Insomnia (10 page)

‘Dough . . . Ral.’ She swallowed with an obvious effort, and tried again. ‘
Don’t
.’

‘Yes,’ Ralph said. ‘I’m going to.’

Now it was fear he saw in her one good eye, and nothing dull about it.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Please, Ralph. Don’t.’ She looked past him and held out her hands again. The humble, pleading look on her beaten face made Ralph wince with dismay.

‘Ralph?’ Sue asked. ‘She wants the baby.’

‘I know. Go ahead.’

Sue handed Natalie to Helen, and Ralph watched as the baby – a little over a year old now, he was pretty sure – put her arms around her mother’s neck and her face against her mother’s shoulder. Helen kissed the top of Nat’s head. It clearly hurt her to do this, but she did it again. And then again. Looking down at her, Ralph could see blood grimed into the faint creases on the nape of Helen’s neck like dirt. As he looked at this, he felt the anger begin to pulse again.

‘It was Ed, wasn’t it?’ he asked. Of course it was – you didn’t hit the cutoff button on the phone when someone tried to call 911 if you had been beaten up by a total stranger – but he had to ask.

‘Yes,’ she said. Her voice was no more than a whisper, the answer a secret imparted into the fine cloud of her baby daughter’s hair. ‘Yes, it was Ed. But you can’t call the police.’ She looked up now, the good eye full of fear and misery. ‘Please don’t call the police, Ralph. I can’t bear to think of Natalie’s dad in jail for . . . for . . .’

Helen burst into tears. Natalie goggled at her mother for a moment in comic surprise, and then joined her.

‘Ralph?’ McGovern asked hesitantly. ‘Do you want me to get her some Tylenol or something?’

‘Better not,’ he said. ‘We don’t know what’s wrong with her, how bad she might be hurt.’ His eyes shifted to the show window, not wanting to see what was out there, hoping not to, and seeing it anyway: avid faces lined up all the way down to the place where the beer cooler cut off the view. Some of them were cupping their hands to the sides of their faces to cut the glare.

‘What should we do, you guys?’ Sue asked. She was looking at the gawkers and picking nervously at the hem of the Red Apple duster employees had to wear. ‘If the company finds out I locked the door during business hours, I’m apt to lose my job.’

Helen tugged at his hand. ‘Please, Ralph,’she repeated, only it came out
Peese, Raff
through her swollen lips. ‘Don’t call anybody.’

Ralph looked at her uncertainly. He had seen a lot of women wearing a lot of bruises over the course of his life, and a couple (although not many, in all honesty) who had been beaten much more severely than Helen. It hadn’t always seemed this grim, though. His mind and morals had been formed at a time when people believed that what went on between a husband and wife behind the closed doors of their marriage was their business, and that included the man who hit with his fists and the woman who cut with her tongue. You couldn’t make people behave, and meddling into their affairs – even with the best of intentions – all too often turned friends into enemies.

But then he thought of the way she had been carrying Natalie as she staggered across the parking lot: held casually on one hip like a textbook. If she had dropped the baby in the lot, or crossing Harris Avenue, she probably wouldn’t have known it; Ralph guessed that it was nothing but instinct that had caused Helen to take the baby in the first place. She hadn’t wanted to leave Nat in the care of the man who had beaten her so badly she could only see out of one eye and talk in mushy, rounded syllables.

He thought of something else, as well, something that had to do with the days following Carolyn’s death earlier in the year. He had been surprised at the depth of his grief – it had been an expected death, after all; he had believed he had taken care of most of his grieving while Carolyn was still alive – and it had rendered him awkward and ineffective about the final arrangements which needed to be made. He had managed the call to the Brookings-Smith funeral home, but it was Helen who had gotten the obit form from the Derry
News
and helped him to fill it out, Helen who had gone with him to pick out a coffin (McGovern, who hated death and the trappings which surrounded it, had made himself scarce), and Helen who had helped him choose a floral centerpiece – the one which said
Beloved Wife
. And it had been Helen, of course, who had orchestrated the little party afterward, providing sandwiches from Frank’s Catering and soft drinks and beer from the Red Apple.

These were things Helen had done for him when he could not do them for himself. Did he not have an obligation to repay her kindness, even if Helen might not see it as kindness right now?

‘Bill?’ he asked. ‘What do you think?’

