“Let’s go get something to eat,” Daniel suggested.
Eve glanced once more at her sister’s locked apartment and the one next door, feeling torn about wanting to try to have a longer conversation with Pauline. She blew out a breath, chose not to knock once more on the neighbor’s door, and followed him down the stairs to the car. They got in and he started the engine. They both sat watching the building.
“She knows more than what she’s saying,” Eve finally said, shaking her head.
“Yeah, well, I don’t think we’ll hear anything else while her boyfriend is in there.” He pulled out of the parking place and stopped at the end of the driveway and looked in both directions before pulling out onto the street. “Did you see the bruise under her eye?” he asked.
“Yeah, and the ones on her arms,” she answered, thinking about the blue-black marks covered with a thick layer of makeup on her face and the other ones forming a kind of chain around both wrists. Eve had noticed them when she took the drags off her cigarette, the sleeves of the robe dropping away for a clear view of the wounds.
Eve pulled at her seat belt, stretched out her legs, and slid down a bit in the passenger’s seat. “We have a lot of abused women come to the convent. I guess since we’re right off the highway, we’re an easy place to get to. We usually try to bandage them up and get them to the hospital or the shelter, but sometimes they stay with us for a while.” She shook her head. “When we offer to call the police, most of them ask us not to.”
“Yeah, even when we’re called, a lot of the women don’t want to file a report. Of course, now New Mexico has an ordinance in place that if the police are called to a domestic dispute, somebody’s getting in the backseat of a cruiser. We’re taking somebody to jail. It’s helped a lot, but still, in the end, usually the victims won’t follow through.” He tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
“How can a woman stay in a relationship like that, especially in this day and time where there are more options for victims?” She crossed herself as she thought about the girls who showed up and left the monastery. “I just don’t understand,” Eve confessed.
“Well, most people don’t,” Daniel explained. “But once you get in a relationship like that, it’s really hard to get out. It’s like the women get stuck or their brains freeze. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve seen more women stay with the guys who beat them up than I’ve seen leave.” He paused, seemed to be thinking. “Sometimes if there are children or somebody else gets beat up, they’ll find what it takes to leave, but even then . . .” His voice trailed off.
Eve thought about the women who arrived at Our Lady of Guadalupe in the middle of the night. The calls she had received from somebody at the front gate, the women standing there, begging to be let in, claiming that they were running from a husband or a boyfriend that everyone at the convent hoped hadn’t followed them to Pecos.
Since she had been in community there, she had probably opened that gate after midnight a hundred times, sometimes even to the same women over and over. She had tried talking them into going to a shelter or getting them a bus ticket to go somewhere to be with family, but most of them would nurse their wounds for a day or two, and then, before one of the sisters or monks could meet with them to discuss their options and make a plan of action, they would leave. Secretly, during a worship time or when most everyone was sleeping, they’d sneak away without any of the help they needed. They would exit in the dark of night in the very same way they had arrived.
Eve thought about one girl, Trina, who came to the religious community at least three times one year, each time more bruised, each time requiring more care, the abuse growing more and more severe. Several of the sisters and even Brother Oliver had tried to talk her out of going back to her abusive boyfriend, promised her a place to stay, help in finding work, money, anything to keep her away from the man who beat her. But Trina would always go back. Finally, Sister Mary Edith had discovered Trina’s name in the obituaries. She had taken her last beating. She had been killed.
“Wait a minute.” Eve spoke up, trying to shake the memory of Trina from her thoughts.
Daniel quickly turned in her direction.
“You don’t think Robbie beats Dorisanne, do you?”
Daniel glanced back at the road and didn’t respond right away. Eve could see that he was driving slowly and carefully back to the center of town.
She waited, hoping for some confirmation that her sister wasn’t another statistic, wasn’t in a domestic abuse situation, wasn’t like her neighbor Pauline and spending her evenings trying to cover up the wounds and scars. She closed her eyes and then felt Daniel’s hand on her shoulder. She looked up.
“I don’t think so,” he finally replied. “I’ve seen them together, and she doesn’t seem afraid of him. She doesn’t have that look in her eye that you usually see.” He pulled his hand away and shook his head. “The look that Pauline had when the guy from the back of the apartment yelled her name. You saw that, right?”
Eve nodded.
“But I’ll be honest,” he continued. “There’s really no profile for an abuser. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been surprised by the men I’ve brought in and even more surprised by their victims. So I can’t really say for sure,” he said. “But I don’t think he’s threatened her or hurt her. I don’t think he’s made her go with him. I just think he’s in money trouble again, and she’s taken off with Robbie for her own safety.”
Eve agreed. At least what Daniel was saying felt like some reassurance. And yet, even as she felt some comfort in Daniel’s opinion, when she thought about it, it didn’t really seem to matter at this point whether Dorisanne was in a physically abusive relationship with her husband or not. Because even if he didn’t beat her, it certainly seemed as if he had brought her into something dangerous, some kind of unsafe situation; and whether he meant it to be this way or not, he had put his wife at risk. Eve didn’t know the details, but it appeared as if he was responsible for her quick departure from their home and her lack of contact with her neighbors or her family. She leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes.
For the first time since she’d actually begun to worry about her sister, Eve felt a sudden rush of anxiety, her hands starting to sweat. She wished it wasn’t so, but her intuitions had been correct: Something was terribly wrong with Dorisanne.
She reached up and removed the rosary from the rearview mirror and began reciting the familiar prayer: “Hail Mary, full of grace . . .”