| |
“CISSIE’S really hurt,” Chelsea blurted before George’s sedan slipped into the afternoon traffic. “I need help, Mom. Can you come? Like—right now!”
“Ronald?”
“Yeah.”
“Should you call an ambulance?”
“Cissie says that’ll make him even madder.”
I didn’t care if Ronald got so angry his head exploded; but Cissie had to live with the bastard, so she had the final say.
“Eric?” I suggested. He could help get her to the Emergency Room much faster.
“Oh, no no no...”
“On my way.”
This was precisely the worst-case scenario some frightened part of me imagined the day Eric, Cissie, and I had lunch on the Voight’s back steps. I wanted to hammer my fists and kick like a brat having a tantrum, but I was driving so I bottled it all up. I don’t know how I arrived at my daughter’s without incident.
Chelsea lurched into my arms the second I stepped inside the door. Tears pooling in her eyes, she gestured me into the living room where Cissie sat on the sofa.
Nothing about the young mother resembled the trusting, naïve woman I’d so recently met. Her face was ashen, her eyes dull. Despite her obvious pain, she sat stiffly upright holding baby Caroline snugly to her shoulder.
Approaching slowly, I stretched out my hands. “May I?”
Cissie didn’t seem to understand the question.
After I gently relieved her of the sleeping child, she clutched her ribs and curled into herself.
I passed Caroline over to Chelsea. “Did you give Cissie any painkillers?”
“Not yet. I didn’t want to interfere with what the doctor will do. Anyway, she’s nursing, so...”
“Good thinking, Chel.”
I kneeled down to Cissie’s level and spoke softly. "We need to get you to a doctor. Will you let us call an ambulance?" Still the best option in my opinion.
Cissie's hand shot out and grabbed my wrist. "No ambulance. Please. No ambulance." The fear in her voice gave me chills.
"Okay, okay," I promised. She wasn’t gasping for breath or bleeding anywhere I could see.
“Nothing’s broken,” she insisted. “I walked over here by myself.”
"Is Ronald still home?"
Negative.
"Do you have your purse?”
Cissie tucked her head under her arm and sobbed.
“Okay. No problem.” If necessary, I would break a window to get it.
Brow pinched with concern, Chelsea swayed from foot to foot as she rocked the baby in her arms. She was rattled, I knew, still close to tears.
“You be okay for a few minutes?"
She said yes, and I had to trust she meant it.
My hope was that Cissie had left through her backdoor and it would still be unlocked.
It was, but I turned the knob with trembling fingers. Ronald may have returned by now.
Once inside, I glanced around as if he might jump out of a shadow or drop down from the ceiling.
Nothing moved that I could hear, yet the whole house seemed to hold its breath.
Dirty dishes filled the kitchen sink, crumbs littered the vinyl tablecloth, laundry overflowed from a basket on the floor. Yet everything felt different. The odor of fear-sweat mingled with the smell of bacon grease.
I checked the stove. Off. The coffee pot. Unplugged.
Then I made my way through the dining room, glanced into the living room, and gasped.
An overstuffed chair had been knocked askew. Two top-heavy, wrought iron floor lamps I’d noticed before had toppled, their glass globes nothing but shards. A blonde-wood coffee table tilted on a broken leg. Something ceramic had exploded against a wall. The hook for the dolphin mobile above Caroline's Pack N Play had snapped. So much angry energy lingered I could almost hear Ronald's insults, helplessly watch the body punches, the vicious kicks, the final violent shove across the room.
Remaining with such a man was madness, yet I knew women did it again and again. Until now Cissie had done it, too, but maybe this time her husband had gone too far. Maybe this time she could be persuaded to heed the handwriting on the wall.
I found her purse among the rubble and checked inside for a health-insurance card. Then I ran upstairs to Caroline’s room, threw extra diapers into the diaper bag by the changing table.
"Abington Emergency room, here we come," I called as I rushed back through Chelsea's front door.