McGovern looked from Ralph to Helen, sitting in the red plastic chair with her battered face lowered, and then back to Ralph again. He produced a handkerchief and wiped his lips nervously. ‘I don’t know. I like Helen a lot, and I want to do the right thing – you
know
I do – but something like this . . . who knows what the right thing is?’

Ralph suddenly remembered what Carolyn used to say whenever he started moaning and bitching about some chore he didn’t want to do, some errand he didn’t want to run, or some duty call he didn’t want to make:
It’s a long walk back to Eden, sweetheart, so don’t sweat the small stuff
.

He reached for the phone again, and this time when Helen reached for his wrist, he pushed it away.

‘You have reached the Derry Police Department,’ a recorded voice told him. ‘Push one for emergency services. Push two for police services. Push three for information.’

Ralph, who suddenly understood he needed all three, hesitated for a second and then pushed two. The telephone buzzed and a woman’s voice said, ‘This is Police 911, how may I help you?’

He took a deep breath and said, ‘This is Ralph Roberts. I’m at the Red Apple Store on Harris Avenue, with my neighbor from up the street. Her name is Helen Deepneau. She’s been beaten up pretty badly.’ He put his hand gently on the side of Helen’s face and she pressed her forehead against his side. He could feel the heat of her skin through his shirt. ‘Please come as fast as you can.’

He hung up the telephone, then squatted down next to Helen. Natalie saw him, crowed with delight, and reached out to give his nose a friendly honk. Ralph smiled, kissed her tiny palm, then looked into Helen’s face.

‘I’m sorry, Helen,’ he said, ‘but I had to. I couldn’t not do it. Do you understand that? I couldn’t not do it.’

‘I don’t understand
anyfing
!’ she said. Her nose had stopped bleeding, but when she reached up to swipe at it, she winced back from the touch of her own fingers.

‘Helen, why did he do it? Why would Ed beat you up like this?’ He found himself remembering the other bruises – a pattern of them, perhaps. If there
had
been a pattern, he had missed it until now. Because of Carolyn’s death. And because of the insomnia which had come afterward. In any case, he did not believe this was the first time Ed had put his hands on his wife. Today might have been a drastic escalation, but it hadn’t been the first time. He could grasp that idea and admit its logic, but he discovered he still couldn’t see Ed
doing
it. He could see Ed’s quick grin, his lively eyes, the way his hands moved restlessly when he talked . . . but he couldn’t see Ed using those hands to beat the crap out of his wife, no matter how hard he tried.

Then a memory resurfaced, a memory of Ed walking stiff-legged toward the man who had been driving the blue pickup – it had been a Ford Ranger, hadn’t it? – and then flicking the flat of his hand across the heavyset man’s jowls. Remembering that was like opening the door of Fibber McGee’s closet in that old radio show – only what came falling out wasn’t an avalanche of old stored junk but a series of vivid images from that day last July. The thunderheads building over the airport. Ed’s arm popping out of the Datsun’s window and waving up and down, as if he could make the gate slide open faster that way. The scarf with the Chinese symbols on it.

Hey, hey, Susan Day, how many kids did you kill today?
Ralph thought, only it was Ed’s voice he heard, and he pretty well knew what Helen was going to say before she even opened her mouth.

‘So stupid,’ she said dully. ‘He hit me because I signed a
petition
– that’s all it was. They’re circulating all over town. Someone pushed it into my face when I was going into the supermarket day before yesterday. He said something about a benefit for WomanCare, and that seemed all right. Besides, the baby was fussing, so I just . . .’

‘You just signed it,’ Ralph finished softly.

She nodded and began to cry again.

‘What petition?’ McGovern asked.

‘To bring Susan Day to Derry,’ Ralph told him. ‘She’s a feminist—’

‘I know who Susan Day is,’ McGovern said irritably.

‘Anyway, a bunch of people are trying to get her here to speak. On behalf of WomanCare.’

‘When Ed came home today he was in a great mood,’ Helen said through her tears. ‘He almost always is on Thursdays, because it’s his half day. He was talking about how he was going to spend the afternoon pretending to read a book and actually just watching the sprinkler go around . . . you know how he is . . .’

‘Yes,’ Ralph said, remembering how Ed had plunged his arm into one of the heavyset man’s barrels, and the crafty grin

(
I know a trick worth two of that
)

on his face. ‘Yes, I know how he is.’

