"You touch one part of it, and the whole thing shivers, from one end to the other. It's such a delicate thing, revision, and revision is where the artistry is; and so you have to be ruthless, and put away anything--even parts you like the sound of, even the matters that speak from your secret self to who you hope you are--put away anything that does not contribute to the whole thing. And God damn it is hard."
Richard Bausch
In my creative writing class, we are required to submit two stories. Taking the critiques of our classmates and our teacher, we have to revise one of them and resubmit at the end of the semester as our "final". My first story was a tightly written piece that won the praise of a majority of my class. I knew when I wrote it that it was safe and would be generally well-received. It wasn't challenging, probably more cathartic than anything else. It was exactly the kind of piece a novice writer should submit when building one's ego.
When I am inspired, I am assaulted. I build the story in my mind for weeks and weeks before finding the courage to write it. One rainy afternoon in September, I was overcome by a scene of a woman standing over a man with an axe. The opening italicized paragraph emerged instantaneously, almost faster than I could type, and I wasn't able to write anything else until it was finished. That's how it is with me--the obsession overtakes me, like a baby waiting to be born. And it's not until it's in the world that my weary mind rest and my fears subside. I knew this story was a risk. I was frightened by it's complexities.
I have an innate sense of these things and my fears were justified. The critiques were, well, confusing. I'll post them before I reveal the final piece. Below is my first draft of "The Tipping Point". I'm currently in the throes of revision, and yes, God Damn it is hard.
“The Tipping Point”
She stole away in the middle of the night, through the yard, into the tool shed. A wad of cash bloomed out of her back pocket, a grey headband held back her dirty, dark hair. She wasn’t sure what made her do it, what made her pause in the middle of her midnight pacing, what triggered inside her the feeling that tonight was the night she would finally be free.
***
She was the shadow of death, standing in the doorway of their bedroom with the axe in her hand. Her husband slept soundly, oblivious to the fact that his life was in peril, that his silent, passive wife of fifteen years was weighing the pros against the cons, trying to decide if killing him would be easier than leaving him.
Her manicured hand wound tightly around the heavy wooden handle, fingering the yellowing bruise that encircled her eye with the other.
How did it all go so wrong? She wondered. How did we get here? She thought back to their courtship, to their engagement, to their wedding day. No, she decided, she saw no signs. He was a gentleman, so handsome and well-off. So polite and considerate. She was ridiculously, excessively in love with him. For months, she couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. He nourished her, poisoned her with his grand gestures and happy façade.
The mere hint of recollection struck her, winded her, dizzied her—the origin of the fear, of the doubt. She hadn’t realized at the time what the warning signs could mean.
One random, rare occurrence, one startling moment of violence. Over the years, it evolved into a fear-inducing cloud of darkness, leading to the present, to where she stood in the doorway with a blade so heavy she could hardly hold it upright, the shadow of death. Her mind went round and round, weighing and deciding.
To live or to die, to live or to die. She tightened her grip on the axe.
***
(Fifteen Years Ago) George paced the length of his mother’s living room, making footprints in the plush carpet with every heavy, angry step. Nora watched with hesitant eyes, motionless, the ice trembling in her untouched gin and tonic.
Warm, morning sun poured in through the large bay windows. George’s mother, Barbara, finished her third glass of Merlot. She sat completely erect, her elbow barely resting on the arm of the couch, twirling the empty wine glass between her fingers. “George, you need to calm down.”
“Calm down?” George stopped and glared at his mother, his nostrils flaring. “We had to fly back from Italy in the middle of the night! From our honeymoon! All because my stupid brother got drunk and wrapped his car around a tree. Just typical, so typical.”
“That poor girl,” Nora whispered.
George snorted. “I don’t feel bad for her.”
Nora’s eyes widened with surprise. “George,” she gasped. “She may never walk again.”
George turned his hateful stare towards her. “She knew what she was doing getting into that car with him.”
“Is Gregg going to be ok?” Nora whispered towards Barbara.
Barbara stiffened, looking away. “I don’t know.”
“We had to fly back in coach because it was all they had on such short notice,” George grumbled, looking out the window. “Do you know how uncomfortable coach is, Mother?”
