The Bleeding Heart

by Marilyn French

  She rose. “Mary, if there’s anything I can do, please ask.”

  “Of course.” Mary rose too. “Do come down for dinner some weekend when Gordon’s here, will you? I’ve told him about you. I’d like you to meet him.”

  “Lovely.”

  They embraced each other lightly, touched cheeks lightly, in recognition, in mutuality, in acceptance of a kinship far deeper than nation.

  4

  AND DRAGGED HERSELF UPSTAIRS AND poured some of Victor’s Scotch in a glass and hauled herself to her bed and fell on it. Just lay there, head propped up on the pillows, sipping. Her breath was coming in heavy sighs, almost shudders. She felt as if she’d been beaten about the heart and gut.

  The old salt pool. Can’t get out of it. Every time I try, something heaves up from the bottom and drags me down again. My own private Loch Ness monster.

  Terribly tired. Wanted to sleep, her body wanted to sleep. Forever. Never to have to wake up again, never to have to feel again. It was possible, of course. It was not difficult to kill yourself if you were determined to do it. She thought of it often, it was a good thought Knowing you could end this corrosion of your innards, knowing that if you lived another day it was through your own choice, made life seem less oppressive.

  Doomed. Doomed. It’s me who’s Lot’s wife. She didn’t even have a name, and she didn’t have anything to say about anything. She stands there forever gazing down at the cities of the plain as the smoke rises, the brimstone falls. Stands there in Zoar, a word that means “scarcely anything.” Yes, scarcely anything. Her husband, two daughters, a pack on her back. The daughters don’t have names either, even though they screwed their father and continued his line. But not yet, not then. Still virgins. Only men have names in this story.

  Lot’s wife has trudged out of Sodom behind her husband, carrying what she can on a pack on her back: scarcely anything. The girls are there too, dawdling. Lot is smacking them on the rear to hurry them up. The old woman sighs, what is he doing now? This man, this very good man who is her husband. The night before this very good man had offered his daughters, her daughters, to the crowd of angry men pounding at the door. The men wanted the strangers Lot had brought home from the town gate, acting like a big deal, liked to feel important. He said the two men were angels. Angels already! The crowd wanted to bugger and roll the strangers. This good man had offered them his daughters instead. The strangers, he said, were more important than his daughters. Angels! Devils is more like it. Terrorist spies. Because look now, look!

  Oh, but she’s really too far off to see the cities burn. All she can see is the smoke. But she sees, she sees, in her mind’s eye. She sees and she hears. She sees the marble pillars of the temple crack and disintegrate, she hears the crack, the terrible crash as the roof caves in and dust rises and blanks out everything. She hears the licking sound of the flames swiftly devouring the houses, the screams of children, the cries of dogs running on fire. They’re being burned up, her two married daughters. They should be here, in Zoar with her, but their husbands laughed at Lot and his angels. What if he’d said terrorists: they might have believed that. But now they are burning, her Miriam, her Sarah, her five grandchildren. She sees the little ones running in circles, hiding their heads in their hands, crying Mama! Miriam is gathering Ben-ami in her skirt, she has little Piti in her arms, she is searching for Sarah, calling to her. But Sarah can’t move, she was always timid, she is calling for her, her, calling Mama! Mama! Her children cling to her legs, whimpering. Miriam shouts that they should head for the palm grove, for the well, for someplace wet, someplace maybe safer. But Sarah can’t move, and Lot’s wife sees her drop, right there, on that spot, calling Mama!

  Lot won’t look. He has commanded her and the girls not to look. But she doesn’t care what he says. Last night she divorced him in her mind. What should she worry about now? She should go on living on this earth? With him? After this? For it was those very men, his friends, his angels, who had brought this fire and brimstone, who were at this very instant murdering her Miriam, her Sarah, the five little ones, oh, my little Piti with the great black eyes!

  Is it any wonder she turned into a pillar of salt? Nameless to this day, unimportant in the great male sweep of history, one who looked back, one who dared to see, one who dared to feel.

