Stress Test Ch. 33

The worm has its bird, the bird its cat, the cat its dog. But a woman contends with the male of her own species.

The predators hunt alone and in packs. They enforce curfew at sunset, but they strike just as swiftly in broad daylight. They test their skills at an early age, then sharpen them throughout their lives.

Sometimes Sandy thought men were transformed by the idea that bleeding was nature's plan for women. As kids, boys teased girls with frogs and bugs, but that was no worse than the torments the boys inflicted on each other.

When a girl faced the scary metamorphosis of her body, the boys saw some of the changes, heard about others. Maybe the boys felt threatened by the way their own bodies seemed to have been left behind in childhood.

Maybe when their own hormones finally kicked in, the boys felt betrayed by the girls' conspiracy of silence. Maybe they felt cheated and inconsequential, that everyone knew how awful puberty's cruel mix of pimples and longing was about to make their lives, but nobody bothered to warn them.

When Sandy walked out to get the mail one Saturday morning, a Volkswagen full of teenagers slowed down. From the back seat, a boy who couldn't have been more than thirteen leaned forward and stuck his head out the window. "Nice tits!" he shouted just before the car sped away.

The scene left Sandy stunned for a moment. Then the absurdity of it struck her: a child barely weaned proving his manhood by screaming about breasts. She laughed as the car disappeared around the bend. It was too ridiculous.

She placed her hand on the mail box as she opened it. She chuckled again as she noticed the short skid marks the car had drawn across the asphalt. Then a sudden tiredness overwhelmed her. She rested her forehead against her outstretched arm and looked at how thick the lawn had come in this year. One more sound that could have passed for a laugh gurgled out of her throat before the sobs racked her body.

Even home offered no shelter in a world populated by Jack Gores and Stephen X Skinners. Men ruled their houses. They valued their property above all else, maybe because they found comfort in things which conformed to a balance sheet. Maybe if women could be priced and sold in more honest ways they would be worth something, too.

Her father once rebuked Sandy for letting Jennifer's diaper bleed through to the carpet. Tacking a calendar to the wall without permission sent Stephen X into a rage. "You just punched a hole in the residual value of my house," he yelled, growing even more furious when the thickness of the pages kept him from ripping through all twelve months in a single motion.

Only by the grace of men could you escape the rain, and only on their arbitrary, fluctuating terms. Why did they tell you they loved the way you laughed or dressed or cooked or screwed before they began peeling away every shred of your identity?

Why do they want women in their lives at all if they hate us so much? Maybe the urge to control and punish lurked in the darkest, stinking chambers of all men's hearts.

A week or so before her father and Uncle Josh killed Jennifer, Sandy heard an ungodly wail from behind the Airstream where Mama Gore had lived. She found Josh on his knees, leaning over a cat that struggled against his weight. He looked over his shoulder when Sandy yelled at him.

"I hate cats," he said in a voice all the more terrifying for its total lack of emotion.

"Let her go," Sandy shouted, pulling at his beefy shoulder.

"Aw, what's the matter?" Josh said. "They do it to mice."

Or maybe it came down to selfishness, hunching over a woman not to protect her, but to guard her for himself. Men knew what other men were like.

Even distant men found ways to wound her. Artie Sandoval, the teenager who had attached his fantasies to Sandy before taking a swan dive from the water tower, never had to face her. He never had to explain why he singled her out to carry his burden of guilt.

And Uly Bondarbon, who didn't look big enough to cause her physical harm, could still knot up her stomach with dread. She had no idea what he wanted from her; she had nothing left for anyone. It had all been snatched away from her years ago.

She couldn't stay home or shop or check her own mail box in peace. She tried to bury the gnawing fear that one day Saury would wake up transformed into a brat who shouted from car windows as he entered his apprenticeship of abuse.

From the first time she saw Saury's flushed face, Sandy thought her baby looked more like her sister, Jennifer, than Stephen X. It would be nice if all Saury's tickets in the gene lottery had been purchased on her side of the family. Then again, she thought of her own parents and her father's father. Maybe that wouldn't be such a bargain after all.

If they'd been together as infants, Stegosaurus X and Jennifer could have passed for twins. They shared blue eyes, a button nose that begged to be tickled, a wide, laughing mouth—even the way they waved their arms straight up and down and gurgled when something excited them.

Still, Stephen X hardly ever started a fight over whether or not he was Saury's biological father. He seemed to hold that subject in reserve for those rare occasions when he couldn't come up with a more immediate excuse.

And as Saury entered the Terrible Twos, Sandy began to fear that Stephen X had passed along things much worse than his unblinking stare or the pudgy bulge of his cheek. When Saury missed a nap, he could unleash an all-consuming tantrum or a flood of self-pity.

Pound for pound, Saury's fits rivaled the intensity of his father's. They had similar provocation and they were followed by similar periods of calm as the child slept off his tears.

What if he stayed that way forever? Is that what had happened to Stephen X—he never evolved past being a two-year-old tyrant? But Saury mellowed in his third year, becoming as cherubic as his appearance.

