Theresa is at Billy’s … well, by then she was outside Billy’s. She said, through hysteria and sobbing, that the chemo had made her constipated, horribly constipated. And the toilet had clogged. It was the middle of the night, and she had to ask Billy to help her. He had hidden the plunger. Plunging the toilet was on the seemingly endless list of things Theresa was not allowed to do. Her world was growing smaller by the day, married to Billy. He had convinced her that she was incapable of even the simplest tasks. She was not allowed to mow the lawn (he was afraid she would break the lawn mower). She was not allowed to light the oven. (He explained that it was very old, and perhaps, dangerous.) She was not allowed to drive most places, he took her and then brought her home again. He cooked the meals, well, she would say, I don’t really like to cook, anyway. He bought the groceries. Since she had stopped working, he had forced her to drop her health insurance – I mean, why pay for two health insurance policies, right? And he had her cash out her life insurance when the company offered. For a crazy man, he was quite sly. And slowly, very slowly, he was isolating her from those who loved her. He was failing, of course, but only because brain cancer demands an audience. Does that make sense? It is simply to loud to be ignored or denied or isolated. And so, in the end, Billy failed, even at his worst efforts.
Anyway, she woke him that night and asked him to help her in the bathroom with the overflowing, backed-up toilet. I imagine she had soaked up what she could with paper towels and tissues, heavy with exhaustion, trying in vain to fix it herself. She said he followed her into the small bathroom and flew into a rage. A horrible, brutal rage. He stood there, shaking, and then threw the plunger at her screaming at her that she was an animal. “Why don’t you dig a hole in the yard and shit in it like a DOG???” She said the argument, if you could call it that, never seemed to end. Finally, he had thrown her out the heavy metal screen door and shoved her down the winding steep cement steps, then he threw her chemotherapy medications out after her, pausing to open the bottles first, so that the pills flew all over the lawn, and finally, with her crawling around the lawn in her nightgown, trying to pluck the various colored pills out of the dirt and grass, he threw out her wig.
I can see her there, in my minds eye, sobbing silently, trying to gather as much of her medicine as she could. Maybe putting it into the shell of her wig, since her nightgown would have no pockets. I know that she has no underwear on, because she called me from her car when she left there, weeping, and after narrating it all, she said, “I don’t even have underwear on.”
Theresa was a person of enormous dignity. More than that, really. She was graceful. She was almost holy, if any of us can really approach holiness. She had a sweetness that was otherworldly, and a humanity that was breathtaking. To imagine her, doggy-style on their front lawn, stripped of her hair and her safety, of her health and her strength… to hear her explain that he then stood inside the house, and through the open old-fashioned slatted windows on the porch, started screaming in acrimonious insanity, “Yew don’t live here. This is myyyyyy house. Get out. Yew are NOTHING. Yew are disgusting. Get out. This is my house.” Over and over and over. Well, I guess words can’t really say how I felt about what that did to her.
She came to us that day. To Tommy and I. I suppose she was too ashamed to tell her family what was happening with Billy. Theresa, I would say on the phone, …Theresa, Billy is a spousal abuser. Do you understand that? He simply isn’t hitting you yet. But make no mistake, this is escalating. If you choose to stay with Billy, you need to have an escape plan, now. And you need to leave BEFORE things reach this pitch. You need to get out way before the rage begins. The minute you sense it happening. Do you understand? She didn’t answer at first, except to say that she knew he had a problem before they were married. That she shouldn’t have married him, knowing he had a drinking problem. Terry, knowing intellectually that someone has a drinking problem and LIVING with that insanity are such different things. You simply could not KNOW this until you lived with him. Where ARE you? Tell me where you are, and we will come and get you. But she drove to us. I suppose she needed to have her car, to have some sense of control.
Billy. It’s funny, all this time later. I only miss Billy. We have no anger toward him; we never really did. We simply understood that he was insane. We also sensed his true love for Theresa. How did we reconcile that to what he did? I don’t know. Somehow, both Tommy and I just didn’t judge him.