Barbra picked up a crystal picture frame that was sitting on the marble side table. She turned the picture face towards Nora. It was a picture from their wedding, just two weeks before. Nora was laughing, George was flushed. Just 19 when she married. Only two weeks before, but sitting there in the hostile living room, Nora felt much older.
“It really was a beautiful day,” Barbara said.
George snatched the picture from his mother’s hand and hurled it towards the window in a surge of startling violence. Nora watched in shock as the frame hit dead center in the window, falling with a deadening thud. It started as a small crack, but in the blink of an eye the glass spider-webbed, crackling as it traveled from seal to seal, filling the room with the melody of tinkling cries before anchoring itself in the wood. The room went silent again.
Dissatisfied, he picked up a marble ball off the mantel piece, a token of gratitude to the family for some donation or another. Pulling his arm back, he threw the pewter piece-of-thanks with all his might right into the heart of the break. A terrible clap of contact, glass raining down everywhere, Nora was motionless, watching with perverse fascination.
Wordlessly, George left the room. With a slam of the door behind him, the room shook. The remaining glass shuddered and fell loose, shattering like illusions on the floor.
Nora began to shake, stuttering wordless apologies, grappling with confusion as she attempted to configure the source of his sudden outburst. No, she thought, not acceptable.
As she wiped the glass off her skirt, she realized she was covered in it, her arms glittering in the yellow sun. She didn’t know what to say—mortification and fear was just the tip of the emotional iceberg. A bird’s song, now alarmingly near, startled her. She looked to Barbara for an explanation, for comfort, for equal horror in this uncharacteristic act. “What just happened?”
Barbara shrugged with a coolness that pitted Nora’s stomach. “He’s a Grant. They are renowned for their temper.”
Nora went cold. “I never would have thought—he’s so angry—I’ve just never seen that side of him.”
Barbara, unfazed, laughed once and stood, the shattered pane crunching under her feet as she made her way towards the drink cart. She swept the glass off the top and poured herself another chalice of red. The last bit dribbled out slowly and she shook the bottle once for good measure. She sat down again, smoothing her skirt, and crossing her legs. She put the glass to her lips, smiling sadly. “Well darling,” she said coolly, “there’s a reason they say love is blind.”
***
George snored once, turning from his side to his back. The apologies over the years had bled together, overlapping in their insincerity, in their insignificance. The boy who cried sorry, Nora thought, as she stood over George’s sleeping form. The first episode in his mother’s house was nothing, yet his apologies that afternoon were the most profuse.
“I’m so sorry. Please believe me. I never wanted you to see that side of me. I would never hurt you, you’re my wife. It makes me sick to see you scared of me. Please don’t leave me alone. I need you, my brother just died. I promise you, I never want to be anything like my father…”
A familiar song that looped repeatedly in her mind, Nora wished he hadn’t bothered. The apologies, she decided, were almost worse than the assault themselves. They were a figurative slap in the face, meaningless, as convincing as his love.
At the time, she believed him, gobbling up the apologies, ingesting them to sooth her weary, heaving heart. It took many, many years for the consuming love she felt for him to burn out, leaving behind nothing more than a singed, detached shell of a woman.
Even in his sleep, Nora noticed, George looked angry.
***
(9 Years Ago) Nora lounged by the pool, enjoying the perks of being a Wall Street wife on a particularly hot Wednesday morning. She was alone in their huge house for once, free of the cook and the housekeeper, of the gardener and of George.
She unclipped the back of her bathing suit, slipping it off, indulging for a moment in her solitude. The sun warmed her breasts, and stung the tender, under-exposed skin. She exhaled happily and felt herself slipping into a blissful pool-side slumber.
“What the—?”
Nora’s eyes fluttered, not remembering for a moment where she was.
“For God’s sake, Nora,” George said, his tone heavy with disgust. A cool breeze tickled Nora’s exposed nipples, reminding her in a quick way that she had fallen asleep outside. Topless. At the same time, she heard a whistle.
She sat upright before her eyes even opened, reaching blindly around her in a wild panic. Turning from her husband, and whoever he was with, Nora covered her breasts with her arms, her wide, panicked eyes searching for a towel.
“Wow—your wife is really something,” the man said somewhere behind them. Nora was afraid to turn around, to see who had witness her humiliation. “Her tits are incredible!”
