RoseAnn Discovers Dominance Pt. 28

In the morning, I gave Craig the new tweed jacket with the leather patches on the elbows. "Now," I said, "you look like a real professor." He gave me what he could afford on the allowance I gave him, a bottle of fine perfume and a silk scarf of brilliant red and yellow that went well with my black hair. We kissed, but resisted the temptation for another romp on the mattress. We had another visit to make.

We headed out around seven-thirty. On Christmas morning, the highways were almost deserted, and we reached Bitumen around ten. In our family, Christmas Eve was for church and Christmas Day for celebrating, a family custom for as long as I could remember. Some relatives had been there for hours already, and we had to strip off our sweaters in the damp heat. The windowpanes were decorated with ferns of frost, condensed from the breath of twenty adults and children.

In the kitchen, breakfast was a continuing production line that segued into lunch when Mom ran out of eggs and bacon. By family tradition, at one o'clock my mother would put the food away 'to save our appetites for dinner' and we would open our gifts.

Uncle Albert sat in a recliner, a nearly empty beer bottle balanced on his belly. His grandchild lay tucked in beside him, sucking her thumb and staring at me. "Hey, Rosie, tell me about school."

"Classes all day," I said, sitting on the floor next to him. "Drafting, land surveying, math...you know, engineering stuff. But not at all boring."

"I see you and your professor friend patched things up."

"Uncle, that happened four months ago. It was just a misunderstanding and we both overreacted. We cleared that up as soon as we got home...I mean, back to Chicago."

"Mike didn't think it was a misunderstanding. It was weeks before he stopped going on about it. He was sure you were gonna come home to Bitumen and move back in with him. He talked about going into Chicago and bringing you back."

I tried to laugh, but it came out as a strangled squeak. "Not in this lifetime, Uncle Al. And if you don't mind, it's Christmas. I don't want to think about him today." To my dismay, tears were gathering and threatening to spill down my cheeks. I stood up quickly and went to the kitchen. I opened a fresh beer and passed it to Uncle Albert. The three-year old was now asleep on his chest. "I've got to get some fresh air," I said and kept going past his chair and out the front door.

It wasn't terribly cold outside, and I let the chill air calm me. In a moment, I felt Craig beside me. "I overheard," he said.

"People can't seem to shut up about Mike. I feel like they're accusing me. But they all know what Mike is like." Craig passed me a handkerchief and I blew my nose into it. "I guess everyone likes him. He's a big, tough guy, and women think he's all dreamy and sexy. Men see him as the ideal they wish they'd been. But they didn't see him come home drunk and punch me in the face. They didn't see him push me over the coffee table and into the stereo. The table and the stereo both ended up broken."

Craig listened silently, watching my eyes.

"When he saw the damage, he got furious. I ran out of the trailer and next door where my best friend lived. Her dad hated Mike, and he sat up all night with a shotgun in his lap while I slept on their couch. The next day, I got Candy to drive me to Morris to her own divorce lawyer's office. He wanted me to cool off for a while, but I made him start the process right away. I knew I'd go back if I waited too long."

I watched the condensed moisture stream from Craig's nose into the breeze as he listened. "It scandalized the whole town, at least everyone that knew us. 'How could you divorce Mike Perez?' they said. 'Every girl wanted to marry him, but you won, and now you want to throw him away.' No one could make sense of it. No one in this town sees anything wrong when a man gets drunk and beats on his woman every now and then."

I was silent until Craig prompted me. "And what did you tell them?"

"Nothing. My lawyer told me not to talk about it. I didn't ask Mike for anything. I just wanted out. But the judge awarded me five hundred dollars anyway. He told me to get a job and stay off welfare. I used that money to move Candy and I to Chicago. You know everything after that."

"Are you getting cold?" said Craig, shivering in his thin white shirt.

I nodded. "Yeah. I feel better now. Thanks for listening."

We went back in, and Craig hovered over me, rather than join one of the all-male sports and political debates that had started throughout the house. He helped me chop vegetables for the big meal, prompting my cousin Alice to say, "You should keep this guy. You can put him to work in the kitchen and you'll never have to lift a finger again."

I exchanged sly smiles with Craig. I imagined shocking the panties off Alice by revealing the full range of Craig's household duties.

At one point, I was alone with Mom in the pantry. I took the opportunity to thank her for not inviting Mike.

"I told him he shouldn't come around, so he made plans to go to his uncle's in Ottawa. But so many people were asking about him, I had to invite him to come by for dessert."

"Mom, you didn't! When will be get here?"

"I don't know, but it's an hour's drive from Ottawa. I imagine it'll be late, after you've left."

