by Joy Fielding
“Something wrong?” asked a woman nearby, approaching quickly.
“My wife has a cold,” Victor said hastily. “Here, wipe your eyes.” He handed her a Kleenex. Donna ignored it, continuing to sob.
“Donna, sweetie,” Victor soothed for his gathering audience, “come on, honey. It’ll be all right. It’s a terrible cold,” he explained. There were about five people gathered around them now. Donna sniffed loudly. The small gathering quickly began to disperse. Victor held a Kleenex in front of Donna’s nose. “Blow,” he commanded.
Inside her, Donna felt the scream beginning to build, and waited for the sound. Instead, she was surprised to see her right arm shoot up from her side and slap whatever part of Victor was closest at hand with such force that it caused his drink to fly from his outstretched arm and spew its contents down the backside of one of the ladies who had only minutes ago been so solicitous.
Victor was like an octopus—he quickly had the drink wiped up, the dress restored, his glass recovered, and the guests convinced an unruly sneeze had been the culprit. Donna saw from the faces of several of the guests that they would not be fooled. From their distance they had seen what had actually occurred. Seen Victor’s hand outstretched, offering a Kleenex to his ever-sickly wife, seen her own hand shoot out in full attack, seen the results. They heard nothing. Victor’s wife—just one of her moods. Poor Victor. Well, what the hell, if that was what they wanted—
Victor leaned over her. “If you don’t start smiling and taking an active part in this little celebration, I’m going to have you committed,” he said with the same quiet force her voice had earlier contained.
—that was what they were going to get.
Donna took the proffered Kleenex, blew her nose loudly and then walked boldly into the center of one little clique which had hastily regrouped after the little glass-spilling episode had been resolved.
“We were just talking about a neighbor of ours,” one of the women informed her, moving to include her into the conversation. It was a nice gesture but Donna was no longer in the mood for nice gestures, preferring to turn a critical eye on all those around her. The woman was maybe ten years older than Donna and her hair was several shades of yellow, although Donna realized even as she criticized that the woman was undeniably attractive. “He had a nervous breakdown a number of years back. The doctors said he was a sadomasochist with homosexual tendencies. Apparently, they were able to cure his masochism and reorient his tendencies very quickly, but he remained a sadist for some time.”
“I think sadism is so much healthier than masochism, don’t you?” Donna asked, not altogether sure if she was serious or not.
Neither were the people present who responded to her query with uneasy laughter.
“Anyway,” the woman continued, “he’s out now and working at a respectable job. All straightened out, it seems.”
“What sort of job?” somebody asked.
“He designs underground parking lots,” Donna shouted, this time not waiting for anyone else to laugh before she broke into gales of laughter of her own.
The other guests began to turn slowly away from whatever conversations they were engaged in and follow Donna’s progress around the room.
Donna continued. “I heard someone over here talking about what a lot of bees there are around this year. Isn’t that the truth?! I’ve never seen so many bees.”
“I’ve never seen so many flowers,” said another woman somewhat smugly.
“Oh God, couldn’t you puke!” Donna roared. If anyone had not been watching her, they were now. “That’s like saying, ‘When fate hands you a lemon, make lemonade!’ People who say things like that make me want to throw up,” she looked at the woman, the smugness obliterated by shock. “No offense meant,” she added.
She saw Victor walking toward the front door. Oh well, if he was going to have her committed, she might as well go down in a blaze of glory. “Did any of you see Sesame Street the other day? I’m sure some of you are young enough to have small children. No one watches Sesame Street?” If anyone did, no one was saying so. “Well, it’s practically a religious experience around our house. Adam and I watch it every day.” Victor was shaking his keys, something he always did to indicate when he was ready to leave. She ignored him. “Well, the other day, and I tell you this in peril of my life because Victor hates to talk about children, he says it’s boring to other people—hah! I can see you’re certainly not bored. Well, they did this take-off on Masterpiece Theatre—you know, they always do little things that the kids don’t catch but the adults all appreciate—and they called it Monsterpiece Theatre. And the host was Allister Cookie, the cookie monster, of course doing Allister Cooke. And the play they did was Upstairs, Downstairs. And all it was was Grover running up and down the stairs, you know, to illustrate the concept of up and down. You all know who Grover is—”
“Donna,” Victor called, the shaking of the keys having failed to move her, “I think we better go.”