  The old man and the daughters crept up to the hills and hid out. The story goes they waited until he was asleep and then crept to him and screwed him. What a crock. Impossible that he didn’t know what they were doing. Trying to save their father from that fate worse than death: dying sonless. Story told by men, dishonest. Lots of daddies liked to diddle their little girls. And what can you do with a pillar of salt when you’re horny?

  She got up a little shakily and headed for the kitchen for more Scotch. Get drunk. Haven’t been drunk in years. Victor’s influence, blame Victor, she told the walls, throwing her arms out wide in a sweep of irresponsibility.

  Fury. It was fury that was destroying her. But it wouldn’t go away. She stood stock-still in the middle of the kitchen and closed her eyes. She felt like a pillar of tears that wouldn’t come out, petrified into salt.

  There was a noise, a click, and she turned. Victor was coming through the door. He looked at her and smiled. She stared at him.

  “Did I frighten you? I called, for a couple of hours, but there wasn’t any answer. Then I had to run for my train. Is something wrong?”

  He came in, hung his coat on the hall rack, and entered the kitchen. He stood looking at her. “Lorie? Are you all right?”

  He wavered in front of her eyes. What was his name? Lot. Yes. Must be, since I’m Lot’s wife. But I have a name. He doesn’t know it though, he calls me something else.

  He approached her slowly, he put his hand on her arm. “Lorie?”

  “Go away.”

  He let his hand fall, but stood there looking at her. “Are you sick?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s my heart.” She walked to the table and sat beside it, clumping her glass down.

  He sat opposite her. He took her hand. “You’re sick in your heart.”

  “Yes. It bleeds. There’s no cure for it. And it won’t go away, even when I ignore it.”

  “Sweetheart, have you been drinking?”

  She nodded.

  “Have you eaten anything?”

  She shook her head.

  “I think you’re sick in your belly, too. It’s after eleven.” He got up and took some eggs out of the fridge and scrambled them. He made toast. Dolores stumbled around the kitchen making herself another drink.

  “I don’t want that. I’m not hungry,” she said petulantly. But when he set the food in front of her, she gobbled it, she scooped it up. When she finished, he took her hands in his.

  “Now. What’s wrong with your heart?”

  “I told you. It bleeds. All the time. Goddamned bleeding heart.”

  He lifted her up and put his arm around her and walked her into the bedroom. He undressed her and slipped her nightgown on over her head. He helped her to the bed and pulled up the covers and sat down beside her.

  “What are you doing here anyway.”

  “There was a meeting called out here, last-minute thing. I told them I’d be coming out tomorrow, and didn’t book the Randolph. So we could have a night together.”

  “I’m glad,” she said and reached for him and held him. Then she pushed him away. “But you came here without calling! You’re taking me for granted! How could you be sure I wouldn’t be entertaining one of my other lovers?”

  He smiled at her sadly. “If you were, I’d sleep on the couch. I did call.”

  “Oh, I was down at Mary’s.” Tears sprang into her eyes. “Oh, Victor!”

  “Wait. Wait a minute!” He jumped up and ran into the kitchen, came back with a tall Scotch, and sat down again. He took her hand. “Now tell me.”

  “It’s Mary. She told me the story of her divorce. It did me in.
”

  “Her divorce did you in?”

  “Yes, you see, that’s why I can’t. There are things I can’t do, and I know it. I can’t drink. And I can’t listen to these stories. Like people who bruise if you even touch them, you know? Their skin turns purple if you just press your thumb on their inner arm. Well, I have a soul like that, it’s raw. The only thing that can help it is getting angry, but who am I going to get angry at? I can’t go and bash Roger over the head. There’s nothing I can do with my anger, you know? It just sits around steaming. And eventually, it turns into this.”

  “Into what this?”

  “This: the way I am now.”

  He stroked her head. “It’s all right—the way you are now.”

  “No, it’s not. You don’t know what it feels like inside.”

  He held her against him, smiling a little, kissing her hair.

