The Harder They Fall

by Doreen Owens Malek

“Cat got your tongue?” Chris said inquiringly around a mouthful of chicken.

  “You seem to find everything I say annoying. I’m trying not to irritate you.”

  “Is that what it is? I find it irritating.”

  Helene dropped her fork with a clatter and brushed past him. He seized her arm and stood, kicking his chair out of the way.

  “Let me go,” she said fiercely.

  “You haven’t finished eating.”

  “I’m not hungry,” she almost yelled, close to tears.

  “You should eat, you know, for the baby. I guess I should have told you... it’s very good.”

  Helene stared up at him, stunned. After torturing her for the past couple of hours, he was now going to compliment her on her cooking? What was going on in his mind?

  At this happy juncture the doorbell rang.

  “Who the hell is that?” Chris muttered, releasing Helene and leaving the kitchen to answer it. Helene trailed after him curiously.

  He opened the door to admit a stunning blonde who flung herself into his arms.

  “Christy,” she exclaimed, “where the hell have you been? Nobody down at Brodie’s has seen you for the last couple of weeks and we were beginning to wonder if you’d taken the pledge.” She kissed him lingeringly on the mouth and then drew back to examine Helene.

  “My brother died,” Chris said shortly.

  The girl’s expression changed. “I didn’t even know you had a brother,” she said.

  “He had been living back East for years. I brought him out here to bury him.”

  “Gee, I’m sorry,” she said, nonplussed. Then she nodded at Helene. “Who’s this?”

  “My wife,” Chris said.

  The girl’s mouth fell open unglamorously.

  “Your what?” she said.

  “Wife,” Chris repeated, enunciating clearly. “Ginny Porter, meet Helene Murdock.”

  Ginny disengaged herself from Chris and smiled weakly at Helene. “How do you do?” she said nervously, tucking her billowing hair behind her ear.

  “Hello,” Helene said.

  “So, how long have you been married?” Ginny asked.

  Chris looked at his watch.

  “Three and a half hours,” he said.

  “Kind of sudden, wasn’t it?” Ginny said, looking from one to the other in amazement.

  “You could say that,” Helene replied dryly.

  “Look, Ginny, we’re just in the middle of dinner,” Chris said, taking her by the hand and leading her toward the door. “Tell Brodie I’ll be in soon to see him.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” Ginny said, turning to face him. “If you want to participate in the rodeo you have to register by Friday, and we were all wondering if you forgot about it.”

  “What rodeo?” Helene asked.

  “Just a small amateur thing sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce,” Chris said dismissively.

  “It is not,” Ginny protested. “It’s an all-county event and Chris has been calf roping champion the last three years running. You don’t mean to say he never told you about that?”

  “Never said a word,” Helene replied wonderingly.

  Chris opened the front door and practically levitated Ginny through it. “Thanks for the reminder. I’ll be in to register,” he said hastily, pushing her forward with his hand splayed against the small of her back. “See you soon. Bye.” He slammed the door closed behind her.

  “So who was that, Christy?” Helene asked mildly.

  “Barmaid down at Brodie’s, the local watering hole,” he replied, not meeting her eyes.

  “Fan of yours?”

  “We went out a few times.”

  “Did you see the look on her face when you told her I was your wife? She couldn’t have been more surprised if you’d told her I was your grandmother.”

  He grunted.

  “Do you think we’ll be visited by any more of your little friends? Maybe we should send out a newsletter to spread the glad tidings of your marriage to all of Brodie’s customers.”

  He threw her a dirty look and headed back to the kitchen, dragging her behind him by her wrist.

  “Sit,” he said, pointing to her chair. “I want to see you eat something. You’re supposed to be gaining weight, not losing it, and you look thinner than when you were out here in June.”

  Helene picked up a lukewarm chicken leg obediently and nibbled it gingerly.

  “I guess a lot of people will be as shocked as Ginny was to hear we’re married,” she observed.

  “Don’t worry about them.”

  “How about Sam?”

  “I told him what he needs to know.”

  Helene could only imagine what that meant. She sat staring into space with the chicken leg in her hand.

  He looked up from his food and narrowed his eyes at her, pointing to her plate.

  “I’m eating,” she said, brandishing the drumstick and then taking a big bite of it.

  Under his watchful eye she ate industriously until she was so full she felt she would not be able to get up from the table. When it came time to clear the dishes she stood up and then swayed unsteadily, grabbing for the back of her chair.

  “What is it?” Chris said, at her side instantly.

  “Little dizzy,” she said fuzzily.

  Chris bent to slip an arm under her legs and lifted her into his embrace.

  “Bed for you,” he said, moving toward the hall. “And I’m calling the doctor.”

  “No doctor. Pregnant women get dizzy, don’t you know that? It’s hormones or something,” Helene said wearily, letting her head fall back against his shoulder.

  “We’ll see,” he said grimly.

  “You made me eat too much food,” she protested weakly. “That’s all it is, I feel sick.”

  He kicked open the door of her bedroom.

  “You’re always carrying me,” she said dreamily. The well remembered smell of him engulfed her, and she turned her head to touch her nose to the warm skin exposed by the open collar of his shirt.

