Baal

THE SUMMER MOVED like something alive. It weakened through August, losing days like scorching drops of blood.



The handprints peeled away, as the doctors had theorized, and Mary Kate came home from the hospital. She adjusted well to everyday life and no mention was made of the attack; in fact, it seemed to Joe that she was much more content with both her job and their life together. Once, though, they watched a television program about a rapist on the loose in Manhattan and she suddenly began laughing, quietly at first but with a rising, frightening intensity, until she burst into tears and he held her as she trembled.



Lt. Hepelmann telephoned to ask if she would come down to his precinct stationhouse to page through their mug files. She declined, explaining to Joe that if she ever saw the man again she felt sure she'd go into hysterics. He told Hepelmann and put down the phone before the policeman could protest.



There were other calls and visits: from Dr. Wynter, who told them he wanted to check with Mary Kate every few weeks because the "handprint symptom," as he now called it, was something he would not soon forget: from her parents, who brought her flowers and bottles of wine and who spoke to him with the tongues of serpents.



One night while they sat in the dark before black-and-white figures on the television screen, she looked at him and he saw the images reflected, glistening, in her eyes. "I love you," she said.



He sat still. The phrase was neither familiar nor easy for him.



"I do. I really do. It's just in the last few weeks that I've realized I love you so much." She put her arms around his neck and kissed him lightly on the lips, her hair soft against his face.



He returned her kiss. Her tongue slipped into his mouth and explored it like a wet Columbus, though the world was hardly new. He felt his body answering the call. "All right," he said with a wry smile. "You want something. I can always tell."



She held him tight and kissed him again. She always smelled, he thought, like newly mown grass in a wide, wet field. Probably his Midwest "tied to the land" imagination showing. She leaned over and nibbled softly at his ear. "I want," she whispered, "a child."



She followed his eyes. They slid away from her toward the television screen. "Mary Kate," he said in a low, restrained voice, "we've gone through all this before. There will be a time when a child will be welcome. You know that. But right now we have a hard enough time supporting ourselves, much less another mouth. And I wouldn't want to bring up a child in this neighborhood."



"That ivy-covered suburban cottage you've been dreaming about," she said, "is something we're never going to have. Can't you see that? Now we don't have anything. Don't look at me like that. You know I'm right. All we own right now is what we have in this apartment, things that are either yours or mine. We don't have anything we can call 'ours.'"



"Come on," he said. "A child is not a toy. You don't pick up a child and play with it like a doll. You'd have to quit your job, I'd have to work a double shift. Hell, no."



She disentangled herself from him and stood staring through the open window, her arms folded across her chest. Finally she turned to him again. "I need something," she said softly. "I really do. I want something to be different... I don't know what it is."



"You're coming down off a traumatic experience." He winced. Christ! Don't bring that up! "You need some time to rest, baby. Don't get yourself all upset about this. We'll talk about it later."



Mary Kate watched him, her dark brown eyes unyielding in a face suddenly pale and hard. She said, "We could get a loan to cover my time off from work."



"Mary Kate. Please."



She came over beside him and put his hand to her cheek. He was amazed to feel tears. What the hell is this? he wondered. She'd never before gotten this emotional about a child. Usually, after he'd explained to her the economics of the thing, she would drop the subject without argument. This time she was hanging on with a tenacity he'd never seen before. "It would be a beautiful child," she said softly.



He eased her over the chair arm into his lap and whispered, "I'm sure it would be," kissing the tears away as they danced down the fine plains of her face.



"Now," he said, nudging her chin to root her out of this mood, "what is 'it' going to be? Can't have them both ways, you know. Got to have one or another."



She smiled and sniffled. "You're teasing me. I don't like to be teased."



"I'm not teasing. We're going to have a child someday. We should at least decide now what 'it' is going to be."



"A boy. I want a boy."



"Everybody wants boys. What happens to girls when they're born and they find out their parents wanted boys? That's the beginnings of the inferiority feelings women have. A girl would be nice. Pink diapers scattered all over the floor, dolls lying on the chair so that when I sit down something squeaks and it scares hell out of me..."