Sandy tried not to dwell on the notion that her son might be absorbing awful secrets of manhood from his father. Maybe the lessons men passed on to boys seemed harmless at first, but they were as relentless and powerful as carcinogens. One day the child woke with a sickness that had been rotting his insides for years.

That was the bright side of Stephen X's recurring idea that someone else—Wally, the mail man, even Roscoe—had been Saury's father. He paid so little attention to the boy that he might not be able to twist his son's heart in his own image.

Of course, he didn't pay much attention to Sandy, either, which made life bearable. Stephen X spent long hours at the office or wrapping up business in the bars or on his car phone. But you never knew when he might show up in the middle of the day demanding sex, a snack or solitude.

He left his engine running one Thursday when he surprised her at noon. "Let's swing by Thrift Aisles and pick up a few things for lunch," he said. "We'll take my car."

Sandy stiffened. "I don't want to go there."

"Don't be silly. It's the closest place and they've got the best prices."

"If you know what you want, why don't you go? I'll stay and set the table."

"You know I hate shopping for groceries by myself."

Nestled just off Westmore, a block down from Rollingwood Drive, Thrift Aisles attracted an odd mix of customers. Enormous young mothers pushed carts full of cookies and kids down the same aisles where Stephen X, in his three-piece suit, strolled ahead of Sandy.

Although Stephen X rarely ate anything that came from the ground or from trees, he loved the produce section. He held a foot-long cucumber between the palms of his hands and leered at Sandy. "Hey! What do you think?"

"What?"

He wiggled his eyebrows and held the cucumber higher.

Sandy glanced around to see if anyone were watching. "What are you doing?"

"Come on, Sandy. Is it me?" He slipped his thumb under his belt and stuffed the cucumber into his pants.

A large man wearing a white apron over his shirt and tie cleared his throat, startling Stephen X. "Can I help you?" the man asked.

Stephen X sized up the situation in an instant. He stroked the bulge behind his zipper. "It's not a banana, I'm just glad to see her." He closed the distance to Sandy and slipped his arm around her, moving his hand up to lift her breast. "What else can a guy do with a woman like this?"

Sandy felt her face redden. The man was not amused. "Do I have to call security?" he asked.

Stephen X pulled the cucumber out of his pants. He was going to place it back on the vegetable stand until he saw the man's frown. "I guess we'll buy this, won't we?" he said.

Sandy didn't break down until they made it outside. Now it was Stephen X's turn to see if anyone were watching. "What's the matter with you?"

"You're disgusting!" She didn't care if that made him strike her dead in the parking lot. She couldn't stand it anymore.

"Don't be such a prude," he commanded. "I was just having some fun."

"Get away from me." She kept walking past his car.

Stephen X grabbed her arm from behind and twisted it around like a pretzel. "You look at me when you're talking to me," he shouted, shaking her by the neck.

"Let me go."

She dug her nails into his cheek, but lost her balance when she tried to kick him. He took the advantage to shove her against a blue van. He cocked his arm for the first serious punch when the voice called out.

"You shouldn't be doin' that, mister."

They both turned their heads to see Uly Bondarbon calmly walking toward them.

Stephen X stepped back, allowing Sandy to slip around the van to safety. She pressed her cheek against the cool metal and tried to catch her breath.

"This is none of your business," Stephen X said.

"What kind of business is it, pickin' on a woman like that?" Uly asked. "A dog wouldn't do those things, so you must be less than a dog."

Sandy peeked around the van to see Uly standing with his hands on his hips, giving Stephen X a hard look.

"I don't appreciate that kind of talk," Stephen X said. "You don't understand the situation."

Uly never flinched. "Suppose you explain it to me then, Mr. Dog—or should I say Mr. Dogshit?"

Sandy couldn't see Stephen X, but she knew what he looked like during the long silence that followed. Her husband never felt comfortable when things drifted out of his control. His face could go blank for minutes at a time when confronted by anything unusual.

"You're more fun than a bucket of monkeys, aren't you?" Stephen X said at last. "I haven't got time for this." Then he raised his voice and said, "Come on, Sandy, let's go home."

Sandy held her breath and tried to shrink until she became invisible and safe. She heard Uly say, "You'd best leave this woman alone until you can treat her with the respect she deserves."

She wanted to tell him to stop, that every jab Stephen X took from Uly would be repaid a hundred times when he finally cornered Sandy. But she heard Stephen X say, "Real comedian," as his footsteps moved away.

"You watch yourself, Mr. Dirtydog," Uly called out. "I know a lot of things about you."

Stephen X stopped. "What do you mean by that? Are you threatening me? You can go to jail for that, buddy boy."

"You just watch yourself."

The footsteps began again. Sandy heard the car door slam and the tires squeal into the distance. She sniffed and smeared the tears across her face.

"Are you okay, ma'am?" Uly asked, holding out a tissue.

She didn't want to look at him but she took the tissue. "Yes." She shook her head. "Thank you."

"You know, I got ways to help you. Lots of ways to make things better."

"Please, just go away and leave me alone," she pleaded. She knew a lot more things about Stephen X than Uly ever dreamed of. "It's going to be worse than ever now," she said.

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