The Woman Read online

  He’ll see Doc Richardson tomorrow. Get a shot or whatever.

  God knows what’s been in that mouth of hers.

  He finishes the cornbread and licks his fingers.

  “All right. Everybody want to come on down to the cellar with me?”

  “Again?” Peggy says.

  “Again at dinner time?” says his wife.

  “It’s pot roast, Belle. Put it on simmer. You need to see this.”

  She looks at him a moment, then sighs and wipes her hands on a dishtowel and gives him a small, tolerant smile.

  “Come on, girls. Do as your father says.”

  ~ * ~

  They are downstairs. Assembled. Standing at the foot of the stairs. Peggy and Darlin’ holding hands. Brian with his mouth agape. Brian has been the first one down, all excited. As they crossed the lawn he asked, watcha got in there, dad? A mountain lion? He was kidding of course and Cleek had acknowledged the fact with a grin. A hellova lot more interesting than a mountain lion, son, he said. So now Brian stands there beside him. And his father is right. This is much more interesting than any cat.

  Brian sees…

  …his first half-naked woman, ever. There is more to his response than that because Brian is a complex young man but that’s the first thing and it’s primal. His eyes can barely leave her breasts to take in the rest of her — the bloody face, the matted hair. The fact that she is chained and helpless is not lost on him. Nor is the sheer size of her. But he has never seen Peg’s breasts and his mother’s he doesn’t remember. He feels the beating of his heart. He feels a tremor.

  And Peggy sees…

  …a woman chained to a wall. Somebody has hurt her and that somebody is probably her father. She’s been badly beaten. Her mouth is bloody and blood drools out her ear. It occurs to her to wonder how the woman has come to this. She’s big and strong-looking and should have resisted. She is impressed by a kind of stillness about her, a silent watchfulness — but the woman also frightens her. Her smell frightens her. Her filth frightens her. What has her father done? How crazy is this? And how can she, Peg, go on living in this fucking house?

  And Belle sees…

  …wrongness, evil. In the size of her and the wildness in her which she can read plain like her mother used to read the palms of hands at parties and in her stink and her scars she sees what no woman should ever become, what no human should ever become. Chris Cleek doesn’t believe in God or the Devil, only pretends to believe. But she does and she’s facing a devil of some kind for sure and she feels an almost pleasant thrill of terror that somehow this will get way out of control, chains or no chains, she can feel control slipping away even as she stands here — and then so sad suddenly for Chris and herself and her family and the life they’re living now that she could almost cry. Instead she steels herself. Against whatever is to come.

  And Darlin’…Darleen sees…

  …a lady out of a picture book, out of a fairy tale where ladies are trapped in towers or given poison apples or like that movie where that lady is tied to two poles to wait for the great big ape, not a nice kind of fairy tale but the kind that make you want to cry at first but then they’re okay at the end and the lady comes down from the tower and the prince wakes her up and the ape dies. Except that the ape dying is kind of sad too. And the lady here smells like an ape, or what she thinks an ape would smell like if she ever saw one. The lady makes her nose itch.

  And the Woman sees…

  …a family. What the man has. And she has not.

  ELEVEN

  His children and Belle — at some point they each look at him, the father, for instruction. But it’s Peggy who actually asks the question.

  “Dad? What the hell is going on here?”

  He pardons the swearing.

  “God knows where she‘s been living, Peg. In the woods. In caves. We’re going to help her.”

  “Help her? By chaining her up in a fruit cellar?”

  He sees Belle shoot his daughter a warning glance. Good. Belle’s standing by her man. Though he can see she’s pretty damn puzzled too.

  “She needs a big Band-Aid,” Darlin’ says. Bless her.

  He smiles. “That’s the first thing we’re going to fix. She’s been wounded. We’ll get right to it. Okay, now listen. We’re each going to share in the responsibility of taking care of her.”

  “The police should be taking care of her,” Peggy says. “Or a hospital.”

