The Edge of Sleep

Chapter 11

Becker rose with his plate and carried it to the sink, prompting Karen to say, “I’ll do the dishes. It won’t take a minute. You two just go in the other room and relax.”

“We’ve been relaxing all through dinner,” Becker said. He returned to the table and picked up his glass, his silverware, the crumpled napkin. They had eaten in the kitchen and the trip from table to sink was only a few steps.

“Go on, go on,” Karen protested. “I can do it quicker if you’re out of here.”

Becker looked at the sink, which now held all of the plates, the cutlery, the serving dishes, the two cooking pots. All together it looked to him as if it would take something less than two minutes to rinse, scrape, and stack everything in the dishwasher. It had taken little more than that to prepare the meal in the first place, a warmed-up conglomeration of a chicken and tomato ragout, rice, and a green salad. Karen cooked four entrees on the weekend and froze them for use later in the week, she had explained. On the fifth day she and the boy either went out to eat or ordered Chinese food delivered. She had not mentioned the weekend, but Becker knew that Jack’s father frequently had the boy with him then. It was not hard to imagine Karen eating leftovers while standing over the sink when she was alone. It was the way Becker took most of his meals himself.

“Happy to help,” Becker said.

“It’s basically a one-person job,” she said, standing with her back to the sink, protectively.

Becker understood that the object of the exercise was not to get the dishes done but to put him alone with the boy for a few minutes. Dutifully, he turned and walked to the living room, where Karen’s son was already sprawled on the floor in front of the television set.

“No television. Jack!” Karen called from the kitchen.

“Mom!”

“I mean it!”

Sullenly, Jack turned off the set.

“She’s tough,” Becker said.

Jack nodded his head in agreement and looked at an area in space about three feet to the side of Becker’s head. After an initial stare of surprise when he first arrived at the door, Becker had noticed that the boy had never looked directly at him. Nor had he volunteered a word of conversation. On the few occasions when Becker had directed a question to him. Jack had frozen as if stunned by the need to come up with an answer. His shyness and embarrassment were so palpable that Becker changed his method of converse. He worded his statements so that they could be agreed to or denied with a simple movement of the head. In that way he was able to string several sentences together, giving both the questions and voicing the answers himself, with Jack registering some sort of involvement so that it appeared to be a dialogue. It certainly wasn’t an exchange of ideas, but it wasn’t silence, either. Neither of the participants was fooled, of course, but Becker hoped that Karen was. It seemed to be important to her that all should go well.

“Your mother’s a good cook, don’t you think? That was a delicious, uh, stew thing, with the chicken and the tomatoes. If you eat like that every night, you’re doing all right. Jack.”

Jack kept his gaze fixed on empty space in Becker’s general direction. An unhappy hint of a smile seemed frozen on his face. Becker realized it was the boy’s approximation of politeness. He was being addressed by an adult. He clearly was expected to stand and take it, but liking it was out of the question.

Becker sought a way to end the child’s discomfort as well as his own and conversation clearly was not the solution. The two of them sat for a minute in awkward silence, still playing a game neither of them understood.

“How’s it going out there?” Karen called from the kitchen.

“Great!” said Becker. He pictured her standing by the door, ears straining to pick up every sound. The dishes must have been stacked in the dishwasher long since. He wondered how long she was going to put them both through this form of torture. And for what reason.

“Just a few more minutes,” she said.

“Can I go to my room. Mom?” the boy called.

“You keep Mr. Becker company.” she called back. “I won’t be long.”

The boy’s smile seemed to become even more firmly fixed, Becker thought. He wondered if the boy was really as close to tears as he looked.

“Can you find yesterday’s newspaper for me. Jack?”

The boy looked at him directly for the first time. It was as if Becker had just pronounced him a free man. He darted out of the living room and into the kitchen. Becker heard a flurry of conversation between mother and son, and then the boy reappeared bearing The New York Times.

Poor kid thinks I’m going to read it and get off his case, Becker thought. No such luck.

“This is a famous trick,” Becker said. “Performed originally by the wazir of Baghdad. Using the Baghdad News, I believe.”

Becker separated the sections of newspaper and laid them so they overlapped. He then rolled them diagonally into a long tube and proceeded to tear it halfway down from the top. The boy was watching, almost despite himself.

