Russell Banks - Affliction

Wade turned his back on his father and held his mother to him, wrapping her in his arms and smothering her sob against his chest. “What happened?” Wade asked her. “What happened, Ma? What’s the matter?”

He heard Pop growl, “ That is none of your goddamned business, mis-ter.” He was drunk, mean drunk, dangerous as a trapped animal. Far more than the sight of his mother crazed, it was the way his father spoke, the way he emphasized the wrong words in his sentence — the first, “that,” and the last, “mis-ter,” hanging on to it, savoring its flavor — that set off Wade’s alarms and made him stiffen with fear.

Wade glanced back over his shoulder and made sure Pop was still seated at the table: he was pouring himself a drink from the bottle of Canadian Club. Wade saw through the doorway beyond into the living room, and huddled at the bottom of the stairs at the far side of the room were his little brother Rolfe and his sister Lena in pajamas. Lena sucked her thumb ferociously, and Rolfe, without smiling, flipped a wave to his brother.

“Come on, Ma,” Wade said, “let’s just call it a night, okay? Come on,” he said gently, turning her toward the door into the living room. “Why don’t you ease on to bed now, okay? I’ll be right here.” He heard his father snort.

“He just starts picking on me,” Ma cried. “Picking and picking, over nothing. Nothing.” She shuffled a few steps toward the door. Wade had one arm around her tiny shoulders and held one of her hands with the other, as if inviting her onto the dance floor.

Slowly, carefully, he moved her out of the room, while she continued to talk brokenly. “It starts with nothing, nothing … and he, he gets mad at me. It was only for supper, he was mad because the casserole … it was a nice supper, it was, but he was late, so we ate without him. You know, you were here. He was late, and the casserole got all dried out, and he was mad because we didn’t wait for him. I explained, Wade, I told him you had a movie date and all, and he was late.”

Wade said, “I know, I know. It’s all right now.” He tried to hush her as they moved one small step at a time across the living room toward the door to the bedroom, Uncle Elbourne’s room, they still called it, after all these years, as if our mother and father had never taken true possession of it, even though they had conceived all but one of their children in that room.

“And then when I try to argue with him … all I did was try to explain, but he just gets madder and madder and starts yelling at me for all kinds of things. About money, and you kids. Wade, he blames me for everything! Nothing I say … nothing I say, …”

“I know, Ma,” Wade said. “It’s okay now, it’s over.” They entered the darkened bedroom, and Wade turned on the lamp on the dresser by the door and closed the door behind them. He eased her over to the bed, drew back the covers, and when she had climbed into the bed, brought the blankets back over her. She looked like a sick child, her fingers clutching at the top of the blankets, her face looking mournfully up at him: so helpless and frail, so confused, so pathetically dependent, that — though he wanted to weep for her — he was filled instead with terror: he knew that he could not help her but had to try.

He whispered, “Did he hit you, Ma? Did Pop hit you?”

She shook her head no, turned down her mouth and stuck out her lower lip and started crying.

“Ma, he didn’t hit you, did he? Tell me the truth.” Her face didn’t show any evidence of having been hit, but that did not mean much, Wade knew. He could have hit her someplace where it would not show.

She caught her breath and said in a whisper, “No. No, he hasn’t done that in a long time. He stopped … he stopped doing that. Not since that last time … with you, when you got fresh. Oh, you poor thing!” she said, and she started crying again.

Wade said, “He hasn’t done it since then? What about the other kids? I’m not here a lot, you know.”

“You boys are all too big now,” she said.

“No, I mean Rolfe and Lena.” He looked back nervously at the closed door.

She shook her head. “No. He doesn’t do that now.”

“You’re sure?” Wade did not believe her. “What about tonight?”

She looked up at him, and her eyes filled again. “I thought … I was afraid. I thought he was going to do it again,” she said. “That’s when you came in. He had his fist up, he was going to do it. Just because … I was all upset, he was saying terrible things, things about me. I know it’s just the alcohol in him that’s talking and I shouldn’t react, but I can’t help it, the things he says upset me so, and I start crying and answering back, and that’s what he can’t stand. Answering back. Questioning his authority. He loses his temper.”

“What did he say?” Wade asked; then he said, “No, never mind. I don’t want to know. He’s drunk. It doesn’t matter what he said, does it?” He smiled down at her and patted her hands. “You try to sleep now. Everything’s over now. He’ll be off on some other tangent, and in a minute he’ll be hollering at me for coming in late. You watch,” Wade said, and he smiled.

He backed away from the bed and, still facing her, turned out the light, then reached behind him for the doorknob, opened the door and stepped out, closing it carefully, quietly, as if she had already fallen asleep. He looked over at his little sister and brother and flapped the backs of both hands for them to scoot upstairs to bed. Somberly, they obeyed and were gone.

When Wade returned to the kitchen, Pop was standing by the sink, studying the half-filled glass in his hand as if he’d spotted a crack in it. “You get an earful?” he asked Wade.

“What do you mean?”

“‘What do you mean?’ You know what I mean. Did you get an earful?”

Wade stood on the other side of the table with his arms folded across his chest. He said, “Listen, Pop, I don’t care what you guys fight about, it’s your business. I just don’t want—”

“What? You just don’t want what? Let’s hear it.” He put the glass down on the counter next to him and glared at his son. “Pissant,” he said.

Wade took in a deep breath. “I guess I just don’t want you to ever hit her again.”

Pop stepped forward suddenly and said, “Guess. You guess.” He moved toward the table, then around it on the right, and Wade swiftly moved around it on the left, until they had reversed positions — Wade had his back to the kitchen sink, and his father was on the other side of the table, with his back to the door.

“She tell you I hit her?” Glenn said. “She tell you that?”

“I’m not talking about tonight. I’m talking about the future. And the past doesn’t matter. That’s all,” Wade added weakly. “The future.”

“You’re telling me? You are trying to tell me what I’m supposed to be afraid of? You think I’m afraid of you?” He showed his large teeth and made a quick move toward Wade, and when Wade jumped, he stopped and folded his arms over his chest and laughed. “Jesus H. Christ,” he said. “What a candy-ass.”

Without thinking it, Wade reached behind him into the dishrack, and his hand wrapped itself, as if of its own volition, around the handle of the skillet, heavy, black, cast iron, and he lifted it free of the rack and swung it around in front of him. The sound of his heart pounded in his ears like a hammer against steel, and he heard his voice, high and thin in the distance, say to his father, “If you touch her or me, or any of us, again, I’ll fucking kill you.”

His father quietly said, “Jesus.” He sounded like a man who had just broken a shoelace.