All Gone (9 page)

I'm really out of it this time. She never did a better job on me. I have to turn over and spit out a mouthful of blood to stop from gagging. I rest a while and then crawl to the bathroom to see how bad it is and get a towel to stop the bleeding on my face. My face is a mess. Some of the welts have gashes on them, probably from her rings. I stop the bleeding in my mouth by sticking a rolled-up ball of wet toilet paper between my front teeth and upper lip. I wash myself, smear several streaks of iodine across my face and on my ears and when I feel steady enough I call my best friend.

“Herb, could you come over? Melanie really did a number on me this time. I might have to go to the hospital I think.”

“I'll phone for an ambulance and run right over. Rest till I get there. Door unlocked?”

“I think so. Wow, my mouth hurts. I don't see her suddenly being so considerate to think of locking the door so burglars can't come in. If not, landlord's got the keys. I doubt I can get to the door myself.”

I rest in bed. Herb comes with his wife in minutes. They wash my face and head and Debra says “Anything broken you think?”

“Maybe something in my chest. She kicked me. I think I blanked out but do remember a certain thumping going on down there when I was on the floor, but can't tell for sure. It now feels numb.”

“We told you not to go back to her.”

“I wasn't thinking. Believe me, never again.”

“You do, you lose us as friends.”

“I know. Thanks.”

“If only she'd done it once when we were with you,” Herb says, “you'd have had that witch in a sling by now and could have skipped all this.”

“No chance. She's too careful that way. But maybe I got her this time only because of the extent of the beating and condition of my face.”

Ambulance comes and takes me away. I'm examined. I have two broken ribs and a broken nose and cheekbone and concussion and have lost all my hearing in one ear and several missing teeth. I'm kept in the hospital for weeks. I ask to see the police and learn they also want to see me. She's pressed charges that I got drunk that night and tried to kill her. I tell them that's bull and press countercharges against her. My lawyer tells me “The best you can get from this is that if you drop charges against her, she'll drop hers against you. She's got too strong a case.” And he reads me what she told the police: “He's an erratic drunk. Not a regular drinker as our friends will tell you, but once every other month at home he drinks too much and falls all over the place banging his head and face, which is how he cut his ears and such and lost the teeth. I even picked up the teeth this time to show him what he was doing to himself, but threw them out the window when he rushed at me like a mad dog. For when he gets drunk like that he also occasionally goes berserk and throws things and slaps out at anything in his way. Since I live with him, who else you think gets the brunt? And let's not be silly—you think I'd hit that man first? He might be a little smaller than me but he's wiry and quick and powerful and once or twice in the past he hit me so good that I wouldn't ever think of tangling with him except if I couldn't get out of the house and it was fight him or lose my life. That's what happened this time. The other times he battered me, though I never told our friends or even the ones who are just his friends and maybe believe him, because I was too ashamed and let's face it, the man supports me, and never reported him to you because I knew he'd really give me a licking after that. And then every time after that he moves away out of remorse and in a few weeks pleads with me to take him back. I always did as I'm a sucker for such slob talk and do depend on him for a lot of things and I'm not so young and pretty where I can get another guy that quick and also when he isn't so violently drunk like that he can be very sweet, but from now on I won't.”

My lawyer says “The court will believe her rather than you which they always do in cases like this when the evidence isn't entirely in your favor. Besides, even if they've doubts you weren't lying, to most people the man's supposed to fight back. Please, whatever you do from now on, stay clear of her.”

I drop charges, she drops hers, I'm ordered by the court to send her a certain sum of money every week if I'm going to live apart, and I move into a hotel, start looking for an apartment and, because of the notoriety our situation got, my boss asks me to look for another job. Month later Melanie calls and says “Thanks for this week's check.”

“You're welcome.”

“It's nice speaking to you again.”

“It isn't for me.”

“I want us to get back together, what do you say?”

“That last time was the last time of all the times and I never want to see or speak to you again,” and hang up.

She calls back. “I promise the past won't be repeated. I got it all out of my system. I love you, need you, want you—please. Don't you even still like me a little bit and think of me or my body some? Don't you ever want to hold me again or want me to wrap myself around you at night like I used to and cuddle you to sleep?”

“Sometimes I think of you. I'll be honest. And not just think of you negatively. There were good times, yes, but when you got the adrenaline going till you turned into some horrible beast—well what do you think I am, permanently insane? Next time you'll kill or maim me to where I'll never again be able to stand. No. Definitely not.”

“What can I do to make you change your mind and see how much I changed?”

“Nothing.”

“Please. I can hear it in your voice. What? Tell me. For you I'll do anything.”

“Two things for sure, though even then I can't promise I'll come back. One, tell the district attorney's office you did assault me those last few times and that I didn't strike you first. That way they won't think I'm making up stories and my boss and clients won't think I'm a little crazy. Then, if you beat me again, the city can also send you away or fine you or whatever they do to repeated offenders.”

“No. They'll get me for perjury for swearing out untrue charges against you and maybe throw me in jail.”

“Two, you have to start therapy right away. Group and individual both. And also go to a religious adviser every week to declare that you beat me repeatedly and nearly killed me last time and to keep going till they tell me you worked it out.”

“I can't. People will think the worst things of me. It's crazy for a woman to be called a husband batterer. Society won't tolerate it. They'll say I'm wicked or insane and give me drugs or put me away. They'll also think I married a queer. A whimpering milquetoast. I don't want them to think that. I don't want them to think I married a man who can't stand up to anyone.”

“You have my two stipulations.”

“I can't meet them.”

“Then that's it then, goodbye.”