“A lot of your magicians will make coins disappear, but there’s no trick to making money vanish. We all do it every day. And then where are we? Poorer.” Drum roll, please, Becker thought. “Or they’ll pull a rabbit out of a hat. You’ve seen them do that. I imagine.” Jack nodded. He seemed uncertain whether he wanted to participate in this affair or not. Becker kept tearing the paper into thin shreds, alternating each rip with a flourish of the hands as if every motion were special and magical.

“But what are you going to do with the rabbit when he’s done? Did you ever have a rabbit as a pet. Jack?”

“No.”

“A good thing, too. All they do is eat and poop.”

Jack laughed.

“Eat and poop, eat and poop, eat and poop,” Becker said. Jack’s shoulders shook and explosive sounds burst forth in his throat, where he tried to hold them.

Scatology, Becker thought. Works every time. Nothing funnier than bodily processes.

“And you know who would get stuck with the job of cleaning that rabbit’s cage, don’t you? You would. Jack. The rabbit would poop and you would scoop. Poop and scoop, poop and scoop. You know what that would make you, don’t you?”

“What?”

“The pooper scooper. You be the pooper scooper.”

“No, you be the pooper scooper,” Jack said, grinning.

“Thanks very much, but not to worry. This is not going to turn into a rabbit.”

Becker held the tube to his eye and looked through it at Jack.

“You know what it looks like to me?”

“What?”

“A fart tunnel.”

Jack clamped his hand to his mouth, his eyes jumping gleefully. He looked to Becker like someone about to explode.

“Does your mother ever fart. Jack?”

“Sometimes.”

“Well, when she does, you could look through this and say, ‘I spy.’ ”

“Or… ”

“Or what?”

Jack took the newspaper tube from Becker’s hand. He held it to his nose.

“You could smell her,” he said, sniffing loudly.

“What a fine idea. Why didn’t I think of that?”

Jack shifted the tube to his ear. “Or you could listen to her fart,” he said happily.

“That’s a good idea. Seek her out wherever she goes, listening, listening.”

“You could hear her if she farts in the other room,” Jack said, turning the tube toward the kitchen.

“Or under the covers,” Becker said.

“You could hear her when she does it under the covers!” Jack agreed gleefully. “Or in the car, or in the kitchen, or…” His imagination flagging, he looked to Becker for help.

“Or in the garage?” Becker offered.

Jack grunted, clearly disappointed.

Becker tried again. “Or when she farts in the soup.”

Jack liked that one. “Or when she farts in the milk,” he added.

“Now how is she going to fart in the milk?”

“She has to sit on the cow.” Jack said, delighting himself with the sudden burst of inspiration.

Becker laughed aloud in appreciation, then looked up to see Karen standing in the living room, glowering at them like naughty children. Jack saw her, too, and continued to laugh. Becker took the tube from Jack and put it to his ear and pointed it at Karen. Jack laughed harder.

“Cute,” said Karen.

Becker looked at Jack, shrugged as if he couldn’t hear anything, then handed the tube to the boy. Jack imitated

Becker, leaning to listen to his mother.

“Nice influence, John.”

“It’s a magic trick,” Becker said. He pulled from the center of the tube and transformed the newspaper into a five-foot length of fringed pillar. “It’s a eucalyptus tree,” he said. “Or whatever suits your fancy.”

“Real talent. Bedtime, Jack.”

The boy exited promptly but returned after a moment and took the tube from Becker’s hand.

“Good night,” he said.

“Good night,” said Becker. “Nice talking to you.”

“Nice talking to you,” the boy said. He paused for a fraction, seemed to consider saying more, then hurried out.

“Nice with the shit jokes,” Karen said when she returned from putting her son to bed.

“I did my best.”

“He thinks you’re a scream. He was aiming that damned newspaper thing at me the whole time I was reading to him.”

“He’s a funny kid once he loosens up.”

“He’d probably say the same about you.”

“He doesn’t see many adults, does he?”

“Adults? Or men?”

“Men, I guess.”

“Well, his father, of course. I don’t entertain much, if that’s what you’re driving at.”

“I’m not driving at anything,” Becker said. “I just meant that he seems very, very shy, and I supposed it was because he isn’t exposed to people like me very often. I mean friends of the family, social friends, that kind of thing. Uncles. Cousins.”

