Dancing with the Dead

2

She heard a shriek and she was falling.

Two… three-awake!

Mary reached out a shaking hand, groping for the alarm clock. Its intermittent electronic scream was shredding her brain like jagged glass. Finally she found the clock, fumbled with its cool plastic case, and managed to silence it.

Reaching for it made her side ache where Jake had hit her last night. Pain zapped through her like high voltage, and she wondered if he’d cracked one of her ribs. It had happened once before, a year ago, and she was sure the doctors in emergency at Incarnate Word hadn’t believed her story about slipping and falling on the ice. Not a lot of imagination in that one.

Well, it wasn’t their business anyway. Her business. Hers and Jake’s. Intimate as her dreams.

Mary Arlington had dreamed again she was flying. Soaring near the lovely domed ceiling of a limitless room, almost touching pure curved whiteness, one… two… three, to waltz time, two… three.

… Floating in someone’s arms. It wasn’t clear whose. Far below, faces strained upward, pale ovals with dark, staring eyes and gaping mouths, watching her trace elegant patterns whose lines might extend into eternity.

But morning had arrived. She worked her way up so she was leaning back in bed, supported on her elbows, then she slowly swiveled her body and dropped her legs into space, struggling until she was sitting slumped on the edge of the mattress. More pain. She heard herself groan, but the rib didn’t act up. Hey, the day was starting right.

Mary moved her hands slowly and gingerly beneath her nightgown, gliding fingertips over smooth flesh, seeking sources of pain.

They’d argued last night about the latest of Jake’s unexplained absences. This one had lasted three days and two nights. He’d told her he’d spent the time at the big Victorian house three of his buddies leased in the suburb of Webster Groves, and she knew he did go there at times, paying rent for one of the upper bedrooms. What he had no explanation for was the long-term airport parking ticket stub she’d found in his pocket. This time maybe he’d left St. Louis, not just driven a few miles to Webster Groves.

Jake had worked himself to a high pitch of anger. Then he’d beaten her with the flat of his hand and then his fists.

This morning, early, he’d kissed her ear and whispered he was sorry, he loved her, he’d gotten carried away with the physical stuff. He’d make it up to her, he promised, he really would. Uh-huh.

“Don’t come back,” she’d told him, her voice hoarse from sleep. “Not this time!”

“Sure,” he said, and kissed her again. “Whatever you say, Mary. Don’t I usually try to make you happy?”

Only wanting him to leave, she hadn’t answered. Finally she heard and felt him roll out of bed. The bedsprings moaned as if sharing her pain.

She’d lain awake listening to the roar of the shower, then to Jake thumping around her apartment getting dressed. He was supposed to meet some guys from work this morning. To go fishing, he’d said. Jake and his buddies; sometimes they were like a living beer commercial.

When she’d heard the door snick! close behind him, she’d fallen asleep again.

That was two hours ago, and here she sat with a numb mind and aching body.

Jake would be guilt-plagued, remorseful even in the way he moved. For days he’d loathe himself for what he’d done, an object of scathing self-pity. And, in Mary’s eyes, a man pinned by his agony, writhing in pain as intense as hers even if it wasn’t physical.

Others didn’t understand, she knew, and wondered why she stayed with Jake. But the abuse had grown gradually, creeping up on her love, engulfing it and leaving it whole and somehow undamaged, like the tender walnut, safe within its confining yet protective shell.

That was the problem, she loved Jake.

And she had no one else.

But she knew she had to be strong. This time she meant it, he wasn’t coming back. She wouldn’t let him.

She drew a deep breath, without pain, and stood up, leaning with a hand on the headboard for a moment while her dizziness passed. She had to leave for work in half an hour, and she had a dance lesson right after supper.

She hoped like hell she could move okay. Tonight was tango.