Journey

“Are we going anywhere?” Maddy asked on the way back. She knew he hated to make plans, and he liked deciding at the last minute and just springing it on her. He would arrange for a stand-in for her on the news, and then he'd whisk her away. But she liked it better when she had a little advance notice. Sometimes he only told her the day before or that morning. And she could never say that she needed more time. They didn't have kids, and he was her boss, so if he decided she was leaving with him, there was no one to say that she couldn't. She was always free to go with him.

“I haven't decided about the summer yet,” he said vaguely. He never asked her where she wanted to go, but he always picked places she loved in the end. Life was full of surprises with Jack. And who was she to complain? Without him, she would never be able to go to these places. “I guess we'll go to Europe.” She knew it was all the warning she'd get, and maybe all she needed.

“Let me know when to pack,” she teased, as though she had nothing to do, and could drop everything at a moment's notice. But sometimes that was exactly what he expected of her.

“I will,” he acknowledged, and then took some papers out of his briefcase, which was the signal that he had nothing more to say to her for the moment.

She read a book the rest of the way home, it was one that the First Lady had recommended to her, a work about crimes of violence against women, and it was full of depressing but interesting statistics.

“What's that?” he asked, pointing at the book as they landed at National.

“Phyllis gave it to me. It's about crimes of violence against women.”

“Like what? Cutting up their credit cards?” he said with a smile, and there was a pained look in Maddy's eyes as he said it. She hated it when he belittled issues that were important to her. “Don't get yourself too wound up over this commission, Mad. It's a great image-maker for you, which is why I suggested it, but let's not get crazy with it. You don't need to become the leading champion for battered women.”

“I like what they're doing, and where they're going with it. It's something I really care about, and you know that.” She spoke to him quietly but emotionally as they taxied down the runway after they landed.

“I just know how you are. You can get awfully overboard about things. This is about image, Mad, not about becoming Joan of Arc. Keep your perspective. A lot of what they say about abused women is just plain crap.”

“Like what?” she said, feeling a cold chill run down her spine, as she wondered what he was really saying to her.

“All that garbage about date rape and sexual harassment is just that, and probably more than half the women who are either kicked around by their husbands or allegedly murdered by them deserved it.” He said it with the utmost conviction as she stared at him.

“Are you serious? I can't believe you mean that. What about me? Do you think I deserved what Bobby Joe did to me? Is that what you think?”

“He was a small-time punk, and a drunk, and God only knows what you may have said to provoke him. A lot of people fight, Mad, some take a few pokes at each other, some get hurt, but that doesn't necessarily warrant a crusade, and it's not a national emergency. Believe me, if you asked her privately, I'm sure Phyllis is doing it for the same reasons I wanted you to. It looks good.” Maddy felt sick as she listened.

“I can't believe what I'm hearing,” she said in a whisper. “Her mother was abused by her father for all her married life, and Phyllis grew up with that. So did I. So do a lot of people, Jack. And in some cases, beatings aren't enough, they have to kill the women just to prove how tough they are, and how worthless the women are. What does that sound like to you, just your ordinary fight? When was the last time you kicked a woman down the stairs, or hit her with a chair, or took a hot iron to her, or put bleach in her eyes, or burned her with litcigarettes? Do you have any idea what these people go through?”

“You're getting wound up, Mad. Those are the exception, not the rule. Sure, there are a few nutcases out there, but they kill other guys too. No one ever said the world isn't full of crazy people.”

“The difference is that some of these women live with their assailants, or even eventual murderers, for ten or twenty or fifty years and let them continue to abuse them, and possibly kill them.”

“Then it's the women who're sick, isn't it? They can always put a stop to it by walking out, but they don't. Hell, maybe they like it.” She had never felt as frustrated in her life as she did listening to him, but he was not only the voice of ignorance, but the voice of most people in the world. And she wondered if she could get through to him. She felt helpless.