She cringed, hot with embarrassment, as she wrapped the towel tightly around her, tucking the loose end under her arm. George and the man had moved to the other side of the tall, thick shrub that separated the house from the pool.
Her initial instinct was to run the other way, to duck into the tool shed until she was alone again—but the low growl of George’s voice drew her nearer. She crept silently along the hedge.
“Whoa, calm down, George. Look, all I’m saying is that you married a nice piece of ass—” the man was interrupted by a sickening crunch. Nora didn’t know what that noise could be, but as she ran along the edge of the shrubbery, she was stricken with the mental image of glass raining down on her.
George was standing over a man Nora instantly recognized as Richard, their insurance agent. Richard’s face was bloodied, his body limp and unconscious. George’s fists were clenched tight, blood smeared across his knuckles. He drew back his leg to kick when Nora gasped.
His head snapped in Nora’s direction. He wiped his mouth with his hand, smearing a bit of blood across his cheek. His eyes were unrecognizable.
He pointed a long, bloodied finger in her direction. “Do you see what you just made me do?”
***
Richard lost four teeth, Nora remembered. He filed suit against George, but they settled out of court. George paid big—they had to miss their trip to Mexico that year—and was sentenced to six months anger management.
A chill passed through her at the memory, and she left the axe leaning against the door frame to pull a sweater out of the hall closet. Nora fingered her wedding ring, illuminated in the moonlight that streamed in through the kitchen window. Her fingers were swollen, her ring so tight it hardly budged. She twisted, the plump tips of her fingers throbbing as she ran hot water over her aching hands. The gold band slipped from her grasp, reacting against the force, clinking in the basin of the sink.
In the beginning, there were many years of happiness, of peace, between the bad spells. And they weren’t even spells, really, just instances that startled Nora less and less every time they occurred. Remembering the early years softened her, reminded her that somewhere deep inside him was the George she had married. The man who would stop the car in the middle of traffic to save a turtle; who carried her tenderly into the hospital as she cried into the crevice of his neck when she lost their first child. It was hard to reconcile the dual personality; it was easier for her to think of him as possessed: by rage, by genetic predisposition, by his insecurities. Somewhere in the darkness, he was in there. She used to believe that, now she wasn’t so sure.
She climbed up into the attic to retrieve her suitcase, plagued by a question: Did he ever stop for turtles when I wasn’t in the car?
The answer didn’t matter. Either way, she was leaving.
***
(Six Years Ago) Every year for Christmas, the partners on Wall Street doled out large, expensive bottles of bourbon to all the managing partners. Nora couldn’t stand the oaky, dry flavor to begin with and she had given up alcohol in a feeble attempt to aid in her fertility.
George opened the bottle on Christmas night. Whether as a treat for himself, or as an escape from the darkness that crept into their home during the holidays, the bottle was usually emptied by New Years.
It had been a particularly hard year. George’s mother had passed, Nora’s brother, Michael, moved to Phoenix. It had been two years since she had been able to conceive, two years since her last miscarriage. Nora couldn’t bring herself to look at George, feeling like a disappointment. They hadn’t spoken a word to each other in weeks, their silence starkly contrasted with the commercialized Christmas cheer.
George unscrewed the cap off the bottle and poured himself a glass to the intro music of “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Nora was balled up under heavy blankets, hardly moving or seeing or feeling, buried deeply in her own depression. George, tired of getting up every time he needed a refill, brought the bottle into the living room, drinking straight from the wide lip.
The silence between them was deafening, the tension growing with every heavy gulp.
George turned off the television mid-movie. Nora stiffened.
“Do you know why I think you can’t get pregnant?” George asked. He stood in the middle of the living room, remote in one hand, the bottle of bourbon in the other. He took a swig and then kneeled down in front of her.
Nora shook her head slightly, cringing as his hand cupped her face. Looking into his glassy eyes, she didn’t see him. He was gone.
He smiled, almost kindly, touching her cheek. “Not because you’re barren,” he whispered, his kind voice a stark contrast to his words, “but because you’re frigid.” His hand rested on her knee. “A frigid bitch that only cares about my sperm. You don’t care about me or my needs. You only want a baby.” He made a face. “What, am I not enough for you?”