  “Mary used to be married to Roger Jenkins, THE Roger Jenkins, the physicist, you know?” She pulled away so she could see his face. He nodded. His face was a little stiff. He doesn’t want to hear this. Doesn’t want to be dragged through it. Damn it, I had to listen to him, he can listen to this.

  “Well, turns out this Jenkins, the great man, let out his excess energy not on the squash court but on his wife’s body. He began by just sort of pushing her, the way Anthony used to do to me when I tried to leave the house during his tantrums. But Roger moved on to bigger and better things: slaps across the face, bloody mouths, a little arm-twisting. One night, after they came home from a party, they’d been married about eight years then, he was furious about something, and he punched her as she got out of the car. He knocked her to the garage floor. Then he bent down and picked up her head and smashed it down on the floor, over and over. She passed out.

  “When she came to, he was gone, the garage was dark. He’d just left her there like that. She was bleeding and she felt sick, but she was afraid to go into the house. She believed he’d meant to kill her, and would if he saw her. She got herself up somehow and crept out of the garage and walked to a public phone and called a cab. She went to her mother’s house, then to the hospital. She had a concussion. She said she’d fallen. Didn’t want to damage the Great Man! Damned fool.”

  Victor lay back on the bed facing her, and lighted a cigarette.

  “After she got out of the hospital, she stayed with her mother. She had no money, no job. She’d given up her medical practice when Linton was born, and had chosen to stay home with the children while they were small. Linton was four then, Elise was only an infant. When she was better, she went to see her children. Roger had hired a housekeeper with orders not to let her in.

  “She got a job, saved some money, and took him to court. But all that took time. She rented a house as near to Roger’s as she could—she couldn’t really afford his neighborhood. And when she could, she’d walk there to see the children if they were outdoors. She went as often as she could. Roger brought charges against her for harassment. Harassment! Her own children!”

  Her voice grew thick. “Elise had nearly forgotten her, and Linton was sulky with her, angry that she’d abandoned him—as he saw it. Eventually, they got a divorce and Mary was given the right to have the children for a weekend every two weeks, every two weeks, Victor! And ordered not to set foot in Roger’s house. The judge said Mary had abandoned the children. Roger said Mary was crazy and had invented the stories of his brutality. Roger is a Big Name in Oxford, he has lots of money for lawyers, a big house, a housekeeper. He’s legitimate and respectable. Mary isn’t.

  “Well, that wasn’t bad enough, but then Linton got the measles and couldn’t come to Mary’s. And measles is a serious disease, and Mary is a doctor. So she went to see him, she went every day, she pushed the housekeeper aside and went in. (More crazy behavior, Roger claimed.) He brought charges against her. He mustered a strong case, and she didn’t expect it, she didn’t have things mustered against him. He brought witnesses to testify—her friends, Victor! Women don’t stick together in this country—to testify that she had a lover. She does, but so does Roger, but she hadn’t thought to get witnesses against him. He got her friends to testify that while the children were with her, she sometimes sat there reading books.

  “And the judge found for Roger. He said any woman who would read books while her children were with her was not a fit mother. Mary said she was a doctor and could care for the children better than Roger, but the judge decided, in whatever place judges indulge their eminence, that she was only an ‘embryo doctor’! I guess because she had given up her practice for a few years. And he reduced her access to the children from every two weeks to every three!

  “All this has taken years. Linton is nine now. Elise is five. They’re a little disturbed, judging from what Mary says. Roger tells them their mother is crazy. And she, poor thing, says nothing, she doesn’t want to turn them against him, doesn’t want to confuse them any further. Doesn’t want to drive them mad. It’s like Solomon with the two putative mothers—except the wrong mother won. Roger doesn’t mind tearing his kids up if it increases his power against her. He must know that the best thing for them is to love both their parents, be with both of them. Fathers,” she concluded bitterly.

  She sipped her Scotch and looked around for her cigars. Victor found them, and lighted one for her.

  “Thing is, I don’t think she knows how to get angry.”

  “Roger takes care of that department,” Victor said grimly.

