Before My Life Began (41 page)

“I hear, but frankly, my dear, I don't give a shit.” Her voice was calm. She raised her two little fists and they trembled, as if she'd caught a chill. “Beat me up, lay me out, kick the shit out of me—what do I care anymore? Come on! We might as well get all the brutality over with early in life and avoid the rush later, right?”

She banged on my chest with both fists and, using all her force, shoved me back. Then she opened her robe. Her stomach was round and powdery, glossy with talcum. “Here—why don't you take care of him too while you're at it, big shot? Come on—”

“When did the message come?”

“Tonight.” She was heaving in and out, trying to catch her breath. “Okay? It came tonight. The message came tonight. The paper was inside the door when we entered and I put my foot on it while you went by and then I read it and I crumpled it and I threw it in the garbage, or so I thought, and then you must have fished around in there because you don't ever really trust me, David, do you?—or anybody else in this world, for that matter—and then you found it and then you decided I'd betrayed you so that you'd have the right to beat me up, and then you did, and do you know what? I'm
glad
, David. I'm glad you know I hid it and threw it away, because now you won't ever have any doubts about the way I feel about your goddamned uncle.”

She looked as if she had knuckles growing under the skin of her cheek. I thought of getting her ice, but I couldn't move. I stared at her mouth, at the words that poured from it.

“Abe said to call. Abe the King, right? Abe the big shot. Big shit, if you ask me. Abe once said that even brave men get scared shitless. Abe once said that happiness is like taking a piss in a long, bad movie. Abe once said that paradise is when you can wipe your feet on your enemies without fear. Abe once said this and Abe once said that and I'm tired of hearing about it. Abe promised this and Abe promised that and Abe is just full of shit. What about
Davey?
What does Davey say and what does he promise and what does he believe? Can you answer me that? Davey says that if Abe told him to jump off a roof, he'd do it. Davey says that if Abe told him to take a long walk on a short pier, he'd do it. Davey says that it's okay to kill people if your uncle says to do it. Davey says that it's okay to hurt people if your uncle says to do it. Davey says it's okay to slap your wife around if she tries to save you from harm and that someday it'll be okay to bang your kid around too, won't it? And what will I do then? What the hell will I do then? Can you tell me that? What will I do
then?”

She was pushing me across the room, her eyes clamped shut, her head thrashing wildly the way it did sometimes when we were making love, when she'd lost all control. I tried to grab her arms, to get her to stop.

“So why don't you start punching the kid tonight, here in Abe's place, right? Why don't you beat him up now and finish the job off? You don't want him to live anyway, don't you think I know that? You never wanted him. You did the whole thing out of your crazy nobility and guilt and I thought it might work but it didn't, so fuck everything, all right? Just fuck everything! You don't want him to live anyway and you never did. You don't give a shit about me. You—”

“It's not true,” I said quietly.

“It
is!”
she cried. “Don't you lie to
me
, do you hear? You don't want him to live and I know it. I know it! I—”

She raised her fists as if to punch me again, but instead she brought her arms down and began pounding on her own stomach. She was puffing, out of breath. She smiled, tears dripping along her cheeks and across her mouth.

“Are you happy now? Are you? Or should I use a crochet hook this time, for insurance? Up your hole with a Melorol, twice as far with a Hershey bar. Up your twat with a ball of snot. Remember? Up yours with a meat hook…it doesn't rhyme, folks, but it sure hurts. Your favorite schoolyard sayings, brought direct to you from Davey Voloshin's House of Horrors. See the anger vein throb in our hero's forehead! See him batter his wife and child! Step right up—”

She bumped her stomach against me.

“Come on, big shot, you take a punch too, okay? If your demure little wife can do it, why not a big hunk like you? Let's get rid of the damned thing right now and then you won't be able to tell me for the rest of my life that I trapped you. Come on, big shot. Punch me, kick me, whatever you want to do—now's the time. Come
on
, I said—”

“I don't want to.”