“No uncles, no cousins. When you get home at seven and have to cook and feed your child and get him into bed by nine, you don’t entertain a whole lot.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“The baby-sitter is here by eight in the morning and I have to get to work by nine. Every other weekend, when Jack is with his father. I’m working, trying to catch up on what I would have done if I didn’t have to be home by seven. On the weekends when Jack is with me, I devote myself to him.”

“Um.”

“What does that mean?”

“It sounds rather grim having someone devote herself to you.”

“Jesus H. Christ, Becker, is there anything about me you do like? You criticize the way I raise my son, you make fun of my cooking… ”

“Your cooking?”

“I heard what you said about the ragout. ‘That stew thing with the chicken and tomatoes.’ ”

“That wasn’t criticism,” Becker protested. “I liked the stew.”

“Then you mock me in front of Jack with all that farting business. I hate that word.”

“We weren’t mocking you…”

“Farting in the soup is your idea of showing respect?”

“I was just trying to befriend him. I thought that’s what you wanted.”

“Why would I want that?”

“I’m not sure, but you certainly set us up that way. You were hiding in the kitchen for half an hour.”

“I was doing the dishes, then I was cleaning up. I happen not to like a messy kitchen, if that’s all right with you, although I gather it isn’t. Apparently nothing about me is all right with you. I’m sorry if you were subjected to such an ordeal.”

“It wasn’t an ordeal… What are you so mad about?”

“I’m sorry if you think I’ve deprived my son of an adult male role model, which I happen to think he can get along without very well, thank you, especially considering the kind of role models that seem to be available.”

“What are we talking about?”

“I don’t know… Oh, it’s just too hard, it’s too damned hard.”

“What?” Becker asked.

“Getting along.”

“With me?”

“Who else are we talking about?”

“Sorry.”

“Oh, don’t look so woebegone. It’s not just you, it’s men. They’re such a waste. I mean, really, John, you’re all such a waste. You never say anything supportive, you don’t seem to have a clue how hard I work or how difficult it is to raise a child by yourself and still hold down a full-time job and all I hear is criticism…”

“I think you’re doing a terrific job at everything.”

“I know what you think of me as a parent. You’ve made it equally clear you don’t think I’m much of an agent, either… ”

“You’re a very good agent…”

“You think I’m a soup farter in everything I do. Maybe I am…”

“I think you seem to have lost your sense of humor a little bit

…”

“Not funny enough for you either,” she said. “You see, everything I do falls short.”

“I think…”

She dropped heavily onto the sofa.

“Who gives a shit what you think, Becker? Why don’t you just go home.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“You drove me here. I don’t have a car.”

Karen slumped into the cushions, all the fight gone. “Oh, why don’t you stay then,” she said. “I just don’t have the energy to fight you.”

“You were doing a pretty good job.”

She dropped her head to the back of the sofa. Her face stared at the ceiling.

“I am such a bitch sometimes.”

Becker sat beside her on the sofa, but she continued to stare upward.

“The hardest part is right at the end. The last fifteen, twenty minutes before I say good night to him. I’ve had the whole day’s work, the commute both ways, the hassle with the couple dozen agents who think they’re a better man for the job than I am, fixing dinner, doing the dishes, cleaning up. I’m so damned tired, all I want to do is sit in front of the television and glaze over for an hour, then collapse on my bed, but instead I have to sit with him and read a story, then go through this ritual of saying good night in just the right way. If I’m impatient, he knows it. If I try to cut it short, he jumps on me for that. I’ve got to do it all just right or else do it over again, and he’s watching me every step of the way to make sure I’m not faking it. Kids are so superstitious. Putting him to bed is absolutely the toughest part of the day-and yet it’s my favorite part, too. I see so little of him and then for these few minutes we’re completely alone together with no distractions, and I love him so much and he needs me like I’m his next breath. If I do say everything just right, he’ll feel safe and secure and he’ll be able to sleep through the night. God, how can I ever be impatient about that? I am such a bitch. I’m not fit to be a mother.”

“From what I’ve seen, you’re a great mother.”

“Do you really think so?”

“He’s a nice kid, Karen. You’re doing a good job.”

“He’s a great kid… And I’m doing a terrible job.” She turned and looked directly at Becker. “John, he doesn’t sleep. He’s so afraid.”

