Double Talk (2 page)

He went to push past her, but she blocked the doorway. He tried again but she slumped against him, wedging one foot against the door frame. His face was that close to hers she could see an irritation on his left cornea, a bubbly patch of something that looked like raw egg white. Perhaps, she thought afterwards, this is what distracted her. She didn't see the punch coming. She just remembers the shock of pain in her jaw, the room's reverberation, the sudden sense of being in a vacuum. She lost her balance. He hit me, she remembers thinking. The asshole hit me. She couldn't believe it. He'd outdone himself.

Violet fell, banging against the wall, catching her ribs on the outlet, before crashing into a tower of empties. Beer bottles rained down with a far distant sound, spattering her with stale slops and soaked cigarette butts. What now? she wondered. She felt as if she were floating. She saw herself looking sidelong at him. She felt like a penned slaughter-house animal awaiting its awful turn. She saw Brian standing over her, his mouth opening and closing. She couldn't think what to do.

Help, when it arrived, came in the form of a mote, then a word, then a simple phrase moving from the horizon through to her inner eye, a phrase that had been her mantra during her women's studies days:
zero tolerance
. She read it as a call to arms. And yet, for a while, she just lay there — playing possum, she told herself afterwards. She felt paralysed, movement only returning when she heard the front door slam. She got to her feet, walked into the kitchen and, dialling 411, got the operator who put her through to 911.

Violet slides open the living room window. “Hi, Brian,” she says. “Sorry about the window. The front porch is blocked with stuff. Jeez, what a mess!” She doesn't want to say that, had he taken the time to return her call, he could have avoided the indignity of having his possessions handed to him through the window.

Brian doesn't answer her, though he arches his left eyebrow ever so slightly. That raised eyebrow — she thought it was so sexy when they first met. Much to her surprise — her shame almost — she still finds it sexy. But how could it be otherwise? she counsels herself. They spent thirteen years together. He is the father of her children. He had once been her best friend. She should have expected time apart to refresh some things about him that years of living together had made stale. Even so, it doesn't add up, she thinks, doesn't explain her powerful urge to ask how he is doing, to invite him in for coffee, to have one last talk.

But he is in no mood. In fact, it's obvious he's in zero tolerance mode. He glares past her, his eyes flicking from bare walls to boxes to plastic-covered couches, happy to rest anywhere but on her.

“I'm sorry about the door,” she says again. There is a long, awkward pause.

“You've spoken with the kids?”

He nods.

She hands the box to him and he very gently takes it from her, careful not to make contact with her hands. He then turns and walks away, without a word. Violet sticks her head out the window to watch him go.

Fresh once more is the wound of their separation. Her voice, which can carry three city blocks, gathers to scream after him, but no words come to mind. It has all been said. And besides, she doesn't have time.

It took only twenty minutes for the cops to show up that morning. Violet was in the half-bathroom, examining her face in the mirror, when she heard the squabble of their radio outside. The red mark on the side of her face was beginning to fade, and she was worried that it would disappear.

“I'm looking for a Ms. Budd. A Violet Budd?” said the young female officer.

She can't be more than in her late twenties, Violet thought. She noted how the woman held her peaked cap under her arm, how her uniform looked both tailored and slightly too big for her, like it was departmental policy to downplay the female form. The woman wore a thick black belt around her waist. There was a heavy-looking baton dangling from it and next to it an enormous bunch of keys. Despite these things, the officer still managed to come across as being friendly. Not threatening at all, Violet decided. The woman had wheat blond hair, which she wore tied back in a ponytail. Take off the uniform and put her in grey sweats and she would have been one of those girl jocks that Violet had gone out of her way to avoid in university, the kind who took notes in big loopy handwriting and underlined whole pages with yellow highlighter — If everything was that important, why underline at all? Violet remembers wondering. These same jockettes could be heard whooping and hollering in shooter bars on the weekends, knocking back sangria and B-52s until they were drunk enough to let themselves get dragged off. They were so lacking in irony, so not cool. Back then Violet couldn't have imagined a day when she would find that kind of straightforwardness reassuring.

