Chapter Fourteen

Tuesday, October 17, 3:03 p.m.

Roy wound up and let go. Lydia's bottle of Eternity made a popping noise as it shattered against the wall. Then the only sound in the room was his own harsh breathing. Trembling with rage and exhaustion, Roy looked around the bedroom for something else of Lydia's to destroy.

There was nothing left untouched. He had been awake and raging all night, and now all of her things were strewn on the floor, stamped on, smashed, cut, torn, crushed. The pages from her books lay everywhere, like drifts of leaves. He had pulled her necklaces until they burst into beads, ground her tubes and pots of makeup until they smeared into paste on the bathroom floor. After finding them discarded in the back of a bathroom drawer, he took the hammer to her wedding and engagement rings. He had smashed the glass on the framed photo of her parents that had hung above the couch, then ripped the photo into a hundred pieces. Now Roy saw a bright bead of blood on the end of his index finger and realized that he had cut it on a piece of glass. He sucked on it, the hot salty taste of blood mingling with the sour tang the whiskey had left behind on his tongue.

Finding the brochure hidden in Lydia’s panty drawer had been what did it. He had been touching all the slick and shiny things, thinking of how much he needed her, when his fingers brushed against something stiff. Paper. From the back of the drawer, he had pulled out a purple brochure.

"Love doesn't have to hurt," it said on the front in curlicue writing. Roy could feel the red climbing up the back of his neck. Where had Lydia gotten this? Had she been talking out of turn, nattering on to people about things that were none of their business?

He opened the brochure and began to read. "Are you in a close personal relationship that has become frightening? Is your partner controlling, abusive or violent? The danger is real. If you have a controlling partner, don't ignore or try to excuse abusive behavior. It is not the result of stress, anger, drugs or alcohol. It is learned behavior that a person uses to intimidate and manipulate. It is destructive and dangerous. Every year, thousands of people are seriously hurt or killed by their spouses or partners. But we can help. We can offer you a safe house where you – and your children – can be secure.”

The stupid bitch had even put checkmarks after nearly every item on a long list:

“Does your partner:

- hurt you by pushing, hitting, slapping, kicking, or choking you?

- threaten to hurt or kill you?

- call you names and humiliate you?

- blame you for the abuse they committed?

- limit where you can go and what you can do?

- control your money?

- tell you that you’re crazy?

- force you to have sex against your will?

- apologize and tell you it will never happen again (even though it has already?)”

Until he found the brochure, Roy had been thinking about taking Lydia back. But a crank-fueled rage had come over him when he realized that she must have told a bunch of strangers what was none of their business. What had happened between them had nothing to do with outsiders.

He picked up the brochure again, ready to throw it in the burn pile, but for the first time he noticed something on the back. No address, but a phone number. A phone number that started with 503 - the area code for Portland. So that’s where Lydia had taken herself off to. Was she really dumb enough to think he wouldn’t get her back? A long time ago, before she knew better, Lydia had always been pestering him about going to Portland. She had even wanted to go there on their honeymoon, instead of the old cabin near the Zig-Zag he had inherited from Pop-pop. He had set her straight about that pretty quick.

Roy picked up the phone. The phone and the TV and the stereo were all in one piece, little islands in the sea of broken things. He thought of them as solely belonging to him, because Lydia was never allowed to touch them. He dialed the number from the back of the brochure.

“Gabriel House.”

“Let me speak to Lydia Watkins.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but we have no one here by that name.”

“Yes, you do, you stupid bitch. Let me speak to my wife.”

“She is not here. But we do have Caller ID, and we do make tape recordings of all calls, and we do bring harassment charges when necessary.”

The woman’s words were a blur of noise. Lydia was there, Roy could feel it. And in his mind’s eye, his wife was dressed in a short skirt and some dike with a crewcut had her arm around her, and Lydia was laughing. Laughing at him. “You tell Lydia that I will come get her if she doesn’t get her butt home now. You hear me? You tell Lydia I will find her and put one bullet in her eye and one straight in her heart if she’s not here by tomorrow.”

The only answer was a dial tone. He called 411 and said he needed the address for a Gabriel House in Portland. Even though Roy had expected it, he still felt a surge of anger when the recorded voice told him, “I’m sorry, but that information is unavailable.”

Staggering toward the doorway, he kicked a mound of her clothes out of the way. He had cut them up, scissoring out the crotch and the places where her breasts had rubbed. Just wait until she came back. He'd make her earn new clothes, piece by piece.

Roy ran his hand roughly down the front of his pants, then took another hit from the nearly empty bottle of Jack. If he left the clothes here, though, she would just sew them up. Lydia was clever, in a sly sort of way. She could always think of ways to fix things, make it as if they had never happened. If he tossed her dinner on the floor, he might get up in the middle of the night to find her picking off the top bits and eating them. If he hit her, she covered up the bruises so she looked as if he hadn’t left a mark on her.

Well, she wasn’t going to have these clothes to make over, to make nice, to piece together until the eye couldn’t even see the scars. Leaning down, Roy gathered up an armful of dresses and pants and blouses and then took them outside, bumping the screen door open with his hip. He stuffed them into the burn barrel, then went back for her underwear.

What if Lydia didn’t come back? Because she might not, Roy knew that. He probably was going to have to find her. He would find her, and then he was going to have to teach her a lesson. Teach her that she couldn’t talk about private things to outsiders. But first he had to think about how to find her when she had gone to ground at a place that specialized in hiding wives from husbands, children from fathers.

Roy ran this thumb over the wheel of his lighter until it flicked into flame. Her bras and panties twisted as they melted and burned. He pitched the empty bottle of Jack on top and stepped back as it exploded. How could she have humiliated him like this?

From the laurel bushes came a questioning sound, almost a moan. Roy jumped, then saw two eyes glowing back in there. Without thinking about it, he crossed himself. The reflex had been beaten into him by his grandmom, starting when he was three, after his mother decided to drop him off for good.

Squinting, he made out the form of a black cat, thin as a shadow, hidden way back in the branches. He swore to himself. For weeks, he had suspected that Lydia was feeding a stray out in the backyard. Once he’d even found an empty tuna can out in the middle of the grass, licked clean. She had claimed it must have fallen out of the garbage, and had stuck to that claim even after he whacked her a few times.

He had never liked cats. From his grandmom he knew that they were sneaky, dirty, Satan’s familiars, and that they sucked the breath right out of newborn babies. Now here came this black cat slinking around as soon as Lydia had taken off, taunting him with its slanted yellow eyes.

Slowly, a smile curled Roy’s lips. He would track down Lydia, wherever she had gone, and then he would show her what she would get for lying to him. He couldn’t wait to see Lydia’s face when she saw this stupid cat after he was done with it. He bet she wouldn’t be able to be hide behind her dead eyes then.

“Here kitty, kitty,” he called. The cat didn’t budge. That was okay. Roy went into the kitchen and opened a can of tuna. He went back out in the yard, settled down on his haunches and set the can of tuna a foot in front of him. He could be patient when he wanted to be.