"You're teasing again..."



"You want a boy, huh? That's all right. Then there are those little plastic soldiers that puncture your bare feet when you walk into the kitchen for a midnight snack. That's all right."



Mary Kate snuggled closer to his chest and held tightly to him, her hands gently swirling at the back of his neck.



"A big businessman, maybe that's what he'll be," he envisioned, kissing her forehead and then the closed lids of her eyes. "Maybe the President." He reconsidered for a few seconds. "No, no. Scratch that. But somebody important."



As the television continued flickering its shades of fantasy, he picked her up and carried her to the sofa that, when kicked in the right place, turned down into a spring-mattressed bed. He laid her down between the cool blue sheets and then, undressing, joined her there. She twined her arms and legs around him in a sweet captivity.



He made love to her in a soft, quiet way. Her body, always responsive, reacted to the caress of his fingertips. She cried out and he took her cries deep into his throat. But always in his mind was the knowledge that someone else had enjoyed her warmth. Someone else, held between her thighs, had moved his body powerfully within her. The vision nagged relentlessly at him and he sought to control it by concentrating only on her body; the firm ripened breasts, the smooth light down on her arms and thighs, the barely healed scratches that ran the length of her belly...



And when he slept, enclosed by her limbs, he dreamed of those marks he had first seen beneath the crisp hospital sheets. Now they moved in red circles on her body, around and around until every inch of her flesh was burnt and swollen. And then a fiery hand planted itself on his face and sought to gouge out his eyes and hold them steaming on the tips of vaporish fingers.



When he awakened from his troubled sleep sweat was cold at his temples. He rose quietly from wet sheets and stood in the darkness, staring at her where she lay coiled on the mattress. Behind him the television's test pattern cast a black-shadowed grid on the opposite wall. He switched it off.



Those nightmares, he thought, are becoming too real. They had begun when Mary Kate returned from the hospital. When his mind was unguarded in sleep they crept out from their hiding places and sowed the seeds of hysteria. They now hid, rasping, in corners, listening, listening. Waiting for him to lose strength and return to the bed. And when his eyes had closed they would ooze from their crevices to touch hot fingers to his forehead. Against them he was defenseless. What was that theory, he asked himself, about the subconscious mind being the ruler of the body? That the subconscious mind, through dreams, spoke in cryptic scrawls of mental pain? Shit on it, he protested to himself. I'm just tired as hell.



He went into the bathroom and drank a glass of cold water, then returned to bed, and slipped against Mary Kate's warmth. As an afterthought he threw aside the sheets again and rechecked the door to make certain it was locked.



In the morning he was stirred by the sun as it lay in golden stripes across his face. She was cooking bacon and eggs for him - something she rarely did anymore. Usually it was only cold cereal and a pot of reheated coffee. He made a conscious effort to be pleasant to her as she moved about the tiny nook of a kitchen. There was no mention of babies and he drank his fresh strong coffee while talking about the new dispatch man they'd hired at the cab company.



During the weeks that followed she ceased to talk about wanting children. He was honestly relieved not to have to answer her questions about why they couldn't afford a baby. The frequency of his nightmares diminished until, finally, he lost his fear of giving himself up to the darkness of sleep. Mary Kate settled back into a regular work schedule, though now she always left the diner before dusk, and it seemed to him that his tips were getting better. He was certain it was his imagination but he felt inspired and new all the same. He began, after a while, to entertain thoughts of returning to school.



He soon decided to do so without consulting Mary Kate, and telephoned a friend he had met in a literary criticism class three semesters before. "Hello? Kenneth? This is Joe Raines. Right, from Marsh's class."



"Oh yeah. Hey, I haven't seen you for a while. You've been hiding or something? What'd you come out with?"



"B. Just barely. Listen, I'm thinking about getting back into school next semester and I'd like to know what's going on, who's teaching what. I'm taking a day off Friday and I... we... wondered if you and Terri could drop over."



"You're still hacking, huh?"



"Yeah. It's pretty rough but it beats working."



