Journey (4 page)

“Believe me, it's not that exciting.” She never really
felt it was her life anyway, she always felt as though she were living in the spotlight she borrowed from her husband. “We had the McCutchinses down to Virginia for the weekend. God, he's disgusting.”

“Handsome guy, the Senator. Very distinguished.” Greg grinned at her.

Maddy was silent for a long moment, and then decided to take Greg into her confidence. They had become very close since they started working together, like brother and sister. She didn't have that many friends in Washington, she'd never had time to make them and those she had made, Jack never liked, and eventually pressured her not to see them. She never objected because Jack kept her so busy, she was always working. In the beginning, when she'd met women she liked, Jack always had some objection to them, they were fat, or ugly, or inappropriate, or indiscreet, or he thought they were jealous of her. He kept Madeleine carefully guarded, and inadvertently isolated. The only people she really had a chance to get close to were at the office. She knew he meant well in protecting her, and she didn't mind, but it meant that the person she was closest to was Jack, and in recent years, Greg Morris.

“Something awful happened this weekend.” She started cautiously, still feeling a little awkward about divulging Janet's secret. Maddy knew she wouldn't want people talking about it.

“You broke a nail?” he needled her, and she usually laughed at him, but she looked serious this time.

“It was Janet.”

“She looks pretty colorless and drab. I've only seen her a couple of times at Senate parties.”

Maddy sighed, and decided to take the plunge. She trusted Greg completely. “He beats her.”

“What? The Senator? Are you sure? That's pretty heavy.”

“Very heavy. I believe her. She showed me the bruises.”

“Hasn't she had mental problems?” Greg asked skeptically. It was the same reaction Jack had had, and it annoyed her.

“Why do men always say things like that about abused women? What if I had told you she had hit him with a golf club? Would you believe me? Or would you tell me that fat bastard was lying about it?”

“I'd probably believe him, I'm sorry to say. Because men don't lie about things like that. It's pretty unusual when a man is abused by a woman.”

“Women don't lie either. But people like you, and my husband, make them feel like it's their fault, and they have to keep it a secret. And yes, she was in a mental hospital, but she doesn't look crazy to me, and those bruises were no figment of her imagination. She's terrified of him. I've always heard he was a son of a bitch to his staff, but I never knew he was an abuser.” She had never spoken openly about her past to Greg. Like other women in the same situation, she felt it was somehow her fault, and kept it a dark secret. “I told her I'd help her find a safe house. Any ideas where I start?”

“What about the Coalition for Women? I have a friend who runs it. And I'm sorry about what I said. I should know better.” He looked contrite as he said it.

“Yeah, you should. But thanks, I'll call her.” He jotted down a name for her, and Maddy glanced at it. Fernanda Lopez. She vaguely remembered doing a
story about her when she first came to the network. It had been a good five or six years before, but she remembered being impressed by her. But when Maddy called from her own office, they told her Ms. Lopez was on sabbatical, and her replacement had just left on maternity leave. The new woman in charge wasn't coming in for two more weeks, and they'd have her call as soon as she got there. They gave Maddy a few names to call when she told them what she wanted. She tried but the numbers were all answered by answering machines, and when she called the Abused Women's Hotline, it was busy. She'd have to call back later. And then she got busy with Greg, and forgot about it until she went on the air at five o'clock, and promised herself she'd try again in the morning. If Janet had lived with it this long, she would certainly survive until the next morning, but Maddy did want to do something about it. It was obvious that Janet was too paralyzed by fear to help herself, which wasn't unusual either.

When Greg and Maddy went on the air at five, they covered the usual assortment of local, political, national, and international stories, and a plane crash at JFK ate up most of the seven-thirty

She went home in Jack's car alone that night, he had another meeting with the President, and she couldn't help wondering what was keeping them both so busy. But she was thinking of Janet again when she got home, and wondered if she should call her. But Maddy was afraid that Paul might be listening to Janet's calls and decided not to.