“I'm Violet.”

“Violet, I'm Constable Budgell and this is Constable Galloway,” she said, gesturing to the man standing next to her. He was overweight, his pants drooping under his belly. Constable Cruller, Violet thought, even as she chastised herself for thinking in clichés. She knew she was in no position to make fun of anyone. Still, she had to wonder how he'd ever catch a criminal he had to chase on foot.

Violet nodded to him, but he made no greeting in return. She had the strong impression he would rather be anywhere else. He looked tired, she thought. Maybe he was on the last leg of a double shift, or perhaps he was attempting to play bad cop to Constable Budgell's good cop. Or maybe he was on a diet.

“We're responding to a 911 call, a report of a domestic dispute made from this address. May we come in, please?”

Violet showed them into the kitchen and offered to make them tea, which Constable Budgell accepted but Constable Cruller did not. Violet was determined to remain cool, as detached as possible, but faced with the task of placing a cup on a saucer, her hands began to shake. Much to her shame she started to blubber. Constable Budgell pulled out a travel pack of tissues, shaking a couple loose the way people used to shake cigarettes from a pack.

Constable Budgell asked Violet to describe the events leading up to her placing the 911 call. Violet told her story, bringing to it as much detail as she could. Constable Budgell seemed particularly interested in the boots. She said her boyfriend liked snakeskin boots. Was she trying to be funny? Given what appeared to be her general lack of guile, Violet didn't think so. She was probably just trying on a textbook technique for putting victims at ease. Constable Budgell wanted to know whether there was a history of violence between Violet and her husband. Violet told her there wasn't, not physical violence anyway. Constable Budgell asked her to elaborate, but Violet couldn't come up with an example at that moment. “No doubt,” said Constable Budgell, “you will think of one later.” Violet detected no trace of sarcasm in the remark. Constable Budgell wanted to know if Violet had children and whether they were present at the scene when the alleged assault took place. Violet pointed to pictures of Lucy and Joe on the fridge door. The female officer responded by showing Violet pictures of her twin nephews. Two fat and jolly looking babies dressed in RNC onesies. She said she hoped one day to have kids of her own, if she could ever get her hockey-crazed boyfriend to settle down.

When she came to the end of her questions, Constable Budgell, or Mira, as Violet had agreed to call her, asked Violet to repeat her story from the beginning. A visibly upset Violet had to be reassured that they were just following procedure. Once they had run through it all a second time, Constable Budgell asked if Violet would like to be referred to the Women's Crisis Centre. Visions of the old clapboard mansion on Military Road flickered in Violet's memory. She used to volunteer there. She could still smell the mildew, see the pink wallpaper in the entrance, the pictures of Judy Rebick, Gloria Steinem and Betty Freidan in the staff room, and the tattered copies of
Our Bodies, Ourselves
. Violet remembered—with some discomfort—the solidarity she used to feel with the women who worked there.

“Just one more thing,” said Constable Budgell, rising from the chair with a jangle of metal. “I need to see any injuries you may have incurred as a result of the assault, other than those already visible.” Constable Galloway made a show of averting his gaze when Violet lifted her shirt to show the scratches along her ribs. Constable Budgell leaned in and looked closely at them, touching their edges very gently as if trying to gauge how fresh they were. Violet winced. Constable Budgell got out her camera and took several snapshots.

Satisfied, she announced briskly that she had enough evidence to prosecute a charge of assault against Violet's husband.

Violet hardly had time to let this information sink in before Constable Budgell asked if the abuser was still on the premises. Her question infuriated Violet. She wanted to ask the officer if it was normal for men who beat their wives to hang around the house afterwards, maybe napping to recover from their physical workout. But she didn't. She told them simply that Brian had gone out. Constable Budgell wanted to know if Violet knew of his whereabouts, explaining that if they could easily locate him, it would save them from having to issue a warrant for his arrest. For the first time since the interview began Violet noticed Constable Galloway taking a keen interest. The idea of Brian being picked up in a public place, handcuffed and shoved into the back of an RNC cruiser filled Violet with perverse pleasure.