"Infant seat," the injured woman warned from her prone position.
“Covered!” I fished Cissie's keys out of her purse and tossed them to my daughter. "Chelsea will drive Caroline in your car, and you’ll ride with me.”
I desperately wanted to counsel the young mother, persuade her to try the Women’s Shelter for at least a night or two, but I simply could not. She was too traumatized to think half an hour ahead, in too much pain to think at all. I let her rest in the backseat with a pillow.
After I gave the receiving nurse some basic information, the emergency staff whisked Cissie away on one of their many wheelchairs. I wouldn’t see her again for over an hour.
Chelsea arrived with Caroline in her car-seat carrier, but one glance at the waiting room’s revolving cast of needed and needy and my daughter waved me outside. The afternoon heat was at its apex, but an overhang sheltered the unloading zone from the sun. We chose a bench away from the door and flopped down gratefully.
Caroline fell asleep sucking on a purple pacifier, and I finally got to ask what happened.
Chelsea leaned back and sighed. “I was watering my hanging baskets before it got too hot. A little before noon I guess, so I was on my front porch when Cissie ran out.
“Ronald shouted for her to ‘Get back in here,’ but Cissie just stood there, so he came out after her. He was shoving her toward the steps when Eric stormed out of his house yelling to let her go.
“Ronald told him to mind his own business, so Eric threatened to call the police.
“That’s when Ronald pushed Cissie aside and squared off in front of Eric.
“’Go ahead,’” he says. ‘I’ll tell them what you did to dear old Granny.’
“Eric started to laugh that off, but Ronald was serious, so Eric told him he was crazy, that he hadn’t done anything to Maisie.
“’Oh, yeah? That’s not what her doctor thinks.
“Until then Cissie’d just been biting her thumb and listening, but Ronald’s zinger made her gasp. ‘I didn’t,’ she tried to tell Eric, but then she saw Ronald’s face. The guy was steaming, Mom. He looked like he wanted to punch Cissie right then and there.
“Eric must have been pretty alarmed, too, because he tried to calm things down. ‘The doctor’s wrong,’ he said. ‘I would never hurt Maisie.’
“’Oh, yeah?’ Ronald challenged him. ‘Then how come you told my wife you’d be better off without the old bag?’
“That really upset Eric. He called Ronald a liar, and I was sure fists would fly. But they didn’t. For some reason Eric backed off...”
My daughter lowered her head and spread her hands. “...which must have been exactly what Ronald wanted, because he gave Cissie the smuggest, most arrogant look I’ve ever seen. She got the message, too, whatever it was, because she practically wilted.
“Then Ronald turned back to Eric and said he guessed it was his word against Eric’s—‘except for one thing.’ He’s got a witness who saw Eric man-handling Maisie into his car. She was fighting back tooth and nail, hollering and slapping at Eric. Even worse, it happened the day before Maisie fell down the stairs, Mom. Ronald said he remembered because it rained and he had gotten off work.”
Unfortunately, that sounded true.
I asked Chelsea if she knew why Ronald had come home in the first place.
She nodded. “To check up on Cissie, who happened to be on the phone.”
“With...?”
“A girlfriend, but Ronald thought she was talking to Eric. That’s why he exploded.”
“She told you this?”
“Yes. While we were waiting for you.”
I didn’t want to disillusion my daughter, but I couldn’t imagine how Eric would have known Cissie was in trouble if they hadn’t been on the phone together. Also, even a Neanderthal like Ronald would know how to access the most recent caller’s name and number.
I did not believe Eric got that ‘better off without the old bag’ line from Cissie. Surely, she knew better than to ever mention Eric’s name to her husband.
Yet somehow Ronald had either discovered, or invented, another way to tighten his chokehold on her. Whether Cissie and Eric were friends or lovers didn’t especially matter. Ronald felt entitled to do whatever he wished to his wife.