John, but I’d die before I’d let him go live with his father. Nothing happens now on their weekends together. I check Jack as soon as he gets home. I’ve told Carl what I’ll do to him if I even suspect anything. He knows I will.”

  “You said you couldn’t believe it was happening to you, but you meant you couldn’t believe it was happening to you again,” said Becker. “Isn’t that it?”

  This time Karen was silent.

  “Because it happened to you as a kid, didn’t it, Karen?” She did not answer.

  “I know it did. You told me about it ten years ago.”

  “I never said a word ...”

  “No, you didn’t talk about it, but you told me. I could tell by the way you reacted to my touch, the things you didn’t feel comfortable with, all the things you didn’t say when I told you about myself... You don’t have to admit it if that comforts you, but don’t bother to deny it.” Karen continued to lie very still in his arms and the silence seemed to balloon around them and envelop the room. They could hear noises from outside—the wind against windows, the far distant cough of a car engine starting—but within the room it seemed to Karen that all sounds had ceased to exist. She could no longer hear Becker’s breathing and was aware of her own only by the measureless rise and fall of her bosom. When she shifted her weight slightly, the groan of the mattress and the rustle of the sheets against her body seemed incredibly loud. In the new position, Becker’s arm had ridden up from her abdomen so that it crossed her chest just below the first swelling of her breast. He still held her firmly and she was grateful now for the pressure and the sense of comfort it gave her. She wanted someone close if she had to confront the monsters of her past.

  When Becker spoke his voice seemed so loud in the stillness that had come over them that Karen was momentarily startled.

  “What else?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Was there more? With Carl.”

  Her ex-husband’s name sounded odd on Becker’s lips, and she realized she had not heard him speak it before. He had referred to him only as “her husband,” not by name, and the change seemed too abrupt, overly familiar. For a moment she resisted it, as if allowing someone else to use Carl’s name was in itself a revelation of family secrets. Her reaction was swiftly past, but it left her feeling slightly soiled.

  “No,” she said. “What do you mean?”

  “Did he do anything else?”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “It’s too much, but it usually doesn’t stop there. Violence creates its own appetite.”

  Karen wanted him to stop asking, she wanted to demand what made him such an expert. But she knew he was, she knew he understood it all better than anyone.

  “He hit me, too,” she said. Her throat was constricted and her voice so low she had to repeat herself. Even as she said it, she still found it hard to believe.

  Becker grunted noncommittally, as if he had expected her statement and was waiting for the rest. There was a quality to his silences that Karen found compelling, as if she had to fill them. He seemed to know what came next but required the formalities to be observed by having her say it.

  “It didn’t happen that often,” she said. “Any is too many, but it wasn’t that often. The first time I couldn’t believe it had happened. I couldn’t believe
he would dare to do it, that he would want to do it. It was still early in our marriage. I had convinced myself I was in love, we were in love, hell, I wanted so much to be in love ...”

  “To have someone love you,” Becker interjected.

  “Yes, I suppose, but to love someone else, too; I knew you were supposed to love someone else, that’s what everyone said, so I convinced myself I loved Carl ... And then he was so repentant afterwards. He cried, he said he loved me, he adored me, he would never, never do it again ...”

  “And you believed him.”

  “I wanted to. I made myself believe him. I was in a marriage, I had to give that every chance, every effort. I couldn’t just walk away because of one mistake.”

  Again Becker was silent and Karen felt she had to continue, had to find the explanation that would justify herself, that would win his approval.

  “The second time was months later. He had been fine until then. We had had quarrels but he had controlled himself. I assumed that it really was only a one-time thing. But then he snapped. We weren’t fighting about anything special, nothing particularly sensitive. He’d been drinking, not much, just a little. There seemed to be no provocation, then all of a sudden he was hitting me, hitting me and hitting me ... I wore pancake makeup the next day to hide the bruises at work, I was so ashamed. If anyone had asked what happened—no one asked.”

  “And you stayed with him.”

  “I was pregnant then, I had a child on the way. That was the curious thing; in the midst of his rage Carl had not hit me anywhere near the baby. In an odd way that seemed to show he cared about the baby, about us, about our future ... I don’t know, I rationalized it a hundred ways ...”

  “And you stayed.”

  “Yes, damn it, I stayed! Don’t judge me, John. You don’t know what it’s like to be beaten by someone who’s supposed to love you... It makes you feel so worthless, it makes you feel that you deserve it, it makes you feel it’s your fault.”

  “I know,” Becker said simply. There was no special pleading in his voice, just a statement. Karen realized there had not been any harshness in his tone before, either. The judgment was only in her mind. Becker was merely noting, just stating the obvious so they could get on to the next step, as if the process had to be completed no matter what.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “It’s all right.”

  “I did stay with him, you’re right. I should have left him then, but it seemed so—so ludicrous that it was happening to me. I wasn’t some welfare mother in the ghetto, I wasn’t a hillbilly with trucks parked in the front yard. Carl was a professional, for God’s sake. He was a radiologist. We weren’t the kind of people this happened to. Plus, I was trained in self-defense. Even when it was happening, while he was hitting me, I told myself, ‘I can break this man in two.’ ”

  “It’s not about self-defense, though,” Becker said.

  “No, not at first. But it got that way. When Jack was two years old Carl tried to beat me again. The baby was there in the room, watching, and maybe that’s what gave me the courage, I don’t know, but I realized right then that it was going to stop. I kneecapped him and broke his arm ... He never touched me again.”

  “But he started on Jack.”

  “Not long after that, I think he must have, but I didn’t know it.”

  Becker was silent.

  “I swear to you, John, I did not know it. I did not. I did not know it.”

