Mean Woman Blues

were trying to tell it
? she thought.
What would I say? Would I say my own husband tried to rape me? Would it be true?
    She couldn’t explain that part at all. She wondered if, in some crazy, sick fashion, he was sexually excited by the thrill of his performance, turned on in some kind of twisted, violent way. But there were two kinds of violence at issue: sexual and physical. He may or may not have tried to rape her, but he’d most certainly knocked her around. You really couldn’t call it anything else, and you couldn’t forgive or excuse it. She wanted to; she really, really wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened. But her back hurt too badly.
    Falling against the wall, she’d hurt herself. Her back was killing her; she had to get some ice on it. And she couldn’t go home. David would be home soon; if he wasn’t, so much the worse. She’d be there alone, contemplating the ruins of her marriage.
    She wanted her mama.
    Without thinking much about it she drove to her parents’ house. If she’d analyzed it she’d have remembered that they had fought and then made up, would still have gone there, as countless women did when their husbands hit them. But she didn’t think; she just drove. After her first marriage exploded, she’d had to live at first simply and then in poverty. Now, with David, she was slowly, painfully trying to recreate the warmth and luxury of her parents’ home, but she wasn’t succeeding, and she felt it. Felt the lack of warmth she didn’t know how to find. She hadn’t her mother’s knack or, for that matter, her mother’s money. She really didn’t know where to start and she was too proud to ask anyone except a decorator. Her wonderful new home looked like someone else’s; it had an iciness, an aloofness. It didn’t look loved.
    She thought of her parents’ den, with its two wide-screen TVs and its books; its worn, cozy furniture and her mother’s needlework; its framed photos of family vacations; its seldom-used fireplace; her dad’s golf trophies. Now that was home. She wanted nothing more than to be in that room, with her mother’s arms around her as if she were a little girl again. She realized with surprise that her own home had hardly a book in it, hadn’t any of the earmarks of two people’s mutual interests, their shared life.
    She knocked shave-and-a-haircut (the family signal) and entered through the door that was never locked till bedtime. Her parents were having dinner on trays in front of one of the televisions. Even though she’d grown up in this house, in this room, she felt like an intruder. “Oh. I’m sorry to interrupt your dinner.”
    Her father didn’t speak. He returned to his lamb chop with an aggrieved air.
    Her mother was gracious as always. She crossed the room to kiss her daughter lightly. “Karen. Congratulations. We saw the show and it was wonderful.” She sounded underwhelmed.
    “Mother… Mother…” Karen felt her face breaking; no need to hold it in anymore. “Mother, he hit me.” She let it all out as she collapsed in her mother’s arms— the tears, the sobs, the body shakes, everything that conveyed her desperation. She wasn’t just hurt; she was heartbroken. And she’d had to walk out of that studio and drive over here as if nothing had happened. Now she was screaming.
    Her mother said, “Calm down now. Calm down.” That was the last thing she wanted to do; she’d been calm for the last forty-five minutes. She wanted to be her mother’s child. “Boyd, get her some water.”
    In a moment, she looked up to see her father holding a glass of water. The expression on his face terrified her almost more than the thought of her husband.
    Her mother took the glass and held it out to her. “Drink this now. Drink this.” Karen hated the way people repeated themselves when someone lost it. She took the glass, and she sipped, momentarily quiet. And then she began hicupping.
    Her dad sat down on one of the big, shabby sofas, looking like something that belonged on Mt. Rushmore. He didn’t speak at all, didn’t even look at her, just stared at the wall. He had turned off the television.
    “You’re all right now. Tell us what happened.”
    “Oh, Mother, I was so happy tonight! I wanted to surprise him. So I went to the studio and sat in the front row.” Her mother nodded. Karen hiccupped.
    Her father said, “For God’s sake, drink that water.”
    Karen obeyed. “He wasn’t happy to see me. I don’t… know why. I tried