"I know how it is. God, you and I have got a lot of ground to cover. It's been almost a year since I've seen you."



"Well," said Joe, "I've gotten caught up in things, I guess."



"Friday? Okay then, that sounds great. I'll pick up a semester catalogue for you and bring it over. What time? Do you want us to bring a bottle of wine?"



"We'll take care of that. Would seven be okay?"



"Fine. You're still at the same place? The sweat-box?"



"Right." He laughed weakly. "The sweatbox."



"Okay then, we'll see you Friday. Thanks for calling."



"Sure. Good-bye."



The idea of returning to school excited him. For him attending classes was a release from the hot chrome crush of Manhattan traffic. The cavalier poets would sing in his ears instead of the metal voice of a taxi meter.



That night after work when he told Mary Kate of his decision, he was surprised at her genuine enthusiasm. On Friday afternoon they shopped for sandwich meats at the delicatessen on the next block, then went to the neighborhood liquor store to look for two bottles of a good inexpensive wine. Their arms filled with packages, they kissed on the front steps of their building, and a small kid laughed at them from behind a fudge popsicle.



Kenneth Parks and his wife, Terri, were the kind who attended student-sponsored bonfires and campus Bogart festivals. He was tall and lean, the perfect build for a basketball player though he had told Joe he was never athletically inclined. She was his perfect complement, a girl of medium height with flashing green eyes and long chestnut-colored hair. Dressed in clothes that were neither too old nor too new but just, as the rage demanded, "lived in," they were a magazine couple, and Joe immediately felt a little insecure as they entered his cluttered, poster-walled apartment.



"The man is here," said Parks, grasping his friend's hand. "Haven't seen your face for a long time. I almost forgot what you looked like."



Joe closed the door behind them and introduced his wife. She stood smiling and composed. "Joe's told me about you," she said to Parks. "Aren't you the guy who explores the caves? A spe - " she began hesitantly.



"Spelunker. Yeah, off and on I guess." He took the glass of wine Joe offered and gave it to his wife. "Used to do it every weekend when I was a kid."



"What do you do for a living?"



"Well..." He glanced over at his wife, whose eyes were bright and empty over the rim of the wineglass. "Terri's father is kind of... lending us the money we need until we finish school." He playfully punched Joe's arm. "Old buddy, only one more semester to go and then I pound my feet flat looking for a job."



"And they're hard as hell to come by. I was lucky to get the one I have, believe me."



Terri sat with the wineglass in her hand, transfixed by a poster on the opposite wall that showed King Kong atop the Empire State Building, crushing a bullet-spitting biplane in a hairy fist. "Do you like our apartment?" Mary Kate asked.



Parks had opened a semester catalogue on the scarred coffee table before him and indicated courses he had marked with a ballpoint pen. "And Dr. Ezell is teaching my European Lit Forum. That's supposed to be one of the major gut-grabbers this semester."



"Oh yeah? I suppose Ezell hasn't eased up any?"



"Hell, no. That guy should've retired years ago. He mixes his lectures up, still. Like that final we had where he was asking us questions from another comparative lit course. My God."



Joe grunted. "Listen, can I get you a sandwich or something?"



"No, thanks. This is fine." He glanced over to where Mary Kate and Terri had begun a conversation of their own. Terri's eyes were widening. "So," he said flatly, swinging his gaze back to Joe. "You want to get back into it."



"Yes, I do. I've got to. I need something more than what I'm doing. I mean, sure, driving a cab is okay. Really. I hear some fabulously funny stories and the tips are fair. But I don't want to stay there, like I'm locked behind the wheel or something. I've got to move in some kind of direction. I've got to take that first step."



"And you want to complete your degree. You've only got two more semesters to go, right?"



"Three more."



"The worst thing you can do," Parks said, "is to start and then quit. What happened? You didn't have the money?"



"Yeah. I don't know. I thought I could make it with what I had. And I was stupid. I wasn't prepared the way I should have been. My grades started falling off and I just lost interest in studying." Mary Kate said something to him which he didn't hear. He nodded at her as if to say, Just a minute and I'll listen to you. Terri watched them as if she were frozen. "I wasn't prepared for the grind of both school and work and it took me under."