“But I swear I won't hit you again. Sweetheart, please, I love you, come home right now. I'll make it nice. I'll bathe you, make your favorite foods, take care of you in every way, do everything you want me to, take gladly all your commands.”

“I don't want to command. I just wanted our relationship to be natural as possible, no fakeries or postures, can't you see? Beating isn't natural. Getting things out of your system is, but not like you do. Yours is vicious. Sadistic. You don't even stop when I'm down. No, first work out your problems or at least show me you've begun to by telling the district attorney's office and going to that therapy thing for a month. Only then I'll come back.”

“If you don't come back now I'm really going to get mad.”

“What, break my neck?”

“Yes.”

“There, see? Oh, I wish I had a recording of this call. Forget it,” and I hang up.

Hour later she knocks on my hotel-room door. I say through the peephole “Go away or I'll call the desk.”

“What'll you say: ‘My wife wants to get into my room'?”

“Yes, I'll say that. Also that you want to murder me, that you tried it before and nearly succeeded and that I want protection from you.”

“You don't need protection. I only want to speak gently to you.”

“No.”

She kicks the door. I say “Save your energy, I'm not opening up.” She bangs her shoulder against the door. I say “I'm calling them so you better leave.”

She's still banging. A paint seam runs down the entire middle of the door and the wood seems to be buckling. I call downstairs.

“Manager? Then assistant then, listen. There's a woman at my door who's my wife, all right, but we're legally separated and she's trying to get in my room to kill me, I'm not kidding. She won't go away. She's busting down the door now. Get up here. 6G. She's a very big woman and I just recently got out of the hospital from a serious beating from her and I'm not allowed to get excited and certainly not to fight back.”

They come upstairs. She yells “Let me go. He has someone in there—a prostitute, that's why I'm here.”

“That true, Mr. Ridge?” a man says through the door.

“Absolutely not.”

“I myself saw him accost her on the street before and ride the elevator up with her. I'm reporting this hotel for allowing whores in it.”

“She's lying. I've no one. She's just trying to get in the room to attack me. Call the police, Fifth Precinct, Sergeant Abneg if he's in or any of his associates and ask them if they don't have a file on us about this beating thing.”

“Could you open the door so we can see for ourselves? If you do have a woman in there, for one thing it's a single room and she's not a paying guest, and for another, if she is a prostitute then we'll have to ask you and the woman in there to leave. We don't allow that in this hotel.”

“I told you. My wife just wants to get in here.”

“Then we'll have to open the door ourselves. Sergio, the passkey.”

They get the key in a minute and open the door. I'm at the other end of the room with a chair raised over my head ready to bring it down on her if she makes a move toward me. She screams “You whoremonger,” and rushes at me. I bring the chair down. It hits her shoulder and she falls and gets up, drops again and while the two men are keeping me from hitting her again with the chair, she gets up and grabs an ashtray off a table and smashes it against my head. I go down.

“Ma'am,” one of the men says.

She kicks me in the jaw. I hear the snap and know it's broken. She kicks it again and again and I go out. Next thing I know I'm in an ambulance driving through the city, a doctor leaning over me holding open one of my eyes.

I press charges against my wife from the hospital bed. The policewoman I speak to says “Your wife claims you had a prostitute in your room.”

I can't speak but write on a pad: “She lies. I didn't.”

“You might've that evening, as your wife said she distinctly saw you solicit a woman on the street and take her into your hotel and that's what got her so mad to knock on your room door.”

I write: “Lies, lies, lies.”

“The court will tend to believe her. If not for the prostitute, who you could've gotten rid of before your wife got upstairs, then that she broke your jaw in self-defense. She's witnesses to that.”

I write: “Hit her with chair for frightened death of her that's why. She phoned hour before, said she'd kill me when she got to hotel.”

“You'll never be believed. It's not my job to suggest this, but drop the charges.”

I don't. Case is thrown out of court. I later file for divorce, charging physical cruelty. My wife fights the divorce and wins. At the courtroom she's so soft-spoken and sweet. Tells the judge I drink and beat her up every few months, etcetera. “But I still love him, don't ask me why after all he's put me through, and want him back.”

I get a legal separation and file for divorce the long way and even then it might not be granted if she doesn't stop challenging it. “If you do get it despite her fighting it,” my lawyer says, “you'll have to give her everything you own and more alimony a year than you now earn and which you'll have to continue giving even if she remarries.”

I get my own apartment and go back to work. Melanie calls three to four times a week. She pleads with me to come back. I always hang up. Sometimes she follows me on the street, waits outside my office building and apartment house for me. I always get in a cab or duck into a subway and escape. She writes me ardent letters saying how she misses me, cries every night for me, wants me to make love to her, wants me to give her a child, letters like that. I rip them all up and eventually don't even open them.

I try and think of a way to get her to take one last unprovoked swing at me in front of witnesses. Then I could charge her with assault and maybe win this time and also get a quick divorce because of her physical cruelty and a legal writ preventing her from seeing and speaking to me again. But why bother, because the judge would probably say her hitting me again was caused by all the past times I'd provoked her. I'm also afraid that the next time she hits me she might batter my brains or eyes so much that I'd become blind or knocked into insensibility for good.

About six months after our courtroom battle and a few weeks after she stopped calling and sending letters, I get a phone call.

“It's me, don't hang up,” she says. “I want to give you a quick uncontested divorce.”

“What's the trick now?”

“No trick, darling, it's love. I met a beautiful man and we want to get married.”

“I hope he's a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than you.”

“He happens to be even thinner and shorter than you, but don't be mean.”

“I can see why you want to marry him. So you can beat him up even worse than you did me.”

“Not true.”