What does it matter, anyway. She is gone. She is probably as gone to Billy as she is to us. I wonder if he sits, in his empty, empty house, and rails at the loneliness. I wonder if he has ever, in a drunken stupor, sat in that porch room, on her furniture, and looked at her artwork, and opened the heavy screen door of the small foyer and thrown himself down those cement steps, clutching at the grass and dirt, remembering that scene, vomiting in drunken despair into the grass, perhaps looking at it and seeing the faded, empty casings of one or two pills that she didn’t collect that day.
Anyway, she woke him that night and asked him to help her in the bathroom with the overflowing, backed-up toilet. I imagine she had soaked up what she could with paper towels and tissues, heavy with exhaustion, trying in vain to fix it herself. She said he followed her into the small bathroom and flew into a rage. A horrible, brutal rage. He stood there, shaking, and then threw the plunger at her screaming at her that she was an animal. “Why don’t you dig a hole in the yard and shit in it like a DOG???” She said the argument, if you could call it that, never seemed to end. Finally, he had thrown her out the heavy metal screen door and shoved her down the winding steep cement steps, then he threw her chemotherapy medications out after her, pausing to open the bottles first, so that the pills flew all over the lawn, and finally, with her crawling around the lawn in her nightgown, trying to pluck the various colored pills out of the dirt and grass, he threw out her wig.
I can see her there, in my minds eye, sobbing silently, trying to gather as much of her medicine as she could. Maybe putting it into the shell of her wig, since her nightgown would have no pockets. I know that she has no underwear on, because she called me from her car when she left there, weeping, and after narrating it all, she said, “I don’t even have underwear on.”
Theresa was a person of enormous dignity. More than that, really. She was graceful. She was almost holy, if any of us can really approach holiness. She had a sweetness that was otherworldly, and a humanity that was breathtaking. To imagine her, doggy-style on their front lawn, stripped of her hair and her safety, of her health and her strength… to hear her explain that he then stood inside the house, and through the open old-fashioned slatted windows on the porch, started screaming in acrimonious insanity, “Yew don’t live here. This is myyyyyy house. Get out. Yew are NOTHING. Yew are disgusting. Get out. This is my house.” Over and over and over. Well, I guess words can’t really say how I felt about what that did to her.
She came to us that day. To Tommy and I. I suppose she was too ashamed to tell her family what was happening with Billy. Theresa, I would say on the phone, …Theresa, Billy is a spousal abuser. Do you understand that? He simply isn’t hitting you yet. But make no mistake, this is escalating. If you choose to stay with Billy, you need to have an escape plan, now. And you need to leave BEFORE things reach this pitch. You need to get out way before the rage begins. The minute you sense it happening. Do you understand? She didn’t answer at first, except to say that she knew he had a problem before they were married. That she shouldn’t have married him, knowing he had a drinking problem. Terry, knowing intellectually that someone has a drinking problem and LIVING with that insanity are such different things. You simply could not KNOW this until you lived with him. Where ARE you? Tell me where you are, and we will come and get you. But she drove to us. I suppose she needed to have her car, to have some sense of control.
Billy. It’s funny, all this time later. I only miss Billy. We have no anger toward him; we never really did. We simply understood that he was insane. We also sensed his true love for Theresa. How did we reconcile that to what he did? I don’t know. Somehow, both Tommy and I just didn’t judge him.
What does it matter, anyway. She is gone. She is probably as gone to Billy as she is to us. I wonder if he sits, in his empty, empty house, and rails at the loneliness. I wonder if he has ever, in a drunken stupor, sat in that porch room, on her furniture, and looked at her artwork, and opened the heavy screen door of the small foyer and thrown himself down those cement steps, clutching at the grass and dirt, remembering that scene, vomiting in drunken despair into the grass, perhaps looking at it and seeing the faded, empty casings of one or two pills that she didn’t collect that day.
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