On Saturday, December 9, at 5:50 p.m., Jane Rheardon entered her home by the front door and went through the entrance hall to the stairway leading to the second floor.
As she passed the door to the living room, her father called out to her, “Jane, is that you? Come in here.”
Jane hesitated at the foot of the stairs, torn as to whether to obey the command or continue to her room. Finally, she turned and came slowly back to stand in the entryway.
Bart Rheardon was seated in his accustomed chair with the evening paper lying open on his lap and a martini already in his hand.
“Well, look who’s decided to come home,” he said, lifting the glass in a sardonic toast. “The wanderer has returned at last. Where’ve you been?”
“If you’d been really worried, you would’ve called the police,” Jane said.
“I wasn’t ‘really worried,’ as you put it. I was sure you’d taken off to the home of one of those girlfriends of yours. I wasn’t about to go calling all over town to find out which one. The question is, why are you here now?”
“To get my clothes,” Jane said.
“Oh, really? You mean you girls don’t share each other’s clothing? They’re your soul sisters, aren’t they? I thought you passed around everything like you were one big family.”
“I’m not staying with one of the girls. I spent the night with Ms. Stark. And you wouldn’t have had to ‘call over town’ if you’d wanted to find me. You know the number of my cell phone. You could’ve reached me that way when Mom had her ‘accident,’ too.”
“Why should I? One more hysterical voice wouldn’t have added much to the occasion.”
“Well, now you won’t have to listen to any voices at all,” Jane said. “You can have the whole place to yourself. I’m moving out.”
“This teacher friend is planning to put you up indefinitely?”
“At least until Mom gets out of the hospital.”
“And then where will you be going?”
“With Mom,” Jane said. “Wherever she wants to be.”
“She’ll be here, with me, the way she’s always been,” Bart Rheardon told her. “Your mother wouldn’t know what to do with herself if she wasn’t here. The doctors think she’ll have to be in a wheelchair for a while. That means she won’t be able to do all the things she used to do. You’ll have to pitch in and help out a lot more than you’ve been doing.”
Jane stared at him in amazement.
“Dad,” she said softly, “sometimes I simply can’t believe you.”
When he spoke like this, acted like this, he seemed so normal. He was a handsome man—heavy-jowled and beginning to gray a little at the temples, but still far better-looking than the fathers of most of her classmates. He had honest eyes with a direct, straightforward gaze—a strong, square chin—a wide, pleasant mouth. His was the kind of face that people liked and trusted. If you ran into someone with a face like that on a street corner and he asked you for directions, you wouldn’t think twice about standing there and giving them to him. If you found yourself sitting next to him at a lunch counter and he smiled at you, you’d chat a little. He was well-known in the community. People respected him. Her mother loved him. That was the ultimate mystery—the fact that her mom, who knew him at his worst as well as his best—continued to love him.
That morning at the hospital Jane had asked her, “How did it happen?”
Her mother had looked up at her and lied.
“I slipped on some grease,” she’d said.
“No, you didn’t.” Jane hadn’t even tried to pretend to believe her. “You know that isn’t true. It was a Friday night. Dad came home in one of his tempers like he always does. You must have said something he didn’t like, and he hit you.”
“It was an accident.”
“It’s never an accident.” Jane bent closer to study the swollen face, trying to judge it objectively despite the nausea rising within her. “He must have hit you on the left side of the jaw and knocked you down. You hurt your hip when you landed. I can’t believe none of the doctors have wondered about those bruises and all that swelling.”
“I hit the table.” Ellen Rheardon spoke so softly that at first Jane couldn’t be sure of what she was saying.
“I can’t hear you, Mom.”
“I fell into the table,” her mother said more loudly. “I slipped and fell, and my face went into the edge of the kitchen table.”
“You couldn’t have fallen forward. If you had, you’d never have broken your hip. You had to fall backward to do that.”
“I tell you, that’s how it happened.” The woman on the bed gazed up at her with pleading eyes. “I told that to the doctors, and they didn’t question it. Why are you trying to hurt us, Jane?”
“Trying to hurt you?!”
“It’s between your dad and me, so you just stay out of it. It’s not for you to pass judgment. He’s sorry. He’s living in hell, he’s so sorry. See those flowers over there by the TV? Those roses? Aren’t they beautiful? He must have gone out to a flower shop in the middle of the night and made them open up special so those would be waiting for me when I woke up this morning.” She grimaced as the effort to talk became too much for her. “I need—to rest a little.”
“Yes, you rest, Mom. I’ll come back when you’re feeling better.”
Her mother’s eyelids fluttered, and she gave a deep sigh. They had given her a shot of something to control the pain. She was struggling against it, trying to keep her thoughts in order so that she could convey them.
“And—Janie?”
“Yes, Mom?”
“He can’t help what he is, you know. Dad’s father—he used to use a horse whip. Your daddy told me about it once. When he and his brother were naughty, his father used to go out to the garage and get that whip.”
“That has nothing to do with you and me,” Jane said.
“Maybe—it could help you—understand better.”
“I will never understand him,” Jane said softly, “and I never want to.”
And now, staring at the man in the easy chair, she said again, “I simply can’t believe you. You’re—unreal.”
“I seem to be real enough when it comes to paying the bills around here,” Bart Rheardon said. “I’m ‘real’ when you want a new dress or curtains for your room or a movie ticket. How many kids do you know who get an allowance the size of yours?”
“You’re an asshole.”
Jane spoke the words slowly and clearly, enunciating each syllable. They shot into the air between them and hung there, so sharp and strident that they could almost be seen. Her father’s eyes widened with shocked surprise.