"I guess I'm lucky in that respect. Terri's father is making it very easy on - "



Terri was nudging her husband in the ribs. He looked at her and then at Mary Kate.



Mary Kate's eyes were fixed on Joe's face. "What have we decided to name our baby?" she asked again.



Terri said, "She's been telling me all about it. I think that's great. Really." Her voice was quiet and breathless, as if her lungs were grabbing for air. Joe thought something was wrong with her.



He asked, "What?"



Mary Kate watched him silently. Terri grinned into his face with long horselike teeth.



"I'm pregnant," Mary Kate said. She looked at Terri. "He didn't know. This is a surprise."



"I can tell it's knocked him on his ass," said Parks, slapping his friend on the back. "Here, here. Let's drink a toast. Everybody fill their glasses. Come on, Joe, drink up. You'll need your strength to open those diaper pins. Here's to the expectant mother. Come on, Joe, snap out of it."



"How long have you been pregnant?" Terri asked. "That's great. Isn't that great, Kenny?"



"A little less than a month," Mary Kate said. She watched Joe as he stared into the depths of his wineglass, swirling the liquid round and round as his lips slowly tightened.



"A baby," Terri was saying, as if mesmerized by the word, "a baby. We want to have a baby sometime too, don't we, Kenny? Sometime when we finish school."



He lifted the glass to his lips. "Sure, sure," he said. "Damn. A kid. That's really something."



Terri rambled on about sweet babies in cradles surrounded by squeaking Donald Ducks and pink rattles. Mary Kate's eyes never moved.



"This," Joe said very quietly, "finishes it."



Parks hadn't heard him. He leaned over and said, "What'd you say, old buddy?"



He could no longer contain the rage. It was blood-boiling, bursting behind his eyes; it was bile that gathered in his stomach and rocketed, geyserlike, toward his mouth. It overcame him and suddenly he was standing, his eyes hot and wild, the glass of wine leaving his hand. The glass shattered with a loud, pistol-like crack! and wine smeared along the wall like a thick track of blood. It ran down in rivulets to an oval pool on the floor.



Terri squealed as if someone had struck her. She sat, her upper torso swaying slightly, giddy on her one glass of wine.



Joe stood staring at the eye of blood. His arms hung limply at his sides; he no longer seemed to have any muscle. The act of throwing the glass had drained him of all energy. Now even his speech was faint and weak: "I... I've made a mess. I've have to clean it up."



A moment before, a candle had burned within him, something to warm him and give strength to go forward. Now someone had suddenly put it out; he seemed to smell the sharp odor of a smoking wick. He stared dumbly at the broken glass and the pool of wine until Mary Kate went to the kitchen and returned with paper towels and trash can and began to clean the floor.



Parks was struggling to maintain a smile. It was awkward and lopsided. His bewildered eyes made him look wild and embarrassed, as if he had just stepped onstage without knowing what the play was about. He took his wife's arm and stood up. "We'd better go," he said apologetically. "Joe, call me, okay? About your classes?"



Joe nodded.



Terri said to Mary Kate, "I think it's wonderful. I hope he's not too upset. Men are like that."



"Good night," said Parks, pushing his wife ahead of him, and Mary Kate closed the door after them.



She stood with her back to the wall, watching him as he continued nodding at his absent friend's last question.



"A month?" he asked her finally, avoiding her face. Instead he studied the red drops that slowly ran the length of the wall. "A whole month and you didn't tell me before this?"



"I didn't know how to - "



He looked at her, his eyes burning. Over his shoulder King Kong glowered at her as well. "That's impossible. Unless you've been lying to me about taking the Pill. You were lying to me, weren't you? Goddammit!"



"No," she said softly. "I haven't been lying."



"I don't care about that now!" His anger sparked again. He took a step forward and she realized, with the harsh coldness of fear, that she was trapped against the wall. She had seen him lose his temper before. Once, after a heated telephone argument with her father over money, he had torn the telephone from the wall and smashed it to the floor; he had jerked lamps up off tables and hurled them crashing across the room until finally she left the apartment, wandering for two days until found by a police officer in the park. She had always been afraid of his unrestrained anger, though he had never before raised a hand to her. Now his red-rimmed eyes glared vengefully.



