Authors: Jacqueline Briskin
Lissie, before her recent bad times, would have moved closer, but now her thumb migrated to her mouth, and she backed against Joscelyn’s knees.
Honora was handing around the pizza that she’d heated in the terrace’s little kitchen. “Lissie’s hard of hearing, but she’s a fabulous lipreader.”
The Senator popped his hors d’oeuvre in his mouth, swallowing as he came across the flagstones to bend his knees in front of Lissie. Her thumb slipped from her mouth and she glanced shyly at him.
He smiled. When she didn’t withdraw, he scooped her up. For an instant she stiffened, but then relaxed and let him carry her to his deep patio chair.
“I’ll tell you a story,” he said. “You feel and watch.”
Soon Lissie was her old self, laughing, touching his famous throat, mouth, chest, while he slowly acted out the drama of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
Joscelyn, Honora and Curt smiled at the twosome. Malcolm did, too, but Joscelyn saw something bereft, mournful, in his smile.
When we’re alone
, she thought,
I’ll make it up to him.
By the time they left the house, though, his mood had changed and he was spoiling for a fight. “Can’t we ever get out alone?” he asked.
“We were at the Binchows’ Saturday night.” Joscelyn gazed straight ahead lest Lissie, in her
car seat behind them, be watching. “But if you’re talking about Curt and Honora, no. Lissie’s included in the invitation. They’re her uncle and aunt, remember?”
“Something you ought to know, Joscelyn. As far as I’m concerned this marriage is going to hell in a bucket.”
His low rumble pierced her with sudden doubts. Had she been misinterpreting his foul mood the past weeks? Maybe he wasn’t having difficulties with the Paloverde job. Maybe he’d found some nineteen-year-old with enormous boobs like Crystal’s and a yoyo brain who acted as if he were Prince Charles.
Her jaw clenched. “I don’t find it any bed of roses lately, either,” she said.
“You better get on the ball, then. Figure out some way for us to have a life of our own.”
She hid her new suspicions and lashed out. “I agree, it’s a crying shame that Senator Murphy quit paying attention to you and told Lissie a story. Tell you what. We’ll buy one of those records like they have in the new dolls. We’ll have it transplanted into Lissie, and the next time we meet a big-time movie star he’ll never guess she’s deaf.”
He grabbed for her breast, driving one handed, twisting and pinching. During their recent fights it was a point of honor with Joscelyn never to let him know the anguish—mental or physical—that he caused. She could not prevent her harsh groan.
A car with its brights on came toward them, and in the blinding glare, he released her.
“That’s only a taste of what you’ll get if you don’t shut up.”
At home she carried Lissie, a limp, sleepy weight, into her bedroom. Honora kept a painted wood Surprise Box at her house, and every time Lissie came over there was a present in it, a small toy, a book, something to wear. Tonight Lissie had fished out a new pink nightie. By the time Joscelyn had undressed the drowsy child and put on the new garment, Lissie was asleep. Joscelyn turned on the night-light and left the door open. Malcolm was sitting on the couch, a bottle of scotch in front of him, his head hunched low between his slumped shoulders. Portrait of dejection.
She sat next to him. “Malcolm, let’s not tear at each other. I love you so much.”
He drained his glass. “Some way you show it.”
“It kills me when we fight.”
“Oh, Christ, first you get me thoroughly pussy whipped, then you don’t want me around my kid. And now it’s a crime to want to take you out swinging occasionally.”
“We could swing right here,” she said. Since the afternoon of the outsider, they had made love only once. (
Another sign he has somebody else?
)
“You’re sure it won’t kill you to stay in your own bed one night?” he growled.
“I only go in to Lissie when she has nightmares.”
“How you manage to sleep with all the lights on is beyond me.”
Lissie’s night-light had become their Vietnam. Joscelyn couldn’t for the life of her comprehend her husband’s vicious guerrilla warfare on the small glow: the closest she could figure was that he saw it as proof that his daughter lacked not only hearing but also courage.
“The light’s a necessity. If you’d ever come on a Tuesday night you’d learn a bit about deaf kids—”
“That’s a subject I know more than enough about, thanks.”
“Lissie has no hearing. If it’s all black in her room and she can’t see, she’s completely cut off.”
“The way you swarm over that kid you’re turning her into an emotional cripple.”
