Grand Avenue (24 page)

What was Tony doing out here? Barbara wondered, rounding the bend of the city reservoir and driving by the Murray Seasongood Pavilion, built in 1959 to honor a former mayor. A few more twists and turns and they were in front of the Cincinnati Art Museum, then the Eden Park Water Tower, an Ohio Valley landmark that hadn’t operated since 1908. They drove past
the Irwin M. Krohn Conservatory, continued on past the stone eagles gracing the old Melan Arch Bridge, before arriving at the entrance to the Twin Lakes section of Eden Park. Twin Lakes was once a stone quarry, and various overlooks provided a wondrous view of the Ohio River, especially during the spring and summer months. Now, the trees were bare and the sidewalks dirty. There were no children playing at the water’s edge, and only the occasional jogger. What was Tony doing here?

They drove past Edgecliff College on Victory Parkway, passed the magnificent old churches along Madison Road, and continued past the Summit Country Day School and the Cincinnati Country Club until they reached the Grandin Road Viaduct in Mt. Lookout. Was Tony planning to stop, enjoy the view? What would she do if he did?

He didn’t. Tony continued along Grandin Road into a lovely residential area filled with spacious homes, wooded grounds, and river views. Was it possible this was where he and Chris were living? Barbara held her breath. Was it possible he was taking her to Chris?

But they drove right past the beautiful homes and landscaped grounds into the recreation area of Alms Park, at the brow of a high hill, before doubling back. Several blocks short of the entrance to the Columbia Parkway, Tony pulled his car to the side of the road and turned off the engine. In the next instant, he was out of the car and walking toward her.

Barbara froze. For one insane second she considered running right over him, then thought of jumping out of the car, fleeing on foot, but she did neither of those
things. Instead, she threw her car into park and rolled down her window, watching the smirk plastered across Tony’s face grow larger as he drew nearer. To think she’d ever considered him at all attractive. A diamond in the rough, the women had agreed.

“Hi, there, Barbie doll,” he was saying, his words riding toward her on a white puff of air. “Enjoy the tour? I normally charge for that, you know.”

“You knew I was following you,” Barbara said, as much to herself as to Tony.

“Hard to miss that hair, sweetheart.” Tony laughed. “Thought I might have lost you a few times along the way, but I got to hand it to you, you stuck right with me. I like that in a woman.”

“Where’s Chris?” Barbara asked, ignoring the sneer in his voice, the leer in his eyes.

“Chris is home where she belongs, looking after her children, cooking supper for her man. Is that why you were following me? Hoping to catch a glimpse of my bride? And here I thought it was my animal magnetism that had you all hot and bothered.” His smile widened as he leaned closer. “Wouldn’t mind seeing you all hot and bothered,” he said.

“Go to hell.”

Tony stiffened. “Go home. Mind your own business. Bad things happen to people who don’t mind their own business.”

“Are you threatening me?” Barbara asked in disbelief.

But Tony was already walking back to his car. She heard him call something over his shoulder. Half a beat later the message reached her ears: “Drive safely.”

C
hris walked gingerly down the stairs toward the small laundry room off the garage. She took her time, pausing at each completed step, taking shallow breaths because they caused her less discomfort, cradling Tony’s shirts against her still sore ribs, looking neither left nor right, only down at her slippered feet. She didn’t want to lose her footing. She couldn’t risk another fall. Wasn’t that what she’d told the doctors during her last visit to the emergency room—that she’d slipped on some ice, taken a tumble down the outside steps?

“You’re sure?” the young intern had asked her, his voice low, the first doctor to question her well-rehearsed routine. “You’re sure someone didn’t do this to you?” He’d glanced beyond the curtain to where Tony paced impatiently back and forth, the dull thud of his footsteps echoing down the hall. She knew Tony was listening. Listening and waiting. Waiting for her to make a mistake, to say the wrong thing.

She always did.

The one way in which she’d never disappointed him.

“I slipped on some ice,” she’d insisted, as a knowing frown slid across the doctor’s boyish face, like a shadow. “No one did this to me.”

“What the hell was that all about?” Tony demanded on the drive home. “You were with that guy for almost half an hour. What the hell was going on in there?”

Chris stared out the car’s side window, said nothing.