“Of what?”

“He can’t tell me, or he won’t tell me. Sometimes he talks about robbers getting into the house, but that’s not it; it can’t be that simple. Some nights he won’t let me go. He grabs hold of me and just won’t let me leave the room. He says he’s afraid I’m going to die.”

“What do you say to him?”

“I tell him I’m not going to die, what else can you say? Oh, I word it a little better than that. I tell him everyone dies eventually, but it will be so long from now that he’ll have his own grandchildren by then, blah-blah, but what can you really say? How can you promise anyone you won’t die?”

“Is he worried because of your work?”

“My work? I’m not in any danger because of my work. Most of the time I’m in an office.”

“Except for this case.”

“Except for this case. But that doesn’t mean I’m in danger.”

“Does he know that?”

“I don’t know what he knows. He won’t tell me. But I’ve seen him. John. I’ve looked in and he’s just lying there, my baby’s just lying there in the dark with his eyes wide open. It kills me.”

Becker took her hand. She allowed it but did not respond. Her hand lay in his palm as if it were dead.

“Why don’t you leave the light on?” Becker asked.

“He has a night light.”

“I mean the overhead light, the bedside light, the light in the hallway, every damned light in the house if that’s what it takes.”

“He’s got to learn to sleep in the dark sometime. He can’t grow up and keep the lights on…”

“Why not?”

”… I’m not sure.”

His thumb rode slowly back and forth across the top of her hand.

“I don’t know anything about kids,” he said. “Nothing at all. But I know something about fear. If he’s afraid of the dark, get rid of the dark. Maybe you’ll figure out eventually what he’s really afraid of-or maybe you won’t. Maybe he’ll learn to deal with it himself-or maybe he won’t. But in the meantime…”

“Turn on the lights.”

“Right.”

He took her hand in both of his and gently worked his thumbs into the muscles on each side of the palm. Karen sighed and closed her eyes. Becker worked on each of her fingers individually, lightly but insistently pulling one at a time, then insinuating his fingers between two of hers, letting them fall to the valleys, then all the way out to the tips. Karen’s lips parted and she moaned with a sound as light as her breath. When Becker finished one hand she gave him the other without opening her eyes.

“You have no idea how good that feels,” she said.

“Yes, I do.”

Her head lay all the way back on the sofa, her lips were still open and smiling now.

“Nobody just touches me anymore,” she said.

When Becker stopped massaging her hand, Karen slid all the way down on the sofa and lifted her feet into his lap.

“Please,” she said, her eyes still closed. But Becker had already started massaging her feet.

Karen abandoned any pretense at decorum and moaned aloud. Becker ran a finger between her toes and she shivered.

“How can I ever repay you,” she asked.

“It’s my payment for dinner,” he said.

“Dinner was never this good,” she said. “I feel like I’m purring.”

He pressed his thumb into the muscles of her foot and she stiffened, then relaxed.

“A lot of tension in your feet,” he said.

“Who would ever have thought there was so much pleasure down there? Ohhhhh… How did you learn how to do this?”

“I’ve had a varied life.” Becker said. He ran his fingernails lightly across the smooth skin atop her foot. Karen gasped and tensed and relaxed and gasped again.

“That feels so good it almost hurts,” she said.

“It does get confusing.”

He worked on her feet for a long time, and after a while they stopped talking. Karen simply lay back, eyes closed, and moaned openly while Becker massaged and caressed in turn, patiently and thoroughly.

Eventually he relinquished her feet and ran his hand slowly up the underside of her calf.

“I didn’t shave my legs today,” she said.

Becker didn’t bother to answer. At the tender skin under her knee joint he smoothed his fingers like feathers and she gasped with pleasure.

He ran both hands halfway up her thigh, gripped firmly, then slowly and with some pressure pulled his hands down the length of her thigh, her calf, across the foot and all the way off the toes.

“My God.” Karen said. “Do you know what that feels like?”

“Yes,” Becker said. He did the same with the other leg.

“I feel that everywhere.” she said. “It may be better than sex.”

“It is sex,” Becker said.

He repeated the procedure, this time using his fingernails instead of the palms of his hands and going even slower. Karen groaned every inch of the way and arched her back.

“All this for dinner? I didn’t even offer you dessert.”

