“Son. Do as Jordan says.” Davis still wouldn’t look at me. Slowly, Mark got Bradley to his feet and led him out of the kitchen. Bradley was bent with walking, his feet shuffling like a prisoner fettered at the ankles.
I felt thoroughly sick. “Davis. Look at me. How long has this been going on?”
He, like his son, stared at the floor. He rubbed at a spot of his own blood that had dripped from his nose to the tile. More blood leaked between his teeth. I seized his jaw and turned his face toward mine, hot with anger toward him.
“Davis, damn you, answer me! How long has she been battering you?”
He closed his eyes, shamefaced. “Since we found out Bradley was retarded. I guess about thirteen years.”
“ What? ”
“She can’t help it. You know what a temper she’s always had. She just gets upset when Bradley messes up and she, well, she can take it out on me,” His voice sounded soft, reasoning, the tone of long justification of terrible wrong.
“For God’s sake! Takes it out on you? She was going to beat you to a pulp, Davis!”
“Well, she couldn’t hit Bradley, could she?” Davis said.
I closed my eyes in nausea. “But Mark saw bruises on Bradley’s arm-”
“She got upset with me last night. Bradley tried to stop her and she hurt him. She hurt him for the first time.” He finally looked at me. His blue eyes were streaked with bloodshot sorrow. “I couldn’t believe she hurt him. So I figured, it can’t go on, I can’t let her hurt my boy. So I went to go see Steven Teague, I thought he’d know what to do, what I could do to make her better.”
“Oh, Davis, Jesus. You can’t fix what’s wrong with Cayla. She has to do that.”
“We got back and Bradley told her he’d seen Mark. Cayla wanted to know where’d we been. I told her I went to Teague’s office and she went crazy.” He made a horrible snuffling sound of sickness and sadness long buried.
“Davis. Why didn’t you leave her?”
“I can’t. I love her.”
“I don’t understand you at all.” My own voice sounded near the breaking point. “Why didn’t you defend yourself, fight back? Why’d you let her do this to you?” I was so mad, so frustrated, I wanted to shake him myself.
“Good God. You don’t hit girls, Jordan. I could never hit Cayla.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t let anyone know. Hell, you don’t think I see how you look at me right now? A man that lets a woman beat him. It’s wives that get beaten, not husbands. What kind of man do you think people would say I was?”
If this was his reasoning and logic, he was a far sorrier lawyer than I ever suspected. “I would have respected you for getting out of this hell, Davis.”
He buried his face in his hands. “I’m so ashamed. So ashamed. My boy-”
“Listen to me. We’ll get you and Bradley out of here. You can stay with us, as long as you need. We’ll see if we can get Cayla to go to counseling. No one has to know what’s happened.”
Davis Foradory turned away from me. “No. People will know. They’ll find out. Like Clevey and your sister.”
“Sister? She knows about this?” I managed to keep my jaw off the blood-specked tile, but it wasn’t easy.
“She came over-the morning Trey was shot. We had been having breakfast and Bradley spilled his milk all over the table, all over the paper. Cayla got upset with me about it. She was hitting me, telling me that Bradley’s clumsiness was my fault, I shouldn’t have put so much milk in his glass-and Arlene walked in. She tried to stop Cayla, and Cayla belted her. Gave her that shiner. I’m awful sorry about that. So’s Cayla.”
Oh, God have mercy. “Your wife hit my sister?”
“Yeah. Knocked her to the floor. Cayla got upset and ran upstairs, so I took care of Arlene. She was so surprised she could hardly say much.”
Although I could imagine Sister being shocked, I could hardly picture her at a loss for words. “She told me she’d fallen down some steps and blackened her eye.”
“I begged her not to tell. I said Cayla didn’t mean it, she just had been awful upset. She was hankering to go wallop Cayla, but I talked her out of it. For Bradley’s sake.”
“I don’t understand why my sister was here.”
Davis sniffed. “She wanted me to be her attorney. Get a restraining order against Trey, keep him from Mark.” He wiped his dripping nose with the back of his sleeve, the carefully cultured lawyer gone. “I told her if she didn’t tell about Cayla, I’d represent her for free.”
I sat back down on the floor. Free legal services for her silence. And she’d done it, knowing that a boy was in an abusive household. Suddenly I wasn’t real happy with my sister.
He saw it in my face, “Oh, she don’t know the whole story, Jordan. Don’t be mad at Arlene. Please, I made her promise. I told her it was the only time that Cayla hit me.”
“And Clevey? He knew, didn’t he? You said so.”
Davis nodded, misery clouding his face again. “He found out about a year ago. He saw a bruise on my arm when we were out at Lake Bonaparte fishing. He kept at me about it, and I finally told him. I confided in him. He kept his mouth shut for months, but then he wanted money!” Davis quivered with rage.
“How much money?”
“Oh, God, thousands,” Davis leaned against the wall, face contorting in pain. I’d been so floored by this series of revelations that I hadn’t even thought about getting him to a doctor. I made him sit, went to the sink, and dampened a washcloth. I handed it to him and slowly, he cleaned his face, blinking at his blood on the cloth.
“Clevey said if I didn’t pay, he’d feature us in a story he was writing about domestic violence.” Davis stared at me, eyes rolling. “I couldn’t let that happen, oh no. It’d ruin me. I’d have lost my law
practice. And if I lost that, I’d have to sell my partnership in KBAV.”
I held my breath. “Did you kill him, Davis? Did you?”
He gave a shuddering breath. “No. I didn’t. I wanted to; God, I even thought about it. But I was too scared. And he promised that the money would be just that once. I could get on with my life.”
As though you could, I thought. Davis couldn’t get on with life while Cayla beat him. He and his son would forever be caught in a loop of bitterness and twisted love, manifested with fists and clawing fingers. And Clevey would have taken his place at KBAV. The humiliation would have been utter.
“You believe me, don’t you, Jordan? I swear, I’m not a killer.”
No, I didn’t think Davis was. He hadn’t roused himself to flee the hell his house had become; he wouldn’t have shot Clevey Shivers in cold blood. I had to get him to take action now, though.
“Never mind Clevey now. We’re gonna get you and Bradley out of here.”
“No.” He shook his head violently. “I can’t leave my house. How do I explain it?”
“We’ll say you and Cayla are just having some problem. People don’t have to know the specifics.”
“Then why wouldn’t Bradley stay with his mom? Kids stay with moms. Folks’ll know, they’ll find out, and I’m ruined!” His voice rose in a whiny shriek.
“Listen to me!” God, yelling in his face was probably not the way a trained counselor would handle this, but I was winging it. “Your life is already ruined! You can’t live this way, you can’t pretend that this is normal. Get yourselves out of here-if not for your sake, for Bradley’s. His life matters more than any stupid, overblown reputation of yours.” I clutched at this straw of persuasion and kept pressing him.
“Davis, you said yourself she hurt him last night. That’s the start, don’t you see? What happens when she starts getting mad at Bradley? Are you going to stand by and watch him be beaten?”
“I-” He faltered, unable to speak.
“You took the first step. You went to get help from Steven Teague. You don’t have to do this alone, okay? I’m here to help you, and Mark and Sister and Junebug and Hart and Ed. Your friends will help you. Now, come with me. He dragged the back of his hand across his bruised and cut face, “But I’m supposed to be in court this afternoon-”
“Never mind court. I’m sure the judge will understand. In fact, we can call the courthouse from my house. Why don’t we go do that now?” The air in the Foradory house felt dense, oppressive. I wanted to leave badly.
He nodded, finally, and stood. He was in obvious pain. I wondered how many injuries he’d suffered-and
