The Devil's Menagerie (17 page)

“But—”

“Not now, Dave.”

“I
T STARTED ON
our honeymoon,” Glenda said.

She and Dave were in their upstairs bedroom, the kids both asleep now, or at least in their beds, the night silent beyond the windows. No sounds along the empty street. In the distance a siren pealed, so far away it didn’t seem part of San Carlos, it belonged to that great troubled megalopolis to the north.

Glenda sat up in bed, pillows propped behind her against the headboard, as she talked quietly, her gaze avoiding his. “I thought he became very tired of me very quickly,” she said. “I felt … inadequate. He’d make fun of me … my breasts, my hips, my butt—no, don’t interrupt, I have to do this. When the abuse began to be physical, at first he acted as if it was all in fun. Things like twisting my nipples between his thumb and forefinger hard, or pinching the inside of my thighs—not playfully, but trying to hurt.

“He acted very jealous. I don’t think he really cared what I did, but he would act as if he did. If I went to the store to pick up some groceries, he would question me afterward.
‘You’ve been all this time picking out cereal?
I’m supposed to believe that? Who were you talkin’ to in there?’

“The verbal abuse never stopped. He just kept after me. Nothing I did was right. The apartment was never clean enough, even if I scrubbed on hands and knees. The baby—Richie—was spoiled. I didn’t know how to raise him. I was letting myself go, he was ashamed to take me anywhere, ashamed to admit I was his wife.” She broke off, trembling. “I know this sounds petty, whining—”

“No, no—”

“—but that was only the beginning, the first six months or so. I really believe he thought he was being supertolerant. He’d compare me to his mother, how her home was always spotless, how she couldn’t stand a slovenly housewife … but it’s funny, that’s the only time he ever mentioned his mother. I don’t even know if she was dead or alive. He didn’t have any pictures of her, any keepsakes from his childhood, anything to remember her by. If she was alive he never wrote her or called her on the phone or heard from her. It was as if he didn’t have any family, no mother or father, no brothers or sisters or uncles or cousins. It was like he sprang into the world by himself.”

“Maybe he was an orphan.”

“No, I don’t believe so. He grew up with his mother. I’m sure of it. If you want to know the truth, I think he hated her. He compared me to her unfavorably all the time, but I believe that was a lie. He was only building her up to tear me down.”

“It sounds like a rotten marriage, honey. You’re lucky you got out of it when you did.”

She looked at him for a long moment in silence. “You don’t understand yet, Dave. I haven’t even started.”

He seemed puzzled, and for a moment anger flashed in her. She took a deep breath. She folded her hands in her lap to hide the tremors. “I was an abused wife. Do you know what that means?”

“He hit you?”

“My God, you haven’t been listening to anything I’ve said!”

“Of course I’ve been listening. He sounds like a real jerk, but—”

“He’s not a jerk, Dave! Do you hear me? He’s a monster!”

Dave looked as if she had slapped him. “You don’t really mean that.”

“Yes, I mean exactly that. He hurt me any way he wanted. At first it was the cruel pinching, the gripping and twisting. He loved to show how strong he was, how he could do anything at all he wanted with me and it was no use resisting. Then he started to slap me around …”

“Honey, you don’t have to go on with this.”

“Yes, I do. I’ve waited too long. I never should have hid it from you. I didn’t want you to think less of me.”

“I wouldn’t have thought less of you. I don’t …”

Hot tears stung her cheeks and she brushed at them with one hand. Her words rushed on. She couldn’t have stopped the outpouring now if she had wanted to. “He drank a lot. Most military men do, it’s part of their macho thing. When Ralph drank he became meaner, more abusive. He’d come home late, drunk, and he’d start accusing me of things, beating me for what I didn’t do and beating me for denying doing them. He’d hit me or pinch me where it wouldn’t show, but after a while he got careless about that. Our neighbors, friends, they started looking at me strangely, and I had to come up with a lot of excuses for running into doors or tripping on the stairs, to explain a black eye or why I was limping or couldn’t lift my arm. I found out later Ralph told them I was drinking and hurting myself.”

By this time Dave was pale, tight-lipped with anger. “Why didn’t you leave him?”

