The Stories of Richard Bausch (18 page)

He chose instead to talk to Delbert Chase. He drove to the car dealership and walked into Delbert’s little grotto of an office. Delbert sat with his feet up on the desk, talking into the telephone. When he saw Kaufman, he said, “Guess who just walked in here?” Then seemed to laugh. “Your old man.”

Kaufman waited.

Delbert turned to him. “She doesn’t believe me.” He offered the handset. “You want to say hello?”

Kaufman took it, held it to his ear. “Princess,” he said.

“If you say anything or do anything—” she spoke quickly, breathlessly. “Do you hear me? It’ll only make things worse. Do you hear me?”

“What’s she saying?” Delbert wanted to know.

“Your mother’s fine,” Kaufman said into the phone.

“I’ll bet she’s so happy,” Fay said, low. “If you say anything—please. It just needs to calm down. He doesn’t mean it—” She was crying.

“Fay,” he said. “Princess.”

“Please, Daddy. I have to hang up. Put him back on. Please don’t screw this up.”

“I’ll tell her you said ‘Hey,’” he said. “You take care.” He handed the phone back to Delbert, who called Fay “lover” and said goodbye. “I won’t be late getting home,” he said.

Kaufman sat down on the other side of the desk and put his hands on his knees.

“So,” Delbert said, hanging the phone up. “To what do I owe this honor?”

“We have a friend,” Kaufman said, “who told us she saw bruises on Fay’s arms.”

The other man was silent.

“Fay doesn’t know I know. Do you understand me?”

“We had a couple of knock-down-drag-outs,” Delbert said evenly. “You never had a fight with your wife? I’ve promised it won’t ever happen again. I was very sorry about it. I felt like all hell.”

“Just so we understand each other,” Kaufman said.

“I said I’ve promised it won’t happen again.”

“Good,” Kaufman said. He stood. He felt almost elated. An unbidden wave of goodwill washed over him. “Let’s try to get beyond all this bad feeling.” He offered his hand, and Delbert stood to take it.

“Okay by me,” he said, smiling that boy’s bright smile. “I always try to get along with everybody.”

“Maybe we’ll get the women back together, too,” Kaufman told him.

On his way home, he felt as though he had accomplished something important, and he told his wife, proudly, that she could expect a call from Fay any time.

But Fay didn’t call, and Caroline was adamant that it should be their daughter who made the first move.

“This is ridiculous,” Kaufman said. “I’ve called her. I’ve seen her and talked to her. She’s got a hardship neither of us ever wanted for her—we’ve got to take part here, don’t we?”

“She’s too proud to admit she was wrong and I was right.”

He looked at this woman, his wife, and decided not to say anything.

“You don’t see that,” she went on. “Well, men don’t see this sort of thing. Women do.”

“What are you telling me?” he said.

“She’s getting mistreated, and she won’t do anything about it because if she does it’s an admission. You don’t understand it. I understand it.”

He endured the
hot end-of-summer days. There wasn’t anything he could do to alter the situation as it stood. Driving past the little garage, he would slow down, his heart racing, and once he even saw Fay washing the car. She
looked all right. She wore a scarf and a sweatshirt and jeans—a young woman with this practical task to accomplish, out in the good weather.

In early October, she called him at work. “It’s me,” she said.

He held the phone tight and felt his own hope like a pulse in his arteries. “Hey, princess, how’ve you been?”

“I’m great.”

“We’d love to see you,” he said. And then remembered to say, “Both of you.”

She was silent.

“Everything’s all right?” he asked. “Just fine.”

“Why don’t you call your mother. I bet she hasn’t eaten lunch.”

“I’m calling you. I wanted to ask you something.”

“Shoot,” he said, hoping.

“Did you ever mop up the floor with Mommy?”

He couldn’t bring himself to say anything for a few seconds. It came to him that she had been drinking.

“Tell me, Daddy, did you ever hit Mommy?”

Something buckled inside of him. “Princess, let me—if you’d let us help.”