‘I sent him out to get some baby food . . .’ Her voice was rising, becoming fretful and frightened. ‘
I
didn’t know he’d be upset . . . I’d all but forgotten about signing the damned thing, to tell the truth . . . and I still don’t know exactly
why
he was so upset . . . but . . . but when he came back . . .’ She hugged Natalie to her, trembling.

‘Shhh, Helen, take it easy, everything’s okay.’

‘No, it’s
not
!’ She looked up at him, tears streaming from one eye and seeping out from beneath the swelled lid of the other. ‘It’s nuh-nuh-
not
! Why didn’t he stop this time? And what’s going to happen to me and the baby? Where will we go? I don’t have any money except for what’s in the joint checking account . . . I don’t have a
job
 . . . oh Ralph, why did you call the police? You shouldn’t have done that!’ And she hit his forearm with a strengthless little fist.

‘You’re going to get through this just fine,’ he said. ‘You’ve got a lot of friends in the neighborhood.’

But he barely heard what he was saying and hadn’t felt her small punch at all. The anger was thudding away in his chest and at his temples like a second heartbeat.

Not
Why didn’t he stop
; that wasn’t what she had said. What she had said was
Why didn’t he stop this time?

This
time.

‘Helen, where’s Ed now?’

‘Home, I guess,’ she said dully.

Ralph patted her on the shoulder, then turned and started for the door.

‘Ralph?’ Bill McGovern asked. He sounded alarmed. ‘Where you going?’

‘Lock the door after me,’ Ralph told Sue.

‘Jeez, I don’t know if I can do that.’ Sue looked doubtfully at the line of gawkers peering in through the dirty window. There were more of them now.

‘You can,’ he said, then cocked his head, catching the first faint wail of an approaching siren. ‘Hear that?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘The cops will tell you what to do, and your boss won’t be mad at you, either – he’ll probably give you a medal for handling everything just right.’

‘If he does, I’ll split it with you,’ she said, then glanced at Helen again. A little color had come back into Sue’s cheeks, but not much. ‘Jeepers, Ralph, look at her! Did he really beat her up because she signed some stupid paper in the S and S?’

‘I guess so,’ Ralph said. The conversation made perfect sense to him, but it was coming in long distance. His rage was closer; it had its hot arms locked around his neck, it seemed. He wished he were forty again, even fifty, so he could give Ed a taste of his own medicine. And he had an idea he might try doing that anyway.

He was turning the thumb-bolt of the door when McGovern grabbed his shoulder. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘Going to see Ed.’

‘Are you kidding? He’ll take you apart if you get in his face. Didn’t you see what he did to her?’

‘You bet I did,’ Ralph replied. The words weren’t quite a snarl, but close enough to make McGovern drop his hand.

‘You’re seventy fucking years old, Ralph, in case you forgot. And Helen needs a friend right now, not some busted-up antique she can visit because his hospital room is three doors down from hers.’

Bill was right, of course, but that only made Ralph angrier. He supposed the insomnia was at work in this, too, stoking his anger and blurring his judgement, but that made no difference. In a way, the anger was a relief. It was better, certainly, than drifting through a world where everything had turned shades of dark gray.

‘If he beats me up bad enough, they’ll give me some Demerol and I can get a decent night’s sleep,’ he said. ‘Now leave me alone, Bill.’

He crossed the Red Apple parking lot at a brisk walk. A police car was approaching with its blue grille flashers pulsing. Questions –
What happened? She okay?
– were thrown at him, but Ralph ignored them. He paused on the sidewalk, waited for the police car to swing into the parking lot, then crossed Harris Avenue at that same brisk walk with McGovern trailing anxiously after him at a prudent distance.

Ed and Helen Deepneau lived in a small Cape Cod – chocolate brown, whipped-cream trim, the kind of house which older women often call ‘darling’ – four houses up from the one Ralph and Bill McGovern shared. Carolyn had liked to say the Deepneaus belonged to ‘the Church of the Latter-Day Yuppies’, although her genuine liking for them had robbed the phrase of any real bite. They were
laissez-faire
vegetarians who considered both fish and dairy products okay, they had worked for Clinton in the last election, and the car in the driveway – not a Datsun now but one of the new mini-vans – was wearing bumper stickers which said
SPLIT WOOD, NOT ATOMS
and
FUR ON ANIMALS, NOT PEOPLE
.