“Scared, huh?”

“No.”

“Okay then. How about you go call your uncle while I beat up the baby. Division of labor, right? Get it? Division of
labor
. Oh Lord, but you do have a way with words, Kogan. So let's divide the labor from the mother and the mother from the labor and kill two birds with one stone, okay?”

She swung her arm to the side, as if taking a backswing in tennis, and then she banged herself in the stomach with a vicious roundhouse. I gasped, felt my own stomach close on itself. She gagged, doubled over, moaned.

“Oh Jesus.” She groaned and looked up at me, her arms locked around her stomach. “I think I went too far. I think I finally did. Oh Jesus, it hurts, David—oh fucking Jesus. Oh Jesus F. Christ—help me lie down. Please? It hurts so bad….”

I helped her to the bedroom. She lay on her back, knees up, her forearm across her eyes. I sat next to her, watched her cry. She stopped for an instant, then let loose with a long high-pitched wail. She clutched her stomach and began sobbing, rolling from one side to the other.

“Should I call your father?”

She shook her head sideways, bit down on her lip.

“Oh Jesus, it hurts so bad, David. I—I—” She groaned, then exhaled. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but it just hurts so bad….”

I put my hand on her forehead, then on her stomach. She made rasping noises when she breathed in. She lowered her knees.

“That helps.”

“Stretching your legs out?”

“No. You touching me, stupid.” She moaned. “Oh God, David. Do me a favor and see if there's any blood leaking out. I'm afraid to look. I think I feel something wet.”

I looked. “Just sweat. But what should we do? Tell me—I'll do anything….”

“Just wait. Try not to
imagine
things, all right? Please?” She breathed in, sighed. “I think I'm getting some relief. I think it may just be a big muscle cramp. Can you really knock the wind out of yourself?”

“I don't know.”

Her stomach was hard as a rock, like a smooth piece of round marble, a thin layer of skin pulled tight over it. I remembered how we'd argue when we were kids: could you actually kill yourself by running as fast as you could and ramming your head into a wall, or would you always pull back just in time? Was there some built-in reflex that kept you from committing suicide that way? Had guys in jail been able to commit suicide by cracking their heads open when everything else—ropes, belts, spoons, knives, blades—had been taken from them?

“Do you think the baby's starting to come?” I asked. “Are you contracting?”

“I don't know. Subcontracting maybe. Putting the burden on you.”

I massaged her stomach, using both hands.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “Really.”

“Me too.”

She let her hand rest on top of mine, took in a long breath, let it out.

“Did you hurt him?” I asked.

“Him?”

“Him. Her. Whatever's in there. You know what I mean.”

“No. I don't think so. I'd be bleeding or breaking water or something like that if I had, I think. It just hurts like hell. That's all. I never felt anything hurt so much.”

“Worse than when I slapped you?”

She lifted her head, propped herself up on her elbows. “I did mean a lot of what I said and I don't want to take any of it back and I won't. I've been wanting to say those things for months, David. Half the time when you're gone with him I roam around the apartment making speeches in my head, trying to come up with the right words so that I can persuade you, so that I can
force
you to change. I know how much your uncle means to you, but I don't really think it's him you love. I figured that out way back. I don't really think you even know who he is anymore. I think it's some
idea
of him you're still in love with, and I guess I keep hoping you'll outgrow it.”

“And use your love instead?”

“Exactly.” She smiled. “I've got lots. Endless reservoirs. Wells at the bottom of wells. I'll never run out of love for you, David. And everything I want to say comes down to this: that he'll ruin your life, and mine with it.”

“You don't know everything. You don't know what his life was like.”