“An asshole,” Jane repeated with satisfaction. “Mom won’t say it, but I will, I’ll say it for both of us. And when she gets out of the hospital, she’s not coming back here. I’m not going to let her.”
“I don’t think you’ll have much to say about that,” Mr. Rheardon said.
“I think I will, Dad.”
“I say you won’t. End of story.”
“This isn’t the Dark Ages,” Jane said. “Women don’t have to let themselves get beaten up, and they don’t have to watch other women get beaten. I’m going to the police.”
“And accomplish what, Jane? It will be your word against mine and your mother’s. She’s not going to back you up.”
“She doesn’t have to. There’ll be the doctors at the hospital. They’ve seen her bruises. Not just her face right now, which is bad enough, but the others. She’s got them all over her.”
“Your mother has had several unfortunate falls,” Mr. Rheardon said in a tight, controlled voice. “She herself will testify to that if she is forced to. Nobody is going to listen to a kid like you, especially when the person you’re supposedly defending calls you a liar.”
“They will listen to me! I’ll make them listen!”
“You can’t make anybody do anything,” Bart Rheardon said with a short laugh. “A little piece of chicken fluff like you has about as much clout as peach fuzz.”
“You’d better think twice before you say something like that, Daddy,” Jane said in a burst of anger. “You know what your sweet little ‘chicken fluff, peach fuzz’ daughter was doing this afternoon? She was chopping up office furniture with an ax!”
“You don’t even own an ax.”
“It came from Paula’s house. Her brother Tom takes it with him when he goes hunting. We all got to use it! We chopped up the desk! You should’ve seen it!” The words came pouring out of her in an uncontrollable rush. “Mr. Shelby’s desk was this big, mahogany thing; now it’s like firewood! And the cabinets and the bookshelves, we did the same to them! We burned all the books! That was Kelly’s idea. We had to rip them up to start with because they were too thick, but that didn’t matter. We had the whole afternoon!”
“You’re making this up.”
“I’m not making up anything! Every bit of it’s true!” His refusal to believe her drove her to greater fury. “I’m nobody’s ‘chicken.’ I’m a woman, and women are powerful! We can do whatever we want when we band together! You lay a hand on my mom again and you’ll find out how strong we are! We’ll make you sorry—even sorrier than Peter!”
Her voice was rising higher and higher, a shriek of desperation. Far and shrill, she could hear it screaming out words she never meant to say. Stop, she cried to it silently. Stop! Please, be quiet! But it wouldn’t obey her.
“We’ll get you! We’ll punish you!” the voice screamed.
Jane saw her father rise from his chair and come toward her, but she didn’t take in his full intent until she felt the blow. His fist struck her on the left ear and sent her reeling backward across the room into the bookcase. The wooden shelves behind her kept her from falling, and she stood, leaning against them, stunned into silence.
Her father said, “Come here.”
No! Jane mouthed the word, but no sound came. Terror drained all strength from her body. She lifted her left hand and pressed it against the side of her face.
“I said, come here!” Bart Rheardon said hoarsely. “Do you hear me, daughter?”
Numbly, Jane nodded. She managed to get her feet aligned under her and took a tentative step forward. The world spun dizzily around her. She took another step, and her father’s hand closed hard on her shoulder.
“Now, you listen to me,” he said, “and you listen good. Number one, you’re resigning from that Daughters of Eve club. I don’t know what’s going on there, but whatever it is, it’s turned you into a vicious, smart-mouthed troublemaker in just a couple of months. Number two, you’re not moving out of here until you graduate. This town would have a heyday gossiping about ‘that Rheardon girl who left home to live with one of her teachers.’
“Number three, you’re going to shape up and behave yourself. You raise your voice to me one more time, and you’re going to find yourself sharing a hospital room with your mother. Do you understand me?”
Jane made a second painful attempt to nod her head.
“You tell me, ‘Yes, Dad.’ ”
“Yes, Dad.” She brought the words out in a whisper.
He released her shoulder, and she took a quick step backward.
“You’re not leaving this house. You’re here to stay awhile.” Bart Rheardon went back to his chair and seated himself. He picked up the glass, which he had set down on the coffee table, raised it to his lips and took a long swallow. “That teacher was with you, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“When you girls were in Shelby’s office axing up his furniture, your friend Ms. Stark was right there with you. She had to have been or you’d never have been able to get into the building.”
“I thought you didn’t believe me,” Jane said in a cracked voice.
“Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. We’ll see. If it really happened, it’s all going to be in the papers. And let me tell you, if it did happen the way you said it did, that Stark woman isn’t just going to be out a teaching job—she’s going to find herself behind bars. We’ve got enough trouble with our kids today without having people like that around to influence them.”
“You won’t say anything?” Jane asked wretchedly. “Please, Dad, you can’t! Irene’s been so good to me!”
“Don’t you try telling me what I can and can’t do.” He picked up the newspaper, which had fallen to the floor beside his chair, and opened it to the sports section. “Go fix us some dinner.”
Jane stood, staring at him. “You want me to cook for you now?”
“Damned right, I do. With your mother out of commission, you’re the woman of the house. You might as well start learning what woman’s work is all about.”
Jane didn’t move for a moment, and then she slowly crossed the room.
In the kitchen, her mother’s heavy iron skillet stood in the drying rack. Jane picked it up and held it a moment, testing the weight of it. Then she went back into the living room, moving quietly, and stood behind her father’s chair.
She lifted the skillet as high above her head as she was able. She closed her eyes. The smell of lemon-scented hair tonic filled her nostrils, and beneath it there was the faint, lingering odor of pipe tobacco. There was nothing of her mother. Nothing at all.
The left side of her face twitched violently.
With her eyes still closed, Jane braced herself and brought the skillet down with all her strength onto the top of her father’s head.