  He sat on the edge of her bed and then eased her into position against the pillows. She looked up at him. The room was spinning and his face seemed to be fading in and out of her visual field. He started to move away and she clutched his arm.

  “Stay with me,” she whispered, succumbing to a sudden irrational fear of being alone. No matter how negative his opinion of her was, the one quality he exuded was strength and she needed that now.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said soothingly. “I was just reaching for the phone.”

  How nice he is when I’m in trouble, she thought dreamily. I should be in trouble all the time, cut my foot or pitch a faint. Then he will always talk with this gentle note in his voice, instead of that hard, cynical tone I hate.

  She heard him talking on the phone, the sound coming as if from a great distance, and then she was asleep.

  * * * *

  Helene awoke several hours later to find Chris sitting next to her bed in a kitchen chair. She had a dim memory of the doctor’s visit, his stern warnings about low blood pressure and exhaustion, but it all blended in with her dreams.

  “What’s the verdict?” she said, yawning.

  “Dr. Stern says you’re to stay in bed for the next several days, and if I have to handcuff you to the headboard you will do just that,” he said grimly.

  “Don’t worry,” Helene said quietly. “I know how much your brother’s child means to you. I’ll be good.”

  “I’m going to see that you are,” he said. He stood and opened the door to admit Maria, who came in still wearing the dress she had worn to the wedding that afternoon.

  “Oh, Chris, you didn’t,” Helene said in dismay. “This isn’t fair to Maria, she has her own family.”

  “My children are grown and out of the house and my husband can do without me for a few days,” Maria said briskly.

  “So you’re to be my watchdog?” Helene asked.

  “We have to take special c
are of you,” Maria replied, shooing Chris out of the room. When the door had closed behind him she added in a low tone, “That boy practically promised me the moon if I came here tonight. I think he’s really worried.”

  “He loved Martin, the baby is important to him.”

  “But you’re not?” Maria asked softly.

  “I’m the incubator,” Helene said lightly.

  Maria opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it and settled for tucking the covers in around Helene’s feet.

  “Now,” she said, “how about a nice cup of herbal tea?”

  * * * *

  Once Maria was on the job, Chris virtually vanished. He was gone before Helene got up in the morning and he came in for dinner at night, bone weary, and ate anything Maria put in front of him. Then he went to his room, took a shower and changed and left again, doubtless for Brodie’s or a similar destination. Sometimes Helene heard him come in before she fell asleep, but usually not. She had no idea how he could keep such hours and work so hard, and she had no idea what Maria thought of their somewhat peculiar living arrangements. Nothing was discussed.

  When Dr. Stern returned in a week and pronounced Helene fit and rested, Maria went back home and Helene was allowed out of bed for the first time since the doctor’s previous visit. For two more weeks she wandered around the house, bored by inactivity, while Chris stuck to his previous schedule: work during the day and disappearances after dinner. One night at the end of September, looking for something to do, Helene wandered down to the living room to find a book on the shelves by the fireplace. She settled down to read. She read until well past midnight and then finally fell asleep with the book in her lap, waking by the chiming of the grandfather clock when Chris came in at two-thirty. He strode into the living room, spotted her on the couch and said wearily, “I thought you would be in bed.”

  He was wearing faded jeans that clung to him like a second skin, with woven moccasins and a yellow oxford cloth shirt showing vividly against his suntanned throat. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, revealing the well developed veins and tendons in his work-hardened forearms. His hair was tousled, doubtless from the homeward ride in his convertible. Helene wished, not for the first time, that she had the nerve, or the right, to stroke it back into place.

  “I fell asleep reading,” she answered, holding up the book.

  “Poetry?” he said archly.

  “Yours,” she replied, thumbing to the flyleaf and displaying his name written there.

  “I must have done that during one of my possessive periods,” he said. “Martin was always taking my stuff.” He folded his arms combatively. “Are you surprised that I read poetry? Or are you surprised that I can read?”

  “Not at all, to both questions,” she said lightly, putting the book aside.

  He slumped next to her on the couch. “I’ve been drinking,” he said almost belligerently, and smiled.

  That was obvious, but he was not drunk—just clearly relaxed enough to lose his inhibitions. Warning bells went off in Helene’s brain; without his customary control he would be dangerous indeed. She rose smoothly and stepped into her discarded slippers.

  “Good night,” she said.

  “Wait a minute, where are you going?” he asked, waving her back into her seat. “Don’t you want to know why I’ve been going out every night? Aren’t you the least bit curious?”

  “I have assumed the obvious, that you want to avoid me,” she said evenly.

  “Bingo,” he responded. “Correctomundo, right the first time. But do you know why I want to avoid you?”

  “Chris, is it really necessary to do this?” she asked, pained and a little frightened. Where was this leading?

  “Certainly, certainly. Know the truth and the truth shall make you free. Don’t you remember that one?”

  Helene waited.

  “I have wanted to avoid you because I have a secret, a secret very difficult to keep in your presence.” He got up and helped himself to the bottle of Scotch on the sideboard, splashing a liberal dose of the amber liquid into a glass.

  “Chris, don’t drink any more,” Helene said quietly.

