Last Dance, Last Chance

Domestic abuse crosses all demographic boundaries. Friends and relatives often throw up their hands in frustration and disgust when they see one spouse, usually the wife, forgive and forgive and forgive. Why can’t she see what’s right in front of her eyes? Why can’t she show a little backbone? She’s too good for him.
    But they haven’t been there.
    Tragically, some abused husbands or wives don’t leave the relationship alive. Plans were already in place for Debbie Pignataro to become one of those casualties. But in the spring of 1999, no one could have convinced her of that. She had been systematically programmed over too many years to stay. As long as Anthony could persuade her—even a little bit—that he was sincere, it was still impossible for her to walk away from her marriage, even though it had become only a brittle shell of what she had once believed it was.
    The comfortable living she and Anthony had finally achieved had long since been shattered. Debbie worked that spring as a receptionist in a pediatrician’s office. It was the only income they had beyond help from Lena Pignataro, who seemed to have forgiven Anthony for his fall from grace with Tami. Like Debbie, she believed that her son was no longer seeing his mistress.
    Anthony had failed to find a job. He complained that he could have worked for Dairy Queen if only Judge Tills had allowed him to go to Florida. He would be working with his brothers, and there was dignity in that. No one should expect him to apply for just any job. No one could ask a man who had trained to be a medical doctor to work in a bank or deliver pizzas.
    By the time Anthony moved back home in July, their financial situation was desperate. Debbie couldn’t work any longer. She was ill. It wasn’t her neck; she had worked right through constant neck pain for years. At first she thought she had a really bad case of stomach flu, but her symptoms went on and on.
    After her visit to the ER and her very tentative diagnosis of pancreatitis, she never felt really well. Throughout June, Debbie continued to feel sick to her stomach. She could no longer blame it on the flu; her illness had gone on too long. She didn’t think it was psychosomatic, either, because on the surface, things were far better than they had been a few months earlier. Anthony hadn’t left her after all. He had been virtually living with the family for weeks before moving back for good. No, she couldn’t attribute her queasiness to sorrow over a broken marriage.
    But she felt worse all the time. Debbie had severe pains in her abdomen, and it was bloated and distended. She vomited a lot. It became difficult for her to hold down any nourishment at all.
    Over the years, Caroline Rago had usually come to visit her daughter and grandchildren on weekends. Debbie and Caroline had made it a habit to shop for groceries together at Tops or Wegmans supermarkets. Now, most of the time, Debbie was too sick to go. Caroline went alone, and Anthony would run to the store for a few things, although he didn’t really like to shop for groceries.
    He didn’t like to cook much, either—unless it was something special that he could make into a big production. And they couldn’t afford special foods any longer.
    When Debbie was able to cook, she didn’t prepare anything very exotic. At the time she first became ill, in May 1999—when she started having serious digestion problems—Debbie was the cook. “Then we had pasta, chicken, steak, hamburgers, salads.” She cooked her own pasta sauce most of the time. Anthony didn’t always like what Debbie served, and he often made an omelette for himself.
    Debbie rarely drank alcohol. She occasionally had a wine cooler. Actually, she preferred Kool-Aid or juice. Anthony, however, was still a heavy drinker. “He drank tequila every day in May,” she recalled.
    In June, Debbie began to feel worse. Some days she lay in bed and could barely lift her head off the pillow. “I had good days and bad days,” she said. But she couldn’t come up with any common denominator that might explain why her sickness came and went. The fact was that she never felt really well any more.
    On the days when she couldn’t get up, Anthony cooked, or at least he made sandwiches for Ralph and Lauren and brought her Kool-Aid or some ice cream or sherbet. Debbie decided there had to be something the matter with her taste buds. Food just didn’t taste right any more—sherbet in particular. She