"I want to know," he said in a loud, ragged voice, "when you decided we'd have a child! I want to know when you decided to forget every goddamned thing I have ever told you about our having a child!"



"I always took my pills," she said. "Always. I promise."



"Shit!" he yelled at her, and the word was like a hand across her cheek. She winced from the blow and stood breathless. He reached out for an ashtray, a ceramic bowl that had been given to them as a wedding gift by one of her uncles, and tensed to smash it across through the kitchen and into the far wall. The weight of it in his hand made him suddenly stop, realizing the utter futility of shattering bits of clay to avenge his bitter disappointment and, worse, to dispel his conviction that she had finally, utterly, overstepped her bounds. He let the ashtray drop to the floor and stood, his chest heaving, too confused and angry to do anything.



She sensed a gap in the tension. "I swear to you," she said quickly before his anger could peak again, "I've never missed my pills. I don't know. I felt that I should have an examination about two weeks ago and the doctor told me. I got the bill out of the box before you could find it and paid it myself."



"He's wrong!" said Joe. "The doctor is wrong!"



"No," she said. "No."



He sat down slowly on the sofa and put his face in his hands. "You don't get pregnant unless you... Shit. Oh man. Mary Kate, I cannot afford this. I'll go under... I swear before God I'll go under!"



She waited until she felt certain that his anger had subsided. She came over and quietly knelt on the floor beside him, taking his hands and pressing them against her cheek. "We can get a loan. Maybe from my father."



"Sure," he said. "He won't let me have a dime!"



"I'll talk to him. I mean it."



He shrugged. After a moment he said, "You'll talk to him?"



"We can get a loan from him and we'll be okay," Mary Kate said. "It'll be rough; we know it will be. But other people have kids and they make it. They scrimp and save like hell but they do make it, Joe."



He withdrew his hands and looked down into her innocent, wide-eyed face. Through tightly drawn lips he said, "I don't mean a loan to keep the child, Mary Kate. I mean a loan for an abortion."



"Goddamn you!" she cried out, drawing away from him. The tears burst from her eyes and streamed down over her cheeks. "No abortion! Nobody in the world could make me go through that!"



"You're not going to break me," he snarled bitterly at her. "That's what you want to do! You want to finish my ass off!"



"No," she said, her teeth clenched. "No abortion. I mean it. I don't care what I have to do. I'll work a double shift, night and day. I'll sell my blood, I'll sell my body. I don't care. No abortion."



Joe faced her, his lips working but no words coming out. He wondered if this was what made so many men just walk out the door and never come back, this sudden and terrible power she had obtained, this awesome force that came with the knowledge that she harbored a child in her body. The King is dead. Long live the Queen. But when the hell did I die? he asked himself. Two years ago? A minute ago? When?



Something was working its way out from a deep place of tissues and bone. It swam up through her blood and surfaced across her face. It distorted her features and left her glowering at him like an animal. She said, "The baby is mine."



He slumped back on the sofa, wanting instinctively to lengthen the distance between himself and the woman whose white teeth glittered in the darkness. She had placed defeat like a crown of black thorns on his head. Her face, as lifeless and determined as some ancient concrete death mask, ate its way past his eyes and hung marionettelike in his brain, dancing there like a grim shade of what she had been only a few moments before. He shuddered suddenly and wondered why. In an empty, toneless voice he said, "You're killing me, Mary Kate. I don't know why or how but you're killing me all the same. And this business about a child. This is the last nail in my coffin."



"Then lie in it," she said.



She rose and stood with her back to him. Her eyes, reflected in the window glass, were fierce and uncompromising. I will have my baby, she said to the wind that blew newspapers in the narrow street below. No one on earth will take my baby away from me now. And standing there she suddenly sensed someone standing beside her, a man whose pale thin hand touched her shoulder like a burning brand. I will have my baby.