“Why doesn’t every woman leave a man like that? Don’t you think I wanted to? I was afraid of him! He made it clear he’d find me if I tried to leave. He threatened to take Richie from me and I’d never see him again. I really believe if I’d tried to leave him then, he would’ve killed me.”

“You can’t really mean that.”

“You don’t know him. You don’t believe there is real evil in this world. You don’t want to see it, so you pretend it’s not there.”

“I’m not blind—”

“But you don’t want to see the ugly side of things. You don’t even like the graphic violence in the new movies. It sickens you.”

“It’s bad art,” Dave retorted. “And it’s self-defeating. Once you start down that road it’s never enough—”

“No lectures, Dave, please. Not now.”

He stopped, baffled. When he tried to take hold of her to comfort her she flinched involuntarily. After a moment he said, “You’re still scared of him.”

“He’s angry and he’s dangerous. He’s bottled up the rage all these years, and now he’s come after me. What do you think?”

“I think … I think maybe it’s time to go to the police. Sign a complaint about harassment, threats. Maybe you can get a restraining order.”

“What good will that do? We don’t even know where he is! We can’t even prove he’s the one who’s been making these phone calls, stealing your slicker, cutting your tire.”

“If he did that—”

“Of course he did it! And that means he’s been following you around, spying on you just the way he’s been watching Elli and Richie and me. But if I told the police all that, they’d only brush me off. You know what they’d say? Even if it’s Ralph doing this, he hasn’t committed any crime. Calling up and wanting to talk to his son isn’t a crime.”

“Malicious mischief is.”

“We can’t prove he did any of it. Nobody saw him. He’s too smart for that.”

He wanted to take her in his arms, to comfort and reassure her, and this time when he put his arm around her she didn’t pull away. Dave held her quietly, kissing the salty tears on her cheeks. Her body remained rigid, her eyes tense. She seemed fragile and vulnerable, as if the slightest touch might cause her to shatter like fine porcelain. He was more disturbed by her state of mind than by the threat of Ralph Beringer’s escalating harassment.

“Feeling the way you did, how did you ever find the courage to leave him?”

“I didn’t.” Her expression shaded into something bleak and remote. “I waited until he was overseas. I was in therapy with a support group for battered army wives—there were quite a few of us. I was only able to get help after Ralph was gone. I didn’t have the guts to leave him until he was far enough away that I could do it by mail.” The words were harsh with self-disgust.

“You can’t blame yourself for that—don’t let him do that to you.”

“He already did, Dave … a long time ago.” She rolled away from him and swung her legs off the bed. “You want to know how he answered my letter? I’ll show you.”

She left the room. Dave heard her bare feet pad along the hallway to the spare room they used as an occasional guestroom and also for storage. Some dull thumps told him she was getting a box down from the stack in the closet. Waiting, he had the feeling of having stumbled into a nightmare, like someone in a fantasy film.

The kind of things Glenda described happened to other people, not to anyone he knew—certainly not to his family. But her experience with her first husband explained many things to Dave about their own relationship and the way he thought she had flowered during their six years together. He had taken pride in seeing the timid, hesitant, agonizingly self-critical young woman he had first met grow into someone mature and confident and open. He had never known what was behind her nervousness, her lack of self-esteem, her sudden tension when a car door would slam during the night somewhere up the street. A great deal was now clearer, and he wondered how he could have been so obtuse, so slow to comprehend a pattern that now seemed obvious.

Glenda returned carrying an ordinary letter-size envelope. The paper was old, somewhat yellowed. He could not read the faded cancellation stamp, but the stamps on the envelope were German. He raised his eyebrows questioningly.

“I received this about three months after I wrote Ralph in Germany to tell him I was leaving him.”

Dave Lindstrom read the brief note. He glanced up at her. Then he read the message a second time. Its callous bluntness offended and angered him. He could readily understand why, under the circumstances, Glenda had been frightened by it. But that was, after all, a long time ago. Tempers cooled, wounds healed. Eight years was a long time.

“What are you trying to tell me, honey?”

“Ralph sent me that note as a warning. He likes to play those kinds of mind games, Dave. He likes to shake you up—scare you. Just like these phone calls we’ve been getting. He wanted to give me something to think about. And he was telling me in no uncertain terms that someday he would be back, and he wasn’t finished with me.”

