“That’s not true, Martin. I’m your wife; of course I care about you.”
He studied her for a few moments. “Then why ain’t you showing it?”
“I do in my own way, by making a home for our children and—”
“You know damn well that’s not what I’m talking about.”
“If you’re suggesting I lie with you Martin, I won’t do it. You’re my husband, and I’d do most anything for you but not that.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because you don’t want any more children, and I don’t want to bring another unloved child into the world. Nellie is going on three years old, yet you’ve never once hugged her or said how pretty she is. And with Virgil it’s even worse. You treat him like—”
“Don’t give me that horseshit!” He stood and began pacing across the room. “There’s more to this than what you’re saying. I don’t know what your game is, but I’ll find out soon enough.”
“There’s nothing more to it. I’m happy being here with the children, and I’m not willing to risk it by going back to the way we once were.”
“You’ve got no say in it. You’re my wife, and I can take what I want whenever—”
“No, you can’t.” She pulled a heavy bladed knife from beneath her embroidery. “You might try, Martin, but I will fight you tooth and nail. You will not walk away unscathed.”
His jaw dropped as he looked first at the knife and then at her face. “You are batshit crazy, Eliza. Batshit crazy. If I wanna take that knife away from you, I can do it easy. You know that, don’t you?”
She gave a barely perceptible nod. “Yes, I believe you could, but before you do think about what it will cost you. A man with a scarred face is not nearly as pretty as you are.”
Martin shook his head. “I never thought I’d live to see the day my own wife would turn against me.”
His expression was sorrowful, his words threaded with a melancholy she’d not heard before. “I don’t mean it to be hateful Martin, it’s just that—”
He smacked the knife out of her hand and sent it sailing across the room.
“Don’t you ever try to tell me what I can or can’t do!”
Grabbing the front of her dress he yanked her from the chair, threw her to the floor, and kicked her in the ribs. There was the crack of bone. After that she no longer had strength enough to cry out for she could barely breathe. He dropped his pants, lifted her skirt, tore her knickers away, and climbed atop her. The pain was so excruciating that she blacked out.
When she came to, he was gone.
Repercussions
BY THE TIME MARTIN LEFT the house the trolley had stopped running, so he had to walk back to the train station and wait almost three hours for a southbound headed to Altoona. It was near dawn when he arrived home. He’d planned to stretch out on the sofa and catch an hour or two of sleep without waking Martha Mae, but he didn’t have to worry about that. She was sitting in the chair waiting for him.
Noticing the half-empty whiskey glass on the table beside her, he knew there was going to be trouble.
“Before you start in on me, you gotta at least let me explain about—”
“You were with her, weren’t you?”
“Only to see the kids and bring the money, like always. The trains were off and—”
“Something is always off, isn’t it? Nothing is ever your fault. Those eight kids just fell from the sky, and you didn’t have a thing to do with it.”
“We’ve been through this about the kids a hundred times. Let’s give it a rest and move on.”
She bounded out of the chair and stuck her pointy little nose in his face.
“Move on?” she screamed. “You want me to move on and ignore the fact that you’re probably screwing her again? Well, you can just forget it. This time you’ve gone too far.” She went back to the half-empty glass and drained it.
“Martha Mae,” he pleaded, “it’s five-thirty in the morning. Don’t you think it’s time to stop drinking and get some sleep?”
“No, I don’t. And you don’t need to tell me what time it is; I know, because I’ve been up all night waiting for you!” She hurled the glass at him.
As he stepped aside it narrowly missed his head, slammed against the wall, and sent shards of glass across the room.