Back on the deck, Ari’s holding her Preggie Pops—reading the back of the box. I ask her about dinner. “We can go out for a bite, or I can run up to P’town, get some groceries and cook us something. Maybe buy some of the things on Tracy’s list.”
Ariane chooses option number two. “If you don’t mind, Daddy.”
“Nope. Not at all. Now let’s get back to what we were talking about.” She shakes her head. Changes the subject to how much she likes Tracy. Okay, message received, but we’re not finished with this yet.
Inside the house, my phone goes off. Love shack, baby love shack, bay-ayy-be-ee. Ari gives me a quizzical look. “Cell phone,” I say. “I should have known better than to have your sister choose my ring tone.”
She smiles. “Don’t you need to get it?”
“Nope. Whoever it is can leave a message.”
But then, another interruption. The cleaning guy’s at the screen. “All set,” he says. “See you a week from now.”
“Okay.” I reach into my wallet and pull out two tens for a tip. I grab the register receipt from Tracy’s bag of stuff. “Let me jot down my number for you. If you call the night before and let me know when I should expect you, I’ll make sure I stick around.”
“Will do,” he says. He takes the number and stuffs it in his pocket. “All right then. Later.” He waves the two tens at me. “Thanks, man.”
I wait until I hear their van start up, the tires crunching against the clamshell driveway. But Ari gets up and starts toward the house. Says she’s going to take that shower now. “No, wait. Sit down,” I tell her. When she does, I pull my chair closer to hers. “Okay, help me out here. You said your mother was abusive toward him. So give me a specific.”
“Daddy, please. It’s been such a nice day. Can’t we just drop it?”
“No.”
She sighs, resigned. Struggles to begin. “This one time, Mama and I were making supper and . . .”
“And what?”
“Andrew was sitting on the kitchen stool, okay? And he started bugging her. He wanted to skip supper and go off someplace with Jay Jay. I don’t remember where. But Mama said no. And when he asked her why not, she just ignored him. So he got off the stool. Went over to her and said it again: ‘Why not?’ And instead of just saying something like ‘Because I said so’ or ‘Because I want you home for dinner,’ she just kept not answering him. So he kept asking her. You know, like goading her. I could tell she was getting madder and madder, but she still wouldn’t say anything. So he got even closer. Right up in her face, you know?”
Annie’s always hated that. Close talkers, people whispering in her ear: it makes her skittish. “How old were you guys when this happened?”
Sixteen, she says. It was right after she’d gotten her driver’s license. “You and Mama wouldn’t let Andrew get his until he brought his grades up,” she reminds me. “And he was so mean to me about it. Like it was my fault. If he needed a ride someplace, instead of asking me, he’d order me to take him. And when I did, he’d tell me all the way there about what a bad driver I was. How he should have been the one who got his license, not me.”
“Yeah, okay. Back to the kitchen. He was goading her.”
“He just kept repeating it over and over, right into her ear. ‘Why not, Mom? Why not? Why can’t I?’ And then . . . and then . . .” She’s shaking. Her breathing’s fast and shallow, as if she’s back there. “She just snapped.”
“Hit him?”
She looks down at her lap. “You know that wooden mallet she used to use to pound out meat if it was tough?”
“Yeah. You’re not saying . . . ?”
“She had that mallet in her hand and . . . she went after him with it. He put his hands up over his face to protect himself, but his forehead was . . . She hit him on his forehead. Hard! I heard this sound and . . . It was awful, Daddy. He went staggering across the kitchen. Grabbed onto a chair like he was going to pass out. I was so scared. I thought she had really hurt him. Cracked his skull or something.”
For the next several seconds, I’m speechless. “And you’re telling me you actually saw this?”
“Yes! I was standing right there!”
It’s hard to watch the pain she’s in, but I have to know. “Deep breaths,” I tell her. She obeys. Calms down a little. “It’s okay, Ari. Just get it out, and then you’ll be done with it.”
“Don’t be mad at her, Daddy,” she pleads. “She couldn’t help it.”