  “Oh, but I must. How else do I keep my secret, especially with you sitting there in that most fetching outfit?”

  Helene glanced down at her cotton nightgown, as plain and practical as a nun’s. What did he mean? She glanced up at him again, her expression guarded.

  He wagged his finger at her. “You’re humoring me, I can tell by that look of sainted patience on your face. Have I ever told you how much I hate that look?”

  “You wouldn’t have to see it if you’d let me go to bed,” she pointed out reasonably.

  “Bed,” he said. “Now there’s a subject of interest, actually in line with my first topic, one and the same, in fact.”

  Helene sighed. Booze certainly made him loquacious. Which was worse, his sober silences or this?

  “Haven’t guessed my secret?” he said, sipping. “Not a clue? Then I’ll tell you. It’s mundane, not original, very old I’m afraid. Biblical. Now what do you think of that?”

  Helene was frozen in place.

  “Don’t know what I’m talking about, Miss Innocence?” he said, examining her with those unsettling eyes, the same color as the liquor he held in his hand.

  But she did know what he was talking about. After three weeks of listening for his footfall, straining to catch the sound of his voice, fingering one of his discarded shirts cast over a chair, she knew all too well.

  “I know,” she whispered.

  His sneer vanished and he thrust his glass onto the top of the television set. He was beside her in two strides and had seized her bare upper arms, holding her in a viselike grip.

  “Please, Chris, you’re hurting me,” she gasped, twisting futilely in his grasp.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said gruffly, and then his mouth was on hers—hot, searching, the way she had dreamed of it since the first day she’d met him. For several seconds she was stunned, and then her arms crept up around his neck, her fingers sinking into the wealth of hair at his nape and her body molding itself to his.

  When he saw that she was not fighting him and he felt her response, he moaned against her mouth and the sound turned her limbs to water. She clutched him as she kissed him back, her very lack of expertise inflaming his desire as he lifted her into his arms and onto the couch. They lay entwined as his lips trailed down her neck and inside the collar of her gown. She was wearing nothing beneath it; he fumbled with the buttons on the front to open it fully, then she whimpered as his mouth found her breast. Her eyes squeezed shut as his free hand trailed up her leg and to the inside of her thigh, and then she surged up eagerly when he moved to kiss her again. Thought fled, time stood still as his tongue found hers and Helene submitted completely to his kisses. Too soon, he drew back slightly, still holding her fast.

  “Do you want me?” he whispered harshly against her lips, pulling her lower body against his. She arched to meet him.

  “Do you?” he prompted.

  “Yes, yes,” she moaned, drawing his head down to hers again, incapable of anything but desperate, headlong yearning.

  “Then say it,” he demanded.

  “I want you,” she sighed.

  “Is that what you said to my brother?” he asked.

  Chapter 4

  Helene shoved him off her with as much force as she could muster and then jumped to her feet, sputtering.

  “You... you,” she said and stopped, at a loss and shaking so hard she had to put a hand out to the wall for balance. She stared at him in malevolent silence; she just couldn’t think of anything vile enough to call him.

  “Bastard?” he supplied, sitting up and then vaulting easily to his feet. “Isn’t that the word you’re searching for—doubly appropriate in my case, don’t you think?”

  “You did that to me deliberately,” she gasped, when she could talk again.

  “Just an experiment,” he sa
id casually.

  “I thought you wanted to take care of me and the baby, not upset me.”

  “You’re not upset, lady, you’re turned on—don’t you know the difference?”

  “So this was a test?” she said, rebuttoning her nightgown with trembling fingers.

  “And you failed,” he said, with a slight insinuating smile.

  “Then you failed, too,” Helene retorted, revamping her shattered defenses.

  His expression changed, became guarded.

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” he replied coldly.

  “I’m not doing that,” Helene said, striving for calm. “I may not have your vast experience of... of physical relationships, but even I know that what just happened between us was not typical.”

  “It was typical for me,” he said cruelly.

  “So you just felt like seducing me?” she asked, staring at him in disbelief.

  “Sure,” he said flippantly. “Why not?”

  “Then what was all that talk about avoiding me because you have a secret?”

  He turned away. “Whiskey rambling,” he said dismissively. “You shouldn’t pay so much attention to drunken drivel.”

  “In vino veritas,” she said.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “That people often tell the truth when they’ve been drinking ,” she fired back at him.

  “Not me,” he said, rounding on her with a leer. “It just makes me feel like stripping impostors of their pretenses.”

  “You promised me that you wouldn’t touch me!” she burst out, stung by the unfairness of it.

  “You wanted me to touch you,” he said darkly. “Every day you’ve been in this house you’ve wanted me to touch you.”

  “You broke your word!” she insisted, dodging.

  “I don’t remember forcing you to do anything you didn’t want to do,” he countered, folding his arms and glaring at her.

  “That’s not the point!” she yelled. “You lied to me when you proposed marriage. You planned this all along.”

  “I did not!” he said heatedly, and it was the first thing he’d said that she believed.

  “Then what?” she said softly, changing tactics, sensing that she was getting closer to an admission.

  “Then nothing!” he exploded, taking a step toward her, his fists balled at his sides. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”