“But we’ll never get him to court. He’s got everyone in his pocket. Plays golf with the chief, his wife is on a couple of charity boards with Judge Ames’s wife. He don’t matter. We gotta focus on Mrs. Malone. She was there. And even if she didn’t kill ’em, she was involved. She was their mother; it’s a mother’s job to take care of her children. This happened on her watch.”
He leaned forward and his face was close to Pete’s.
“And she’s the one going down for this, make no mistake. We got a letter today that might be the final link in the chain. Another week or two and we’ll have everything we need to charge her.”
15
Ruth woke in the chair by the window. There was no traffic noise, but weak daylight was already filtering through the slats in the blinds. She stood and stretched out the ache in her neck and shoulders, rubbed her jaw where she’d been grinding her teeth, decided to take a hot bath. Down the hallway, past closed doors, past Minnie, whimpering in her sleep. She made coffee, added two fingers of vodka.
The noise woke Minnie and she padded into the kitchen, circled her empty bowl, whining gently. Ruth ignored her, took her cup into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. She put the coffee on the floor and sat on the john. Breathed out for a long moment.
Frank was gone again. The distance and the silence between them had grown and deepened and she hadn’t cared enough to try to breach it.
He would come home to find her sitting in the dark, a cigarette burned down between her fingers, staring at nothing. Would whisper to her while she ignored him, and then he would leave her alone, and for that she was grateful.
Until one night when he switched on the light and asked if she was okay, and she still said nothing. He tried to hold her, and she lay limp against him until he got angry and shook her. Nothing.
He began to cry—and then she did look at him because she had never seen him cry before. She stared at his red face and his wet cheeks, and he came toward her, fast, and slapped her hard, and she stared at the spit in the corners of his mouth as he shouted.
“This isn’t just about you!”
She didn’t know what to say so she said nothing and continued to stare, and he asked why the fuck was she looking at him like that and he hit her again and again until she tasted blood. And then after a while he stopped hitting and he stopped crying and went into the bedroom. She heard drawers opening and shutting, muffled swearing, a series of thuds. Then he stood in the doorway holding a suitcase and she gazed at his forehead while his face moved and he said things to her and she wanted him out of the apartment more than she’d ever wanted anything from him before. She closed her eyes and eventually his voice stopped and it was quiet. She held her breath until the door closed behind him and then she got off the couch and went into the kitchen, opened the cupboard and found his mug with the chip in the rim that he’d forgotten to take. She threw it against the wall and watched it shatter.
So Frank was gone again, but her mother was back. Her mother, who couldn’t understand why Ruth was just throwing away her marriage. Who had never understood how Ruth could want more than a handsome husband and two children. And Frank was calling every day because they were awfully worried and she shouldn’t be alone. And now she was behind a locked door with her hands in her hair, silent tears running down her face and the relief of being alone was so great she felt sick with it. She peed and cried and felt herself emptying until the lump in her throat was gone. She stood, turned the faucet on full, blew her nose, and flushed pee and tissue and grief away. As she waited for the bathtub to fill, she tensed against the possibility of the dog whining again, needing to be fed, needing to be taken out, needing, needing, needing. Against the possibility of the running water waking her mother, against the expectation of a knock on the door and that insistent voice asking what she thought she was doing, taking a bath at a time like this, so much to be done, what would people think—and she dropped her shoulders and let her breath out.
“Fuck you,” she whispered to the door, teeth set in fury. Spitting out the syllables. “Fuck you and leave me alone and let me get through this in my own way.”
She closed her eyes and clenched her fists and dug her nails in until she was aware of the pain and until the wave of anger had passed. Picked up the bottle of Avon bath foam that Gina had given her for her birthday, and upended half of it into the running water. Breathed in roses and geraniums and imagined her mother sucking in air through her teeth and making shocked comments about waste.
As the bathtub filled, she stood at the mirror and stared at her white face. Squinted until the shape was just a blur. Refocused. The harsh bathroom light meant there was nowhere to hide. Her skin was oily and flushed from sleep, the pores dark. Every blemish, every bump, every scar: they were all there.