“I’m not mad.” But I am. I’m furious. She took a weapon to our son and I’m just hearing about it now? “What happened after—”
“She reared back and was going to hit him again with it, but I grabbed it away from her. And I was like, ‘Stop it, Mama! If you don’t stop it, I’m calling Daddy!’ When I said that, she just looked at me. Stared at me like . . . like she was coming out of some crazy trance or something. She looked over at Andrew. And when she realized what she’d just done, she . . .”
“What?”
“Dropped to her knees and started . . . wailing. It was horrible.”
“But your brother was okay? He didn’t pass out?”
“No. He was just holding on to that chair and looking at her.”
“What about Marissa? Was she there when this happened?”
“In the house, yes, but she didn’t see Mama hit him. She came into the kitchen when she heard her crying. I remember her just standing there, staring down at Mama like she was a freak or something. When Andrew and I finally got her up off the floor, she was like, ‘Just get away from me! All of you! Leave me alone!’ Then she ran upstairs to your bedroom and locked the door.”
I can’t believe what I’ve just heard. Don’t want to believe it. “And what did you kids do?”
“Andrew left,” she says. “Got on his bike and took off.”
“Which was the last thing he should have done. He could have had a concussion and . . . What about you and Marissa?”
“I finished making dinner. Put it on the table. Mama wouldn’t come down, so the two of us ate without saying anything. Did the dishes. Then Andrew came back and he ate. You got home late that night, I remember, and by then things were back to normal, almost like nothing had happened. I was at the kitchen table doing my homework, and Mama and Marissa were in the den watching TV. I don’t remember what Andrew was doing. Probably up in his room, playing his music.”
“And none of you said anything to me.” She shakes her head. “Did she tell you not to? Threaten you or something?”
“No. Nothing like that. We just . . . I don’t even really know why we didn’t tell you. When she got like that, I guess we wanted to protect her.”
“From me? What did you think I was going to do?”
She shrugs. “We should have told you. But we felt . . . sorry for her.”
“Sorry for her? For Christ’s sake, Ariane. Your brother was the victim, not your mother.”
“I know but . . .”
“If one of you had come to me—if she had come to me—I could have done something.”
“I think that’s what we were afraid of, Daddy. That if you knew, you might send her away someplace and—”
“No! I could have gotten her put on medication. Depakote or something. Insisted she see a therapist. Do you realize what could have happened if she had seriously hurt him? There might have been police involvement, an arrest. How many times did she lash out at him like that?”
“That bad? Just twice, Daddy.”
“Twice? What happened the other time?”
“I . . . wasn’t home, but Marissa was. She told me they were upstairs, arguing with each other and—”
“Who? Who was arguing?”
“Mama and Andrew. She started chasing him down the hall, whacking him from the back with a hairbrush. And when he got to the top of the stairs, trying to get away from her . . .”
Oh god, don’t say it. “Tell me.”
“Marissa said she saw her shove him. And he fell. Lan
ded upside down at the bottom of the stairs. And then Mama came to her senses again like the other time. Marissa said she ran down there and . . . and got down on the floor and was just holding him in her lap. Rocking him and telling him over and over that she was sorry. That she loved him and didn’t mean it.”
“But you didn’t see this.”
“No. By the time I got home, they had already gone to the emergency room.”
“Who? The three of them?”
“No, just Mama and Andrew. That was when Rissa told me what happened. And when they came back, he had a cast. He was okay, though. They’d taken an X-ray. He had just broken his wrist.”
“No, she’d broken it. What about the doctor who treated him? Didn’t he question them about it?”
“Yeah. Andrew said he told the doctor that he tripped and fell down the stairs. That’s what he told you, too, I remember. Daddy, it was Andrew who always made us promise not to say anything. He’d say that he had asked for it. Deserved it. Then he’d make up some story about how he’d gotten hurt so you wouldn’t question it. He felt sorry for her, Daddy. We all did. It wasn’t like she could help it when she got that way. And after, she’d feel terrible about it. Try to make it up to him. To all of us. She’d take us out for ice cream, or over to the mall. She felt so guilty.”
