Paris Trout (19 page)

"This is Hanna Trout," she said, slowly.
"My husband — "

"
Oh, Mrs. Trout. Goodness, I misunderstood your
name. Yes, what was the message?"

"
That I need to speak to him," she said.

"Has something happened?"

Hanna found herself staring at the mantel. There was
an ancient picture of Paris's family there, Paris sitting in short
pants and a cap, cross-legged in front of his mother. One of her
hands rested on his shoulder, some secret connection, and his father,
off to the side, staring straight toward the camera.

She wondered what thoughts he'd had as a boy.

"
Mrs. Trout? Should I try to locate him for you?
Has something . . . further occurred?"

She heard the interest in the woman's voice, and she
understood its pleasurable nature. Hanna fought her own interest in
other people's trouble, but she knew the attraction. She imagined
telling her that she had been violated in the office with a bottle of
mineral water. What would Harry Seagraves's wife tell her in return?

That she understood?

Hanna said, "No, don't trouble yourself to find
him."

"It's no trouble," she said. "I told
Mr. Seagraves back when this started, 'Consider the poor woman at
home .... " It was quiet for a moment, each of them hearing how
that sounded. "I don't mean to offend you," the lawyer's
wife said.

"
I am not offended?

"
It's just that the men don't take into account
what it's like to be the woman."

Hanna could not think of a single word to say.

"I know how you feel,
dear," the lawyer's wife said. "If you want to talk, here I
am."

* * *

THE LAWYER DID NOT call.

She waited downstairs until five o'clock and then
went back to her room. She locked the door and lay in bed and was
suddenly weak. She had not eaten at all since Paris forced her.
Remembering what he had done, she could suddenly smell canned pork,
and she gagged.

The doorbell rang while she was in the bathroom. She
stood still, the toothbrush in her mouth, listening. The bell rang
again. The sound grabbed her, in the chest and throat. For a moment
she seemed to forget how to breathe. She looked at herself in the
mirror, afraid of her own house.

She brushed at her hair and wiped the toothpaste out
of the corners of her mouth. The bell rang again as she was coming
down the stairs. She saw a man's shadow through one of the windows
that led to the porch.

She hurried to the door before he rang again — it
seemed to matter — and a moment before she arrived, the door began
to open from the other side, and then Dr. Hatfield's head poked
inside, waist-high.

He called, "Miz Trout?" before he saw she
was there.

"
Dr. Hatfield," she said, and he started at
the sound of her voice.

He smiled, recovering and straightening, opening the
door farther to step inside. "I hoped to save you the trip
downstairs," he said.

She did not understand.

"
Your foot," he said. "I was passing
the house, and thought I might change your dressing and look at the
stitches."

"
It seems to be healing," she said.

"
May I look?"

"Of course," she said, and led him into the
front room. She sat on the davenport, he moved a straight-back chair
and sat in front of her and took her foot into his lap. He found a
pair of scissors in his bag and began to cut the tape. The scissors
were cold where they touched her skin and tickled her feet as they
moved.

He stopped for a moment and searched her face. "Is
this causing you pain?"

"
No," she said, "it's a tickling."

Without smiling, he returned to her foot. He made a
single cut from her heel to her toes and then opened the dressing the
way she would open a box of canned goods at the store, pulling at one
side and then the other. There was a noise like opening a box too,
and then her foot felt cool.

He removed the gauze he had packed into her toes more
carefully, squinting to see the work he'd done. She could not tell if
he was pleased or disappointed. He went into the bag again and found
cotton and a bottle of disinfectant.

"
Have you been on this today?"

"
Not much," she said.

He began to dab at the underside of her toes with the
wet cotton. It was freezing cold. Her leg jerked reflexively, but his
other hand had encircled her ankle and held her there.

"
You need to stay off it a few days," he
said. "You don't want to end up in the clinic over a cut foot."
He picked up her second toe, wincing as he looked underneath. She
fixed on his collar, the hair growing all around his neck, down into
his chest and back. He was round-shouldered and warm-looking, she
thought again of a bear.

"
Dr. Hatfield," she said, "may I speak
with you on another matter?"

He looked up, over her toes, waiting.

"
I have reason to believe I may indeed find
myself in your clinic," she said. He waited, she framed her
words. She looked out the front window, checking the walk. "My
husband has become irrational."

His expression did not soften or change.

"
There have been incidents which I would prefer
not to discuss," she said, "which now put me in jeopardy,
and perhaps my husband as well."

"
It's a normal thing, missus, to feel
threatened. It's threatening times," Dr. Hatfield said.

"
No," she said. "His behavior may
appear normal, but it is not. Events have occurred of a highly
bizarre nature."

"
Are you physically injured?" he said.

"I have been assaulted," she said in a
quiet voice.

He did not seem to understand. "In what way?"
he said.

"In ways of a private nature," she said.

He leaned back to look at her again. "I don't
see marks," he said.

"
Not even a bruise, which is common enough even
in the best households."

"
He has assaulted me."

The doctor rubbed his chin. "If they went to
commit everybody that assaulted his wife into the asylum, they'd be
more in than out."

She saw that the doctor, for all his kindness, was no
help. And it didn't feel like kindness then. He picked a roll of
gauze out of his bag and began to repack her toes.

"
Dr. Hatfield," she said, but then the
front door opened, and Paris was in the house.

