Robert Goolrick: A Reliable Wife

He took his hand away from her mouth and kissed her, violated her mouth with his tongue and bit at her lips and still she didn’t make a sound, still she stood twisting beneath his arms, but soundlessly, only the rustle of her skirt on the floor, only the sound of the flapping wings of the birds and the rustling of the palm fronds where the birds alighted. He kissed her eyes, the skin of her forehead. He licked her face and bit at the lobes of her ears. It felt as though he were on fire.

He needed her to want him. He needed her never to have gone away, never to have abandoned him in this insane scheme they had concocted, never to have slept with his father. She was his lover. His. She was the desire of his childhood, the woman on the trolley car, the young girl in the restaurant, the whore at the end of the dark street.

He ripped at her dress, and it tore open in his hands, two quick pulls and it was open. He tore at her thin camisole until he could see her breasts, the dark nipples full and erect. He fell to his knees and pulled her forward, her breasts in his mouth, his teeth biting her nipples. He knew he was raping her. He knew this was not her will, not what she wanted, and he found that erotic as well.

He tore at fabric, and he saw the dark triangle of hair. She was still standing, her hands on top of his head. His hair was wild, it was slick with sweat from the exertion of doing this thing he didn’t want to do, this thing he had to do to bring himself one step closer to his own death.

She was crying now, and he could hear her breath coming in and out as she cried, and he rose and licked the tears from her face as he undid his pants and pushed himself into her, against her will and he knew it and didn’t care. She wasn’t Catherine anymore. She was someone he didn’t know, and he didn’t care if he hurt her or defiled her or made her ashamed. She was the last one; this was the last time. He would never see her again.

She stabbed him twice. She stabbed him with her sewing scissors out of a basket on the arm of the chair. She stabbed him in the back and then she stabbed him in the shoulder when he lurched back in shock. Her dress hung open in the front, her skin exposed; her camisole was a rag around her naked torso, just beginning now to round, to show a fullness. Her body arched forward as she howled in pain and rage and despair.

“Why?” was all she screamed. “Why?” Again and again.

Now he began to cry, blood pouring from his shoulder and his back, he howled in pain for all that was lost, everything that was broken now for good, everything he could never get back. He had wanted something, but now he couldn’t remember what,

“He killed my mother! I saw it!”

“He didn’t, Antonio. That never happened.” Drawing her ruined dress around her, trying to hold it closed with one hand and sweep her hair away from her face with the other, her eyes dry now, her mouth hard and unyielding and her voice hard, too, hard and filled with the truth.

“He let her die. She was sick, Antonio. You dreamed it. You imagined it so much, out of hatred, out of… I don’t know, out of something, that you thought it was real, but it wasn’t. She was sick. She was alone and dying, and he took you to see her and she didn’t even know your name, and he turned his back on her and walked away and in that, yes, he killed her, but not the way you think.”

“No!”

“Yes. And he has spent a lifetime regretting it, wishing he could have felt otherwise, but he didn’t, and he let her die and you have to let her die, you have to let her die in peace and not look to find her, not wonder where she is. She’s gone, that’s all. She was always gone. Long before she was dead.”

He was bleeding badly. He was in pain. He didn’t care. He fell to his knees and buried his head in her ruined skirt and wept, wept for himself. And then they heard the sound in the door. They heard Truitt’s footsteps in the hall, but it was too late. Her dress was ruined, Antonio’s blood fell to the marble floor and Truitt would know everything that had happened, and know, too, that he had finally been betrayed beyond his ability to endure it.

Then he was standing in the door. Then he knew.

Antonio turned to him, his hands covered with his own blood, his face a mask of pain. “Yes! I raped her. I’ve been with her, inside her a thousand times. Do you know what she is? Do you know who she is?”

The color drained from Truitt’s face. He stood stock still. He saw everything, in frozen detail, the tattered dress, the blood on his boy, the birds, the palms. He smelled the jasmine and the orange blossoms and he saw the dress and the blood and he understood, and he knew he was going to kill his son.

He stepped forward and picked Antonio up by the shoulders and held him in his arms, the son’s blood staining his father’s shirt-front, wetting him through to the skin.

And then Truitt’s hands moved. He fists came down on his son’s head, buckling his knees, and Antonio stood while his father beat his face and his body with his fists and he didn’t resist, he didn’t try to protect himself. It was like a dream of long ago, a memory of his boyhood. He merely thought, said to himself, this is it, this is the moment and then you can rest. If we just get through this, you can finally come home, be at home and rest.

Finally he ran. He turned from his father’s grasp, he turned from Catherine, seeing her scream but not hearing it, seeing the last look on her face as she screamed because she loved him and hated him at the same time, seeing her call his name but not hearing it, the voice he had loved, he ran from the conservatory, scattering the tiny birds, he ran and Ralph followed him, his fists still beating his son’s bleeding back.

Antonio ran into the big hallway, the hallway with the Venetian mirrors, the long corridor tilting wildly, where he could not get a footing because his shoes were wet now with his own blood, and he ran to the fireplace and picked up the iron poker, and when Ralph ran up to him, he hit Ralph in the face with the poker, drawing blood, sending his father reeling, his head cracking on the stone floor. Catherine followed into the hall, she caught at him, tried to stop him as he ran past her and out the door into the garden.

Catherine ran to Ralph. She lifted his head from the floor. She saw his eyes open wide in rage and knew that this was not hers to stop, that it would play itself out to an end she didn’t want and couldn’t have imagined. Ralph got to his feet, Catherine begging him to stop, now, to stop before it was too late, but he didn’t hear her or wouldn’t hear her, and he followed Antonio into the garden and beyond, catching and beating him. Antonio never made a sound. He stood and ran and was caught by his father and was beaten the way he had been beaten so often as a boy, except that this time he was guilty and filled with sin and horror, and they both knew it.

Down the long meadow they fought, Antonio fighting back with whatever he could find-sticks, rocks-hurting Ralph, drawing blood from his head. But Ralph wouldn’t be stopped, as he used his fists to beat back the memory of the wife who had used him, the child who had run away, the days spent in the idleness of love while his own father lay dying, the mother who had buried the needle in his palm. In his fury, all the rage of all the years came pouring out.

Catherine was standing on the broad stone terrace, afraid to go any farther, afraid to interfere, knowing that however it played out, the end was already decided. Mrs. Larsen was standing beside her now, flour in her hair. Catherine could see every detail of what was happening, every detail of the field, the Arabian standing in the short grass, its head down, then up in alarm as the two men passed, screaming and fighting.