I shake my head. Tell her it’s the classic pattern for an abuser: lash out and then act remorseful. Buy the victim’s silence. “Victims,” I correct myself. “Plural. Your brother was the primary victim, but you and your sister were victims, too.”
She shakes her head. “That makes her sound diabolical, and she wasn’t. She just . . . she couldn’t help it. I’m sorry, Daddy. You’re right. I was the oldest. I should have gone to you. It’s like you said before: you were the safe parent.”
“No, your mother was the one who should have . . . And even if she didn’t. Goddamnit, I used to treat kids that had come from violent households. Used to read the signs and get them to confront what they’d been through.”
She stands. Goes over to the railing and looks out. I get up and go to her. Put my arm around her and tell her how brave she’s been for finally telling me. She leans against me. Apologizes again for keeping it from me. Says she just didn’t know what to do.
“Why would you? You were just a kid. I should have read the signs. Picked up on something.” She begins to cry. For the next few minutes, we just stand there, me holding on to her, reassuring her. The poor kid: it happened ten years ago, but she’s still clearly traumatized. All three of them must be, Andrew most of all. Her target. Her victim.
When we go back in, Ariane heads upstairs. I hear the shower going. Mix myself another drink and pace through the downstairs rooms. They’re damaged. They’ve got to be. And Annie just gets away with it? Causes all this emotional wreckage and then goes off to her New York life? I think about how pretty she looked that sunny afternoon at the San Gennaro festival, and the day the two of them came by on their way to the Gardner Museum. My wife, the woman I’d lost and still longed for. . . . Then I see her going after him with that mallet. At the bottom of the stairs she’s pushed him down, cradling him in her lap like she’s the Virgin Mary in a fucking pietà. Well, guess what, Annie? The secret’s out. You didn’t get away with it. I don’t care about your hip, highbrow wedding, or the fact that it happened all those years ago. You’re going to account for what you did to them. You and I are going to have a long-overdue conversation, and it’s not going to be pretty. I go over to the sink and pour the rest of my drink down the drain. I’m not sure what I’m going to do yet, but getting smashed isn’t going to help. Not with Ari here.
When she comes back down again, she’s wet-haired and scrubbed clean—the way she used to look when she’d get out of the tub as a kid. She looks drawn, though. Exhausted. When I ask her if she’s all right, she shrugs. I suggest that we get in the car. Drive up to P’town and get those groceries. “Some steaks, maybe, or some fish. I can fire up the grill when we get back.”
She says no, she’d rather stay here. Be alone for a while. “Maybe I’ll take a walk while you’re gone. How far is the bay beach from here?”
“About half a mile. Tell you what. If you’re not here when I get back from the store, I’ll drive the car down there and pick you up.”
“Okay,” she says.
I grab my keys and head for the door. “Oh, and lock up before you leave, okay? Viveca’s orders. There’s a spare key in one of the kitchen drawers. The one below the silverware drawer, I think—where the other kitchen utensils are. The spatula and nut crackers and stuff.” Is there a mallet in there?
She nods. “I might not go, though. I’ll see how I feel.” I tell her not to overdo it if she feels tired—that we can always walk down there tomorrow. “Yeah,” she says.
Driving along Route 6, I replay what she’s disclosed. Start to backpedal a little. Memory’s not that reliable. Maybe she’s remembering it worse than it actually was. . . . But Jesus Christ, how could I have been so blind? I’d helped everyone else’s kids and left my own three in the lurch.
In the supermarket parking lot, a woman grabs the space I was about to turn into. Asshole! I find another spot two cars down. She gets out of her car, I get out of mine. Following her into the store, I glare at her back as if she’s guilty of something far greater than taking my parking space. But it’s Annie I’m furious with, not this random woman. At the entrance, I grab a basket and go in. It’s so brightly lit that it feels like a police interrogation room. You didn’t know your wife was abusing your son? Or did you just look the other way? The strawberries are achingly red, the piles of bananas insanely green. When I bump into a cart someone’s left in the middle of the aisle, I apologize to it. What the fuck, Orion. Get a hold of yourself. A woman in a cap and apron approaches me with a tray of free samples. Says something. But I walk right past her. She might as well be speaking in a foreign language.
