Chapter Bear #2
She stops because he hasn’t blinked; his eyes haven’t left her face.
And this part, it’s like someone with a fear of heights, someone at the top of a ladder, so sure they’re about to fall, they have the impulse to jump and get it over with.
It takes all her strength not to sink to his feet and let him kick her, to not even try to escape its inevitability, but to submit, because this anticipation only delays what she knows is coming.
But then she thinks of Bear up in the bedroom closet, and Maia eating dinner in Mehri’s kitchen, and straightens: “I’ve called him Bear. ”
He smiles and she sees his demeanor shift, sees him shake his head, reach for a drink.
She realizes he doesn’t believe her. “No,” she says, “no, it’s the truth.
” And she takes out the envelope from where it’s hidden between two cookbooks.
He turns then, one hand still on the water filter as he surveys the certificate.
He spends longer than he needs to, staring, and her hand begins to shake as she continues to hold out the paper for him, its audible wackering filling the seconds as they tick by.
He looks up and, holding her gaze, lets the jug drop, hard, so that it smashes against the kitchen tiles.
She feels water soak into her socks and knows she should have thought to put on shoes.
He reaches out, grabs a clump of hair near the crown of her head and pulls it backward, his face just inches above hers. For a moment she’s confused, thinks he may be about to kiss her, but instead he hurls her head against the side of the refrigerator.
Even though she’d promised herself she wouldn’t, she cries out in shock, then quickly closes her mouth, not wanting to risk waking Bear. She must not drag his presence into Gordon’s thoughts.
“You’re my wife,” he hisses. “I asked you to do one thing for me”—her head slams against the fridge once more—“and you couldn’t do it. Just one”—thud—“damn”—thud—“thing.”
Some part of her realizes he’s only just beginning; that there are only so many times she will feel the flux of brain, skull, and flesh against metal before she does not.
And so she overrides her wish not to disturb Bear, and does something she’s never done before: she screams for help.
Not just once, but over and over, knowing the small window in the pantry is open, that the door is ajar, that it will be impossible for someone in the cul-de-sac not to hear.
When he covers her mouth, she clamps her teeth down hard on the side of his hand, sinking into flesh and wiry hairs.
He recoils, surprised. But it’s only a moment’s relief, because now there are a few feet between them and she realizes he will use this as a run-up, that he’s about to charge.
She springs sideways and feels the midwife’s careful stitches pop. But there is no pain, just a rush of adrenaline, as he chases her through to the living room. He grasps her hair again, but she jerks away and is freed, a prickle of white heat at her scalp.
He lunges, pulls her to the ground, and although she hasn’t heard the shatter of glass or the front door open, someone—who?
—is in the room with them. It is the man from two doors down, who only moved in a few months ago; the man she sometimes sees walking his dog back from the park on the afternoons when she’s set out to meet Maia at the halfway point from school, the man who has smiled at her pregnant belly and who one day said something about it being nice weather for ducks, as they sloshed past one another.
This man, he is pulling Gordon from her, and for a moment it feels as though this is an end, of sorts, that whatever happens next will be a de-escalation.
But then Gordon is shouting, “What the hell are you doing in my house?” as the man’s dog yaps at his ankles, its trailing lead caught up around the legs of the coffee table.
The man puts up his hands, as if to say, I don’t want any trouble, I don’t want to fight, as Gordon places flat palms firmly against his chest and then pushes with such force, Cora can only watch as the man falls backward, smashing through the glazing of the patio doors.
Later, and not necessarily in this order, a police officer—young, maybe not even twenty-two—will dial the digits of Mehri’s number that he finds written out by the phone and arrange for Maia to stay overnight.
Then, he will go upstairs and retrieve Bear from the closet, and Cora will wonder how he knows to jig the baby just so and to pat his back until his cries ebb into occasional shuddering sighs.
But she won’t think to ask, because the words have disappeared from her head; the path between thought and voice temporarily broken.
She will keep a hand over her right ear, trying to silence the ringing inside her head, not comprehending why it’s there or that it has anything to do with the scene in the kitchen just forty-five minutes earlier.
She will notice when the flashing blue lights slide from the living-room walls as the ambulance outside pulls away.
She will watch as an older police officer cuffs Gordon’s hands behind his back and, although she cannot hear the man’s words, she will understand he is a patient, that there is something in his manner that tells her he is uncomfortable to be cast in this role, leading away the man who perhaps officiated his own mother’s death; diagnosed his wife’s depression; said, Don’t worry, I’ve seen it all before, as he felt the man’s enlarged prostate.
Because Gordon is a man well-liked by his patients.
He is a good doctor, no matter what his surgeon father thinks of general practice.
Cora will nod and point to the back of the chair as the young police officer gathers up her things, slipping his hand into the front of her bag to check her keys are there.
He will leave the room momentarily to lead through a second set of paramedics when he hears them in the hall.
And they will smile and treat her with such tender kindness that she feels it’s this—of all things—that may break her.
She watches the medic’s lips, can’t decipher the words, but senses their warmth, notices how she keeps her eyes on Cora’s own, not returning the anxious glances of her more junior colleague.
All these people, so many of them young, dragged into the horror of their evening, into the messiness of their lives, which have been unfolding year by year, month by month, week by week, day by day, hour by hour, to bring them to this moment.