“Of course, they never even knew about Randy. Not until after I left school completely and moved out of the place they’d rented for me. By then, they had bigger fish to fry. The more they tried to push me back into their mold, the more I ran back to him. I hate to admit that, but what’s the point in hiding it now? For awhile, I even had the gall to blame it all on my parents. I told myself that if they hadn’t pushed me so hard, I wouldn’t have had to run so far away from them. I wouldn’t have had to cling to Randy like I did. But that’s all a lie. It’s the opposite of the lie I told myself about deserving Randy’s abuse. I blamed my parents for my decisions, and blamed myself for Randy’s. For a while, it was a vicious cycle.
“I became exactly the sort of woman I’ve always hated. That’s how it always is, isn’t it? It’s like the homophobic guy who’s really just responding to his own gay tendencies. We all hate the thing we most fear becoming. I’d always hated the weak women who stayed with the men who hurt them. I scorned them, and had no patience for them. I even considered getting into domestic law, just so I could sit across the table from those women, the ones who defend the men who beat them, who make excuses for them and protect them, even after those men have nearly killed them. It wasn’t that I wanted to help those women, necessarily. I just wanted to lean across the table and grab them by the collar and shake them, and say ‘Why? What in the hell is wrong with you? Why do you protect the one who hates you? Women like you are the reason men like them always get away with it! Women like you are the reason rapists go unpunished! You are as much to blame as they are! What is WRONG with you?’”
Christiana stopped again. Her voice had risen, grown loud and shrill, splintering on the last few words. She was shaking a little, struggling to hold her coffee cup steady. She exhaled and shuddered and reached to set her cup on the stone wall next to her.
“You don’t need to tell me all of this,” Shane said quietly. “He’s not here now. There’s no point in upsetting yourself.”
She was shaking her head, making her hair flop limply around her face. “That’s not true. There’s
every
point in getting upset now. I’ve been numb for months, for over a
year
. I’ve been fooling myself. I was so adamant that I could never become one of
those
kind of women that I didn’t see it when it actually happened. I didn’t see it until I was standing there in the mirror, dabbing at the bruises on my arms, and telling myself it was my own fault for getting him so riled up.
“Those were the words I thought, too. I actually said them in my head. ‘I shouldn’t have gotten him so riled up’. Like he was a dog I had teased, a dog that didn’t know its own strength, or how sharp its teeth were. I was amazed. I wanted to reach through the mirror and grab myself, like I’d always envisioned grabbing those pathetic, abused wives and girlfriends. I wanted to grab myself and demand those same answers.
“And that’s when I realized the truth about it all. Nobody
plans
to get into an abusive relationship. Some of us just don’t plan
not
to. And once you start sliding down that slope, it’s all too easy to just put on blinders and hope it won’t be as bad as it could be. You start making excuses from the very beginning. And let me tell you, once you start making excuses…” —she laughed; a shrill, hopeless bark— “you just never stop. It’s like giving the guy Carte Blanche. Do whatever you want, sweetiecakes, because you’ll never have to pay for it. I’ll forgive you every time. I’ll cover for you. Just don’t take off my blinders. Keep telling me the lies about how you regret it, about how you’ll never do it again, and how it’s all because of how much you love me. As long as you keep telling me the lies… as long as you let me wear the blinders…”
Her voice trailed away again. She reached to pick up her coffee cup, and then took a long, deliberate sip.
“So,” Shane said, trying very hard to keep his voice even, trying to simply give her room to say whatever needed to be said. “Why did you end up here last night?”
Christiana looked at him full on, perhaps for the first time since beginning her tale. Her face was remarkably composed, her eyes steady, almost grave. “Because,” she answered, “He didn’t keep his end of the deal. The stupid bastard. He did the one thing he wasn’t supposed to do.”
Shane asked, although he thought he already knew the answer. “What did he do?”
Christiana drew a sigh and looked away again, out over the bluff. In a businesslike voice, she said, “He took off my blinders.”
Shane called Greenfeld while Christiana lay down to sleep for a few hours, borrowing one of his tee shirts to use as a makeshift nightshirt. She hadn’t wanted to, but Shane had insisted. She obviously needed the sleep. By the looks of it, she hadn’t had a decent night’s rest in several days.
He stood in the kitchen and looked toward his cracked bedroom door as the telephone line clicked through. After three rings, Greenfeld’s answering service droned to life. Shane waited for the beep, then told Greenfeld that if he got the message in time, he could tell his nephew to stay home and play a few more hours of World of Warcraft; he and Christiana would be coming downtown themselves later in the day, and they’d drop off the Florida title painting when they did.
He hung up, feeling fairly confident that Greenfeld would get the message, despite his previous engagements—his “priors”, as he’d called them. Shane had considered offering some explanation for Christiana’s presence at his cottage, had even begun to concoct a rather elaborate lie about showing her some works-in-progress for a future gallery show, but had decided at the last minute not to say anything at all. It wasn’t Greenfeld’s concern why Christiana was there. She hadn’t asked Shane to keep her presence a secret. Besides, they were all adults. If Greenfeld was curious about it, he could ask.
Thinking that, Shane climbed the stairs to the studio. He took the Florida title painting off the big easel and placed a fresh canvas there, setting it on its side, in “landscape” position. He pulled his stool up to it and sat down, resting his chin on his right hand. For several minutes, he simply stared into the white. Like all artists, blank space tended to both calm and mesmerize him. His mind wandered.
Shane had had only one good friend back in New York City, a writer named Desmond. Desmond wrote crime mysteries under a female pseudonym, and while he didn’t earn a terribly fine living at it, he was prolific enough to have been able to quit his advertising job of ten years and write full time. He and Shane had only ever talked about the craft of writing once or twice, but on one of those occasions, Shane had asked Desmond what it took to make a really awful villain. Was the worst bad guy a rapist? A murderer? A pedophile?