“My master’s voice,” Donna said, dripping with sarcasm.
He walked over to her. “You really shouldn’t drink when you’re taking antibiotics.”
“Oh, hello, Victor. Congratulations. I didn’t realize your medical certificate had arrived in the mail.” She turned to the other guests. “You send in two boxtops from Preparation H—”
The rest of what transpired was pretty much a blur.
It took several more minutes of cajoling, reasoning and bullying before Victor was able to get her out of the house. She remembered shouting some vague obscenities—nothing as specific as she would have liked—and wondering why she was behaving this way and then thinking it didn’t really matter—nothing did, and soon she was sitting in the car beside a Victor so silent, she could actually feel his rage inside her own body, growing and about to implode. She closed her eyes.
She was surprised to discover, as the car pulled to a halt under their carport, that she had actually slept all the way home.
She walked almost dreamlike past Mrs. Adilman, heard Victor thank her, pay her and show her out before she reached Adam’s door. Out of habit, she opened it and checked on her sleeping son, then she walked across the hall to the bedroom she shared with Victor. All she wanted to do was go to sleep. She had never felt so exhausted in her life. The only night that had in any way approximated the way she was feeling now was the night her mother had died, a night she had sat up by the telephone, knowing it would ring, praying it would not. And when it had, at about three A.M., she had been startled nonetheless. Oh my God, no! It’s the hospital, the nurse had said. You better come, your mother’s very low. Is she—? She’s very low. Donna had called a cab, not trusting herself to drive. Her father was already at the hospital, her sister was with him. Only Donna had come home, hoping perhaps irrationally that by not keeping a deathwatch, death would go elsewhere where he received greater attention, thinking how strange it was that when humans assigned death a human form, it was always male whereas life was always a woman. Her mother.
Donna sat down on the bed and began unzipping the back of her green dress. In front of her she saw the back of the cab driver, his black hair slick with cream. She had told him where she was going and to please hurry. Are you a nurse? he had asked, trying to make conversation. No, she had answered, my mother is dying.
Donna stood up and stepped out of her dress. Absently, she picked it up and threw it over a chair. There had been no further conversation. The cab driver had stepped on the gas pedal and gotten her to the hospital in record time. She walked inside, found the proper elevator and somehow made it up to the eleventh floor. She saw her sister as soon as she turned the corner. Joan’s face was bloated and red and her knees were obviously about to give way beneath her. She stood alone in the middle of the hallway. Nurses passed her; no one noticed that she was about to collapse. Donna rushed toward her, encircling the child in her arms, realizing even as she did so that when your mother dies, you’re not somebody’s little girl anym
ore. Immediately, Joan’s knees gave out, wobbling toward the floor. She held onto Donna as if Donna were made out of granite. Who is holding me up? Donna wondered, as the two sisters stood in the center of the sterile corridor and sobbed.
Donna walked into the bathroom and splashed some water on her face. The effect was negligible. She spread some toothpaste on her toothbrush and brushed her teeth, then she rinsed her mouth and walked back into the bedroom, discarding her bra, panties and shoes on her way to the bed. She pulled down the covers and crawled inside.
When they had let her go into the room, the first thing she felt was the stillness. Her father sat numbly on the bed, slouched over and motionless, almost like a piece of sculpture by George Segal, white papier–mâché instead of flesh, an overabundance of feeling so strong that it became no feeling at all. Frozen in time.
Donna closed her eyes, aware now that Victor had just entered the room. She would not see him.