But that was not how she felt five minutes later when, walking the two officers out, they met, head-on, her white-faced and soon to be ex-husband coming in the front door. Brian looked from his wife to the police officers and back to his wife again, his face the picture of guilt. “Has something happened?”

Violet had an urge to laugh or be sick or punch the wall. Constable Budgell, picking up on Violet's distress, put her hand on Violet's arm. Constable Galloway stepped forward: “Are you Brian Power?”

Brian nodded dumbly.

“And do you currently reside at this address?”

“Of course I do. Violet, what's going on?” He sounded panicked.

Violet stared at the floor. Constable Galloway continued: “Brian Power, we are placing you under arrest for assault on the person of your wife. We are requesting that you come back to the station with us for questioning.” Not waiting for a response, the officer stepped forward and gripped Brian's elbow with a dimpled hand.

“Violet?”

She ignored her husband, kept her eyes fixed on the floor.

“Violet, please, what's going on?”

Violet noticed that one of Joe's favourite marbles — the one that looked like a tiger's eye — was wedged under the baseboard heater. There was a lollypop stick beside it, like he had been trying to dig it out. She was thinking about this when a splash of coins hit the ground and a quarter slowly rolled in front of her, wobbling before it fell flat.

“Violet, I took back the boots. I was bringing you the money. Look!”

But she couldn't look. She could barely listen as the police began to sketch in broad terms what would happen next: Brian was to be questioned at the station. He was entitled to legal counsel. Legal Aid would provide, if necessary. Once released, Brian could have no contact with Violet. He was prohibited from coming within five hundred yards of either the house or Violet's workplace.

As they led him outside, Violet felt a falling sensation, like at the end of an exhausting day when you collapse into bed and your body sinks a thousand fathoms into sleep.

Baby
Power

I had come by the house for one reason and one reason only: to pick up a box of things Violet had gathered while packing up. I had not come to say goodbye. I was determined not to speak with her at all because I knew that to engage, even on the most basic level, was to enter the world of the critically perverse. Anything I might say could and probably would be used against me, in a court of law or in the court of public opinion. I knew this better than anyone because I had seen the inner Violet.

Violet's real self — in contrast to her warm persona — operated with something like clinical efficiency, cherry-picking everything I said for choice words, before setting each one on a slide to be analysed microscopically under ever-increasing magnifications until there was nothing anyone could see but a blur. Anyone except for her, that is. Violet could always see the pattern within the pattern, the deep structure, the hidden flaw.

I, on the other hand, was blind to what was right under my nose, or so she constantly told me. It wasn't until our marriage foundered that I began to understand just how right she was. I was shocked to see exposed the covert operations our inner lives had been waging against each other for years, maybe even since our first date. Violet's animus had made my anima the enemy. And yet, I knew, even if she was right about my inner eye being visually impaired, about my being slow on the uptake, it didn't mean I couldn't learn. And I proved it in the months following our break-up, developing a robust immunity to her sympathetic tricks, learning to stay clenched in the face of her gap-tooth grin. I learned from each encounter; so much so that by the end of that first year my rules of engagement had been whittled down to one: no engagement.

I clutched my box of belongings and walked away, swallowing the urge to scream my resentment about being painted the villain of the piece. Maybe now that she was leaving town I would find a way to let such feelings go. I wasn't hopeful, though. Two years of pacing my one-bedroom apartment's indoor-outdoor carpet; two years of lying in my pull-out bed and wondering what had made glacier-like striations through the stucco peaks on the ceiling; two years of scouring my conscience, of likening my personality to sheets of wood panelling; two years of listening to the toilet cistern trickle; two years of overhearing the next door tenants fucking; two years frying eggs on a cooker that kept blowing a fuse; two years of watching sedated human beings wander up and down Colonial Street, heedless to the litter swirling around their shins; two winters of watching the snowbanks creep higher and higher and waiting for the morning I would awake to find my single slider window glowing like an igloo block; two years of trying to find and exterminate that sour smell that no store-bought and no industrial disinfectant could get rid of; two years on the hamster wheel of hurt, and still I couldn't move on.