Wordlessly, Nora pulled away. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.” He scoffed.
Nora moved to her feet, wiping away tears. He grabbed her wrist, tight, as she passed, pulling her quickly towards him. His breath was hot in her ear. “You know, the only way you can get pregnant is if you fuck your husband,” he sang. She cringed and he laughed.
She fled quickly up the stairs, George too drunk to follow her. She locked her bedroom door, then her bathroom door, and curled up in her bathtub, the cordless phone cradled in her hands, her fingers on the dial.
***
Things between them were never the same after that night. Nora was furious, even to this day, as she searched her hiding place, pulling out a wad of money. Whenever she recalled that Christmas, she shook with rage. It was enough to entice her to take the axe and bury it in his skull. Instead, she counted her money.
There was probably close to four grand hidden behind the false bottom of her starch can, enough to get her to Phoenix. She counted her money a final time, this time sorting out the amount she was going to give to her brother Michael and his wife Helena. She didn’t want to be a financial drain on them, after showing up unannounced. She didn’t want to be a burden.
He wouldn’t know she was coming, but Michael wouldn’t be surprised to see her. After that one particularly gruesome Christmas, Nora traveled to Michael’s every year, leaving George behind.
Michael was aware of the situation, always encouraging her to leave. She hid it from him the best she could, but sometimes it was impossible. He knew her well enough to hear the underlying fear, the fear that had taken root to her foundation as a person.
***
(Four Years Ago) Nora peered out her kitchen window, frowning at the silver Mercedes sitting in the driveway. The headlight was cracked; a long gutted slice pierced the side. She cradled the phone between her ear and shoulder, her brother’s concerned tone making her more worried than she already was.
“Michael, I told you. I called him at work and told him about my little run-in already. And he took it fine.”
“He was at work, Nora, surrounded by people.”
“You worry too much, you know that?” Nora chewed on her bottom lip, not wanting to admit how strangely cool George took the news. He sounded strange, detached. She glanced at the clock. He was due to be home any minute. “He hasn’t acted out since that Christmas—when was that?—Oh yeah, two years ago. It’s been two years since he’s been Scary- George.” Nora laughed weakly.
“It’s not funny, Nora. He should never be Scary-George. Scary-George shouldn’t exist.” Michael was quiet for a moment, waiting for Nora’s response. Nora wasn’t breathing as George pulled into the garage. “Hold on a second, Michael.” She placed the receiver face down on the counter and waited, George’s footsteps quickly drawing nearer.
George started yelling before he opened the back door: “You know I lost an account last month. I told you you’d have to cut back on the spending. And then you go and wreck the God damn car?”
He was on her in a flash, his finger-tips curling into her shoulders. With an exasperated huff, he shoved her, hard, backwards. Tripping over the stool behind her, Nora fell hard against the counter. A sharp pain radiated in the back of her neck where it slapped against the granite ridge.
It was then George heard the faint murmur of Michael’s frantic voice coming from the phone on the counter. Michael was cursing, threats and expletives raging from the plastic receiver. George narrowed his eyes towards Nora, as if he’d been betrayed, as if she was in the wrong. He threw the phone at the ground, where it shattered into fifty plastic pieces.
***
Nora touched the back of her neck, still able to feel the pain after all these years. That was the day it all changed, when his violence, usually focused on the external world, made its way into their marriage. Michael begged her to leave, but Nora couldn’t. Despite his flaws, despite her fear, she loved him. Her head told her to leave, her heart told her to stay—and she couldn’t reconcile the two any more than she could separate the scary-George and George she married.
Head or heart? Head or heart? She paced the floors every night, pondering this very question.
George continued to sleep soundly as Nora ghosted through the room, removing clothes from her drawers and closet. She hadn’t considered what she’d do if he woke up. She had no doubt it would turn violent.
A year ago, George lost his job, and with that, lost any semblance of the man she once loved.
***
(One year ago) When he didn’t come home on time one night, Nora began to worry. She called his cell, his office and finally, the police, at half-past eleven, when he was still missing. The police wouldn’t help. “Call back after 24 hours,” they said.
As soon as she hung up the phone, furious and frantic, it rang, vibrating gloriously in her hand. The number was blocked, and Nora’s heart began to race.
