The pendulum in the grandfather clock was too tired to swing; it stumbled from side to side of the wooden trunk. Outside the skies dumped snow like so much confectioners’ sugar to salvage a dry cake. A blaze pitter-pattered in the fireplace to one side of a long table with nothing on it, not even a crumb.

A late middle-aged man and woman sat there, he with bloodshot eyes and deep facial lines, she with an inexorable frown and a pained look. They kept their hands on their lap in silence.

“How could you let me do it?” he said in a whisper.

She was impassive.

“Henrietta. How could you let me do it?” He glared.

She sat as if she hadn’t heard him.

“What is wrong with you?”

She groaned.

“What is wrong with you?” He pounded a fist on the table.

A moan. Her crepey eyelids slumped toward the floor with the weight of old trauma.

“Answer me. Say something. Else I’ll beat you upside the head.” His face heated to the color of organ tissue.

Henrietta stared at her hands, squeezed together on the tabletop. He took a sharp intake of breath.

“You are sorry you beat them but now you want to beat me? That makes sense to you, Carly?” she said.

He slammed the table toward her. “They were innocent children and you were a grown woman. You did nothing.”

“Nothing is better than what you did.”

“Damn you! I was a drunk. Senseless with anger. I didn’t want to be on this planet. I hated everything. I hated you.”

She snorted and shook her head.

Carly continued. “I hated them too.” He grimaced as though he’d taken a blow. “I was out of control and I blame it on the drink. What’s your excuse? You were complicit.”

A tear sluiced down her wrinkled cheek.

“I hated myself worst of all.” He gazed at the table, his shoulders heavy. “Your negligence was even more shameful than my violence. You could have saved them. Shit. You might have saved me too.”

“I wanted to save you.” Her voice trickled from her mouth amid the maelstrom that raged between them.

“But they were your children. You gave birth to them. You carried them for nine months.” Carly growled.

Henrietta pursed her lips and shook her head again.

“Say something, dammit. What’s your excuse? You were sober. You never had a drop of booze the whole time I’ve known you. And you were their fucking mother.”

She muttered.

“Don’t talk under your breath for fuck’s sake!”

A shudder passed through Henrietta’s gaunt frame. She gave a small shrug. “I loved you too much. That was my sin.”

Carly couldn’t speak for the frenzy of laughter that shook him. He halted. “What kind of an explanation is that?”

She looked him in the eye for the first time. “I couldn’t bear to stand up to you, to point out your flaws. I didn’t want to take you down. And I was afraid. What would you do to me if I said something? Would you beat me as you beat them? I considered leaving. It was the only decent solution. The only answer I could think of. I packed their things four different times.”

Henrietta stole another glance at Carly. She shuddered and shook, the tremors of regret coursing through her. “But I couldn’t leave you. And yet I couldn’t bear the sight of their bruises. When Lyndsay couldn’t move her right arm at seven and a half years old because of what you’d done to it? Do you think the teachers didn’t ask me what was going on?” She cocked her head to one side and dug her nails into her palm. “I smiled. I playacted. Greg always did sports, you know? Soccer, then wrestling and football. The boys were so rough. It was an excuse. And those gymnastics lessons really took their toll on her. But sports are important! They teach discipline. Dedication. Stamina. No pain, no gain.” A husky sob.

Carly gripped the table with white knuckles and a fusillade of fury at the ready.
“I remember their sports well. I do. Even in my drunken stupors. And what about the time she refused to participate at the swim meet because she was ashamed of all the marks I’d left on her? You let me pick her up drunk. I was late of course and she was all alone. There was a damp towel around her shoulders to cover the marks on her skin. But her coach was still there. Mr. Ponczak, I think. He took me aside, made an effort to ignore that I was drunk and told me about the bruises and welts. He told me as if I didn’t know! He looked at me with pity. And did I ever tell you that I nearly crashed into the guardrail driving her home? I nearly killed her. Or that afterward I took off that old leather belt I wore and chased her around the house? Where were you?”

Henrietta had stopped weeping and frowned once more.

“How could you? You were their mother. You were their mother!” Carly pounded the table again. And again but harder. “Or what about the time he was playing Nintendo with those two boys? I was hungover and out of booze. The noise from that video game was like sharp lasers zapping my brain. It drove me insane. I crashed into the den and pulled him away by the ear. I didn’t want the boys to go home and tell their parents I was a monster. I knew Greg wouldn’t say a word. I hauled him into his room and warned him that if he cried out and his friends heard, I would beat him within an inch of his life. Do you know what I did? I clobbered him on the head. I’m lucky he didn’t have a concussion.”

