Fault Line

by Janet Tashjian

  “If you’ve already made them,” I said. “Abby and Mike will go nuts.”

  He smiled, turned into the parking lot, and shut off the truck. “You’re not going to sit here, are you? I don’t think it’s safe.”

  He was right. It was late, and I didn’t know the neighborhood. I followed him to the door closest to his truck.

  As he put the key in the lock, my body involuntarily flinched. Just a small, almost imperceptible twitch in my stomach. I told myself not to worry, that we were only getting the cd’s, that he’d been on his best behavior, that the support group was obviously working.

  As a matter of fact, I was sick of being cautious, thinking something bad would happen. I decided to ignore the fearful instinct and go with another instinct instead.

  When we got inside, I jumped him.

  It was one of those scenes straight out of the movies—clothes flying, tripping over shoes, collapsing onto the bed.

  We had a lot of catching up to do.

  We sat there sharing a bag of potato chips from the vending machine outside, watching an old Mary Tyler Moore episode. Neither of us wanted to leave.

  Then my cell rang.

  I excused myself and took it in the bathroom.

  “Where are you?” Abby asked.

  Don’t panic. Stick with the plan. “I’m with Delilah,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. I woke up and realized you could’ve been lying to me.”

  “Abby, it’s the middle of the night.”

  “I know. And I know how Delilah freaks when her beauty sleep gets disturbed, so I didn’t come pounding on the door. But I just got so worried.”

  “Well, don’t,” I said. “I’m going back to sleep.”

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Stop worrying! I’m fine!”

  I hung up and threw the phone in my bag. I didn’t want to get caught; I’d have Kip drive me back in case Abby woke up again.

  I came out of the bathroom and jumped back on the bed.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Abby thought I had her wallet.” It was amazing how good I had become at lying.

  Kip ran his hand through my still-short hair. “I can bring you back if you want.”

  “That’d be great.”

  I kissed him.

  He kissed me.

  The next thing I knew, another half hour had gone by. I told him I had to leave.

  Kip handed me the cd’s; I put them in my bag with my stowaway pajamas and toilet kit. (Not to mention the squirrel.)

  When I looked up, I saw something shift in his face.

  “Abby,” he said.

  “What about her?”

  “She didn’t lose her wallet.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  His head dropped toward his chest. “You told her.”

  “Told her what?”

  “About me, about my problem.”

  “No. No, I didn’t.”

  He looked as deflated as I’d ever seen him. “That’s why she called. Did you tell her?”

  Which answer would make him less angry?

  “Be honest with me!”

  “I didn’t tell her anything.”

  “You’re lying!”

  I grabbed my bag and went for the door. This time, with no hair or earring to grab, he pulled my arm and yanked me to the ground. The stained orange rug burned against my cheek.

  “I’m doing all this work for you—for us—and you go tell Abby like it’s some piece of gossip?”

  Say anything; just get out. “She guessed. I told her it was nothing, that you had it under control.”

  “Do I look in control right now?” He pressed his knee into my back, pinning me to the floor. “Christ, Becky—why?”

  “Kip, stop! I swear to God, I’ll scream.” I blindly reached into my bag and hit the redial button on my phone. If Abby picked up, she’d hear us and call for help.

  “Why didn’t you believe in me? You and your friends waiting for me to explode like Old Faithful? That’s me, one big tourist attraction. Pull over and watch.”

  “It’s not like that!” My arms and back felt like they were about to break. “You can turn this around right now—we can turn it around.”

  He picked me up, and I sighed. But then he grabbed me by the shoulders and threw me toward the wall. I hit the bureau hard, then fell to the floor.

  “I hate that you told her.” He was crying now. “Couldn’t you have had a little more faith?”

  By this point, I was too busy making an escape plan to answer. If I kept inching my way across the carpet, I might get to the door before he noticed.

  “You bring this out in me—you!”

  I tried to make eye contact, reach the part of him that didn’t want to be doing this.

  His eyes were as dead and fearful as mine.

  “Kip—”

  He hit me again. This time I screamed as loud as I could.

  “Oh God, what am I doing?” He pulled me toward him just as the door opened with a kick. A man who looked vaguely familiar grabbed Kip by the shoulders and yanked him off me.

  I stared at the man pinning Kip to the bed. I felt like I was going to pass out.

  Abby bent over me and screamed, “Call 911!”

  It wasn’t until Abby dragged me into the bathroom that I realized who the shirtless man with the bald head and the bike shorts was.

  “Delilah.”

  But he was all business, telling 911 to send a police car and an ambulance.

  When Kip protested, Delilah put his knee in Kip’s back to keep him on the bed. Abby helped me stand up; I cried even harder when I caught my reflection in the mirror.

  “It’s okay,” Abby said through her own tears.

  Kip winced on the bed. “Please, let me help.”

  “I don’t think so,” Delilah said.

  “You’re hurting me!” Kip yelled.

  “Not nearly enough,” Delilah answered.

  Abby washed my face with the towels.

  I could barely speak through my sobs. “Did you get my call?”

  “Yeah, when we were pulling into the parking lot.”