Maddy read a stack of articles she'd been meaning to get to, and skimmed through a new book about the latest state of the art techniques in dealing with breast
cancer, to see if she wanted to interview the author as part of a news story. She did her nails, and went to bed early. And she heard Jack come in around midnight. But she was too tired to talk to him, and she fell back to sleep before he could join her. It was morning before she woke again, and she heard him walk into his bathroom and turn on the shower.

He was in the kitchen reading
The Wall Street Journal
when she came downstairs, and he looked up at her with a smile. She was wearing jeans, a red sweater, and bright red Gucci loafers. She looked fresh and young and sexy.

“You make me sorry I didn't wake you last night,” he said with a smile, and she laughed at him, as she poured herself a cup of coffee and picked up the paper.

“You and the President must be up to some real mischief these days, with all those meetings. It better turn out to be something more interesting than a cabinet reshuffle.”

“Maybe so,” he said noncommittally as they both turned back to their papers, and suddenly he heard Maddy gasp and glanced over at her. “What is it?” She couldn't speak for a moment as tears filled her eyes and she continued to try to read the article, but she was blinded by tears as she turned to her husband.

“Janet McCutchins committed suicide last night. She slashed her wrists in their house in Georgetown, one of her children found her and called 911, but she was already dead when they got there. They said she had bruises on her arms and legs, and they feared foul play initially, but her husband explained that she had fallen down the stairs the night before, over one of her son's skateboards. The son of a bitch … he killed her….” She
sounded choked and nearly breathless and she could feel her whole body tense as she thought about it.

“He didn't kill her, Maddy,” Jack said quietly “she killed herself. You said so.”

“She thought she didn't have any other way out,” Maddy said in a strangled voice, remembering the feeling all too vividly as she looked at her husband. “I could have done the same thing, if you hadn't gotten me out of Knoxville.”

“That's bullshit and you know it. You'd have killed him first. She was disturbed, she had a history of mental problems. There were probably plenty of other reasons for her to do it.”

“How the hell can you say that? Why don't you want to believe that that fat bastard abused her? Is that so incredible? Does he look all that nice to you? Why isn't it possible she was telling the truth? Because she's a woman?”

It made her furious listening to him, and even Greg had doubted the story when she told him. “Why is the woman always lying?”

“Maybe she wasn't. But the fact that she killed herself supports the theory that she was unbalanced.”

“It supports the theory that she thought she had no other way out and she was desperate. Desperate enough to leave her kids motherless, and even risk having one of them find her.” She was crying openly as she spoke to him, and her breath was coming in little staccato gasps of terror. She knew what it felt like to be so tortured, so terrified, so cornered that there seemed to be no escape route. If she hadn't been young and beautiful and Jack hadn't wanted her for the network, she might easily have met the same fate as Janet
McCutchins. And she wasn't so sure Jack was right that she would have killed Bobby Joe first. She had thought of suicide herself, more than once, on dark nights when he was drunk and her lips and eyes were swollen from his latest acts of vengeance. It was all too easy to understand what Janet had been feeling. And then she remembered the calls she had made the day before, on her behalf, from her office. “I called the Coalition for Women for her yesterday, and a hotline. Shit, I wish I had called her last night. But I was afraid to, I was afraid Paul would intercept the call and I'd get her in trouble.”

“She was beyond your help, Mad. Don't beat yourself up over it. This proves it.”

“This proves nothing, goddammit, Jack. She wasn't crazy. She was terrified. And how do you know where he was, or what he had done to her before she did it?”

“He's an asshole, not a murderer. I'd stake my life on it,” he said calmly, as Maddy got ever more heated about it.

“Since when are you two such big pals? How the hell do you know what he did to her? You have no concept what that's like.” She was shaking with sobs as she sat at their kitchen table and cried for a woman she scarcely knew, but she had once walked the same path she had, and she knew that she was one of the fortunate survivors. Janet hadn't been as lucky.

“I do know what it's like,” he said quietly. “When I married you, you had terrible nightmares, and you slept in the fetal position with your arms over your head. I know, baby, I know … I saved you….”