“You can come in like the police. Right? That’ll be great. You can tell him to be a good boy and stop waking up the neighbors banging his wife’s head into the walls. Tell me how you hit Mommy when you were pissed, Daddy.”

“I never—Fay.
Please.”

“Tell Mother she can tell everyone I got what I deserved.” The line clicked.

He sat at his desk with his head in his hands, in plain view of everyone in the office, crying. When the phone rang again, it startled him. “Yes,” he said.

It was Fay. She sounded breathless. “I was just mad,” she told him. “It wasn’t anything but me being spoiled and mad. I’m fine. Delbert’s fine. He’s keeping his promise, really. He is. Keeping his promise.”

“Fay?” he said. “Baby?”

“I’m fine,” she said quickly. “You take care, good-bye.” And she broke the connection.

“She sounded terrified,”
he told his wife. “Terrified.”

“He wouldn’t really hurt her,” Caroline said. “When a women is getting treated like that, it’s always partly her fault. You know that.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t know that. Jesus Christ, Caroline.”

“We’re here,” she said. “Aren’t we? We haven’t moved to India or anything. We’re six miles away. If she really wanted to and if it was all really that bad, she could come here and we’d take her in.”

“Would we?” he said.

And Caroline began to cry. “How could you suggest that I would be so hard-hearted. Don’t I love her too? I love her so much, and she repays me with silence.”

“She asks how you are,” Kaufman said, convincing himself that it was true.

“If she’d only call and ask
me
that. Is it too much to ask? Is it, Frank?”

He put his arms around her. “I’m scared, Caroline. You see, the thing is, I’m—I’m just tremendously scared for her. And I don’t know anymore—I have to do something, don’t I? I have to make it stop some way, don’t I?”

They rocked and swayed, sitting at the edge of the loveseat in their bedroom that she had made to look oriental, with its paintings and the white rug and deep red hues in the walls, and delicate porcelain dolls on the nightstands.

“What did we do wrong?” Caroline said. “I don’t understand where we went wrong.”

“I hate this,” Kaufman said, getting up and pacing. “I’m going over there in the morning and bring her home.”

“She won’t come with you,” said his wife.

“I’m telling you I’m not going to let it go on.”

She shrugged, standing slowly—someone with a great weight on her shoulders. Her eyes were moist, brimming with tears, and clearer than he could ever remember them. “There’s not a thing in the world we can do.”

He went to
see Delbert again. Walked into the showroom at the dealership and asked for him. It was a preholiday sale, and the showroom was crowded. Delbert came in from the bank of offices in the back hall and stopped a few feet away. “Yeah?”

“Delbert,” Kaufman said, in the tone of a simple greeting.

“Unless you’re here to buy a car,” Delbert said, “I’m kind of busy.”

“I wanted to ask if you and Fay want to come over for Thanksgiving.”

He seemed genuinely puzzled.

“Well?”

“Maybe it’s escaped you, man. Your wife and your daughter aren’t speaking.”

“Nevertheless, I’m inviting you.”

Delbert shrugged. “I guess it’s up to Fay. But I’ve got my doubts.”

“You know what we talked about before?” Kaufman said.

The other only stared. “You’re keeping to it, right?”

Now he turned and moved off.

Kaufman called after him. “Just remember what I said, son.”

“Yeah,” Delbert said without looking back. “I got it. Right.”

“Don’t forget Thanksgiving.”

He faced around, walking backward. “That’s between her and your old lady, man. That’s got nothing to do with me.”

The day before
Thanksgiving, at Kaufman’s insistence, Caroline made the call. She dialed the number and waited, standing in the entrance of the kitchen, wearing her apron and with her hair up in curlers, looking stern and irritable. “Please, Caroline,” he said.

She held the handset toward him. “A machine.”

It was Fay’s voice. “Leave your name and number and we’ll get back. Bye.”

“They’re in Richmond, with his mother.”

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” Kaufman said.

“It’s in the first part of the message.” She put the handset down and started to dial the number again. “Listen to the message. They’re in Richmond.”