  “No police. No hospitals.”

  “She’s not some fucking pet, Dad!”

  “Peggy,” says Belle, “you watch your mouth.”

  He lets that one pass too.

  “The first rule, ground rule number one,” he says, “is no touching.”

  He holds up his ruined finger, wiggles it. Darlin’ giggles.

  “I learned that the hard way. Our friend here likes to bite.”

  “ She bit you?” says Belle.

  “Took about an inch off my finger. Swallowed it.”

  “Jeez!” Brian’s impressed. Well, he would be. Hell, he’s impressed. If not in a good way.

  “What are we going to do with her?” his son says.

  “Train her, Brian. Civilize her. Free her from herself, her baser instincts. What we have here is…well, I’ve never seen anything quite exactly like it. This woman thinks she’s an animal. Damned if I know how she got that way. But we can’t have people running around in the woods thinking they’re animals. It’s not right. It’s not safe.”

  He takes a quick survey of his family. Darlin’s easy to read — Darlin’s fascinated. Brian’s probably thinking, awesome. Peggy is going to be trouble. Her face reads a mix of disbelief and disgust…or is that contempt? It better not be contempt. Belle is wearing that guarded look she has. The jury’s still out with Belle. But she’ll come around. She always does.

  “Belle, why don’t you run on up and put together a bowl of cereal or oatmeal or something. Something simple. The woman’s got to be hungry. All she’s had to eat since I found her is…”

  He wags his finger again. Gets another giggle out of Darlin’.

  “And Peg? Dig out the first aid kit for me. I want to see to her wounds. Go on now, get a move on, ladies.”

  They both seem to hesitate for a moment and then Belle leads them up the stairs. Darlin’ doesn’t want to leave, he can tell, but Peg takes her hand and off they go. That leaves Brian standing there with him. The boy can’t take his eyes off her. And that would figure too. She’s a mess but she’s still a woman full-grown and mostly naked. He can’t help but smile.

  “Better than a mountain lion, son?”

  “Boy, you said it. Do we really get to keep her?”

  “We do. Go out to the barn. Grab me a bow rake, will you?”

  “Sure, dad.”

  He takes the stairs two at a time — and once out there, sets the dogs to barking. Have they been fed tonight? Probably. Who knows. He’s tired of asking.

  ~ * ~

  The man has done her a service. She doesn’t know why. He has removed the poultices at her side, cleaned her wounds and replaced the poultices with ones of his own making, white. No, he has done her two services. He has removed the piss-bowl from under her and used a crank on the wall to lower her down and allow her to rest on her knees, taking the strain from her arms and legs.

  The man’s family stands around him. His woman holds another bowl, smaller. The woman wears a worried look. But it is the younger one who interests her. She is perhaps the age of Second Stolen, a woman only beginning to be a woman. She seemed unwell at first but now she isn’t sure. The Woman wonders if this is the man’s birth-daughter or if he has stolen her. She holds tight to the hand of the little girl.

  The boy holds a rake with long light tines. She wonders if he means to stab her with it. She wouldn’t be surprised.

  The boy favors his father.

  ~ * ~

  “Now, I can’t stress this enough,” Cleek says. “For the moment you keep your distanc
e. So Belle, set the bowl down in front of her but not too close. And Brian, you push it forward with the rake so she can get at it. Careful not to spill it now. What’d you make her, Belle, oatmeal?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Nice and nutritious. Go ahead and set it down.”

  She does.

  “Brian?”

  He moves it to within inches of her with the rake.

  “There you go,” Cleek says. “Teamwork. See? We all pitch in.”

  The woman doesn’t seem to understand what this is all about at first.

  And then she does.

  ~ * ~

  They have given her a kind of grey-brown slop to eat which has no smell or smells of dust at best. And she is meant to put her face to this slop and lap it like a dog.

  She is not a dog. But she can show them what a dog can do.