“What? You’re not talking to me now? I drive your clumsy ass to the hospital and you don’t talk to me? What’s the matter, Chris? All talked out? Your new boyfriend has you too tired to talk to your husband? What is it with you anyway? You have to go after every guy you see? You have to embarrass me that way? What the hell is the matter with you?”

“I’m sorry.” Tears fell toward her bruised chin, her mind already in their bedroom, trying to prepare herself for the brutality she knew would follow. The thought of her with another man seemed to excite him. He used his unfounded accusations as a stimulant. Such tirades were merely foreplay. The sex that resulted was always violent and nasty, his fist flattened against her mouth to block her screams. It didn’t matter. No one ever heard.

They’d moved around a lot since leaving Mariemont, renting first a house in Batavia, then one in Anderson Township, one in Amelia, and now this, a furnished clapboard, two-story cottage in New Richmond. The farther they moved from her friends, the worse the abuse got, as if now that Tony no longer
had her friends to worry about, he had the freedom to unleash the full range of his brutality. And why not? There was no one around to stop him.

Chris reached the bottom of the stairs, readjusted the floppy, pink slippers clinging to her otherwise bare feet, smiled at her children grouped around their father in the sparsely furnished living room. Montana was doing her homework; Wyatt was on the floor playing with his Game Boy; Rowdy was curled up in Tony’s lap watching
Roseanne
.

“Where are you going?” Wyatt asked in his father’s voice, staring at Chris accusingly.

“Laundry.” Chris offered up the three shirts in her arms, almost as proof.

“You can do that later, sweetheart,” Tony said, extending one arm toward her. “Why don’t you sit down and relax for a while?” He patted the empty seat beside him on the worn navy corduroy sofa. “Come on, Chrissy. The laundry’s not going anywhere.”

He sounded so thoughtful, so reasonable, so loving, Chris thought. If only she could learn not to provoke him, everything would be fine. They could be happy again, like they were at the start of their marriage. Chris closed her eyes, tried to remember the last time she’d felt anything even vaguely approaching happiness.

“What’s the matter, Chrissy? Don’t you want to keep your husband company?”

Chris heard the threat implicit in her husband’s soft voice. Don’t be silly, she admonished herself. There was no threat. She was hearing things, just like Tony always said. Putting words in his mouth. Making false
assumptions. Jumping to conclusions. Making trouble for herself.

Chris stood in the hallway, unable to move. She shifted from one foot to the other, her body swaying unsteadily as she watched her family huddled together in the other room. Where did she fit in? she wondered. Was there no place for her anywhere?

“Suit yourself,” Tony said, withdrawing his invitation, returning his attention to the TV.

Chris remained frozen to the spot, trying to decide which move would cause her the least amount of repercussions later on.

“What are you waiting for?” Tony demanded flatly, his eyes never leaving the television. “Christmas?”

Rowdy exploded into a fit of childish giggles. “Christmas!” he repeated gleefully. “What are you waiting for? Christmas?”

Christmas, Chris repeated silently. She’d barely given a thought to Christmas, and here it was, less than three weeks away. Tony had said something about taking them all out this week to select a tree. Maybe she could talk him into giving her a little extra money so she could buy some cards to send to her friends. She hadn’t seen them in so long. They had no idea where she was, that she was still in the greater Cincinnati area. That she was still alive.

“And while you’re washing those shirts,” Tony said now as she was turning to leave, “you might think about washing that nightgown you’re wearing. You look like crap.”

“Crap!” Rowdy repeated loudly. “Crap, crap, crap.”

“Shut up, dummy,” Wyatt ordered, and for an instant Chris thought he might be coming to her defense. She turned back, eyes tearing in gratitude, but all she saw was Wyatt angrily waving the Game Boy in the face of his younger brother. “I messed up because of you! You ruin everything!”

“Mommy!” Rowdy protested, climbing off his father’s lap and running toward her, slamming against her knees, so that Tony’s shirts flew from her hands, fell to the floor.

Tony was instantly beside them, forcefully removing Rowdy’s hands from around Chris’s hips. “What are you, some kind of momma’s boy—running to your mommy instead of standing up for yourself? Go back in there and give your brother a punch in the nose.”

