Rose Madder

“He would have snapped my neck like the wishbone in a chicken,” she told Bill without looking up. She had promised herself that she would leave, though; she would do it the very next time he hurt her. But after that night he hadn’t laid a hand on her for a long time. Five months, maybe. And when he did go after her again, at first it hadn’t been so bad and she had told herself that if she could stand up to being poked over and over again with a pencil, she could put up with a few punches. She had gone on thinking that until 1985, when things had suddenly escalated. She told him how scary Norman had been that year, because of the trouble with Wendy Yarrow.

“That was the year you had your miscarriage, wasn’t it?” Bill asked.

“Yes,” she told her hands.

“He broke one of my ribs, too. Or maybe it was a couple. I don’t really remember anymore, isn’t that awful?” He didn’t reply, so she hurried on, telling him that the worst parts (other than the miscarriage, of course) were the long, scary silences when he would simply look at her, breathing so loudly through his nose that he sounded like an animal getting ready to charge. Things had gotten a little better, she said, after her miscarriage. She told him about how she had started to slip a few cogs at the end, how time sometimes got away from her when she was in her rocker and how sometimes, when she was setting the table for supper and listening for the sound of Norman’s car pulling into the driveway, she’d realize she’d taken eight or even nine showers in the course of the day. Usually with the bathroom lights off.

“I liked to shower in the dark,” she said, still not daring to look up from her hands.

“It was like a wet closet.” She finished by telling him about A

“A biter,” Bill said quietly. It sounded almost as if he were talking to himself.

“Is that what they call men like him? Is that the term?”

“I guess it is,” Rosie said. And then, maybe because she was afraid he wouldn’t believe her (would think she had been “fibulating,” in Normanspeak), she slid her shoulder briefly out of the pink Tape Engine tee-shirt she was wearing and showed him the old white ring of scar there, like the remnant of a shark-bite. That had been the first one, her honeymoon present. Then she turned up her left forearm, showing him another one. This time it wasn’t a bite it made her think of; for some reason it made her think of smooth white faces almost hidden in lush green undergrowth.

“This one bled quite a bit, then got infected,” she told him. She spoke in the tone of someone relaying routine information-that Gramma had called earlier, perhaps, or that the mailman had left a package.

“I didn’t go to the doctor, though. Norman brought home a big bottle of antibiotic tablets. I took them and got better. He knows all sorts of people he can get things from. He calls people like that “daddy’s little helpers.” That’s sort of fu

“What?” he asked hoarsely.

“What, Rosie?”

“You’re crying,” she said, and now her own voice wavered. Bill looked surprised.

“No, I’m not. At least, I don’t think I am.” She reached out with one finger, drew a gentle semicircle below his eye with it, and then held the tip up for him to see. He examined it closely, biting his lower lip.

“You didn’t eat much, either.” Half of his dog was still on his plate, with mustardy sauerkraut spilling out of the bun. Bill pitched the paper plate into the trash barrel beside the bench, then looked back at her, absently wiping at the wetness on his cheeks. Rosie felt a bleak certainty steal over her. Now he would ask why she had stayed with Norman and while she wouldn’t get up off the park bench and leave (any more than she had ever left the house on Westmoreland Street until April), it would put the first barrier between them, because it was a question she couldn’t answer. She didn’t know why she had stayed with him, any more than she knew why, in the end, it had taken just a single drop of blood to transform her entire life. She only knew that the shower had been the best place in the house, dark and wet and full of steam, and that sometimes half an hour in Pooh’s Chair felt like five minutes, and that why wasn’t a question that had any meaning when you were living in hell. Hell was motiveless. The women in Therapy Circle had understood that; no one had asked her why she stayed. They knew. From their own experiences, they knew. She had an idea that some of them might even know about the te

“What are the chances he might have killed the woman who was making all the trouble for him back in

“85? That Wendy Yarrow?” She was shocked, but it wasn’t the kind of shock one feels when asked an unthinkable question; she was shocked in the ma

“Rosie? I asked you what you thought the chances were-”

“I think they might have been… well, pretty good, actually.”

“It was convenient for him when she died like that, wasn’t it? Saved him from watching the whole thing get hung out in civil court.”

“Yes.”

“If she had been bitten, do you think the newspapers would have printed it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe not.” She looked at her watch and got quickly to her feet.

“Oh, boy, I have to go, and right now. Rhoda wanted to start in again at twelve-fifteen and it’s ten past already.” They started back side by side. She found herself wishing he would put his arm around her again, and just as part of her mind was telling her not to be greedy and another part (Practical-Sensible) was telling her not to ask for trouble, he did just that. I think I’m falling in love with him. It was the lack of amazement in that thought which prompted the next one: No, Rosie, I think that’s actually yesterday’s headline. I think it’s already happened.

“What did A