“She’s three and a half. And though I know this pains you to hear it, she’s profoundly deaf. When she wakes up in the night she needs some sensory input.”
“Ahh, what’s the use?” Broodingly he poured himself another drink. “You never could listen to a constructive suggestion. You’re spoiling her rotten.”
She stalked into their bedroom, jabbing on the small television. At this hour, ten, network News wasn’t available, so she watched Channel 5. After a few minutes of watching their routine reports of murderous activities in south-central Los Angeles, she turned off the set. Removing her blouse, she went into Malcolm’s precious pink bathroom. The mirror reflected a fresh bruise rising like a red-purple sun above
her left bra cup.
She was slathering her face with Neutrogena when, over the running water she heard Lissie’s sudden shriek of animal panic. Soap on her face, she darted to the other bedroom.
The door had been shut. Flinging it open, she blinked in the darkness. The night-light had been turned off.
She picked up Lissie, cuddling the convulsing little body. Lissie’s arms clutched at her neck. “Mah-mah.”
“I didn’t think she’d wake up before morning.” Malcolm, behind her in the hall, spoke in peculiar, high voice: it was as if he were ventriloquizing the tones of a frightened pre-adolescent.
“You prick, you unspeakable prick!”
“It’s time she learned bed means sleep.”
Lissie’s wails rang unhappily, yet minus that shrill hacksaw of panic.
“Quit dumping whatever’s wrong between us on the poor baby,” Joscelyn said, pressing her cheek into her daughter’s damp hair. “I don’t give a shit if you’re humping some secretary.”
“Secretary?”
“Lissie tries so hard. She was doing really great until you started in on her. How could you do a remake of your own rotten father?”
“Bitch, shut your mouth about my dad. You’re not worthy to say his name. And maybe I
ought
to put it to some other woman. Be a pleasure after you. Go take a look at yourself, titless wonder. Soap all over your face like you’re going to shave—what are you, a
guy in drag?”
Joscelyn rushed with Lissie into the big pink bathroom. One arm holding the child, whose sobs had lessened to desolate little snuffles, she rinsed her face with the washcloth.
Malcolm burst in. “Tonight, dammit, she’s going to bed like every other kid does!”
He reached for Lissie. Joscelyn, feeling the small body tremble, clasped the child more tightly. With her left hand slippery and wet, she couldn’t maintain her hold.
Malcolm wrenched Lissie away.
“For God’s sake, Malcolm, haven’t you terrified her enough? Give her back.” She wrapped both hands around Lissie’s waist.
“Fuck off!” Malcolm growled.
Seizing his daughter in a demon grip, he stamped across the bathroom. Joscelyn followed, tugging at the child’s soft, boneless-feeling hips.
She could see their mirrored reflection, father, mother, child, united in a swaying, tormented dance across the bathroom.
The Unholy Trinity.
“Let her go!” Joscelyn screamed. Strengthened by the tiger’s milk of maternal protectiveness, she was aware of only one imperative—to get her child away from Malcolm and take her to a safe place, a place where she couldn’t be battered as he had been, couldn’t have her fragile child’s bones broken as his had been.
Malcolm hammered a blow at Joscelyn’s bare chest. She staggered back, and a scrap of Lissie’s nightgown came away in her hands.
“Bastard, give her to me!” she screamed.
Over the rasping of her breath, she could hear Lissie’s wailing, but faintly, as if her child were a long way away. Regaining her balance, she charged at her husband.
He struck out at her chest again. This time he missed her. The back of his clenched hand caught Lissie’s flailing arm.
The child’s mouth opened wide and her body went into a paroxysm as she stored up breath for an onslaught of sound.
At the blow to her daughter’s soft flesh, Joscelyn reacted as if a match had been touched to her gasoline-drenched brain. All that lay within the curve of her skull ignited. Redness jumped behind her eyes. An immense roaring drummed against her ears.
Her maddened gaze was attracted by the candy stripes of the useless jar from Venice.
She reached for it. With complete lack of rational thought, she lifted the oversize ornament with both hands, one dry, one wet, raising the heaviness high over her head.