  ~ * ~

  She growls, slams her forehead down onto the bowl, which shatters beneath the force of her.

  Damn! Cleek thinks. Damned if she hasn’t done it again!

  Astonished him.

  Darlin’ lets out a little cry. The woman’s scared the cry out of her. She’s scared the whole damn family.

  “You see what I mean about keeping your distance,” he says. “I guess we just use plastic next time.”

  He takes the rake that Brian’s gripping for dear life away from him and pushes the mess of oatmeal and crockery into a small pile in front of her.

  “She gets hungry enough,” he says, “she’ll eat.”

  He gives the rake back to Brian and turns to his family.

  “Now this is our project and it’s a secret one. I shouldn’t have to tell you to keep your mouths zipped but I’m telling you anyway. Each of us is gonna have chores with this one. Same as taking care of the dogs. Someone’s got to pick up after her and so on. Your mother and I will take care of anything…overly complicated. Right, hon?”

  Belle gives him a nod and a little smile. She doesn’t like this at all, he can tell. But she’ll do as she’s told. They all will.

  “Alright,” he says, “dinner time. She may not be hungry but I sure am. We’ll lay out the routine afterwards. Everybody okay with that?”

  His tone says do not fuck with me.

  Even Peggy nods.

  TWELVE

  Peggy had halfway expected it, this little foray into her room tonight. Her father stood backlit by the hall light in the doorway gazing first at Darlin’ asleep by the window and then at her. He walked over and sat down beside her on the bed.

  “Everything okay at school?” he said.

  “Sure, daddy.”

  It wasn’t. But that was what he expected to hear, so that was what he got. She wondered if he detected the lie but simply ignored it. He was easily capable of that.

  “You’re a good girl, Peg. I know it’s hard being your age sometimes but you’ve got to remember to look on the bright side. You’ll have your license soon, right? Your grades are good. You’ll be going to college. Think about that.”

  “Okay, dad.”

  College was all she did think about. Getting out of here.

  And now with this new insanity...

  It was as though he could read her thoughts. It wasn’t the first time.

  “I know you’re upset about this woman. Don’t be. We’re doing her a mitzvah, Peggy, that’s what the Jews say. A blessing. You’ll see.”

  He smiled, put his arm over her shoulder, leaned down slowly and kissed her on the forehead, then gave her arm a gentle squeeze.

  “Love you, kiddo,” he said.

  “Love you too, daddy.”

  It was their nightly mantra. Daddy and his kiddo. Their stupid, stupid call-and-response. Ever since she was a little girl.

  She had grown to loathe it but there it was sometimes, even now after all these years. Yet another thing that trapped her.

  He got off the bed and turned and she saw that her mother was standing in the hallway behind him. Watching.

  All her mother ever seemed to do these days was watch.

  She wondered if she’d always been like that, and that Peggy as a child just had never noticed. And if her mother had been that passive at her own age, when she and her father first met in the same high school corridor she now walked every day, or if it had happened gradually over time, this slippage — and if so, would it happen to her too someday? Would she inherit this? And gradually melt into the ghost of some unknown man‘s desires?

  She was afraid it would. But then for a while she’d been afraid of a lot of things.

  ~ * ~

  He showed no signs of displeasure at her being there watching them and Belle thought that was good — because she needed to try to have a serious discussion with him. In fact he placed a tender hand on the nape of her neck as they walked together to their room.

  Once inside she turned on the bedside lamp and he closed the door and started to undress unbuttoning his shirt first the way he always did, his back to her as she put her hand to his shoulder. She warned herself against seeming too concerned.

  “Chris, honey? Could we talk a minute? That woman. Do you really think we should be…”

  He whirled and her hand dropped away from his shoulder and suddenly her face felt on fire.

  He raised his other hand as though to slap her again. His eyes were glittering slits, his lips thinned, jaw set.

  “Jesus, Chris!”