“You’re reading a lot into this note.”

“No! I’m not exaggerating! I know him, Dave. He’s something you don’t even believe in outside of a movie screen. And he’s come back for me … and for Richie.”

R
ICHIE SAW THE
Buick again Friday morning on the way to school.

Billy Dickerson had just dug an elbow into Richie’s shoulder, laughing, and when Richie swung around to give Billy a knuckle shot on his bicep he saw the big blue sedan pulling out of a side street and falling in behind the school bus. He confirmed at a glance that it was a ‘93 LeSabre. The car fell back quickly. Richie had only a glimpse of the driver’s face behind the wheel, but that glimpse made him a little dizzy with excitement.

The babble of the school bus whirled around him. This morning Richie felt removed from it, as if he were floating up around the roof of the bus, watching all the kids at their horseplay. His excitement gave way to the odd confusion he always felt about the stranger who was his real father. He remembered the rush of emotions a week ago when the man on the telephone made his stunning announcement. Richie had been assaulted by a bewildering compound of anger, resentment and excitement—and something deeper that he couldn’t name, something that left him shaking, his heart hammering in his chest like a blind thing trapped in a cage.

He told himself that he might be wrong about the driver of the Buick. He might just be someone going to work. Richie peered out the back window. The Buick continued to follow the bus, staying one or two car lengths behind. Sometimes it would drop farther back, but even when traffic became heavier it stayed in sight, keeping pace.

It was him, Richie thought. Ralph Beringer.

His father.

Richie knew exactly what he looked like. Besides the one photograph his mother kept in a frame, showing her with Beringer and Richie as a baby, she had other pictures in a cardboard box in one of her dresser drawers. Several years ago Richie had found them. Seeing the unposed snapshots of the young, muscular soldier in his air force uniform, Richie had experienced that peculiar mingling of anxiety and excitement Beringer’s image evoked in him. He took one of the photos, and for weeks afterward he waited in terror for his mom to announce that she had discovered the theft. She never did. Maybe she never looked at those old pictures anymore. Maybe she didn’t care.

Richie hadn’t been worried about physical punishment for taking the snapshot. Neither his mom nor his dad—Dave, that is, not his real father—believed in spanking. Mom exercised discipline in other ways. A sad disappointment in her voice (“Oh, Richie”) was enough to bring tears to the boy’s eyes. A cool distancing in her tone of voice, or a silent stare, were as effective as blows. Richie’s feelings for his mother were not ambivalent, and he never wanted to disappoint her.

It was the same with Dad—Dave. He would lose patience sometimes, raise his voice, but he never threatened Richie. His way was to talk things over quietly. That was why Richie had been hurt and resentful the night Dave shoved him so hard he cracked his head against the door frame, the same night Ralph Beringer had telephoned.

His anger hadn’t lasted, of course. He had been okay with Dave afterward, like when they went to the beach on Sunday. Richie had seen right away what his parents were up to that day. He wasn’t stupid. There had been something warming and delicious about their mutual anxiety over him, Dave suggesting they go off together, Mom watching them go with that worried look she sometimes wore.

Ignoring the babble on the bus, Richie fished inside his jacket pocket for his wallet. He slid out a plastic sleeve and peeked at the snapshot. The man in the photo didn’t look like a Ralph. Ralph seemed like a wimpy name, like the kid in Richie’s class who was always out sick. The soldier—Richie’s real father—was obviously no wimp, even though he wore glasses. You could see that right off. You could see how tough he was.

“Hey, Richie, lemme see. Whatcha got?”

Richie shoved the sleeve back into the wallet and the wallet into his pocket. Billy grabbed at it. “Come on, Richie, show us.”

“Get lost.”

“What is it? Dirty pictures?” Grinning, Billy raised his voice. “Whatcha holding out on us? Feelthy pictures?”

With no recognition of the fury he was unleashing, Billy danced in the aisle by Richie’s seat, leading a taunting chant that was quickly picked up by others. “Dirty pictures! Dirty pictures!”

Gene Couzzens, the balding, potbellied bus driver who had grandchildren Richie’s and Billy’s age, became annoyed over the commotion. He called out, “Cool it back there. You, Billy, sit down!”