“Okay,” he said. “You don’t need to call the number again.”

His wife fairly shouted at him, lower lip trembling, “Whatever her married troubles are, she can apparently stand them!”

Christmas came and
went. The Kaufmans didn’t bother putting a tree up. He’d got Caroline a nightgown and a book; she gave him a pair of slippers
and a flannel shirt. They sat side by side on the sofa in the living room in the dusky light from the picture window and opened the gifts, and then she began to cry. He put his arms around her, and they remained there in the quiet, while the window darkened and the intermittent sparkle of Christmas lights from neighboring houses began to show in it. “How can she let Christmas go by?” Caroline said. “How can she hate me so much?”

“Maybe she’s wondering the same about you.”

“Stop it, Frank. She knows she’s welcome.”

He went to bed alone and lay awake, hearing the chatter of the TV, and another sound—the low murmur of her crying.

The week leading up to New Year’s was terrible. She seemed to sink down into herself even further. He couldn’t find the words, the gestures, the refraining from gestures that could break through to her. Sunday at church, they saw Mrs. Mertock, who said she had seen Fay at the grocery that morning, only hadn’t spoken to her. “She was on the other side of the counter from me, wearing sunglasses. Sunglasses, on the grayest, dreariest drizzly day. She looked almost—well, guilty about something.”

“Oh, God,” Kaufman said. “My God.”

“I could be wrong,” Mrs. Mertock hurried to add.

“Why can’t she come home?” Caroline said. “How can she let it go on?”

On New Year’s Eve, they went to bed early, without even a kiss, and in the morning he found her sitting in the living room, staring.

“What’re you thinking?” he asked.

“Oh, Frank, can’t you leave me alone?”

He put on his coat and went out into the cold, closing the door behind him with a sense of having shut her away from him. But then he was standing there looking at the winter sky, thinking of Delbert Chase throwing Fay around the little rooms of that garage.

There wasn’t any wind. The stillness seemed almost supernatural. He walked up the block, past the quiet houses. There was a tavern at this end of the street, but it was closed. He stood in the entrance, looking out at the Christmas tinsel on all the lampposts, the houses with their festive windows. Pride, dignity, respect—the words made no sense anymore. They had no application in his world.

The next morning, he headed to the office with a shivery sense of purpose,
tinged with an odd heady feeling, an edge of something like fear. It had snowed during the night—a light, wind-swept inch; it swirled along the roofs of the houses. The Ford was in its place as he went by, looking iced, like a confection. He had told Caroline that he didn’t know if he would be coming home for lunch, and when he got to work he called to tell her he wouldn’t be. He said he had to show a couple of houses in New Baltimore, but this was a lie; he was showing them that morning, and was finished with both before eleven o’clock.

The slow hour before noon was purgatory.

But at last he was in his car, heading back along the wind-driven, snow-powdered street. Color seemed to have leached out of the world—a dull gray sky, gray light on snow, the darkening clouds in the distances, the black surface of the road showing in tire trails through the whiteness. Delany Street looked deserted; there were only two tire tracks. He stopped the car, turned off the ignition, and waited a moment, trying to gather his courage. He breathed, blew into his still chilly palms, then got out and, as though afraid someone or something might seek to stop him, walked quickly up the little stairwell along the side of the building, and knocked on the door there. He knocked twice, feeling all the turns and twists of his digestive system. The air stung his face. He saw his own reflection in the bright window with its little white curtain. Aware that the cold would make his ruddy skin turn purple, he felt briefly like a man ringing for a date. It couldn’t possibly matter to Fay how he looked; yet he was worried about it, and he tried to shield himself from the air, pulling his coat collar high.

As the door opened, he heard something like the crunch of glass at his feet. He looked down, saw her foot in a white slipper, and tiny pieces of something glittering. It was glass. He brought his eyes up the line of the door, and here was Fay, peering around the edge of it. Fay, with a badly swollen left eye—it was almost closed—a cut at the corner of her mouth, and a welt on her cheek.