He stood in the entranceway, looking upstairs and
then noticed them sitting in the front room. He came in without a
word and stopped a yard in back of the doctor, following his work. "I
was on the street," the doctor said, turning to acknowledge him.
"I thought I might have a look in on your wife's foot."

The doctor was afraid of him too, she heard it in his
voice. His taping went faster now, and she could see it bothered his
nerves to have Paris standing behind him.

"I appreciate it," Paris said, "to
have a doctor drop by so late." He lifted his eyes and stared at
her.

"I was on the street," Hatfield said again.
"It's no trouble. I expect Mrs. Hatfield can keep dinner another
five minutes."

Paris walked out of the room and into the kitchen. He
reappeared a moment later, carrying his toolbox, and climbed the
stairs. The doctor tightened his face against distractions. She
watched his hands as he wrapped the tape. The hair on them lay in one
direction, as if it had been combed. There were noises from upstairs,
tapping, things falling onto the floor.

"
Is Mr. Trout handy?" the doctor said. He
spoke in a manner that denied what had been said between them before.

"
He has been fortifying his room," she
said. "He has covered the floor with glass and set the legs of
his bed into overshoes." The doctor nodded, as if that were
something he was thinking of doing himself.

"
He sleeps with a sheet of lead under his
mattress," she said.

He patted her foot, first on one side and then on the
other. "How does that feel?"

She did not reply, and he said, "Is it too
tight? Let me see you wiggle your toes."

She moved her toes, and a pain went all the way
through her foot.

"
That's good," he said. "You don't
feel your pulse in there, do you?"

"
No," she said quietly.

"
Good. That's excellent."

The doctor moved to stand up at the same time Paris
started back down the stairs. He had been up there no more than five
minutes. The doctor said, "Cal1 me, that gives you any trouble,"
and then he shut his bag and stood up.

Paris met him in the entranceway and steered him out
the door.

"Her foot appears to be healing," the
doctor told him. "If you can, keep her off it."

"
She's lost her appetite," he said, and
then they were out of the house, and she could not hear what they
were saying.

She stood up slowly, getting used to the new
wrapping, and walked up the stairs. On the way she saw them through
the window, stopped halfway to the gate. Paris was speaking, the
doctor seemed to be watching his shoes. She was unconcerned with
anything Paris could say, her worry was Dr. Hatfield.

She walked into her room, listening for Paris. It was
quiet. She did not think Dr. Hatfield could stand on the walk very
long with Paris without telling him what she had said. The silence
downstairs frightened her, and she moved into the bath and began to
draw a tub of water. Wanting the noise.

And then she froze, realizing she had not locked the
door to her room. She left the water and stepped back into the
bedroom, expecting to see him waiting for her.

He was still outside with the doctor.

She crossed the room and
shut the door. And even as it closed, she knew something was wrong —
something different in the swing — and then she saw that he had
taken the lock.

* * *

SHE FOUND HERSELF CRYING, without knowing when it had
started. She was sitting in the tub again, the water was an inch from
the top and still running. Underwater, a line of pink smoke rose from
her bandaged foot. She had not bothered to rest it on the edge.
Behind her the bathroom door was shut and locked, but the lock was
only a hook, with enough play so it could be opened from the outside
with a pencil. It was a lock to keep the door shut, not to keep
anyone out.

She heard him moving, she couldn't say where. She
pressed her toes into the end of the tub, and the line of smoke
darkened and billowed. He came through the door just as the water
began to spill over. He turned off the faucets and sat heavily on the
commode. She covered her breasts and slid farther down, sending more
water over the side.

"
Dr. Hatfield said you might need a rest,"
he said.

She turned her head away and looked at the wall.

"
He asked if there was a relative you could
visit." He stood up and moved closer to the tub. He stared down
into the pink water. "Did you tell the doctor you was tired?"

She did not answer because she was crying and did not
trust her voice.

"Tell me what you said."

"I am tired," she said.

"That's what he said. I told him you didn't have
nothing to be tired about."

She felt his hand then, on the back of her head. It
moved down, gently, and rested against her neck and shoulder. She
tried to sit up, but he held her where she was.

Then, slowly, the points of his fingers pressed into
her and forced her down into the water. She didn't intend to fight
him. He held her under until the panic took over, though, and she did
fight. Clawing at his arm, trying to find his face.

His expression was unchanged when he brought her up,
although his face was dripping bath water. "Is that what you
told him?" he said.

"
That you was tired?"

He pushed her under again, with both hands this time,
and held her there longer than he had before. She fought him again,
raking his cheek until suddenly there was less reason to fight and
then none at all. A calm took over, and she opened herself to it,
without realizing what
it was.

She would have stayed there forever, but something
changed — a direction — and she was suddenly moving, and then her
face was out of the water. Her eyes blurred, and she looked up into
his face.

"
Is that what you told him?" he said again.

In one moment of clarity she saw his thoughts again
and understood that he was afraid. Not of the doctor — Paris had no
interest in his opinion, good or bad — but of her. He believed he
owned her the way he owned his own hands, and she was out of control
now, working against his interests. She thought of the food spilled
across the kitchen floor.

She wiped water out of her eyes and noticed that the
whole tub was pink now. She lifted her foot out of the water, and
fresh blood ran down the bandages. "Get out of the house,
Paris," she said calmly.