  He let the hand fall slowly to his side.

  He hadn’t hit her since the abortion, what she thought of as the abortion though there had been no doctors involved, no clinics, no lines of protesters thank god. He hadn’t hit her since. But even then he’d had no cause. She’d only said there were other ways to go about this than the one he proposed.

  Her face stung and her ears rang.

  You bastard, she wanted to say. You son of a bitch.

  I didn’t deserve that.

  He turned and slipped out of his shirt, kicked out of his slippers, unbuttoned his pants and pulled them off his legs and folded both shirt and pants neatly over the corner chair. Then sat down and patted the bed beside him. Smiled at her.

  “Let’s get some sleep, Belle.”

  He shifted to his side of the bed. Plumped the pillows. Pulled the covers over him. And then he was just lying there.

  She took her own sweet time undressing and getting into her nightgown, sitting in front of the mirror and brushing out her hair. The woman looking back at her in the mirror wouldn’t just fall asleep. Not tonight. Not for a long while.

  She thought, if I had known back then, would I still have married him?

  She had a lot of questions about herself. Always had. But she knew the answer to that one.

  ~ * ~

  Brian listened in the dark for the house to settle. For everyone to sleep.

  When he felt sure they had, he got out of bed and walked to the window opposite and as quietly as he could, raised the blinds. The yard was silent. No dogs barking or howling. No sound of night birds. Not even crickets. Down by the pond there would be crickets — and frogs too. But here? Nothing. Moonlight and stillness.

  He stared at the fruit cellar door.

  Stillness there too.

  He wondered what she was doing down there. What she looked like hanging there in the dark. He imagined her in the dark.

  ~ * ~

  She gazes at the mess of food and glass in front of her. She has bled from her ear into the food. It is easily within reach. She will not touch it.

  She hears movement to her right, faint, from beneath the old trunk across the room. She has no need to scent the air to know what makes these sounds. The scent has been with her for a long time. The scratching sounds are mice and she sees them now, three of them, hesitant yet scurrying toward her in short fits and starts.

  Three small brown mice that at last find the food in front of her and do what she will not.

  PART TWO

  THIRTEEN

  The morning was bright, a crisp in t
he air before the day’s heat took hold. He drove to work with the windows open and took his time along the coast roads. They made him think of her and where she’d been — without the Quickie Marts and Robin’s Donuts or Captain Submarines along the way to distract him. He thought of her wandering along the Canadian shoreline. All the time alone.

  He could make the drive from his house to work in half an hour but today it took him three quarters of an hour before he passed the Coast Tide Inn and the Old Curiosity Shoppe and then the library and court house into the center of town. He parked the Escalade in his usual spot in front of Apple Tree Books and climbed the single flight of stairs to his office above.

  Betty of course was already at her computer. She wore that pretty green sleeveless dress she knew he liked that went so well with her curly red hair. She greeted him with her usual smile and a good morning, Mr. Cleek. Twenty-one and eager and sweet as sugar.

  “Mornin’ Betty. How’d things go with Mrs. Oldenberg? She satisfied with the papers?”

  “Didn’t even read them. Signed them right away.”

  “Fine. Though I always counsel against that.”

  She looked at her desk calendar.

  “You’ve got lunch with Dean at noon. Then court at two and a meeting with those Exxon reps at three-thirty. Are they really going to tear down McAllen‘s Hardware?”

  “Not if the town council and I can help it. Last thing we need is a gas station three blocks away from the Royal Bank of Canada. Those DeFuria files ready?”

  “I just have to print out this last one.”

  “Well, bring ‘em on in when you’re done along with a cup of mud and we’ll get to it. Thanks, Betty.”

  Betty had this sort of funny tic, this habit. Whenever she turned back to her computer from talking to him or somebody else, as she did now, she took a deep breath as though about to take an underwater plunge. Which had the effect of plumping out those more-than-sufficient breasts against whatever she was wearing.