“I’m sure you will. You’re too good a hostess not to.”

“And you are a presumptuous male swine,” she said lightly. She pressed her foot into his groin.

“You seem to be a little tense in spots yourself, John.”

“It comes upon me at times.”

“I’ll let that one pass,” she said. ‘Too easy.”

Becker slid his hands all the way up her legs until his thumbs came to rest at the top of her inner thighs. He left his hands there, resting lightly with just a hint of pressure.

She opened her eyes and looked at him for the first time in minutes.

“When did you know we were going to do this?”

“Right about when you did,” Becker said.

“I didn’t,” she said.

Becker grinned at her.

“I didn’t!.. I did not,” she insisted. Becker continued to grin. “All right, I did.”

“When?”

“Not until I saw you hanging from the mountain,” she said. “Not a moment before that, I swear.”

She slid her legs around his back and pulled him onto her. After a moment she stopped him with a touch and slipped out from under his body.

“Pray he’s asleep,” she said.

Karen tiptoed to her son’s room and peeked silently at his recumbent form. His eyes were closed and his breath came slowly and easily. She said a quick and indifferently directed prayer of thanks for small favors and returned to the living room.

Becker was not in the room, but her bedroom door was ajar. She entered expecting to find him naked under the covers, but when she saw him standing in the middle of the room with only his shoes off, she realized how much she had forgotten about the man. He was a deliciously slow and lingering lover, accomplishing in an hour what more energetic men would fail to achieve in ten minutes, and he relished every step of the process. So did she.

“He’s asleep,” she said. “We’re in luck.”

“I’m the lucky one.”

He took her in his arms and kissed her, pressing against her from foot to face as if no amount of contact could be enough. The kiss was a form of seduction in itself. His lips explored hers languidly, almost shyly, but at the same time with a certainty of purpose. They seemed to Karen to be seeking out the proper join of his flesh and hers, and when they found it, his lips rested there on hers, pressing just firmly enough. She felt herself weaken and behind her closed eyes she had the sensation of a long, slow, very safe tumble through space. She loved to kiss, and Becker was one of the few men she’d ever known who loved it as much as she did.

They seemed to kiss for hours. Karen knew that later the kisses would become hard, fierce, demanding, but not until they were both ready and could no longer restrain themselves. That was lust, this was love. Or at least it felt that way, she thought. For the moment it felt that way and for the moment that was more than enough.

Finally his hands began to move, stirring as if awakened from slumber. Slowly they traversed her back in opposite directions. One hand reached her neck, caressed her there, then moved upwards into her hair. Karen felt her whole scalp tingle with his touch. As earlier with her hands and feet, she became aware of a source of sensory pleasure she had long forgotten. She wanted it never to stop and, as if sensing her desire, Becker ran his fingertips to the top of her head, across her temples, gently down over her ears, then started back up again from the neck. Karen groaned against his lips. Once more she had the feeling that her mind was being released and tumbling languorously backwards. A swoon must feel like this, she thought.

Only when his fingers had stopped moving on her head and returned to her back did his other hand begin to explore. It slid slowly downwards, into the small of her back where it paused, as if seeking permission, before slipping onto the swell of her buttocks. It followed the curve of the buttock to where it met the leg, then came up again until it reached the hip. His fingers spread across the hipbone and stretched until they stopped just short of the pubes.

Karen pulled his shirt from his belt and ran her hands up his back. He leaned away from her just far enough to insinuate one hand into the neck of her blouse. His fingers began the slow and tantalizing descent to the rising mound of her breasts. Again he lingered for a long time, just beyond the breast, as if uncertain or not daring to continue. By the time his hand lowered still farther, Karen’s body was screaming for him to continue.

Later, when his lips replaced his fingers on her nipple and she emitted a shuddering sigh, Karen admitted to herself that she was overmatched. Becker seemed capable of giving her more pleasure and more excitement than she could stand. Certainly more than she could give in return.

And much later, when he had finally removed all of her clothes and she had torn away the last of his and he eased her to the bed, she decided she was just a greedy bitch who was going to have to take all of this magnificent love-making and quit worrying about what she brought to it. It was not a hard decision.