  “And so,” Dolores’s voice went high and funny, “she’s lost her children!” Her mouth was twisted, her forehead was wrinkled, her hands were fists.

  Victor sat down beside her again, took her hands in his, untwisted them, and chafed them lightly, as if they were cold.

  “Can she appeal?”

  “She has no money.”

  “Listen, Lorie: I don’t want to see you suffer like this. Try to look at it this way: she did leave them.”

  She leaped up, furious-eyed. “She had no money! No home! And he is decent to the kids, she says. Although God knows how he’ll treat them when they get old enough to talk back to him.”

  “Sweetheart.” Patient. Calm. “It’s terrible. But would you have left your children with Anthony when you left him?”

  “NEVER! NEVER!” Fierce. Then she subsided. “But Anthony wasn’t trying to kill me.”

  “Sure he was.”

  “What do you mean? You don’t even know anything about Anthony.”

  “No.” Head down, looking away, at the carpet, or at the baseboard. “But I know what I was like years ago.” He looked at her. “I think I might have tried to kill you—one way or another.”

  “Why!”

  “To keep you.”

  “Pumpkin shell.”

  “Something like that.”

  She mused. “Yes, but it’s not the same as physically killing somebody. He just left her on that garage floor. She might have bled to death, and he’d have been up on murder charges. He didn’t even care. He’s not a stupid man, he had to know. I think he’s the one who’s crazy. And besides, the reason you’re saying that—well, I understand. It’s because the whole thing is intolerable. So to make it more tolerable—to you, to me—we want to say: oh, well, her children don’t mean as much to her. Or, she participated. That makes us feel better. But I don’t think it’s true.”

  Victor was staring at his hands.

  She put her hand on his and he looked up at her. “I think I was drunk,” she smiled.

  “You certainly were,” he laughed.

  “I shouldn’t drink.”

  “Well, nothing terrible happened.”

  “You should have seen me before you came.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “Feeling. Just feeling.”

  “Because of Mary.”

  “Oh,” she shrugged, “because of Mary, yes. But it’s my own life, my own children I weep for, really, I think. Anthony. My mother. My father. My grandmother, for god’s sakes,” she
laughed.

  He stroked her forehead.

  “Anthony was a terrible father. Of course, he couldn’t be a decent father, he was only a little kid himself. Throwing tantrums all the time. He totally dominated the household, not by being macho, but by being a baby throwing tantrums.”

  “Maybe that’s what macho really is.”

  She smiled at him, and interwound her fingers with his. “You know, you’re really a feminist.”

  He smiled back. “I have two daughters.”

  “Yes.” And I have one.

  “They keep me on my toes.”

  Victor’s face looked tired, the lines in it were shadowed, but his eyes looked right at her, he was being there for her although he’d probably rather be someplace else, anyplace else, or at least, making love or sleeping.

  “Here you could have stayed in London and gone to a nice British comedy, and you had to come down and listen to this. Aren’t you sorry?”

  “There is no place in the world I’d rather be,” he said, sounding as if he meant it

  She tried to put it to music. “Isn’t there a song like that?”

  He rumpled her hair. Hard.

  “Anthony used to pick on the kids. Well, on Tony. For everything, all the time. Constantly. It happened as soon as Tony could toddle around, when he was still in diapers. And I began—it wasn’t conscious, it happened, I slid into it—I began to stand between him and them. I tried to keep them separate. On the one hand, I tried to talk to Anthony, to tell him what he was doing. On the other, I tried to shield them from him, to feed them separately when I could, to ignore the punishments he laid on them like stripes, to keep them from doing things I knew would make him furious.

  “By the time they were nine, ten, eleven, someplace around there, I had come to feel that my children were MY children. Mine. Totally. I didn’t want him to have any part of them, I felt he didn’t deserve them. I didn’t want him to have any influence on them. I wanted more than anything in the world to nullify him. But I couldn’t. They were nine, ten, eleven. They’d been listening to his screaming, his picking for all their little lives.”