“I know you did,” she said, blowing her nose, and looking at him sadly, “I never forget that…. I just feel
so sorry for her…. Think of how she must have felt when she did it. Her life must have been an agony of terror.”

“I suppose it was,” he said coolly “and I'm sorry for Paul and her kids. This is going to be rough for all of them. I just hope the media don't have a heyday with it.”

“I hope some hotshot young reporter does an investigative piece on it, and exposes what he was doing to her. Not just for her sake, but all the other women who are still alive and in the same position.”

“It's hard to understand why she didn't leave if it was that bad. She could have left. She didn't have to kill herself.”

“Maybe she thought she did,” Maddy said sympathetically, but Jack was unmoved by it.

“You got out, Maddy. She could have too!” he said firmly.

“It took me eight years to do it, and you helped me. Not everyone is that lucky. And I just got out by the grace of God and the skin of my teeth. Maybe in another year, he might have killed me.”

“You wouldn't have let that happen.” Jack sounded certain, but Maddy was less so.

“I let it happen for a hell of a long time until you came along. And my mother let it happen until my dad died. And I swear she missed it, and him until she died. Relationships like that are a lot sicker than people realize, for both the abused and the abuser.”

“That's an interesting perspective,” he said, looking skeptical again. “I think some people just ask for it, or expect it, or let it happen, because they're too weak to do anything else.”

“You don't know anything about it, Jack,” she said in a tense voice as she walked out of the kitchen, and went upstairs to get her bag and a jacket. She came down carrying a well-cut dark navy blazer, and she had put on small diamond earrings. She was always beautifully groomed and dressed, at home or at work, she never knew who she'd run into, and people recognized her everywhere she went.

They rode to work together that morning in silence. She was annoyed at some of the things Jack had said, and she didn't want to get in an argument with him about it. But Greg was waiting for her at work, he had seen the story, and he looked anguished.

“I'm sorry, Maddy, you must feel like shit. I know you wanted to help her. Maybe you couldn't have anyway.” He tried to reassure her, but she turned and snapped at him as soon as he spoke.

“Why? Because she was psychotic, like all other abused women, and she
wanted
to slit her wrists? Is that what you think?”

“All I meant was that she may have been too scared to get out anyway, like someone shell-shocked in a war zone.” Then he couldn't help adding, “Why do you think she did it? Just because he was abusing her, or do you think she was psychotic?” Maddy looked infuriated by the question.

“That's what Jack thinks, that's what most people think, that women in these situations are basically crazy anyway, regardless of what their husbands are doing to them. No one can understand why women don't leave. Well, some of them just can't … they just can't …,” she said, as she broke into sobs and Greg put his arms around her.

“I know, baby, I know…. I'm sorry … maybe you just couldn't save this one.” He spoke in soothing tones and she was grateful for his arms around her.

“I wanted … to … help … her.” She was wracked by sobs as she thought of the pain Janet must have been in to make her do it, and the agony her children must be in now, having lost their mother.

“How are we going to cover it?” Greg asked when she regained her composure.

“I'd like to do an editorial about abused women,” she said thoughtfully, as Greg handed her a cup of coffee.

“That's been cut out of our format. Remember?”

“I'm going to tell Jack I want to do one anyway,” she said firmly, and Greg shook his head. “I wish I could blow that bastard McCutchins right out of the water.”

“I wouldn't do that if I were you. And Jack won't let you do an editorial. I don't care if you do sleep with him every night, we got the word from the top. No editorials, no social or political commentaries, straight news only. We tell it like it happened, with no add-ons from us.”

“What's he going to do? Fire me? Besides, this is straight news. A senator's wife committed suicide, after being abused by her husband.”

“Jack still won't let you say that, or do an editorial on it, if I know him, unless you take over the station at gunpoint. And I honestly don't think he'd like that, Maddy”

“No kidding. But I'm going to do it anyway. We're live, for chrissake, they can't knock me off the air, without creating a riot or a scandal. So we do one more editorial, and then apologize for it afterward. If he gets pissed, I can live with that.”