They lay breathless for some time, as if stunned by what had happened. At the end they had both been howling, and Karen had bitten into her pillow to stifle some of her loudest roars. The howls had turned to astounded laughter as they drifted down together, and then subsided altogether as they lay in each other’s arms and panted against each other’s skin.

“I’d forgotten what you were like,” Karen said at last.

“Thanks,” he said.

“I mean that as a compliment. I don’t think you used to make love this way, did you? How can you possibly do it that way all the time?”

“I don’t, normally,” Becker said. “I happen to like you.”

“I got that impression.”

“Actually. I don’t do it at all, lately. It’s been a long time.”

“I know.”

“Is that in my file, too?”

“The Bureau isn’t that interested in you, John… It’s been a long time for me, too… Do you think that accounts for it?”

“For what?”

Karen buried her face in his chest and willed herself to shut up. There was a difference between complimenting him on his sexual performance-a blandishment she knew men required-and gushing like a schoolgirl who’s just had her first orgasm.

After a pause, Becker said, “It is being duly noted that you didn’t immediately say, ‘I like you, too.’ ”

“Do you want me to say that?”

“I’m just noting that you didn’t.”

Like you, Karen thought. Like you? I want to chain you to the bed and feed you oysters and clams. I want to have your magnificent knowing hands surgically implanted onto my flesh.

“I don’t know if I like you or not,” Karen said aloud. “But I obviously respond to you. Well, that’s a bit of an understatement. I responded like a bitch in heat-and proud of it, let me add. As for liking you, I guess I don’t not like you. But you’re a hard man. John. Can we just live with that ambiguity for a while?”

“It would be very adult of us,” he said.

“Do you want to take back saying that you liked me?” Becker paused.

“You don’t really get to take it back, you bastard,” Karen said hurriedly. “It was a bogus offer.”

“Oh, I don’t want to take it back,” he said. “I was thinking of clarifying the statement.”

“Don’t,” Karen said, and immediately regretted it. “You’re right. It speaks for itself. I was just going to gush for a while.”

Gush! Karen thought. Rave on about my charms! But instead of saying it to him, she slid her hand from his chest to his abdomen and felt him react involuntarily to the tickle response.

“Can I ask you a question?” she asked after the silence had lengthened.

“Granted.”

“Do you still see your ex-wife?”

“Cindi? Sometimes.”

“I mean, do you see her?”

“We’re divorced.”

“I know. Still, it’s not unheard of. You made no effort to get away from her, after all. You’re still living in the same little town.”

“Clamden’s my home.”

“I know. I’m just asking. Sometimes husbands think their rights continue after divorce, you know. Sometimes they keep coming around and try to resume relations.”

“What did you do?” Becker asked.

“I didn’t say it happened to me,” she said.

“How did you handle it?”

“With aplomb and diplomacy. I kicked him in the nuts. He didn’t try again.”

“The man’s a quitter.”

“I call him a fast learner. I only had to explain to him once.”

“Amicable divorce, was it?” Becker asked.

“Do we have to talk about it in bed? Couldn’t we discuss politics or something else cheerful?”

Becker spoke in a serious tone.

“What did he do. Karen?” He felt her body tense against his.

“Let’s drop it.”

“I mean during the marriage.” he said.

“I know what you mean.” She rolled away, turning her back to him. “Let’s not spoil the night, John.”

“It would have made your life easier if you had given him more frequent visits. You could have had more free time without Jack, but you didn’t. What went on?”

He put a hand on her shoulders in the dark and felt her tense against his touch.

“Was it something he did to you?”

“You’ve just ruined a great fuck,” she said coldly.

“Or was it something he did to Jack?”

Karen started to get out of the bed but Becker held her. He put his arm across her belly and pulled her back so she spooned against him. Her body was stiff but she did not struggle.

“Let go of me, Becker.”

Becker held on to her and pressed his body against hers from behind. Karen grunted once and tried to jerk away but stopped when he tightened his grip. They both knew she was trained and skilled and could make a good battle of it if she chose to fight.

“What did he do to Jack, Karen?”

For a moment Becker thought she really was going to make a battle of it. Her muscles tightened as if she were going to spring. He would let her go if she really wanted to get away, of course, but he did not think she wanted to.

She was quiet for a moment and both of them were coiled and poised, but then she slowly relaxed. Becker continued to hold her tightly for both self-defense and support. If she was going to kick back into him, it would be when he eased up in response to her; but he sensed that she had given in and was releasing something from inside and his grip helped to show her he was there for her.

