“Right,” Janey said. “I’m stupid. You’re smart; I’m stupid.”
“What would you call it? You take out a restraining order against this man, then invite him into your bedroom?”
“That’s right, Ma. I did,” Janey said, the bit in her teeth now. “And you know what? I fucked him, too.”
“She sure did,” Roy corroborated. “Like old times, right, babe?”
Ruth turned on him. “Which ones, Roy? When you punched her in the face? Banged her head into the wall and gave her a concussion? Those the old times you’re talking about?”
He ignored all of this, staring at Janey. “So tell her.”
She was sitting there, massaging her temples, her breasts exposed again, the sheet having fallen. “Tell her what, Roy?”
“You know. How we’re gonna be getting back together. Be a family again, like before, only better.”
Janey regarded him with undisguised disbelief. “Don’t be a complete moron, Roy. Of course we’re not getting back together.”
“Singin’ a different tune last night, girl. You forget already?”
“It was a good fuck, Roy. That’s all I said. I was horny, okay?”
“Well, there you go. More where that came from.”
Janey stared at him for a long, incredulous beat, then addressed her mother. “Okay, fine. It was stupid letting him in, but you know how scared I get when there’s lightning.”
“Lightning,” Ruth repeated. “The man beats the shit out of you—”
“All that’s in the past,” Roy said, scratching himself below the beltline of his jeans, then inspecting his fingernails.
“Did you notice,” Ruth said to Janey, “how he balled up his fist when you contradicted him just now? Did you? You think he’s through whaling on you just because he says he is? Last time you were in the hospital for three days. And it’s lightning that scares you?”
“A person can’t help what they’re scared of,” Janey said, but clearly at least some of what Ruth had said was getting through. Either she’d seen Roy clench his fist or trusted that her mother had. “And he didn’t beat me up. You can see that, right?”
“That doesn’t mean he’s not going to.”
“All that’s in the past,” Roy said, his new mantra, though the hand not holding the water glass was a fist again. “And that’s for true.”
“It was just the once,” Janey said, apparently referring to the sex, not the previous beatings. “He knows that.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, girl. I don’t know no such thing.”
“Well, then you are a fucking moron, Roy.”
“What’s that you just called me?” he said.
“Get out of here, Roy,” Ruth said, “before we call the cops.”
“Who’s gonna do that?” Roy wanted to know. “You? Or her?”
It was then that Ruth remembered her granddaughter out in the restaurant, hearing all this, no doubt, probably cowering in a neutral corner like she used to do when she was little and these same two people started screaming at each other until the hitting started. “You need to go, Roy. Before this gets worse.”
“Whose fault would that be? You’re the one give her that mouth.”
Seeing her come toward him, Roy made no move to let her pass. “Step aside, Roy,” she told him.
And just that quickly she was on the floor, blinking up at him, tasting salt. Janey screamed.
“There now,” Roy said, pleased, as if he’d just won an argument.
Try as she might, Ruth was having trouble drawing the various elements of her unfolding experience into a coherent whole. Roy was standing directly over her, his right hand bloody. He’d struck her, she realized, with the empty glass. There was a large bloody shard in her lap.
“So whose fault is this right here, huh, Ma?” Roy was asking, his voice sounding far off. “Tell me that.”
“Momma!” Janey was screaming from even farther away. “Don’t, Roy!”
Ruth had managed to get onto her knees when Roy hit her again, this time with his fist. The back of her head hit the wall, causing very little pain but a frightening explosion of sound.
Before she could bring things into focus, Roy was on his knees himself, straddling her, and when he drew back his fist, she closed her eyes and thought, Fine. He was punching her, not Janey. If he beat her to death, well even that was okay. He’d finally be put away for good, and Janey and Tina would at last be shut of him. Perhaps because the roaring in her head sounded like surf, she thought again about that gleaming white bathroom in the Aruba brochure, how pristine and perfect it was. Maybe heaven was like that. A clean place, with pure sunshine streaming down from an unseen skylight, the cleansing surf so near you could hear individual waves breaking.
When Roy’s next punch didn’t arrive and she could no longer feel him astride her, she was suddenly frightened. Had he turned his attention to Janey, or maybe even to Tina? But no. When she opened her eyes, Roy was sitting across from her, his back up against the foot of the bed, looking as dazed and confused as she felt. There was a bright bloom of blood on one ear. Where he’d been standing a minute earlier Sully had magically appeared, holding a skillet. Ruth began to cry, she was so happy. Not because Roy wasn’t going to be punching her anymore or that Janey had been delivered as well, but because Sully was alive. Whatever that blue flame on the roof of the shed had been about, it wasn’t him. She’d been mean to him yesterday, telling him to quit coming by the restaurant so much, to find someplace else, but he’d come anyway. Nor was this the ghost who’d been haunting her lunch counter lately, a geezer staring morosely into his empty coffee cup, his shallow breath an audible rasp. A dying man, it now occurred to her. The man who stood before her here was the Sully of old, fearless, game as hell, fully committed in this necessary moment to the murder of Roy Purdy, fuck the consequences.
But then he remembered her and their eyes met and he dropped the skillet, no longer interested in Roy. She must’ve drifted away for a moment, because when she returned he was kneeling next to her. When she tried to say his name, he said, “Shhh,” then took her face between his hands, holding her head still, so there was no place to look but at this man she’d taken up with so long ago because she was lonely, lonelier than she’d known a human being could be. She had understood how wrong it was, how doing what they were doing might open the door to some bad things down the road. Had they just now got there? She would’ve liked to ask Sully if he thought that the present scenario could be traced back to what they’d done those many years, because, if so, then Roy was right — it was all her fault. But her mouth refused to work, and whenever she tried to speak Sully kept shushing her. It was all over, he was saying, she was safe now and so were Janey and Tina, that there was nothing to worry about, she was going to be okay and at the hospital they’d fix her up as good as new. She was glad to hear all of this because in truth everything felt very wrong, the kind of wrong you couldn’t ever make right. But then again, what did she know? What the hell had she ever known, really, about anything, even as a girl, when that first boy had touched her breast and she’d let him, because it felt good and she felt good, when most of the time she didn’t. It had taken her years and years to understand that most other people didn’t feel good, either, that the world’s work was to make you feel like it was disappointed in you, that you’d never measure up, not really. But Sully said no, it was all going to be fine, and somewhere in the distance there was a siren that was getting closer, so Ruth closed her eyes and stopped trying to speak and allowed herself to believe every word that Sully was saying.