*
The specter of fear descended on us, our phone calls increasingly frantic, the litany of Heather’s injuries piling up: The black eye that she said she’d gotten running into a door. The cut on her lip that she insisted she’d done herself. The limp she had because she’d “tripped.” The series of spots on the inside skin of her forearm that looked suspiciously like cigarette burns. That last injury marked a turning point for Julie. She’d still believed that something could be done, that if Viktor “got help,” then everything would restore itself in that marriage, but no longer. Cigarette burns were so obviously and deliberately cruel; they were also impossible to explain away as an accident.
“They were right there,” she said in a tremulous voice, holding out her own arm and pointing with a shaking hand. “He isn’t going to stop until he’s killed her.” She looked so stricken that both Alison and I hugged her, the three of us holding on to one another for a long moment, helpless.
“Why doesn’t she fight back?” I said. “If she won’t leave the bastard at least she could defend herself.”
“She’s afraid of him,” Alison said. “He makes her feel powerless.”
“Then we’ve got to give her the power,” Julie said, taking the words out of my mouth and sounding surprisingly determined for someone who until recently had been eager to accept Heather’s excuses as reality.
“You’ve got to keep a record of what Viktor’s doing,” I said to Heather the next time we were all at Crazy Mocha. “Take photos of your injuries.”
“Shh.” Her gaze darted around the shop, anxious that someone might overhear our conversation. She whispered, “Viktor checks my phone—he doesn’t trust me.”
“Then use this,” Alison said, pulling a small digital camera out of her purse. Heather didn’t ask why Alison just happened to be carrying a camera with her, and none of us volunteered that we’d talked about it beforehand and come up with this idea. We’d anticipated that she might argue with us, give us some reason she couldn’t take the photos, or deny again that things were that bad, but she just took the camera from Alison and quickly shoved it in her purse.
We berated ourselves for the injuries that had gone unnoticed, like the broken arm from a year ago that Heather said came from a holiday skiing accident, which we now knew had been broken by Viktor. I thought of us all writing happy phrases on her cast and felt sick. Even worse was remembering how once I’d seen a huge bouquet of dark pink roses at her house and teased her, “Oh, look how sweet—someone must love you very much,” completely unaware that these were a guilt gift from Viktor.
Sometimes I look back and wonder how things might have been different if we’d just pulled up outside that enormous house on the hill and packed up Heather’s belongings, hers and Daniel’s, ignoring her protests, sedating her if necessary, and driving them away to Julie’s house, or Alison’s, or mine. But none of us did that. We were polite women living in a civilized society where people rarely did more than whisper about one another’s marriages. We tried reasoning with her and spent hours worrying about her, but ultimately we did nothing, watching from a distance like moviegoers at a disaster film, tense and expectant, waiting for the awful yet inevitable conclusion.
chapter ten
HEATHER
I think about leaving all the time, but where would I go? Back to West Virginia and coal country? Back to living at my mother’s house as if I’m fifteen again and not thirty? He’ll follow me there; he’s said he would. He likes to tell me that now that he’s got me he’s never letting go.
Sometimes when Viktor’s at work I take one of the large suitcases out of the closet in the guest room and open it on our bed. I bring out my clothes from the walk-in closet, folding them carefully, stacking them in as tightly as possible. I plan as I pack: I will take all the jewelry that he’s given me, the necklaces that weren’t my taste, and the rings he chose because he liked the stones. I will take the emergency cash that he keeps in a drawer in his desk and the money that he’s left for the cleaning people. I will call for a taxi and have them drive me to the bus station. Not in Pittsburgh, that is too close and he’d think to look there. I will have the driver take me to the bus station in Greensburg and from there I will board a bus for Georgia or somewhere that is warm, but not a tourist destination. A place he wouldn’t think to look for me.
But as I stand there packing I’m already seeing the flaws in this plan—there isn’t enough cash to get far. Even if I take the money in Daniel’s clown-shaped bank, I would have barely enough to afford the bus ticket to Georgia. That isn’t enough to begin again; I’d have to sell the jewelry first. Viktor might think of this, too. He might have the police put a trace on the jewelry, or claim that it wasn’t mine to sell since he purchased all of it. He’ll have the receipts to prove it because he’s a details person—meticulous, orderly, bothered by things that aren’t neat and tidy. Even if I did manage to sell to a pawnshop or a private buyer, how much am I really likely to get from all of it? It’s not nearly enough to live comfortably.
I can’t do it, I can’t leave. I unpack the suitcase and put it away before he gets home. The clothes are back in the closet, the money back in the drawer. His tires are snaking up the drive as I look around frantically to make sure that there is no sign that I was considering departure.
“You’re home early,” I say, trying to sound excited.
Daniel is at his grandmother’s. It turns out that Viktor has arranged this ahead of time—a special night just for us. “I want to spend time with my wife,” he says, speaking of me, as he often does, as if I’m a possession. He leads me to the bedroom where at his direction I put on the silk negligée he bought me, an ugly shade of salmon pink that was his choice, not mine. He is ready before I am, sitting there on the side of the bed in his briefs and socks, the dead-white skin of his chest stark under the full light that he likes. I imagine that it reminds him of an operating room. When he pats the center of the bed, I dutifully cross the room and climb on to it before presenting myself like a patient, because that’s what he wants, lying still on my back while he runs his cold hands over my body. He straddles me on the bed and I close my eyes, removing myself from this place, but he says, “Look at me, I want you to look at me.” So I open them, but I can’t meet his gaze, looking away from the intensity in his eyes to focus on a spot on his forehead. He examines me the way I imagine him checking his patients on the operating table, carefully perusing every inch of me through the reading glasses he sometimes wears, even in bed. I imagine what he would think if I suggested Botox for the thin trenches running across his forehead.
The bruise on my arm is an interruption in this fantasy he is enacting, a blemish on the blow-up doll beneath him. He runs a finger lightly across it, once, then again, watching my face, waiting for each wince. “How did this get here?” he says, but of course this question is rhetorical. He isn’t really asking, because he’s too busy erasing the mark, reshaping my arm mentally without it. But it won’t go easily, he can’t ignore it. He cups his hand over it—out of sight, now out of mind. It clearly disturbs him, this mark, and he keeps coming back to it, finally kissing the spot too hard several times. “There now, all better,” he says at last, like an owner soothing a pet he’s stepped on.
chapter eleven
JULIE