  Something broke within Karen and she began to cry, quietly at first, and then fully, sobbing, her body shaking with the effort. Becker pulled her even more tightly against him, covering her whole body with his own as she spooned against him.

  He let her cry until she had had enough, not trying to hush her or even comfort her beyond his close presence. When she was finished at last Karen felt as if she had returned from a distant place. Her grief had taken her out and away from the present and deep within herself, but now she was back, in a darkened bedroom, on her bed, with the wind pushing at the windowpanes and a strong man pressed against her from behind.

  She could not say if the quality of the stillness changed when she stopped sniffling, or if the electric charge of the room had been that way all along and she had only become aware of it. Becker’s body was warm against hers and his skin seemed alive in a way it had not when she was talking about herself. His flesh seemed to lie against her like a creature with a life of its own, as if poised to move whenever she chose. It was up to her entirely, she realized, and the thought gave her a sense of freedom and power.

  She reached between her legs and touched him and felt him rise eagerly to her touch. They did not speak, they scarcely moved. Then he was in her from behind and she was clamping the pillow to her mouth once more. This time it was direct and simple without foreplay or patience or tenderness, which was how both of them wanted it. When they finished she had tears on her face once more, but this time for a different reason.

  Chapter 12

  WHEN BOBBY AWOKE ON THE third day of his capture, he knew that he was being watched even before he opened his eyes. He could sense another face close to his, he could hear the hushed, too deliberate movements of someone trying to be quiet that did not make noise so much as they displaced space in a way that he could feel. He kept his eyes closed, pretending to sleep, clinging for a moment to the hope that the hovering someone might be his mother. Perhaps today when he opened his eyes the long nightmare would be over and he would be home in his own bed. He knew it wasn’t so even as he ardently wished for it.

  It could only be Dee leaning in close to him, studying him the way she did with that intense look of hers as if she was trying to memorize every detail of his face and body. Sometimes the look would take on tones of puzzlement as if she were trying to square his appearance with the image she had stored in her mind, but she would always come out of it, the wrinkle of skin between her eyebrows relaxing as she reconciled what she saw with what she wanted to see.

  From the direction of the door, Bobby heard Ash repositioning himself, then the sibilant hush of Dee telling him to be quiet.

  “Don’t wake him,” she whispered. “He’s asleep.”

  Ash made a noise in his throat, perhaps laughter. Then Bobby heard sudden sounds of movement from both of them, the door protesting in its frame as Ash pushed off of it, the sound of tiptoed steps, and just as quickly all was silent. Bobby held very still, listening, straining to hear them, but all sounds seemed to have been swallowed up. Had they gone? It seemed inconceivable that they would have left him alone at last, and yet ... nothing, he could hear nothing at all.

  He tried to open his eyes just a slit, feeling the eyelids quiver as he eased them apart. He could make out only the sheet under his cheek, the carpet between the bed and the wall where his face was pointed. Pausing, not daring to hope, Bobby let his eyes open farther. He saw nothing before him but the motel wall, the sunlight streaming through the slats of the Venetian blinds to make a pattern of lines on the floor. Ash was not by the door. Dee was not hovering over him.

  He lifted his head, almost not daring to move. The room was empty, no sounds came from the bathroom, whose door was open. Bobby sat upright in the bed, then slid his feet to the floor, still not daring to believe. He looked around the room again, wild-eyed.

  “Dee?” he whispered. “Ash?”

  There came a low, rumbling sound, like the growl of an animal, and Bobby held his breath. It came again, a growl of something large and fierce and close and then Dee popped up from behind the bed, laughing, her hands over her head in a parody of a ravening beast.

  “Grrrarrr!” she roared, still laughing. She swept upon Bobby, embraced him, lifted him.

  “We fooled you! We fooled you, didn’t we? Admit it, admit it! We fooled him, Ash!”

  She bundled him in her arms and buried her face in his neck, kissing and growling. Ash sat up from the floor behind the bed, grinning proudly.

  “We fooled you,” Ash declared.


  “Oh, look at him. You weren’t really scared, were you? Were you scared. Tommy?”

  Bobby pulled away from her, angry and embarrassed.

  “We didn’t mean to really scare you.”

  Dee hugged him again, but he put his hands against her chest and pushed her away.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  Bobby ignored the warning in her tone and struggled against her grip.

  “Don’t pull away from me,” she said.

  Bobby tried to yank his arms free, but she held him firmly in her grip.

  “Let go!” he cried.

  He kicked at her with his naked feet. His toes barely touched her shin.

  “No!” Ash called, aghast.

  Bobby didn’t see the blow coming and he was shocked as much by its unexpectedness as by its force. It had to have come from Dee, but when he looked at her with eyes filling with tears, both of her hands still gripped his arms.

  “Don’t ever pull away from me,” she hissed. She lowered her face to his, her fingers squeezed his arms so tightly they hurt, but it was her look that frightened Bobby most. Something had happened behind her eyes, something that Bobby could see but not identify. It looked as if someone other than Dee was behind her eyes now. Someone or some thing, crouching behind the deep blue, glaring out at Bobby. Hating him.

  “Never, never,” she said, her voice still a hiss.

  “Never,” Ash said. He was on his feet now, shaking his head in warning to Bobby.

  “I don’t like it,” Dee said.

  Bobby sniffed. His nose was running, his eyes were tearing, and he was aware of a ringing in his ears, but he was still too stunned to cry.

  “Do you understand?” Dee asked.

  “Yes,” said Ash, pumping his head up and down, urging Bobby to agree. “Yes.”

  “Do you?”

  Bobby nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  “Imagine how it makes me feel, when you pull away,” Dee said. Bobby noticed that the thing behind her eyes had slithered away and she was Dee again, a little wound up, a little too enthusiastic, but still a woman, still the same person he knew.

  Bobby nodded in agreement once more.