In that instant—it was less time than a heartbeat—Malcolm stared at her. His eyes flickered with something she would never understand. Maybe she momentarily brushed his funny bone, standing without her blouse—
titless wonder
—the heavy, useless ornament above her head, a female Moses set to hurl down the commandments. Maybe he was regretting his cruelty about the night-light. Maybe he was thinking of his punitive, war-hero father. For the rest of her life Joscelyn would attempt to comprehend the thoughts that
his deep-set gray eyes reflected.
In a loud, strangled voice, she cried, “I’ll teach you to victimize my baby.”
The jar seemed to descend mechanically, through no volition of hers, yet her hands remained clasped around the smooth, cool weight.
The blow vibrated through her body. A deep, hollow thump reverberated through the remodeled bathroom. A fraction of a second later the jar slipped from her hands to shatter on pink marble.
Malcolm reeled two small steps. She snatched Lissie from his limp grasp. Then he plunged forward.
He fell amid the still skittering shards. As his forehead hit the marble, another thump sounded, less portentously than the first.
Clutching her daughter, whose body remained tensed in that seemingly eternal paroxysm, Joscelyn stood panting.
Malcolm stretched across the pink floor. Time was infinitely slowed, and in this eternal moment she was able to view him dispassionately. One arm flung forward, the other at his side, his legs slightly apart, she decided that he looked as if he were practicing his Australian crawl.
He’s terrific on the first lap
, she thought dizzily. When he challenged Curt he always touched the pool edge first, but after that initial length Curt was the inevitable victor.
Blood was pouring from Malcolm’s black hair, rich crimson rivulets that picked up the small flecks of rose glass, carrying them
like flotsam.
“God, I didn’t mean it,” she whimpered. “Darling, get up. Please get up.”
He didn’t move.
She must help him, but how could she put Lissie’s bare little feet on this broken glass? She knelt with the child, not noticing the sharpness that pierced her legs and knees. Why was he so still? His eyes were staring.
And then Lissie exploded in the low, sustained howl for which she had been storing breath while Joscelyn had picked up the ornament and crashed it down.
The Ivorys were at the front door, arms connubially entwined, watching the red tail-lights of the Senator’s departing car when the phone rang. They exchanged a glance. Nearly eleven, too late for a social call. It was Curt who hurried inside to pick up the extension.
Honora heard him say, “Joss, slow down, I didn’t get that.” His voice was deepened by that mollifying assertion commonly used to calm hysterics.
Leaving the door open, Honora darted to the library. Curt was hunched around the phone, his cheekbones drawn upward in a frown of pain. “Listen to me. You are not to call anyone until we get there . . . . Joscelyn, do you hear me . . . . No, do nothing . . . . We’ll be
over pronto.”
He slammed down the receiver. “Come along!” he shouted as he ran full speed out the open front door.
Honora, palazzo pants flaring, raced after him along the covered brick walkway to the garage. “What’s happened?” she screamed. “Curt, what’s happened? Were they in an accident?”
“They’re at home. Outside of that I’m not sure of anything except it’s bad. Joss was incoherent.”
He screeched around the familiar curves of Firenze Road, hitting ninety when he got to Sunset.
As they swerved into the Pecks’ drive the door opened. Joscelyn stood in the penumbra of light streaming from the hall.
She wasn’t wearing a top. Her chest, white bra and stomach were stained a rusty brown, as was the striped blue and white cotton skirt she’d worn at dinner. Her legs oozed bright scarlet.
Honora, out of the car before Curt, reached the house first, and gagged. The odor summoned a vivid memory from her twelfth year. She had been taking a forbidden novel to read in the stables that belonged to the crenellated house leased by Edinthorpe for the duration and had inadvertently come upon the elderly tenant farmer while he was slaughtering a horse. This identical hot, thick,
animal
smell.
Lissie was crouched under the hall table, rocking back and forth. A streak of brown
darkened her new pink nightie, and the ruffled yoke was torn. A trail of splotches crossed the entry’s white vinyl tiles, becoming footmarks, long and high arched, at the bedroom corridor.
Curt slammed the front door.
“I didn’t call anyone,” Joscelyn whimpered. Gone was the slight superiority and intelligence that lit her expression, gone the stance of competent engineer and housewife. “I did exactly what you told me.”
“Good girl,” Curt said quietly.
“Malcolm needs help, please help him?” Her jaw worked, her eyes blinked as if she were about to crumple into tears.
“Joss,” Honora murmured, holding out her arms.