“Damn you, don’t say anything to her,” Djiak roared, springing from his chair. He shoved past me roughly to where Mrs. Djiak stood and slapped her.
I was on my feet smashing my fist into his face before I realized what I was doing. He was thirty years older than me, but still very strong. It was only because I took him completely by surprise that I managed to hit him full force. He recoiled against the refrigerator and stood for a moment, shaking his head to recover from the blow. Then the ugly anger returned and he came for me.
I was ready. As he charged I slid a chair in his path. He crashed against it, his momentum forcing him and the chair into the table. His fall brought down the TV set and the beer in a jumbled mess of glass and fluid. He lay sprawled under the table, the chair on top of him.
Martha Djiak gave a little moan of horror, whether over the sight of her husband or the mess on the floor I couldn’t know. I stood over him, panting from fury, my gun in my hand barrel-first, ready to smash it into him if he started to get up. His face was glazed—none of his womenfolk had ever fought back against him.
Mrs. Djiak screamed suddenly. I turned to look at her. She couldn’t speak, only point, but I saw a little fire sparkling along the back of the television where something had mixed with the exposed wires. Maybe a jar of solvent that was kept at the ready for oil stains menacing the kitchen. I stuffed the gun back into my jeans waistband and snatched the dish towel from her apron pocket. Carefully skirting the pool of beer, I crawled under the table and unplugged the set.
“Baking soda,” I called sharply to Mrs. Djiak.
The demand for a commonplace household item helped her regain some balance. I watched her feet move to a cupboard. She crouched down and handed me the box across her husband’s body. I dumped the contents on the blue flames flickering around the set and watched the fire go out.
Mr. Djiak slowly untangled himself from the mess of chair and broken glass. He stood for a moment looking at the wreck on the floor, at the wet stains on his pants. Then, without saying anything, he left the room. I could hear his heavy footsteps pass down the hall. Martha Djiak and I listened to the front door slam.
She was shaking. I seated her in one of the plastic-covered chairs and heated water in the teakettle. She watched me dumbly while I rummaged through her cupboards looking for tea. When I found the Lipton bags tucked neatly into a canister, I made her a cup, mixing it well with sugar and milk. She drank it obediently in scalding gulps.
“Do you think you can tell me about Louisa now?” I asked when she’d turned down a second cup.
“How did you find out?” Her eyes were lifeless, her voice little more than a tired thread.
“Your brother’s son came to visit me this afternoon. Each time I’ve seen him I thought he looked familiar, but I put it down to years of looking at Art on posters or TV. But today Caroline was with me. She and I were in the middle of an argument. Young Art walked in with his face flushed, all agitated, and suddenly I realized how much he resembled Caroline. They might almost be twins, you know—I just hadn’t connected them before because I wasn’t expecting it. Of course he’s got that unearthly beauty and she’s always so disheveled, it wasn’t until they were both upset at the same time that you could really see it.”
She listened to my explanation with her face screwed up painfully, as if I were lecturing in Latin and she was trying to make me think she could follow me. When she didn’t say anything I prodded her a little.
“Why did you throw Louisa out of the house when she got pregnant?”
She looked at me directly then, some mix of fear and disgust on her face. “Keep her in the house? With that shame for all the world to know about?”
“It wasn’t her shame. It was Art’s, your brother’s. How can you even compare the two?”
“She wouldn’t have gotten—gotten in trouble if she hadn’t led him on. She saw how much he liked her to dance for him and kiss him. He—he had a weakness. She should have kept away from him.”
My nausea was so acute, it took all my will not to jump on her physically, to slam her body into the debris under the table. “If you knew he had a weakness for little girls, why the hell did you let him near your daughters?”
“He—he said he wouldn’t do it again. After I saw him—playing with—with Connie when she was five, I told him I would tell Ed about it if he ever did it again. He promised. He was afraid of Ed. But Louisa was too much for him, she was too evil-minded, she led him on against his own strength. When we saw she was going to have a baby, she told us how it happened and Art explained it to us, how she led him on against his own strength.”