"Yes, it was Ed. But you can't call the police." She looked up now, the good eye full of fear and misery. "Please don't call the police, Ralph. I can't bear to think of Natalie's dad in jail for... for Helen burst into tears. Natalie goggled at her mother for a moment in comic surprise, and then joined her.
"Ralph?" McGovern asked hesitantly. "DO you want me to get her some Tylenol or something?"
"Better not," he said. "We don't know what's wrong with her, how bad she might be hurt." His eyes shifted to the show window, not wanting to see what was out there, hoping not to, and seeing it anyway.
A beer cooler cut off the view. Some of them were cupping their hands v: avid faces lined up all the way down to the place where the to the sides of their faces to cut the glare.
"What should we do, you guys?" Sue asked. She was looking at the gawkers and picking nervously at the hem of the Red Apple duster employees had to wear. "If the company finds out I locked the door during business hours, I'm apt to lose my job."
Helen tugged at his hand. "Please, Ralph," she repeated, only it came out Peese, Raff through her swollen lips. "Don't call anybody."
Ralph looked at her uncertainly. He had seen a lot of women wearing a lot of bruises over the course of his life, and a couple (although not many, in all honesty) who had been beaten much more severely than Helen. It hadn't always seemed this grim, though. His mind and morals had been formed at a time when people believed that what went on between a husband and wife behind the closed doors of their marriage was their business, and that included the man who hit with his fists and the woman who cut with her tongue.
You couldn't make people behave, and meddling in their affairs-even with the best of intentions-all too often turned friends into enemies.
But then he thought of the way she had been carrying Natalie as she staggered across the parking lot: held casually on one hip like a textbook. If she had dropped the baby in the lot, or crossing Harris Avenue, she probably wouldn't have known it; Ralph guessed that it was nothing but instinct that had caused Helen to take the baby in the first place. She hadn't wanted to leave Nat in the care of the man who had beaten her so badly she could only see out of one eye and talk in mushy, rounded syllables.
He thought of something else, as well, something that had to do with the days following Carolyn's death earlier in the year. He had been surprised at the depth of his grief-it had been an expected death, after all; he had believed he had taken care Of most of his grieving while Carolyn was still alive-and it had rendered him awkward and ineffective about the final arrangements which needed to be made. He had managed the call to the Brookings-Senith funeral home, but it was Helen who had gotten the obit form from the Derry News and helped him to fill it out, Helen who had gone with him to pick out a coffin (McGovern, who hated death and the trappings which surrounded it had made himself scarce), and beloved Helen who had helped him choose a floral centerpiece-the one which said Wife.
And it had been Helen, of course, who had orchestrated the little party afterward, providing sandwiches from Frank's Catering and soft drinks and beer from the Red Apple.
These were things Helen had done for him when he could not do them for himself. Did he not have an ohbligation to repay her kindness, even if Helen might not see it as kindness right now?
"Bill?" he asked. "What do you think?"
McGovern looked from Ralph to Helen, sitting in the red plastic chair with her battered face lowered, and then back to Ralph again.
He produced a handkerchief and wiped his lips nervously. "I don't know. I like Helen a lot, and I want to do the right thing-you know I do-but something like this... who knows what the right thing is" Ralph suddenly remembered what Carolyn used to say whenever he started moaning and bitching about some chore he didn't want to do, some errand he didn't want to run, Or some duty call he didn't want to make: It's a long walk back