It dawns on me that I’ve forgotten the list Tracy made. What foods did she say? Spinach was on there, I remember. Salmon would be good, I guess. Or chicken. That’s it: I’ll pick up one of those rotisserie chickens. Make a spinach salad. Buy some frozen veggies and zap them in the microwave. It’ll be quick, easy. But after I’ve gotten these and head to the checkout, I see that the lines are four or five people deep. Six P.M. and they’ve only got three registers open? Ridiculous! While I wait, I glance at the tabloids’ screaming headlines: all those disclosures of celebrities’ bad behavior. . . . She did single him out more than the girls when they were growing up. I knew that. But he was more challenging, too. Always testing, pushing her buttons. Hey, it wasn’t like I never lost my temper with him. But still. Physical abuse? Cracking him in the head with a mallet? Pushing him down the stairs? . . .
He’s twelve or thirteen, sitting across from me at the dinner table, his wrist in a cast. We’re eating the pizza, his favorite, that Annie’s picked up on their way back from the hospital. “You must be on a first-name basis with those emergency room doctors by now,” I say, nodding at his cast.
He glances over at his mother then looks back at me. “Yeah. What can I tell you, Dad. I’m a spaz.”
“What did you say you tripped on?”
“What?”
“You told me you took that tumble because you tripped on something. What was it?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember something that happened this afternoon?”
“His sneakers,” Marissa volunteers.
“Oh yeah, that’s right,” he says. “My sneakers. I left them on the stairs.”
“Well, don’t be in such a hurry next time,” I tell him. “And from now on, don’t leave your stuff on the stairs. That’s an accident waiting to happen. That goes for the rest of you, too. How many times do I have to tell you kids not to do that?”
“Yeah, okay, Dad,” Andrew says. “You’re right. I’ll try and be more careful.”
“Sir?” someone says. When I look up, there?
??s no one else in front of me. I place my stuff on the belt. Apologize to the kid at the register, the people waiting behind me. When you got home that night, everything was back to normal, she said. But goddamnit, I should have known something was wrong. It was probably staring me in the face.
When I load the groceries into the car, I realize too late that the cover of the rotisserie chicken’s not on tight. The juice has spilled all over the other things in the bag, onto the backseat, the carpet. It’s a mess. I say it out loud—“Fuck!” I snap the top back on, ignoring the dirty look I just got. Open the car door with greasy fingers. Get in and slam it shut.
Driving back to Viveca’s, I approach a family riding their bikes in the shoulder. A mom and dad, two kids, all of them wearing helmets. . . .
I’m in the bathroom shaving when he barges in. He’s what? Fifteen? Sixteen? I’ve taken him to empty parking lots a few times so he can practice his driving. He swings open the medicine cabinet door like I’m not even standing there. “Hey, do you mind?”
“Oh, sorry. I’ve got a headache. Mom says to take some aspirin.”
When he closes the medicine cabinet, I see his banged-up face in the mirror: a cut over his eyebrow, a goose egg on his forehead. “How’d that happen?”
“What?”
“That bump on your forehead.”
“This? I dunno.”
“What do you mean you—”
“I fell off my bike. Hit some sand and went into a skid, then bam! Fell head first against the blacktop.”
“And I don’t suppose you were wearing your helmet.”
“Nah. I forgot. Sorry.”
“You feeling groggy? Nauseated? Because from the size of that lump you’ve got, you could have gotten a concussion.”
“Nah, I’m okay.” And he’s out of there. . . .
Did he have a bike accident, or was that the time she clobbered him with the mallet? All those bumps and bruises. All those trips to the emergency room, and what do I do? Lecture him about wearing a helmet, leaving his shit on the stairs . . .