Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“In the kitchen. The pine-top table, didn’t you say it was an antique? We could sell that.”

“Why would I want to sell the table?”

“You want to sell those trees bad enough. You as much as said that as soon as my mama dies you’ll be out back with a chain saw.”

“Don’t start with me,” he said. “Don’t you start with me, Tildie.”

“Or what? Or you’ll hit me? Oh, God, Dan, what are we doing? Fighting over how to pay for the counseling to keep from fighting. Dan, what’s the matter with us?”

I went to embrace him but he backed away from me. “Honey,” he said, “we better be real careful with this. They were telling me about escalating patterns of violence. I’m afraid of what could happen. I’m going to do what they said to do.”

“What’s that?”

“I want to pack some things,” he said. “That’s what I came home to do. There’s that Welcome Inn Motel outside of Caldwell, they say it’s not so bad and I believe they have weekly rates.”

“No,” I said. “No.”

“They said it’s best. Especially if we’re going to start counseling, because that brings everything up and out into the open, and it threatens the part of us that wants to be in this pattern. Tildie, from what they said it’d be dangerous for us to be together right now.”

“You can’t leave,” I said.

“I wouldn’t be five miles away. I’d be coming for dinner some nights, we’d be going to a movie now and then. It’s not like—”

“We can’t afford it,” I said. “Dan, how can we afford it? Eighty dollars a week for the counseling and God knows how much for the motel, and you’d be having most of your meals out, and how can we afford it? You’ve got a decent job but you don’t make that kind of money.”

His eyes hardened but he breathed in and out, in and out, and said, “Tildie, just talking like this is a strain, don’t you see that? We can afford it, we’ll find a way to afford it. Tildie, don’t grab on to my arm like that, you know what it does to me. Tildie, stop it, will you for God’s sake stop it?”

I put my arms around my own self and hugged myself. I was shaking. My hands just wanted to take hold of his arm. What was so bad about holding on to your husband’s arm? What was wrong with that?

“Don’t go,” I said.

“I have to.”

“Not now. It’s late, they won’t have any rooms left anyhow. Wait until morning. Can’t you wait until morning?”

“I was just going to get some of my things and go.”

“Go in the morning. Don’t you want to see Livvy before you go? She’s your daughter, don’t you want to say good-bye to her?”

“I’m not leaving, Tildie. I’m just staying a few miles from here so we’ll have a chance to keep from destroying ourselves. My God, Tildie, I don’t want to leave you. That’s the whole point, don’t you see that?”

“Stay until morning,” I said. “Please?”

“And will we go through this again in the morning?”

“No,” I said. “I promise.”

We were both restless, but then we made love and that settled him, and soon he was sleeping. I couldn’t sleep, though. I lay there for a time, and then I put a robe on and went down to the kitchen and sat there for a long time, thinking of patterns, thinking of ways to escape them. And then I went back up the stairs to the bedroom again.

I was inthe kitchen the next morning before Livia woke up. I was there when Mama came down, and her eyes widened at the sight of me. She started to say something but then I guess she saw something in my eyes and she stayed silent.

I said, “Mama, we have to call the police. You’ll mind the baby when they come for me. Will you do that?”

“Oh, Tildie,” she said.

I led her up the stairs again and into our bedroom. Dan lay facedown, the way he always slept. I drew the sheet down and showed her where I’d stabbed him, slipping the kitchen knife between two ribs and into the heart. The knife lay on the table beside the bed. I had wiped the blood from it. There had not been very much blood to wipe.

“He was going to leave,” I said, “and I couldn’t bear it, Mama. And I thought, Now he won’t leave, now he’ll never leave me. I thought, This is a way to break the pattern. Isn’t that crazy, Mama? It doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

“My poor Tildie.”

“Do you want to know something? I feel safe now, Mama. He won’t hit me anymore and I never have to worry about him leaving me. He can’t leave me, can he?” Something caught in my throat. “Oh, and he’ll never hold me again, either. In the circle of his arms.”

I broke then, and it was Mama who held me, stroking my forehead, soothing me. I was all right then, and I stood up straight and told her she had better call the police.

“Livia’ll be up any minute now,” she said. “I think she’s awake, I think I heard her fussing a minute ago. Change her and bring her down and feed her her breakfast.”

“And then?”

“And then put her in for her nap.”

After I putLivia back in her crib for her nap Mama told me that we weren’t going to call the police. “Now that you’re back where you belong,” she said, “I’m not about to see them take you away. Your baby needs her mama and I need you, too.”

“But Dan—”

“Bring the big wheelbarrow around to the kitchen door. Between the two of us we can get him down the stairs. We’ll dig his grave in the back, we’ll bury him here on our land. People won’t suspect anything. They’ll just think he went off, the way men do.”

“The way my daddy did,” I said.

Somehow we got him down the stairs and out through the kitchen. The hardest part was getting him into the old wheelbarrow. I checked Livia and made sure she was sleeping soundly, and then we took turns with the barrow, wheeling it out beyond the kitchen garden.

“What I keep thinking,” I said, “is at least I broke the pattern.”

She didn’t say anything, and what she didn’t say became one of her famous silences, sucking up all the sound around us. The barrow’s wheel squeaked, the birds sang in the trees, but now I couldn’t hear any of that.

Suddenly she said, “Patterns.” Then she didn’t say anything more, and I tried to hear the squeak of the wheel.

Then she said, “He never would have left you. If he left he’d only come back again. And he never would have quit hitting you. And each time would be a little worse than the last.”

“It’s not always like it is on Oprah, Mama.”

“There’s things you don’t know,” she said.

“Like what?”

The squeaking of the wheel, the song of birds. She said, “You know how I lost the hearing in the one ear?”

“You had an infection.”

“That’s what I always told you. It’s not true. Your daddy cupped his hands and boxed my ears. He deafened me on the one side. I was lucky, nothing happened to the other ear. I still hear as good as ever out of it.”

“I don’t believe it,” I said.

“It’s the truth, Tildie.”

“Daddy never hit you.”

“Your daddy hit me all the time,” she said. “All the time. He used his hands, he used his feet. He used his belt.”

I felt a tightening in my throat. “I don’t remember,” I said.

“You didn’t know. You were little. What do you think Livia knows? What do you think she’ll remember?”

We walked on a ways. I said, “I just remember the two of you hollering. I thought you hollered and finally he left. That’s what I always thought.”

“That’s what I let you think. It’s what I wanted you to think. I had a broken jaw, I had broken ribs, I had to keep telling the doctor I was clumsy, I kept falling down. He believed me, too. I guess he had lots of women told him the same thing.” We switched, and I took over the wheelbarrow. She said, “Dan would have done the same to you, if you hadn’t done what you did.”