The-Hummingbird-s-Cage(59)

Simon switched off the engine and made no move to exit or to help me out. Instead, he rested his left arm on the steering wheel and eased himself in his seat, angling in my direction. Still he said nothing.

If he’d questioned me then, I couldn’t have gone on. I would have shut down, just as I’d done with the doctor in the clinic and with Alicia from the prosecutor’s office. It wasn’t from obstinacy or defiance. It was just that some wounds run so deep, they can cut you all over again in the telling.

But almost before I knew it—there I was, telling Simon. It helped that it was too dark to see his face well, or for him to see mine.

I told him about Jim’s jealous rage that day, and the punch to the stomach. About the emergency trip to the clinic two days later. I even told him something I’d forgotten till that very moment—about rushing to the bathroom in the clinic before the exam because I was bleeding through my clothes. And somehow there was my blood all over the bathroom floor, the walls, and I panicked, pulling paper towels from the dispenser, frantic to clean everything up before anybody found out I’d made such a mess.

Then, after the exam, the curettage, with Jim hovering and the doctor advising us to go try again, we stood in line to pay the bill, just one more couple like any other in the room. An office assistant was soothing a fussy toddler, holding him over a machine to copy his tiny hands till he laughed.

As I stood there watching them, it was the first time—the only time—I shed tears over the baby. A nurse pulled us out of line and hustled us to a desk in a quiet corner to handle the payment in private. Jim went through the motions of a man comforting his wife, his hand a vise on my shoulder.

Once home, he warned me never to mention the baby again.

And so I hadn’t.

“Joanna, I’m so sorry.” Simon reached for me, but I shrank from him.

“I appreciate it—I do,” I said apologetically. “But I don’t think I could handle a single bit of kindness right now. Does that make sense?”

“It does.”

“I always thought I’d break into a thousand pieces if I ever dared tell anyone about Jim. Like there’d be some punishment—from Jim or, I don’t know, from God, for all I knew. As if the two of them were one and the same. Crazy, right? I mean, if one of them existed, the other couldn’t possibly.”

“It’s hard to make sense of the world when people do terrible things.”

“And get away with it—don’t forget that. And get away with it. If God protects fools and drunks, he sure as hell protects bastards, too. Where’s all that righteous anger of his, anyway? I’ve seen plenty of anger out there, but never his. If he hears the smallest prayer, he sure as hell can hear a scream.”

Simon was looking off in the distance. He had an earnest grip on the steering wheel.

“It can seem that way sometimes,” he said, his voice low. “In our darkest hours, it can seem like there’s nothing out there. When you’re fighting for your life, weeks into a battle—outgunned, outmaneuvered and so exhausted you don’t know if you’re awake or just trapped inside your own nightmare. Watching your buddies disappear one by one in a blast of shells—just gone—or ground up like raw meat under tank treads.”

His voiced trailed off. I was watching him then, mesmerized by his profile, by the strain in his voice—so unlike him. I waited for him to go on.

“Artillery, mortar fire, tanks raking you from all sides . . . explosions so close your ears bleed. You wipe at the mud and the blood, knowing there’s nowhere to run. Nowhere. So scared all you want to do is crawl up inside your own helmet. And you hear the screams. You hear the prayers, too. Impossible to miss.” He turned and gave me a thin smile. “Trust me. Impossible.”

“Simon . . . I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

“No reason you should.”

“You make me ashamed.”

He cocked his head. “Why on earth?”

“I forget other people have scars, too. Where were you? Afghanistan?”

He didn’t answer.

“No,” I continued slowly, “that couldn’t be right. We haven’t had battles like that over there. Weeks and weeks, against tanks . . .” I waited for an explanation, but he wasn’t offering one.

“You know,” he said finally, “maybe some prayers aren’t answered right away. Maybe we have to wait for it. Or work for it.”