Carly began to weep, the muscles of his face making grisly configurations. “Greg didn’t make a peep. He didn’t even cry. Not one tear. He crumpled onto the floor and for a moment—dear god for a moment—I thought I had killed him.” A sour sob. “Did that stop me the next time though? Where the hell were you?”

“I don’t know where I was. I was at the library. Or at the knitting club. I was cooking for charity. I was working at Dr. Keller’s office. I was pretending that my life was good and we were still in love. I imagined that you were the man you were when I married you.”

“But you knew I wasn’t! You saw the bottles. You saw the cuts. The everything. You heard the screams. You were not always out of the house. You were home more often than not, a useless witness to a ruined family.” He blubbered. “How did you let me destroy myself and destroy them? Did you ever even suggest rehab? You should have called Child Protective Services on me. I should have gone to jail. It isn’t legal to abuse children. I am a scourge. I wish I had the courage to end it all. I came into this world broken and bad.”

Henrietta glared at him. “You came into this life a babe. Like the rest of us. You were pure and innocent. Helpless. Curious. Gasping for life. With little awareness and unable to keep yourself alive on your own. But with a will to live. With your tiny, clenching fists you fought for your place here. We all did. We were all like that. Every dictator. Every serial killer. I don’t know what happened after that. Trauma? You’re not bad through and through. Life made you like this. It did the same to me. We will leave this world as babes again.”

“Nonsense.”
“It’s not nonsense. You are a good man who got twisted, like a kink in metal that can never be smoothed again.” She cried but her dry eyes produced no tears. “We came as babes, you and I. Your father beat you. When I met you, you told me you didn’t have a father. You said he had left your family when you were five. Three months later you admitted to me that he had beaten you and Sam your whole life and when you were 16, you fought back, slugging the belligerent alcoholic hard enough to knock out teeth. Then he fucked off to god knows where. And yes, you repeated the pattern but you never left us. You stopped drinking cold turkey when Greg finally stood up to you. Gave you two black eyes. You’ve been trying to make amends ever since.”

Carly keened. “Make amends? Greg is in prison for an armed robbery and she is a crackhead who does god knows what to support her habit.” He rocked to and fro. “And when you walked in that one morning that I hadn’t slept at all, I was still drunk like so many mornings. God damn it. I had my bottle of vodka raised in one hand and I was beating her with the other. A girl! I beat a girl. Oh, my god.” He convulsed. “No wonder she can’t have a good relationship with a man. She’ll never have a good relationship with any man after what I did. No wonder she is hooked on drugs. I would be too.”

Henrietta mumbled. He didn’t notice. He was lost in his own acrid reminiscences.

“What the hell do you have to say for yourself?” He stood, towering over her. “I hate you more than I have ever hated anyone or anything. I hate you more than I hate booze for ruining my life and all of our lives. You could have saved them. You could have saved me. You could have saved yourself because you’re going down with me, you bitch.”

“You didn’t want them.”

“What? What the hell did you say? Talk louder.”

“You didn’t want them. You didn’t want them, Carly.”

“I didn’t want them? I didn’t want to have them?” His eyes roved about, searching for something that wasn’t there. “What does that have to do with anything? I didn’t want kids, true, but we had them anyway. Not wanting kids at some point does not excuse the abuse. Neither yours nor mine. You should have had me arrested. If the jails wouldn’t have me, you should have poisoned me. They were children. ‘Babes’ as you say!”

“I resented them because they took you away from me. You were consumed by your hatred. Maybe you didn’t hate them exactly but you hated the burden they laid on your life. You hated having to work at factories keeping ledgers and books. You’re an artist. You always were. You should have been sculpting in a studio all day in front of a kiln.” Her eyes drifted to a small vase on a kitchen shelf. “You gave me that before we married and it was the best thing. I loved it.”

“You’re a criminal! Why did you always put me first?”

The weary grandfather clock chimed 12 o’clock noontime in a surprisingly loud voice. When the last sound faded away, Carly looked dejected. Henrietta looked spent.

“I shouldn’t have come back.” Carly remained standing. “I should have known I couldn’t get answers from you. This is why I divorced you.”

“I know.” The words were barely audible.

“I’m a shell of a man and I’m not sure what is left of you either. This is your fault as much as it is mine.”

“I know.”

“Goodbye, Henrietta. I won’t see you again. Do something with the rest of your life.”

“You too, Carly. I hope you can forgive yourself.”

“I hope you can’t.”

Carly made for the door. Before he crossed it, he stopped and without turning, he tossed something over his shoulder and waited until Henrietta retrieved it.

“What is this?” she said behind him.

“It’s a poem I wrote you before we got married. I still had it and I don’t want it. For some reason I couldn’t throw it out. It’s yours. Something to remember me by. You won’t see me again.” And he walked out.