Dreamland(27)

But that was an old story, right? Her story was the same as that of thousands, maybe even millions, of other women. Now she understood that there was something wrong with Gary, something that could never be fixed. And Gary had a sick and intuitive kind of radar, one that seemed to understand how far he could actually go. When she was pregnant, he hadn’t laid a hand on her; he’d known she would leave him if he did anything to possibly hurt the baby. Nor had he touched her in the first few months after Tommie was born, when she was sleep-deprived. It was the only time during the marriage when she’d let her responsibilities in the house slide. She still cooked his meals and did his laundry and shined his shoes and kissed him the way he wanted, but sometimes the living room was cluttered when he came home from work, and sometimes Tommie had drool or spills on his clothing. It wasn’t until Tommie was five or six months old that he slapped her again. On that night, Gary had bought her a negligé, the box wrapped with a pretty red bow. She’d always known that Gary liked to see her in negligés, just as he was particular when it came to sex. He always wanted her to whisper certain things, he wanted her hair and makeup done, he wanted her to beg for him to take her, he liked her to talk dirty. On that day, though, when he came home with the negligé, she was utterly exhausted. Tommie had cried inconsolably for much of the previous night, and it had continued while Gary was at work. By then she’d lowered her guard; by then she’d convinced herself that the anger and the shouting and the pain were behind her, so she told him that she was too tired. Instead, she promised to wear the negligé the following evening, and they could make it a special night. Which wasn’t what Gary wanted. He wanted her that night, not the following night, and all at once she was blinking back tears, her cheek on fire with his handprint.

Again, the apologies. Again, the gifts in the aftermath. Again, the knowledge that she should have left. But where would she have gone? Back home, with her tail between her legs, so others could tell her that she’d made a mistake by getting married too young? That she’d made a mistake by falling in love with the wrong man? Even if she could face the endless judgment of others, he would find her there. It would be the first place he’d look. As for going to the police, Gary was the police, the most powerful police in the entire world, so who would believe her? More than that, there was also Tommie to think about. For a long time, Gary doted on Tommie. He talked to him and played with him and held Tommie’s hands as Tommie began to toddle around the house. She knew how hard it was for children to grow up with only a single parent; she’d made a vow that she’d never do that to Tommie. That Gary wouldn’t change diapers didn’t seem all that important when he was willing to spend so much time with his son, to the point that Beverly sometimes felt neglected.

Beverly now understood that Gary was doing the same thing with Tommie that he’d done with her. He pretended to be someone other than who he really was. He pretended to be an ideal, loving father. But Tommie grew older and sometimes dropped a sharp toy that Gary would step on, or there would be puddles on the bathroom floor after Tommie took a bath. The anger inside Gary could hibernate, but it couldn’t rest forever, and as Tommie aged, Gary saw increasing imperfections in his son. He recognized elements of Beverly in Tommie’s personality. He became again the man he truly was. Beverly knew all about the stern voice and occasional shouts; what she hadn’t expected were the bruises she began to find on Tommie’s thighs and arms. As if Gary had squeezed too hard, or maybe even pinched his son.

She hadn’t wanted to believe that Gary could do something like that. When Beverly did something wrong, Gary would tell her that she’d done it on purpose. But Tommie was just a little kid, and Gary had to understand that toddlers made mistakes, right? That nothing Tommie did that angered his father was done on purpose? Beverly went to the library, but the information she found wasn’t much help. Oh, she’d read it all. Books, articles, tips from law enforcement, theories of psychologists and psychiatrists, and the reality was mixed. Sometimes an abusive husband also became abusive to his children, and sometimes he didn’t.

But the strange bruises…

There was also the fact that Tommie had changed from a laughing, smiling, and outgoing toddler to the quiet, introspective little boy she now knew. Tommie never admitted anything, but Beverly started to see fear in Tommie’s expression when Gary’s car pulled into the driveway after work. She saw a forced enthusiasm when Gary prodded his son to kick the ball around the yard. She also remembered how Tommie had fallen when he was learning to ride a bike a few months earlier. The training wheels should have kept him upright, but they hadn’t, and Tommie cried in her arms with skinned knees and elbows while Gary ranted about how uncoordinated his son was. She remembered how, over time, Gary showed less interest in Tommie; she remembered how he began to treat Tommie more like property than simply a child to love. She remembered how Gary told her that she was spoiling Tommie and that he would grow up to be a mama’s boy. She recalled that on Tommie’s first day of kindergarten, Gary hadn’t seemed to care about anything other than the fact that his eggs were overcooked at breakfast.

And the strange, unexplainable bruises…

Gary might be Tommie’s father, but Beverly was his mother. She had carried him and delivered him. She’d breastfed him, and she was the one who had held him in her arms night after night until he finally learned to sleep more than a few hours at a stretch. She changed his diapers and cooked his meals and made sure he got his vaccinations and brought him to the doctor when his fever was so high that she’d been worried he might get brain damage. She helped him learn to dress himself and gave him baths and loved every minute of all those things, reveling in Tommie’s innocence and continuing development, even as Gary continued his endless cycles of abuse with her, always in the hours after Tommie went to sleep.