At a certain point, he became rather cavalier about his now-regular absences. He seemed to time them, placing them in the middle of the week, like a Wednesday golf game. And he was usually gone all weekend, as well. He would pop back home as if nothing untoward had happened, as if he had been out to get cigarettes. He would bring back gifts: records from a downtown shop, or t-shirts, as if he had been vacationing somewhere, which, in a way, I suppose he was.
During the day, there would be a silence, a mutual truce. My brother and I would be in and out of the house, off on some excursion. But as the shadows of twilight lengthened, a process that did not take long on the mountain, nocturnal creatures would stir, smacking their lips at some imagined feast of blood and pain. My brother and I would be tucked in, my mother's lips clamped tight, her eyes turned away from us. She knew what was coming, and dreaded it, but did not, could not, shrink from confronting him. In this she was brave. For by a certain hour, he would have a certain number of cans or bottles beside him. If it was baseball season, an East Coast game would be blaring in the background. More often than not, however, he would be playing music on the stereo. The hi-fi system was the point of pride in his living room, far outclassing the television set in terms of prominence, placement, and attention. When the arguing, the confrontations, would begin, he would turn the stereo up louder and louder, and I would listen intently to every note, every lyric. The Eagles' Greatest Hits was the favorite, a collection of songs that I came to know by heart, the featured soundtrack in a recurring drama of beatings, shouting, dish-crashing, and spitting.
Because as loud as the music became, I could always, in that thinly-walled room, hear their positioning, their circling. I imagined the two of them as wild animals, jockeying for the most advantageous location from which to strike. What struck me most, at that age, was the bitterness, the sheer contempt in both of their voices; hers, that of the betrayed, the victim who wants to show none of her pain; his, the contemptuos, arrogant, and drunk playboy, the one who assumed that she existed to tend the home and the children, while he did whatever he wished. They were voices I only heard at night, between them. Those personalities did not exist in the light of day, or in front of me.
With occasional glances toward my brother, to assure myself that he was asleep and would hear none of this, I would listen to them, laying on my bed in the dark. The slapping sounds were the sharpest, ringing through the halls. These would usually be followed by a generous round of spitting, and I gradually learned to distinguish between the two of them: she had a more delicate approach, using only her saliva. He would draw upon reserves of bile and mucus and would punctuate his profane names for her with a release of phlegm and then a blow. I would hear the blow, of course, and then the fall, either against the adjoining wall, or the floor, or, on one memorable evening, the coffee table. He had knocked her to the floor, picked her up, and bounced her off the coffee table, a move worthy of a wrestler. This resulted in a shattered eardrum, and she would be driven to the hospital, at least a half-hour's drive down the mountain, by the same man who had caused the injury. What words they exchanged on that particular drive, I can only imagine, though I have never really cared to do so.
These performances, from the perspective of a child, would seemingly last for hours, though I am now unsure whether such savagery could be maintained for much longer than one hour. For after he had (as he always did) beaten the fight out of her, he would open the back door and toss her onto the concrete porch, a kind of sheltered storage space, where she would sob and scream and curse him. I would hear every word she spoke, every move she made, her shuffling across the concrete with her battered body, her endless, endless weeping.
The first time this happened, she pounded on the back door, yelling his name over and over again. By this point, he had calmly returned to his game, or to contemplating the music, ignoring her. Then she started tapping on the window, my bedroom window.
"Charlie?" she said in her mother's tone. "Charlie? Can you hear me? Can you let me in?"
I was nine years old. What else was I going to do? I got out of bed, softly tip-toeing past my seemingly unconscious brother, and went to the living room.
"What are you doing up, son?" my dad said, sounding as if he was pleased to see me, but startled by my insomnia. I didn't know how to respond to him, so I said nothing, and proceeded toward the door. His tone darkened.
"What are you doing? There's no one out there. Go back to bed."
I opened the door and let her in. She nearly collapsed on me, then rushed toward where he was sitting. But he had already risen, partially anticipating her return, but heading toward me. He dismissed her with a backhand to her face, and, as near as I can recall, concentrated on kicking me, silently, as if my betrayal were so shocking, he could think of no words to punctuate his violence.
On later evenings, my mother and I devised a plan. She was small enough to squeeze into the window, though the positioning was awkward. I moved my bed, so that when her upper body came through the window, she could tumble onto the mattress. I became adept at opening the window silently, though I would usually have to wait until I heard snoring from the living room, or until one of the louder songs, like "Lyin' Eyes," would come up in the track listing, so I could let her in without him hearing. I don't know what he imagined she was doing out there all night. Who can fathom the logic of such an animal? But I waited, until I could open the window without him hearing it. And she would tumble clumsily onto my bed, weeping softly and bleeding from her face. Being a mother, she did not take up space on my child's bed. She would sleep on the floor of my bedroom, until he left for work in the morning. And I would watch her, on the floor. And I would watch my brother, sleeping on the bed across from mine. But I did not sleep. While he was there, I did not sleep.