She picked him up from jail and helped him to the car. He was barefoot, a mixture of vomit and blood stains on his pressed shirt.
Nora didn’t say anything until they were home, sitting in the driveway. “A DUI?’ she whispered. “What were you thinking? You could have hurt someone. You could have hurt yourself.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said dismissively. “I got fired today, ok? So give me a break.”
Infuriated, Nora tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “Your brother did the same thing—and look what happened to him. He’s dead. He died doing the same thing you did—wrapping your car around a telephone pole. You were disgusted back then. And now look at you—you’re just like him.”
That was the night George slammed her head into the steering wheel.
***
She paced, the white lace fringes of her night gown brushing gently against her legs.
Head or heart? Head or heart? It really wasn’t a question of staying or leaving anymore, but the question remained.
Her insomnia didn’t stem from fear, but indecisiveness. She had evolved past fear. A cold detachment to her life would be more accurate, as she tried to find a way to escape without him following. She didn’t want to put her brother’s life, or the life of his family, in danger. The only way to truly be free was to kill him.
George’s face flashed with pleasure every time she cowered in fear. He was greedy in his influence of her.
Nora ran her finger over the blade, just to make sure it was sharp.
***
(Eight Months Ago) Nora came home from her part time job clerking to find George on the couch, remote in hand, in the same unwashed clothes as the day before. Because she was afraid of him, and because the gash on her forehead was finally the thin, pink line of a scar—she couldn’t demand anything of him.
Instead, she circled job openings in the paper, leaving them by the toilet for him to find.
This night was no different than the others: she swept the floors, took out the garbage, did his dishes and whatever dirty clothes she could quietly persuade him to discard. She cleaned the coffee table, wiping around his unmoving feet, untouched sock smudges remaining as proof of his unbridled animosity towards her.
He leaned forward, looking directly at her, and sat his beer down on the polished surface. A ring of wet formed immediately. George smirked, his eyes cloudy.
Nora’s fear was neck and neck with the resentment. She threw down the bottle of cleaner. The cap broke off, spilling blue soapy liquid all over their beige carpet. “Seriously, George, this has got to stop. You need help. Rehab, counseling, something…”
“Whoa—look at you—speaking your mind.” George sneered. “Just because you’re bringing home the bacon, you think you’re the women of the house.” He tried to stand, but slumped over instead. “Well, I hate to be the one to tell you, but I’m the man of the house. You do what I say.”
Nora took a step back. “Screw you, George.”
He was on her in an instant, pinning her against the sofa. His hands wound tightly around her neck, his face warped in a greedy anger, his eyes distant. He was hardly able to choke her, drunk as he was. He passed out moments after, Nora gasping for breath and fearing for her life.
***
George coughed once and Nora dropped the axe, startled. It landed on her toe, slicing off part of her nail. Hot, red warmth oozed from her foot. She stumbled a little, queasy from the blood, but not from the pain. She didn’t feel the pain.
The sheets are lovely. Blue Egyptian cotton, Nora thought. What a shame it will be to ruin them.
***
(5 Months Ago) They hardly spoke at all; they didn’t even share a bed. George continued to drink heavily, constantly, living on the couch, once beige, now grey. His skin was yellowing, his abdomen swelling. He wouldn’t go the doctor. But when Nora came home with divorce papers in tow, the ambulance had to be called.
“I fell down the stairs,” she lied to the paramedics. She was afraid of what would happen if she didn’t.
A month later, he followed her to work in a blind rage. Drunk behind the wheel, he swerved into oncoming traffic, attempting to run her off the road. Convinced she was having an affair, Nora couldn’t lie to the police after he pulled her out of her car by her hair in her office parking lot. There were too many witnesses. He was sentenced to rehab for a month.
***
Kill or be killed. Nora understood the totality of this expression. Her toe was bleeding. He wouldn’t divorce her. She felt helpless and scared. If only she believed there was good inside him, but she only found darkness. Even as he slept, she found no good in his face, in his soul.
Head or heart? Head or heart?
She picked up the axe.
***
(Two months ago) Fresh out of rehab, George pleaded with her: “It’s my first night back, please. I want to make this right.” Nora wrapped her arms tightly around her knees. He inched closer to her on the bed. “I’m better—I’ve changed. Please, I want to connect with you, like we used to. I’ve missed you.” She looked into his eyes, and thought she saw a glimpse of something.