“Tony!”

“Don’t you have laundry to do?” Tony asked, as Rowdy ran back into the living room to confront his brother. Chris watched anxiously as a shoving match ensued between the two boys. She reached down, retrieved the shirts from the floor.

Tony smiled, gave her rear end a playful tap as she walked away. He’s probably plotting something special for later, she thought, opening the door to the laundry room, closing it behind her, blocking out the sounds of her two sons fighting. Any minute now, Montana would slam down her books and run from the room in frustration, screaming toward her mother, “What’s the matter with you? Can’t you do anything?” And what could she say in response? Nothing. She was as useless as everybody claimed.

Chris ran the warm water, carefully lowered her husband’s shirts into the large basin beside the automatic washer and dryer. Tony had long ago decided that dry cleaners were an unnecessary expense, that he preferred his shirts hand-washed and ironed. Chris had lots of free time. There was no reason she couldn’t incorporate washing his shirts into her daily routine.
Hand
-washed, he’d insisted, even after she’d showed him the washing instructions that stated the shirts could be safely machine-washed and dried. The discussion ended with one resounding slap across the face, a slap that sent shock waves clear up to her eye, a slap that left an angry welt on her cheek that took three days to disappear.

At first, Tony used to watch her doing the laundry, criticize her every move. The water was either too hot or too cold, she used too much detergent or not enough, she was either too rough or too gentle on stains, what was the matter with her, couldn’t she get anything right?

But after a while he’d grown bored and left her to her own devices, and Chris had discovered she actually enjoyed the ritual of washing Tony’s shirts. The feel of her hands in the warm water, the steady motion of her fingers as they worked to get the sweat out of his collars, the subtle rhythm of the wet cotton as it slapped against the side of the white enamel basin. The peace and the quiet. The thrill of being alone. The laundry room became the only place she felt secure, the only room she could call her own.

A room of one’s own, she thought, recalling the novel by Virginia Woolf. Susan had lent it to her, and
she’d devoured it eagerly. How many years ago was that? A lifetime ago, Chris thought now. Another life where she was neither stupid nor useless. A life that included books and movies and good times. A life where she had a sense of humor, where she was capable of making people laugh, capable of laughing in return. I had such a life once, she remembered, wringing the soap out of Tony’s shirts. I had joy. I had love. I had friends.

The Grand Dames, Chris thought with a smile, picturing the four young women perched precariously on the edge of the sandbox in the small park at the end of Grand Avenue. What happened to us?

She still kept track of them. Important details of their lives filtered toward her from a distance, in fits and starts, bits and pieces, like a dream. Occasionally she read about Vicki’s exploits in the newspapers, heard about Jeremy’s latest acquisition on the evening news. Once, when she was in a hospital waiting room, she’d seen Susan’s name listed among the editorial staff in a discarded
Victoria
magazine. Tony had reported to her gleefully about Barbara’s divorce. Chris had cried, knowing what Barbara must be going through, wishing she could help her friend, knowing she couldn’t. How could she, when she couldn’t even help herself?

Chris laid Tony’s wet shirts on top of the washing machine and emptied the soapy water from the basin, watching the last of the soap bubbles dance around the drain before being sucked out of sight. Her life had slipped through her fingers just as effortlessly, she thought. It had disappeared before her eyes.

“What are you doing in there, Chris?” she heard Tony call. “How long does it take to wash a couple of shirts?”

“I’m almost done.” Chris quickly ran the cold water to rinse out the shirts.

“I’m feeling a little hungry. Think you might like to fix your husband a sandwich?”

“In a minute.”

“Make sure you don’t wrinkle the collars like you did last time.”

Chris’s hands worked furiously to press the wrinkles out of the wet collars of Tony’s pale blue shirts. But they were old shirts and they wrinkled easily. No matter how carefully she washed them, how meticulously she ironed them, still the collars wrinkled. “Damn these shirts,” she whispered, panic building as her fingers unsuccessfully kneaded the stubborn fabric. “Damn these stupid shirts.”

Tony’s knuckles wrapped against the door. “Chris, what are you doing in there, honey?” The door opened. His head popped through. He was smiling. Chris held her breath. “I got you a little present,” he said, his smile growing mischievous.