Her eyes moved from her father who sat at the foot of the hospital bed, up to the body of her mother. Funny, she thought, how quickly it becomes “a body.” But that was precisely what it was, she thought. It wasn’t her mother. Most assuredly not her mother. The face was so thin, the body beneath the white sheet just a skeleton, the lines of her hips and bones so painfully evident. Her eyes were closed, her mouth open. Someone had hurriedly affixed her wig and it balanced somewhat askew atop her head, too large for her. Donna had walked past her father and stood by her mother’s face, looking at it without searching for any answers, knowing there were only facts.
She had leaned over and kissed her mother on the forehead, her flesh in the middle ground between warm and cold. What amazed her was the total absence of breath. Of life. What had been her mother, truly been the essence of her mother, was gone. And so, she realized, what she was kissing was not her mother at all. She was kissing a memory: the memory of her mother’s back as she walked up a flight of stairs, of the time she made a chicken pie and forgot to add the chicken, of the laughter they had shared when Donna, at age eight, had come home from school and told her first dirty joke (“and the thunder rolled over the mountains and the little boy ran in the cave”), of her anger so healthy and honest, of her arms, of her eyes, of her smell, so soft and reassuring. When she held you and you felt her arms around you, her smell encircling you, and you knew you were safe—you’re nobody’s little girl anymore—
Donna tried to move.
She couldn’t.
The smell.
A different smell. Donna tried to move.
She couldn’t.
She opened her eyes.
He was on top of her and he was a stranger. She opened her mouth to speak, but his hand quickly covered it. “Just shut up for a change, Donna,” he said. He was moving her legs, trying to force them apart. The weight of his body was fully on her own. She couldn’t move. She could barely breathe. “Open your legs, dammit,” he shouted, though his voice stayed below a whisper. She tried to twist away, but her arms were pinned down at her sides. He prodded her with angry fingers; she glared at him with frightened eyes, more frightened than she had ever been, of anything, of anybody. God, please just let me die, she wished as he moved her body into position, boring into her as if he were a drill, scratching at her insides, inflicting all the pain he could manage. She was dry and unresponsive; when he was inside her and pounding against her, she thought only of the son they had somehow created together, from this same act. No, not this same act. There were no similarities.
When he was finished, he moved without apologies away from her and into the bathroom. She remained motionless, her eyes closed, her mouth open, her hair a loosely fitting wig. She knew only a few things, but those things she knew for absolute certain. Her mind created an imaginary list, bold-faced black type over a white corpse.
She could never leave Victor. He would never let her. He had proved that tonight.
She would never let him touch her again. If he did, she would kill him.
She would never yell at him again. She would do whatever he wanted as long as he agreed never to touch her. But he would get no more arguments from her. Nothing was important enough to fight over. Not anymore.
She would never again drive a car.
She was dead. As dead as she would ever be.
TEN
Mrs. Adilman looked grayer and plumper than when Donna had last seen her. Unlike most of the other witnesses who carefully avoided looking anywhere in her direction, Mrs. Adilman had smiled and said hello as she walked past Donna to take her place on the stand. Donna was surprised to learn the woman’s first name was Arlene, something she had never thought to ask her. She was surprised also to discover that the woman was only fifty-six, a fact well suppressed by the cotton housedresses and comfortable walking shoes she always wore. Mrs. Adilman seemed to Donna, then and now, the epitome of the kindly grandmother, the one who brought you cookies and could always be persuaded to read just one more bedtime story. The kindly grandmother who was about to whip off her false front and reveal the wolf underneath. Why, Grandmother, what big teeth you have!