Maybe, she considered, maybe I can love you again.
The next night, she gave into him, biting back bile, knowing that, sober or not, changed or not, she couldn’t live with him another day. As he spilled out of her, she vowed to never let him touch her again.
***
He will come after me. And it will be worse than before. It will be the end of me. Kill or be killed. She had given him a chance, a thousand chances. But help was never something he wanted, or thought he needed. When he turned his back on help, she lost all hope. She never thought she’d be happy again.
***
(One Month Ago) She had hoped sobering up would quiet his anger, help him manage it. He went to counseling religiously, but like the gin he hid from his sponsor, continued sipping at his rage behind closed doors. She wanted a divorce, carried the papers in her bag. He was home a month when he found them.
“After everything I’ve done to get better, get better for you—you’re leaving me?”
“I’m unhappy,” Nora whispered.
He ripped up the papers. “If you leave me, I will kill you, and then I’ll kill myself.” His voice softened. “Don’t you see? I am nothing without you.”
***
She believed him. How could she deny his sincerity? He hadn’t realized he had given her an ultimatum. His love was frightfully consuming, his rage enveloping. Whichever way you spun it, one of them wasn’t getting out alive. But there was so much more on the line now. She had so much more to lose.
***
(Three Weeks Ago) Nora held a plastic stick between her fingers, blinking furiously at the doubled pink lines. She shook it, wondering if it was her eye-sight. Maybe she was sick—like cancer sick—which explained why her vision was doubled, and why she was vomiting profusely. No, she was pregnant.
She was quieter than usual that night. George drank tequila and punched a hole through their front window. Unfazed, she stepped over him, left him passed out on the floor on the way to the kitchen, bits of glass shining in his open wound.
The next day, George got a job. He came home from the interview with a bottle of champagne tucked under each arm. There was no trigger. Even Nora, who had grown accustomed to the cycle, who had trained herself to detect the signs, couldn’t have seen this coming. He was happy; he had gotten a job, but for some reason, he was enraged.
Nora curled into a ball, praying that George wouldn’t notice she was protecting her stomach.
***
With her free hand, Nora felt the tender, unblemished skin of her abdomen. She had more to lose than ever, more to protect.
Could I be the kind of person who kills the father of my child? She wondered.
Nora focused on his face, his eyebrows, his ear lobes, the rise and fall of his chest, his toes. Probably for the first time in years, truly saw him. His abdomen was distended. She knew enough about liver failure to recognize he was dying. She was beginning to think clearly, to see the powerlessness in his sickness, the abuse of the disease. She smiled, satisfied.
She smoothed the new set of divorce papers, leaving them in plain sight on the bedside table.
Something fluttered in her stomach and somewhere in her mind, lodged down deep in the stretchy part of her sanity—something snapped. Maybe it was the latent anger of years boiling over; maybe it was the inkling of maternal instinct, either way Nora couldn’t bring herself to walk away. She gripped the handle of the axe. Head or heart. Head or heart.
Head, she decided.
George was beginning to stir, his alarm clock moments from buzzing. Hovering over his bed, Nora reared back her arms, blade poised and positioned. In the same moment, George’s eyes snapped open, too frightened and hung-over to process the metallic glimmer cutting through the air.
The wood of the headboard splintered, the blade slicing a part of his ear. Nora stood over him, crazed and delighted, greedily drinking in his fear.
Too scared to move, George wondered if he was dead, if the axe was buried in his head, if the insane eyes he thought were those of his wife were actually those of the devil. He shuddered in fear as warm wetness spread between his legs.
“Sign the divorce papers,” Nora hissed. “If you don’t, if you try and follow me, if I ever hear from you again—I will come for you. And the next time…” she pulled back the axe and rested it on her shoulder, “Next time, George, I won’t miss”.
She stole away in the dawn, taking his car and her dignity. A wad of cash bloomed out of her back pocket, a grey headband held back her dirty, dark hair. She wasn’t sure what made her do it, what made her pause in the middle of her midnight pacing, what triggered inside her the feeling that tonight was the night she would finally be free.
She was free.
