Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

I can see that now, his hand so gentle, and her beaming up at him, wide-eyed, gurgling.

Then he turned to me, and with the same finger and the same softness he reached to touch the side of my face. I did not draw away. His finger touched me, ever so lightly, and then he reached to draw me into the circle of his arms. I smelled his shirt, freshly washed and sun-dried, and under it the clean male scent of him.

We looked at each other, both of us silent, the whole room silent. And then Livia cooed and he smiled quickly and chucked me under the chin and left. I heard the screen door slam, and then the sounds of the car as he drove to town. When I could not hear it anymore I went over to the radio and switched it on. They were playing a Tammy Wynette song. “Stand by your man,” Tammy urged, and my mother’s silence swallowed up the words.

While the radio played unheard I changed Livia and put her in for her nap. I came back to the kitchen and cleared the table. My mother waved a hand at the air in front of her face.

“He smokes,” I said.

“I didn’t say anything,” she said.

We did the dishes together. There is a dishwasher but we never use it for the breakfast dishes. She prefers to run it only once a day, after the evening meal. It could hold all the day’s dishes, they would not amount to more than one load in the machine, but she does not like to let the breakfast and lunch dishes stand. It seems wasteful to me, of time and effort, and even of water, although our well furnishes more than we ever need. But it is her house, after all, and her dishwasher, and hers the decision as to when it is to be used.

Silently she washed the dishes, silently I wiped them. As I reached to stack plates in a cupboard I caught her looking at me. Her eyes were on my cheek, and I could feel her gaze right where I had felt Dan’s finger. His touch had been light. Hers was firmer.

I said, “It’s nothing.”

“All right.”

“Dammit, Mama!”

“I didn’t say anything, Tildie.”

I was named Matilda for my father’s mother. I never knew her, she died before I was born, before my parents met. I was never called Matilda. It was the name on my college diploma, on my driver’s license, on Livia’s birth certificate, but no one ever used it.

“He can’t help it,” I said. “It’s not his fault.”

Her silence devoured my words. On the radio Tammy Wynette sang a song about divorce, spelling out the word. Why were they playing all her records this morning? Was it her birthday? Or an anniversary of some failed romance?

“It’s not,” I said. I moved to her right so that I could talk to her good ear. “It’s a pattern. His father was abusive to his mother. Dan grew up around that. His father drank and was free with his hands. Dan swore he would never be like that, but patterns like that are almost impossible to throw off. It’s what he knows, can you understand that? On a deep level, deeper than intellect, bone deep, that’s how he knows to behave as a man, as a husband.”

“He marked your face. He hasn’t done that before, Tildie.”

My hand flew to the spot. “You knew that—”

“Sounds travel. Even with my door closed, even with my good ear on the pillow. I’ve heard things.”

“You never said anything.”

“I didn’t say anything today,” she reminded me.

“He can’t help it,” I said. “You have to understand that. Didn’t you see him this morning?”

“I saw him.”

“It hurts him more than it hurts me. And it’s my fault as much as it’s his.”

“For allowing it?”

“For provoking him.”

She looked at me. Her eyes are a pale blue, like mine, and at times there is accusation in them. My gaze must have the same quality. I have been told that it is penetrating. “Don’t look at me like that,” my husband has said, raising a hand as much to ward off my gaze as to threaten me. “Damn you, don’t you look at me like that!”

Like what? I’d wondered. How was I looking at him? What was I doing wrong?

“I do provoke him,” I told her. “I make him hit me.”

“How?”

“By saying the wrong thing.”

“What sort of thing?”

“Things that upset him.”

“And then he has to hit you, Tildie? Because of what you say?”

“It’s a pattern, ” I said. “It’s the way he grew up. Men who drink have sons who drink. Men who beat their wives have sons who beat their wives. It’s passed on over the generations like a genetic illness. Mama, Dan’s a good man. You see how he is with Livia, how he loves her, how she loves him.”

“Yes.”

“And he loves me, Mama. Don’t you think it tears him up when something like this happens? Don’t you think it eats at him?”

“It must.”

“It does!” I thought how he’d cried last night, how he’d held me and touched the mark on my cheek and cried. “And we’re going to try to do something about it,” I said. “To break the pattern. There’s a clinic in Fulton City where you can go for counseling. It’s not expensive, either.”

“And you’re going?”

“We’ve talked about it. We’re considering it.”

She looked at me and I made myself meet her eyes. After a moment she looked away. “Well, you would know more about this sort of thing than I do,” she said. “You went to college, you studied, you learned things.”

I studied art history. I can tell you about the Italian Renaissance, although I have already forgotten much of what I learned. I took one psychology course in my freshman year and we observed the behavior of white rats in mazes.

“Mama,” I said, “I know you disapprove.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “Tildie, that’s not so.”

“It’s not?”

She shook her head. “I just hurt for you,” she said. “That’s all.”

We live on220 acres, only a third of them level. The farm has been in our family since the land was cleared early in the last century. It has been years since we farmed it. The MacNaughtons run sheep in our north pastures, and Mr. Parkhill leases forty acres, planting alfalfa one year and field corn the next. Mama has some bank stock and some utilities, and the dividends plus what she’s paid for the land rent are enough to keep her. There’s no mortgage on the land and the taxes have stayed low. And she has a big kitchen garden. We eat out of it all summer long and put up enough in the fall to carry us through the winter.

Dan studied comparative lit while I studied art history. He got a master’s and did half the course work for a doctorate and then knew he couldn’t do it anymore. He got a job driving a taxi and I worked waiting tables at Paddy Mac’s, where we used to come for beer and hamburgers when we were students. When I got pregnant with Livia he didn’t want me on my feet all day but we couldn’t make ends meet on his earnings as a cabdriver. Rents were high in that city, and everything cost a fortune.

And we both loved country living, and knew the city was no place to bring up Livia. So we moved here, and Dan got work right away with a construction company in Caldwell. That’s the nearest town, just six miles from us on country roads, and Fulton City is only twenty-two miles.

After that conversation with Mama I went outside and walked back beyond the garden and the pear and apple orchard. There’s a stream runs diagonally across our land, and just beyond it is the spot I always liked the best, where the walnut trees are. We have a whole grove of black walnuts, twenty-six trees in all. I know because Dan counted them. He was trying to estimate what they’d bring.

Walnut is valuable. People will pay thousands of dollars for a mature tree. They make veneer from it, because it’s too costly to use as solid wood.