“He beat him,” she said, her voice breaking with emotion. “The son of a bitch beat my sweet little boy. I should have killed him. John, I should have killed him.”

“No.”

“I should have, I should have.”

“When did it start?”

“When Jack was about four. Suddenly Carl seemed to blame Jack for everything that went wrong. Not just around the house, anything that went wrong in his life. And there were a lot of things going wrong in his life. Me, for one. I should never have gotten married in the first place. I’m too selfish.”

“We’re all too selfish,” said Becker. “But we all do it.”

“First it was just spankings, then worse. He started to hit him with things-belts, a hair brush-usually when I wasn’t around. I’d be at work and I’d come home and Jack would have a bruise and Carl would tell me he fell off his trike or tripped while running or… And Jack wouldn’t deny it. He was so afraid of Carl he wouldn’t even tell his own mother. What kind of mother does that make me?”

“Don’t blame yourself. You weren’t the one who was doing it.”

“But I didn’t stop it. I figured it out eventually, but even then I didn’t stop it right away. Not as soon as I should have. Carl called it discipline and I just, somehow, I just couldn’t believe he was doing it in the way he was doing it. I tried not to look it right in the face, John; I even told Jack to be careful and not enrage his father. I blamed Jack.”

Karen stopped. She heard Becker’s hard breathing behind her. He sounded as if he was engaged in a fight with himself that he would not win; but he made no comment.

“I’m not fit to have a son,” Karen said. “I just could not admit to myself that it was happening. Even in court, even when we were fighting for custody, I couldn’t bring myself to come right out and say it. I just couldn’t believe it was happening to me. I don’t deserve that wonderful little boy, John, but I’d die before I’d let him go live with his father. Nothing happens now on their weekends together. I check Jack as soon as he gets home. I’ve told Carl what I’ll do to him if I even suspect anything. He knows I will.”

“You said you couldn’t believe it was happening to you, but you meant you couldn’t believe it was happening to you again,” said Becker. “Isn’t that it?”

This time Karen was silent.

“Because it happened to you as a kid, didn’t it, Karen?” She did not answer.

“I know it did. You told me about it ten years ago.”

“I never said a word…”

“No, you didn’t talk about it, but you told me. I could tell by the way you reacted to my touch, the things you didn’t feel comfortable with, all the things you didn’t say when I told you about myself… You don’t have to admit it if that comforts you, but don’t bother to deny it.” Karen continued to lie very still in his arms and the silence seemed to balloon around them and envelop the room. They could hear noises from outside-the wind against windows, the far distant cough of a car engine starting-but within the room it seemed to Karen that all sounds had ceased to exist. She could no longer hear Becker’s breathing and was aware of her own only by the measureless rise and fall of her bosom. When she shifted her weight slightly, the groan of the mattress and the rustle of the sheets against her body seemed incredibly loud. In the new position, Becker’s arm had ridden up from her abdomen so that it crossed her chest just below the first swelling of her breast. He still held her firmly and she was grateful now for the pressure and the sense of comfort it gave her. She wanted someone close if she had to confront the monsters of her past.

When Becker spoke his voice seemed so loud in the stillness that had come over them that Karen was momentarily startled.

“What else?” he asked.

“What?”

“Was there more? With Carl.”

Her ex-husband’s name sounded odd on Becker’s lips, and she realized she had not heard him speak it before. He had referred to him only as “her husband,” not by name, and the change seemed too abrupt, overly familiar. For a moment she resisted it, as if allowing someone else to use Carl’s name was in itself a revelation of family secrets. Her reaction was swiftly past, but it left her feeling slightly soiled.

“No,” she said. “What do you mean?”

“Did he do anything else?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“It’s too much, but it usually doesn’t stop there. Violence creates its own appetite.”

Karen wanted him to stop asking, she wanted to demand what made him such an expert. But she knew he was, she knew he understood it all better than anyone.

“He hit me, too,” she said. Her throat was constricted and her voice so low she had to repeat herself. Even as she said it, she still found it hard to believe.

Becker grunted noncommittally, as if he had expected her statement and was waiting for the rest. There was a quality to his silences that Karen found compelling, as if she had to fill them. He seemed to know what came next but required the formalities to be observed by having her say it.