They dispensed with the unarguable facts quite quickly. She had met Donna when Donna had first married Victor and moved into his house (stress possession of house); they had become better acquainted with the passage of time and especially with the birth of Victor’s son (an interesting interpretation, Donna thought). Donna was a very sweet girl (thanks a lot, lady) but very susceptible to colds and flu bugs. (Must we sit through this again?) This was especially true after Sharon was born. Mrs. Adilman seemed to be there at least two days a week while Donna was in bed. Her behavior became increasingly strange (that word again). Objection. Overruled. Moving rapidly from the realm of the unarguable. She would often see the lights on at all hours of the night. Once, when she had to get up to go to the bathroom, she noticed the lights on in the Cressy house and Donna up washing the living room walls. It was almost four A.M., and Donna had spent the day sick in bed. She knew that because she had come in to look after the children. After that, whenever she had to get up in the middle of the night, which she often did, her kidneys subject to infections easily, you know, she always looked to see if the lights at the Cressys’ were on. They always were. Donna was always up. Cleaning.
And as a mother?
Donna held her breath. The lady could hurt her.
“She was pretty good with Adam,” Mrs. Adilman began. The lady was going to hurt her. “But I do remember one peculiar incident.” She looked apologetically at Donna.
“Please tell us about it,” the lawyer encouraged.
“Well,” she said, “I was out watering the flowers—I hadn’t been able to sleep that night so I was up early—and I noticed Donna sitting in her kitchen. She was drinking a cup of coffee and so I went over to say hello. Victor was out of town on business, and I asked her if the baby was sleeping. Adam was a bit colicky as a baby. He used to cry a lot and that particular morning it was so peaceful.”
“And what was her reply?”
“She said she thought he was dead.” Donna missed the next several exchanges while she watched the judge’s face. It looked appropriately shocked. Way to go, Arlene, Donna thought. “She said that if she checked him and found out he was dead, she’d never get her cup of coffee.”
Ed Gerber pretended to think for several minutes—Donna could tell now when he was only pretending, because he always brought the third finger of his left hand to the tip of his nose and crossed his eyes in the process. It was very difficult to think when you were so busy crossing and uncrossing your eyes. This was done to allow the witness’s testimony time to sink in. This pretense continued for only several minutes, however, because any longer and the humor of it all might emerge from the midst of this horror.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Mrs. Adilman added (how could we possibly get you wrong? Donna wondered), “I think Donna loved her little boy. I think she loved him.”
Thank you, Arlene. Actually I still do.
“Did Mrs. Cressy inform you when she was pregnant with her second child?”
“Yes.”
Donna closed her eyes.
“Could you tell us about it, please.” More a statement than a question.
“Objection.”
“On what grounds, Mr. Stamler?” asked the judge.
“I fail to see the relevance, your honor.”
“I assure you,” interjected Mr. Gerber, “we will show relevance.”
“Objection overruled.”
“Please tell us about that conversation, Mrs. Adilman.”
Donna prayed for a thunderbolt to strike the woman dead. None came. Her lawyer looked over at her. “Well, I tried,” he said, patting her hand.
“I was out in my garden as usual,” Arlene Adilman began, obviously fixing the scene in her own mind. “Donna came home. Yes, she’d been out—Adam was at nursery—and I remember the taxi brought her home—”
“Taxi?”
“Yes. I hadn’t seen her drive her car in a couple of months. She took cabs all over. I assumed something was wrong with the car.”
“So, the taxi brought her home,” Mr. Gerber reiterated, stressing the word taxi and getting the witness back in the right lane.
“Yes. And she looked very upset—”
“Objection.”
“Well, she’d been crying,” Mrs. Adilman said, lodging a protest of her own. “That much was very obvious.”
“Overruled. Witness may continue.”
“She walked over to me and I said hello and asked her if she was feeling all right. She told me she’d just been to the doctor and that she was pregnant.”
“And what did you reply?”
“I said that that was wonderful. That there was nothing sadder than an only child.”
“And her response?” Gerber asked.
“She said she didn’t want the baby.”
“Didn’t want the baby?”
“She said it was a terrible mistake and that she just couldn’t have this baby.”