Right to Life

"Fuck the baby! Fuck you! You know what I ought to do? You know what I really ought to do? I ought to kill you, you little bitch. I ought to kill you right now and to hell with the baby. You try to run from me? You want to go get a cop? You want to put the cops on me? Four months you been here. Four fucking months I put up with you and your bullshit and this is what I get? You little cunt. I ought to kill you and fuck the baby, to hell with the baby, screw the fucking baby."

He threw the whip at her. The heavy knotted handle struck her in the eye. He moved swiftly to the worktable and came back with the red Swiss army knife in his hand open to the cutting blade. His eyes glittered.

"You want to fuck around? You want to call the cops on me? Well how 'bout we give 'em something. How 'bout we really give 'em something? How 'bout we do this?"

He stabbed her. The soft flesh below her left shoulder.

She felt the sudden punch of the thing and the searing burst of pain.

"How 'bout we do this?"

He shoved the knife into her inner thigh. The pain was a hammer and a snake-bite. Her body slammed back against the X-frame and she screamed. Through the sudden panic she saw where he was going. The hand drew back. Pointed at her swollen abdomen.

"How 'bout we…"

"STEPHENNOPLEEEASETHEBABY!" she wailed.

He stopped. Stared at her.

His face went pale. He staggered once and lowered the knife and then looked away from her, looked down at the floor as though studying something there and then walked slowly over to the worktable and folded back the blade of the knife and put it carefully down. Then just stood there staring at the table. Blood was rolling down her side over her hip and down her thigh across her calf and pooling at her foot. She hung there shaking. Sobbing, watching him.

"I better clean you up," he murmured. "I better clean up the mess you made. Before Kath comes home."

Now, a month later, those were practically his last words to her.

He seemed to have lost interest.

She was damn well glad of that but worried as to why. He moped around the house, drank too much beer at night in front of the TV. Mornings Kath would let her out of the Long Box and half the time he'd be still in bed or only just getting up. She'd see the empty bottles. There were times beads of sweat would break out over his forehead, for no apparent reason. He walked with a kind of stoop. His muscle tone seemed to have gone slack. He seemed almost as depressed as she was. Kath said he was worried about money, with taxes and mortgage payments being what they were. But Sara thought it was something else.

She didn't know why she should be worried. So what if he was depressed? Why should she care? The man had almost killed her. She didn't know what it signified or why it should concern her but it did.

Her apprehension resolved itself into something infinitely worse the week before Halloween when she went up into the attic looking for a replacement bag for the vacuum cleaner. And saw what they'd stored there.

***

"When this is over I want to find another," he said.

They were lying in bed back to back. She guessed he couldn't sleep.

She knew what he meant and she didn't like it one bit. The baby was supposed to be the glue. The baby was supposed to be sufficient. How long did he think this was going to go on? With how many? "Jesus, Stephen. With a baby in the house?"

He snorted. "The baby won't know."

"What about us? What about our lives? What about our friends? The baby's got to have friends and so do we."

"The baby isn't going to need any friends the first year or two. I want somebody younger this time, Kath. She's too fucking old. She doesn't do it for me. She's fucking disgusting."

He was serious for god's sake. She thought back to Shawna, the first one. She'd been younger all right. Sixteen.

Buried in back a few feet away from McCann.

He'd been playing with electricity. They hadn't known she had a bad heart.

How many?

"Stephen, I want my life back. I want to have Gail over. I want to go out to dinner and a movie sometimes. I mean, is that a lot to ask?"

"I'm talking about a year or two. Once the baby's older I'll… settle down."

Sure. Sure you will.

"We'll take it easy for a while. But right now, you know. I've got needs!"

Like his needs were the most ordinary, matter-of-fact thing in the world.

"Stephen…"

"Look. You want it to be you again? Is that what you want?"

She did not.

But she didn't want this either.

"We're going to get caught. You know that. We try again, we're gonna get caught."

"That's paranoid. We just have to be careful, that's all. Like always."

She turned to him.

"Do you realize how close we came? With McCann? What if Elsie or somebody else had seen us and not just him? We're lucky we didn't get caught right there."

"Unlucky, Kath. McCann was a one-in-a-million shot for chrissake. Besides, we won't be taking her in front of some crowd at an abortion clinic. We'll be taking her off the street. Any street. It'll be completely anonymous. Just like Shawna was."