“It didn’t happen that often,” she said. “Any is too many, but it wasn’t that often. The first time I couldn’t believe it had happened. I couldn’t believe he would dare to do it, that he would want to do it. It was still early in our marriage. I had convinced myself I was in love, we were in love, hell, I wanted so much to be in love…”

“To have someone love you,” Becker interjected.

“Yes, I suppose, but to love someone else, too; I knew you were supposed to love someone else, that’s what everyone said, so I convinced myself I loved Carl… And then he was so repentant afterwards. He cried, he said he loved me, he adored me, he would never, never do it again…”

“And you believed him.”

“I wanted to. I made myself believe him. I was in a marriage, I had to give that every chance, every effort. I couldn’t just walk away because of one mistake.”

Again Becker was silent and Karen felt she had to continue, had to find the explanation that would justify herself, that would win his approval.

“The second time was months later. He had been fine until then. We had had quarrels but he had controlled himself. I assumed that it really was only a one-time thing. But then he snapped. We weren’t fighting about anything special, nothing particularly sensitive. He’d been drinking, not much, just a little. There seemed to be no provocation, then all of a sudden he was hitting me, hitting me and hitting me… I wore pancake makeup the next day to hide the bruises at work, I was so ashamed. If anyone had asked what happened-no one asked.”

“And you stayed with him.”

“I was pregnant then, I had a child on the way. That was the curious thing; in the midst of his rage Carl had not hit me anywhere near the baby. In an odd way that seemed to show he cared about the baby, about us, about our future… I don’t know, I rationalized it a hundred ways…”

“And you stayed.”

“Yes, damn it, I stayed! Don’t judge me, John. You don’t know what it’s like to be beaten by someone who’s supposed to love you… It makes you feel so worthless, it makes you feel that you deserve it, it makes you feel it’s your fault.”

“I know,” Becker said simply. There was no special pleading in his voice, just a statement. Karen realized there had not been any harshness in his tone before, either. The judgment was only in her mind. Becker was merely noting, just stating the obvious so they could get on to the next step, as if the process had to be completed no matter what.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s all right.”

“I did stay with him, you’re right. I should have left him then, but it seemed so-so ludicrous that it was happening to me. I wasn’t some welfare mother in the ghetto, I wasn’t a hillbilly with trucks parked in the front yard. Carl was a professional, for God’s sake. He was a radiologist. We weren’t the kind of people this happened to. Plus, I was trained in self-defense. Even when it was happening, while he was hitting me, I told myself, ‘I can break this man in two.’ ”

“It’s not about self-defense, though,” Becker said.

“No, not at first. But it got that way. When Jack was two years old Carl tried to beat me again. The baby was there in the room, watching, and maybe that’s what gave me the courage, I don’t know, but I realized right then that it was going to stop. I kneecapped him and broke his arm… He never touched me again.”

“But he started on Jack.”

“Not long after that, I think he must have, but I didn’t know it.”

Becker was silent.

“I swear to you, John, I did not know it. I did not. I did not know it.”

Something broke within Karen and she began to cry, quietly at first, and then fully, sobbing, her body shaking with the effort. Becker pulled her even more tightly against him, covering her whole body with his own as she spooned against him.

He let her cry until she had had enough, not trying to hush her or even comfort her beyond his close presence. When she was finished at last Karen felt as if she had returned from a distant place. Her grief had taken her out and away from the present and deep within herself, but now she was back, in a darkened bedroom, on her bed, with the wind pushing at the windowpanes and a strong man pressed against her from behind.

She could not say if the quality of the stillness changed when she stopped sniffling, or if the electric charge of the room had been that way all along and she had only become aware of it. Becker’s body was warm against hers and his skin seemed alive in a way it had not when she was talking about herself. His flesh seemed to lie against her like a creature with a life of its own, as if poised to move whenever she chose. It was up to her entirely, she realized, and the thought gave her a sense of freedom and power.

She reached between her legs and touched him and felt him rise eagerly to her touch. They did not speak, they scarcely moved. Then he was in her from behind and she was clamping the pillow to her mouth once more. This time it was direct and simple without foreplay or patience or tenderness, which was how both of them wanted it. When they finished she had tears on her face once more, but this time for a different reason.