  “I’m sorry I lied to you.”

  “Ssshh.”

  “You were right,” I continued. “I should have listened.”

  I touched my cheek; the impression of the carpet burned deep into my face. “The Improv …”

  Abby held the wet towel to my face. “Looks like Jimmy Fallon’s all mine.”

  We heard the sirens coming down the street. The police cuffed Kip and took him away. He was still crying.

  He tried to catch my eye, but Abby shoved me back into the bathroom. After they left, a female cop led me to the ambulance.

  Delilah put her arm around my shoulder. “It’s a good thing one of you has some sense. Abby came pounding on my door, wouldn’t even let me put my face on.”

  “I almost didn’t recognize you.”

  “Honey, I hate to tell you how many times you’ve passed me on the street when I was coming back from the gym.”

  Abby climbed into the ambulance with me. Delilah followed in the bus they’d hijacked from the tour’s driver.

  “You might have to stay,” Abby said. “You look pretty bad.”

  The thought of calling my parents from the hospital brought on a new wave of nausea.

  “I’m staying with you,” she said. “Forget the Improv.”

  “Over my dead body.”

  “Don’t even say that!”

  Abby asked the attendant for a paper bag and took deep breaths into it. She was as upset as I’d ever seen her. “He could have killed you,” she said between breaths and tears.

  “Believe me, I know.”

  I threw up into a bucket the attendant quickly slipped beside my gurney.

  I tried to block the scene from my mind, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t the burn of my cheek on the carpet that I kept returning to or the cd’s scattered all over the
room with my blood, it was the glimmer of fear I’d felt in my gut as Kip unlocked the door.

  I was paying the price for not trusting my instincts.

  6/5

  NOTES TO SELF:

  Images embedded in MY mind forever–

  My father banging his fists on the sink in my hospital room.

  Mike and Abby sitting on either side of my bed, trying to pretend the Improv wasn’t the best night of their lives. (To say nothing of Jimmy Fallon–Abby’s new best friend.)

  Mom’s hand flying up to her mouth when she realized Hannah wasn’t the one who pulled off my earring.

  The stewardess eyeing my bruises every time she walked up the aisle on the flight back.

  The judge hiccuping as she issued the restraining order.

  My mother and kip’s, both crying outside the courtroom.

  From the Paper Towel Dialogues of Kip Costello

  The scene was unbearable—Beck’s face, the cops cuffing me, calling my mother, her trying to find a local attorney … . it was forty-eight hours of living hell.

  I know, I know. it was my own fault. kind of hard to blame it on Becky when she’s the one with the two broken ribs. I tried not to let the other guys in the cell see me break down, but when that cop told me about how hurt she was, I couldn’t hold back. I had pictured myself so many times stepping off that cycle of violence we talk about in group. But there’s a big difference between knowing what you’re supposed to do and doing it. The facilitator sounded let-down when he finally got me on the phone. And Mom … I can’t even go there.

  Forty sessions, two hours each. I used to be one of the guys in group who came on his own; now I’m one of the court-mandated Neanderthals. I sit in the back, not talking. If I start to look at my own shame, I think it’ll smother me. This totally and completely SUCKS.

  Mom insisted I continue with the last few weeks of school, with my jobs. When I was setting up the crib for Mrs. Lawton yesterday, she was treating me with such respect and gratitude, I thought I was going to puke. Don’t be nice to me. I’m an animal. I don’t belong in the same room with you, with anyone. I read this thing the other day at group—experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted. All I ever wanted to be was a guy who stood oustage and made people laugh, a guy in a good relationship.

  I blew that one.

  Well, I guess there’s some good news. They say in group that a lot of guys don’t really turn it around until they hit bottom. I’m so low, I have to look up to see roadkill.

  It’s gotta be uphill from here.

  Put on the headdress and the eyeliner, honey–you’re Cleopatra, Queen of Denial.

  The burn on my cheek healed.

  So did my black eyes.

  Eventually my ribs did too.

  But those were the easy things.

  I still woke up terrified a few nights a week. I replayed that night in my mind—weighing the hope and love against the fear and betrayal. But most of the time I blamed myself. Not just for going to Kip’s room but for thinking he could’ve been “fixed” so quickly.

  I analyzed that night more often than a Steven Wright video. I realized each of the times Kip had hit or grabbed me had come when I was trying to leave. It was almost like my leaving was his biggest fear. Yet the way he expressed that fear was what drove me away. I fixated on that Catch-22 for hours on end.

  When I thought about it, the emotional and verbal abuse was just as painful as the physical. Remembering all the put-downs and nitpicking I’d endured, I covered my head with my pillow and screamed.

  I kept coming back to that lame physics experiment. I remembered what happened when you cut off the centripetal force binding the object to its center—it flew off on a tangent. That was me now, hurtling through space, unmoored from what had been keeping me connected to the rest of the universe for the past eight and a half months.

  Since this was Kip’s first offense, the prosecutor in Santa Barbara agreed to counseling, a batterer support group, and community service back in San Francisco—the maximum amount of all, thanks to my mother. The restraining order was her idea too; she told me later that Kip had instructed his attorney to okay everything she asked for.