My heart sank. Now I couldn't relax; Mike could show up any time. I poured a tall glass of red wine and, with shaking hands, drank half of it straight down, in an attempt to calm myself. It didn't help. I grew more and more distracted as I helped Mom with the vegetables and Craig lifted the turkey from the oven. He began to scoop the stuffing from it until Aunt Helen pushed him aside, chiding him for doing women's work.

Meanwhile, I refilled my glass twice until my speech began to slur. Not that anyone would have noticed by then. Uncle Al was a happy drunk, and sat at the piano loudly singing Christmas songs, even though no one joined in. My cousin Marta drank too much beer and peed herself. I had to help clean it up, even in my unsteady condition. We put her to bed with a pail beside her. .

After dinner, we sat around reminiscing, as people do at family gatherings. I sat back with my eyes half-closed and listened to the talk. Although Craig had limited himself to two beers, he dozed beside me on the couch.

The silence was broken by a knock at the door. Before anyone could answer, it banged open against the stop.

"Is my wife in here?"

I came immediately alert but I didn't need to turn around. Shit! What a time for him to show up. Another half hour, and Craig and I would have been on our way home.

"There you are," he said. "You're coming home with me."

"Mike, you're drunk," I said, without turning around.

"I want you to come home with me now. It's Christmas, for Christ's sake."

Finally, I turned to face him. The drunken gleam was in his eyes, but Albert and Arnie and my father already surrounded him, and Albert gripped his shoulder to restrain him. I forced myself to stay calm. "Mike, I'm not going home with you. I have a home, and a man, and you have Cheryl."

"Did you just drive all the way from Ottawa in that condition?" asked Albert. He was nearly as tall as Mike, and Mike would listen to him. "Mike, why don't you lie down for a few minutes?"

Mike shook Albert's hand from his shoulder. "I came here because she owes me something for Christmas. She knows what I mean."

"Where's Cheryl, Mike?" I said, as calmly as I could. But Albert was already steering him into the spare room. He coaxed Mike into lying down on the narrow bed, across the room from Marta, who snored loudly.

I went out into the bitter cold again. Mike's Gran Fury idled at the end of the drive. There was no breeze, and the stink of the car's exhaust made my stomach turn.

I tapped on the window, and Cheryl rolled it down an inch.

"You better come inside," I said. "Mike seems to be passing out. Come in where it's warm and have some dessert."

Cheryl squirmed and puffed her way out of the car, and I reached in and shut off the engine. She lagged behind when I tried to coax her into the house.

I looked at her in the dim light from the house. "You're crying."

She snuffled and sobbed. "I don't want people to see me like this."

"I'm freezing, Cheryl. I've got to get inside. Don't worry about a little red around the eyes. Everyone's still recovering from the shock of having Mike come in all drunk and raving."

"When he got a load of beer inside him, he started going on that you were the only one who could suck him off properly."

"It seems to be something he needs," I said. "Don't you do it for him? He seems to need it."

She looked at the ground. "I try, RoseAnn, I try. But it makes me sick. Sometimes I can do it, but he gets all pissed off when I gag and spit afterward. I don't think I can ever make him happy."

By the time Cheryl was settled in the house, the men bundled the semiconscious Mike into the back seat of his Gran Fury. My father drove him home, while Albert followed in his own car to bring Dad back. Cheryl was invited to stay and would be bedded down in my room for the night.

Craig and I ate our pudding and hard sauce with whipped cream, said our goodbyes, and drove out of Bitumen an hour later than we'd planned. There was more traffic on the highway than this morning, but at least the pavement was dry and there were no accidents to hold things up.

"I feel humiliated," he said after an hour, as the lights of Chicago began to glow in the distance.

"What about?"

"I should have stood up to Mike. He had no business talking to you like that. Instead, I kept my mouth shut and hoped he wouldn't turn on me."

"Craig, no one expected you to take on Mike. You know how big Uncle Al is. Even he was careful not to provoke Mike into fighting. Those men all know each other, and they know how to cool each other off. Anything you did might have set something off that would have really gotten some furniture broken."

"I still feel inadequate. You're out of my league. I've always realized that. I've been afraid you'd wake up and realize it someday, that you deserve someone better."

I giggled, more out of the relief from nervous tension than at the conversation. "I do deserve the best, Craig. I deserve you. You are the lover I want, not Mike. Being big and tough doesn't make him a good lover. In fact, he's a shitty lover, an inconsiderate, drunken, selfish slob. You're the complete opposite. I love you."

"You always know how to make me feel better," he said.

"Well, enjoy it while you can. When we get home, you're going to make me happy. In return, I'm not going to let you come for at least a month, but it might be much longer than that. But you can be sure I'm not going to do without. "

"I love you," he said.