Desmond had shaken his head wisely and peered crookedly at Shane, as if the answer to that question was a sort of trade secret, like the answer to how a magician saws a girl in half. Shane hadn’t thought his friend was going to reply at all. When he did, his response had both surprised and dismayed Shane.
Now, staring at the bottomless white of the canvas before him, Shane thought again about Desmond’s answer to the question of what made the worst villain. For the first time, he thought maybe he understood.
Randy had given Christiana a pet rabbit. Christiana had told Shane this with a wry laugh, as if it was the sort of gesture that was typical of Randy—
close but way off
, as Shane’s dad used to say. She’d wanted a cat, but Randy apparently hated cats. He was allergic to them, or so he had said. He’d bought the fat brown rabbit as an apology gift, after a particularly vicious argument, the one during which he had gripped her arms hard enough to embed deep bruises in the flesh of her biceps, shaken her violently enough to give her a splitting headache that lasted until the next night.
Randy was apparently an expert at that sort of violence—the kind that didn’t leave marks in obvious places. He was almost a connoisseur of careful abuse. There were never any black eyes or bloody lips, but there were plenty of headaches and hidden bruises, plenty of sore ribs and dry heaves in the bathroom afterward, listening to him stalk the floor just outside, breathing curses and threats, telling her how it was all her fault, fretting about how she’d asked for it, demanding to know why she made him do such things.
Randy was wont to return the next day with dramatic ovations of affection and apology, offering Christiana gifts, flowers, often even heartfelt tears of sorrow.
Over and over, Christiana had wanted to end things with him, but had never found a way to do it. When he beat her, she was too scared of him to proclaim her intentions to leave him. When he apologized, he was too sincere and pathetic.
I’ll do it sometime when things are normal between us
, she’d told herself.
When he won’t hurt me, and when I won’t crush him. When we can be like normal people, talking, being rational. I’ll do it then. Then I’ll be free
.
The problem was, things were never normal between them. They were constantly swinging wildly between the polarities of his violent rage and his pathetic, wretched remorse. Further, Christiana had come to fear Randy, even in his ‘I’ve been a bad boy’ mode. This was because some part of her knew that his remorse, dramatic and sincere as it seemed, was just a ruse. It was simply the price he had to pay for the privilege of hurting her whenever he wanted to.
For most men, apology meant giving away a part of themselves; it meant breaking off a part of the ego and presenting it as a gift. For most men, apologizing cost them something, and that was what made it meaningful. For Randy, however, apologies didn’t seem to cost anything. That was why it was so easy for him, so natural and indulgent. He didn’t really ever think he’d done anything wrong. Putting on the ‘I’ve been a bad boy’ façade was merely a dull obligation, like leaving money on the hooker’s dresser.
Christiana was terrified of knowing this, of knowing that Randy’s apologies were meaningless. Because if that was true, then the only real emotion Randy ever felt was the rage, and it was probably always there, hidden just under the surface, under the misty eyes and the oh-so-sincere smile of regret. The rage didn’t need to stew to a boil before it flashed out at her. It was
always
there, simmering, ready at any moment. This was never more apparent than the day of her birthday, less than a week earlier.
Christiana had named the pet rabbit Percy, even though it was a female. Percy lived most of her days in a hutch on the back porch of the apartment, but Christiana took her out for a while most evenings. She’d hold Percy on her lap and stroke her deliciously soft fur.
The rabbit was typically timid. It didn’t arch its back when Christiana pet it, like a cat would. Instead, it sat perfectly still, as if it were catatonic, merely twitching its nose and breathing in quick, panting puffs. Still, there was something pleasant about holding the small animal, about stroking Percy’s luxurious brown coat. Christiana had been holding Percy on her lap, sitting on a lawn chair on the back porch, when Randy had gotten home that evening. He’d announced his intention to take Christiana out for her birthday, acting magnanimous, throwing his arms wide and grinning.
Christiana had been less enthusiastic than him. She’d told him she was tired, and that she’d already started some dinner thawing in the sink.
Randy’s grin had vanished. He’d nodded, curtly, and announced that he’d already made reservations, so whatever was thawing in the sink would just have to wait for another night. She could wear her new black dress, he’d suggested, the one with the spaghetti straps. He liked that one. He’d bought it for her. He’d even gone to the trouble of laying it out on the bed, along with the shoes he liked for her to wear whenever she dressed up. He’d already done all the work for her, so there was no reason for her to complain.
Christiana had known she was treading on thin ice, but she really had been tired. She’d been looking very forward to a quiet evening at home. She’d tried to soothe Randy with her voice, telling him how nice it’d be to just stay in for the night, to snuggle on the couch and watch something she’d recorded on the DVR.
“Besides,” she’d said, smiling up at him and cocking her head. “Percy is so content right here on my lap. I’d hate to stick her back in her hutch. She’s been in there all day. Maybe she can cuddle with us on the couch. I bet that would make her happy.” She looked back down at the rabbit and stroked her fur. “What do you think, Percy? Would you like that?”
Randy seemed to relax a little. He sighed and smiled thoughtfully, hunkering down on one knee in front of Christiana. He was still wearing his sweater vest and tie, although he’d left his briefcase on the kitchen table, like he usually did when he got home from class. He’d reached forward to pet Percy, scratching her between her big, floppy ears. Then, before Christiana had realized what he was doing, he’d wrapped his hand around the rabbit’s neck. He reached forward with his other hand, gripped the rabbit’s head, completely engulfing it in his fist, and twisted. Percy’s neck snapped audibly.