“I'm sure. But I don't
need
to know everything either. I know enough. Like you said he says—people always have choices. He may not have asked for the life he has, but he didn't have to keep it either. It seems so crazy, doesn't it?—us talking calmly like this, and then you off with him, getting in deeper and deeper. What I keep thinking is that you're so
young
, David! We are. We have so many years ahead of us—”

“It's mostly legitimate now. The rough stuff ended with the war pretty much. He's always been good to me, to us. Who else ever cared? My father worked for him. He's taken care of my mother. He knew how to be very gentle with me when I was a boy in a way no one else ever was.”

“I think I'm all right.” She lay back down. “Can you touch me a little bit to be sure. Press here and there and I'll tell you if it hurts. Like playing doctor, all right?”

“Does this hurt?”

“No.”

“This?”

“No.”

I probed, pushed with my fingers the way I recalled our doctor doing when I had exams. A muscle along the outside of her right thigh was twitching.

“David?”

“Yes?”

“Are you afraid to make love with me now because I'm bigger and fatter?”

“I don't know. It's not what you think. I mean, since we got pregnant, it's what I said before—that I'm just afraid of hurting you.”

“Do you still look around a lot? I mean would you rather be doing it with somebody who looked more like Sheila, who had a figure like hers?”

“I'd rather do it with you, but—”

“I feel better. You said ‘we' before, did you know that?”

“We?”

“When
we
got pregnant.”

“I've been distracted too. I didn't want to tell you yet, because I guess I keep hoping things will blow over peacefully, with my uncle. The stuff with Vincent wasn't only about Sheila.”

“I figured.”

“And I was thinking too—about your question—that when you were screaming at me I wanted to shout back that this wasn't the first time you'd lied to me.”

“Really?”
She looked hurt. “I didn't mean to, if I did. I don't want us ever to keep things from one another—”

“What you said to me the night we got married, that now we could do anything we wanted, remember?” She nodded. “It's not true.” I stroked her stomach, felt it softening. “Even after you're married the way we are—

“Is there something special you'd like to try, darling?”

“Don't make jokes. I'm serious. I thought a lot about that and what I decided is that it's not true. You
can't
do whatever you want in life, and it's not always because of others, because of the world. It's—”

“David?”

“What?”

“I
meant
what I said before about your uncle. It gets so complicated sometimes and day follows night and night follows day and we just get carried along, trying to cope, and I guess I'd stick by you no matter what, but it does make me so very unhappy. I mean, it's complicated but it's simple too.” She looked straight at me and spoke very deliberately then, as if trying to pour the words through my eyes and down into my heart, to fix them there. “Because your uncle and the men he deals with, they kill and they steal and they hurt.”

“Not anymore.”

“Not unless they
have
to,” she corrected. “Despite his great love for you, your uncle won't be able to protect you from that part of his life for five seconds if he gets squeezed badly, and you know it. All I want is to look at you and for you to look at me and to say what I said: that it's bad to kill and to hurt and to steal and that you're a good person, and that you shouldn't ever do it. You're not your uncle, David. Not really. You still have choices—”

“Your father said the same thing.”

“Don't hold that against
me
. I'm not my father either—”

“I think about it, though. I can't
not
think about it lately. Only sometimes it's hard to know what to do.”

“Yes, but is it—dare I hope?—is it because you're beginning to agree with me, to see a way out for us?” She put her fingers to my lips. “Don't answer. That way I can hope more, yes?” She smiled. “Do you know how I used to think of you up at Smith? I used to get this picture of you in my head, as if you were the hero from one of those medieval plays I studied—a kind of Everyman—and you were walking through a dark and terrible world, along a subterranean corridor of some kind, and being pulled at from all sides, being stretched one way and then the other: by Beauty and by Ugliness, by Love and by Hate, by Helplessness and by Anger, by Darkness and by Light, by Cruelty and by Tenderness.”

“You still idealize me.”

“Aren't you glad?” She kissed the back of my hand. “I'm okay now, I think. Nothing hurts, except that I'm a bit bruised. I can feel him moving around the way he always does.”

“
Him?
”