  I hadn’t seen Kip since that night at the motel a month ago and knew in my bones I wouldn’t see him again. I didn’t want to either.

  Who said it gets worse before it gets better?

  They were right.

  There were some benefits to the tragedy, of course. Mom quietly agreed when I told her I didn’t want to go to graduation. The whole party/prom scene seemed even more surreal than usual, and I wanted to be as far away from the celebration mentality as possible. I watched the tape of the Improv show over and over in some kind of self-punishing ritual. Mike had called several times; both he and Abby had had their calendars filled with gigs since MTV aired the show. Despite my situation, I was happy for them.

  Besides, why be on MTV or go to the first prom of your life when you can go to a support group instead? When it came time for the first meeting, I slunk downstairs with my notebook and pen.

  My mother was standing by the door with her keys.

  “You’re coming with me?” I asked.

  “Don’t I always?”

  “This isn’t one of my gigs,” I said. “You don’t have to come.”

  “If you don’t want me to go in, I can just drive you,” she said. “How does that sound?”

  “It sounds horrible. You know I don’t want to go.”

  She held the door open for me. “You’ve been through the worst of it,” she said. “Believe me.”

  Mom waited at the coffee shop next door to the community center, the same place where I’d emceed my first talent show. This time the atmosphere was slightly less fun—girls my age, sitting on folding chairs in a circle, sharing their stories of abuse. The rich, preppy girl next to me talked about how numb she still felt, how every time her boyfriend hit her it felt like it was happening to someone else. The Goth next to her talked about how her boyfriend used to pinch and poke her in the halls at school while teachers looked on and did nothing. One honor student who brought her boyfriend up on charges was told by the judge to “get on with her life” while she stood in court with two black eyes and a broken nose. Her boyfriend was released that day.

  I sat through the meeting without speaking.

  Mr. Perez finally okayed the San Francisco murder tour I had suggested last year. Jagged Edge, D.O.A., and Basic Instinct. I had made pages of notes, screened each movie twice, but when the time came to muster up some enthusiasm for these thrillers I was not prepared at all. Mr. Perez had to prod me along when I spaced out during my presentation. Afterward, he suggested I take some time off to get ready for school in September. I took him up on his offer.

  Back at the tour office, I called my mother and told her I was walking home. Put one foot in front of the other—that’s right, you remember how. When I spotted the spires of Grace Cathedral, I decided to stop by.

  My father used to take me there when I was young to visit the large labyrinth outside the church. Dad would walk for what seemed like hours, never calling me back from running, just gesturing quietly as he followed the circular path toward the center. Maybe other dads stopped at a bar to calm themselves after work; mine meditated around the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral.

  I headed to the entrance and started walking. Slowly, deliberately, taking deep breaths. The repetitive movement calmed my body but barely dented my overactive mind.

  I followed the well-worn stone of the labyrinth; maybe if I never stopped, I’d wear down a path to some kind of truth. Other people came and went. I kept walking.

  The tremor began slowly, then shook me off the labyrinth. My legs buckled underneath me, and I almost fell. I’d never been outside during an earthquake; it felt like the entire city was being slammed by a giant truck. After a few seconds, it subsided. I stumbled away from the labyrinth and sat on one of the benches.

  I looked at
the young woman reading next to me. “What do you think?” I asked. “A five or a six?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The tremor. You think it was a five?”

  She looked at me with a puzzled expression on her face and told me she hadn’t felt a thing.

  I joked about how engrossing her book must be before the impossible dawned on me—was I the one with the tremor? I grabbed my bag and ran toward the gate.

  Of course this woman didn’t feel anything; she probably didn’t let her boyfriend beat her up, probably had more self-esteem than to put herself in danger rather than be alone. She probably knew how to trust her instincts, how to stand up for herself, didn’t walk around carrying dead animals in her bag. She looked normal, not some freak with a natural disaster inside her just waiting to be unleashed.

  I cried big racking sobs the whole way home.

  My emotions were so up and down over the next few weeks, I could have registered on the Richter scale. I found myself going to Grace Cathedral often, in a half-baked attempt to make sure the tremors were a onetime thing. I walked for miles every day, staring down at the worn stone. As I walked toward the center, I concentrated on creating my own centripetal force, one that connected me to a better center than Kip. Abby came with me sometimes, saying she could kill two personal goals at the same time—meditating and exercising.

  One afternoon as I approached the labyrinth, I looked up to see my father taking thoughtful, silent steps. I stood near one of the benches and watched him for several minutes before he spotted me. I waited as he completed the circuitous path.

  “Have you been coming here a lot?” His top lip glistened with sweat.

  “Pretty much every day.”

  He nodded. “Me too.”

  We sat on a bench and watched an elderly woman navigate the maze with her walker.

  In the several weeks since the incident in L.A., my dad and I had barely spoken. He suddenly seemed to be working extra shifts or taking Christopher to play dates and games that Delilah would have normally taken him to. I didn’t help matters much either; the guilt of having put my family through this whole ordeal kept me in my room alone more than at the kitchen table with them.