Deafening Silence

"No, Donny, no. Not again."

"Let me handle it woman."

With this statement, Donny gestured with his head for Ann to return to her office. She opened the blinds again and stewed. Donny cancelled his afternoon appointments and just stayed in his office. Ann noted that there was a constant stream of employees hitting reception and many small cliques formed and dispersed. She distracted herself from wondering what that was all about. At 1PM, two policemen arrived and spoke to the receptionists. Donny must have seen them. They were invited to his office, the blinds were closed, then they left 15 minutes later.

Ann was dreading going home, so before she left, she asked if she could move into the motel unit the company rented permanently. The same unit she and Donny used. She snuck home before the kids got back from school and packed a suitcase. Then she sent a text to Dave and Sarah's phone saying she wouldn't be home. At the end of the day, Donny helped her unpack in the unit. Desperate for distraction, she allowed him to fuck her.

At 6.30PM, her mother rang. Before she answered, she thought, typical of Dave to use her own family against her.

"Where the hell are you Ann? Why aren't you home to feed your kids?"

"Um, I'm not coming home tonight. Dave can look after them..."

"Dave is in the hospital again. He'll be there for at least a week this time."

"What? I'll be home as quick as I can."

Ann pushed Donny off her.

"What did you do to him this time?"

"The stubborn prick has to learn that he can't mess with me, Ann."

Ann dressed quickly and sprinted home via picking up take outs. The first thing she noted, when she threw her front door open, was all three children sobbing in the lounge, being comforted by her parents. Her mother intercepted her and led her into the kitchen.

"What the hell is going on Ann? You abandon our children while your husband is in the ICU."

Ann watched her mother's nostrils flare.

"Then you come home with grease for your children's main meal of the day. What is going on Ann?"

"It's none of your business mother. Dave and I are going through a rough spot at the moment that's all."

The two women stared each other down for half a minute. Her mother broke the silence first.

"I note that you showed no surprise when you found out your husband is in hospital. That tells me that what the children say is true. You did have something to do with Dave ending up in the ICU."

"No mum, I had no idea Dave was in hospital again."

Silence settled over the conversation again. Again it was broken by Ann's mother.

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"Aren't you a little curious what your boyfriend did to your husband this time?"

"What boyfriend?"

"Come on Ann, you reek of sex."

Ann looked at the floor and remained silent.

"Well, seeing as how you are so interested, I'll tell you. This time the doctors are fairly certain he has a fractured cheekbone and possibly a fractured skull as well. They are sure that one of the ribs that were broken last time was pushed into his chest this time and punctured a lung. The ambulance driver told me they picked him up from an alley near your work. Tell me Ann; what did the poor guy do to you to deserve this treatment?"

Ann couldn't answer. She was too busy sobbing. Her mother sat in silence until Ann ran upstairs to her bedroom. She noticed there was blood on the sheets of the bed she hadn't slept in for four days. She screamed her hurt in the pillow. She had no idea how long she stayed there, but finally there was a soft knock at the door. It was her mother.

"I have to take Dad home. All this stress is causing his blood pressure problems to come back. He almost fainted when he stood up just now."

"Okay mum, I'll see you out."

By the time Ann got downstairs, her father was walking out the front door. He turned to give her a withering look, but didn't say anything. While she was saying goodbye, the children slipped off to bed. Ann sat and tried to think of a way out of this train wreck. The only way she could see was forwards.

Breakfast the next day was silent. When she got to work, Ann discovered Donny would be gone for the day. She desperately needed reassurance that at least the future side of her plan was on track, so she texted Donny and begged him to meet her at the motel that evening. She then texted her mother and asked her to meet the kids after school and look after their dinner as she had things to do. The reply was, 'Yes, good idea'.

Donny met her after work and reassured her their plan was right on track. The police couldn't connect either of them to Dave's two beatings. Ann didn't bring up the subject of her husband's second assault. Sure, Donny had arranged it, but she could have stopped it simply by running after them as her husband was carried out the door. She allowed Donny to make love to her until after 9PM, then Ann showered and went home.

Although it was almost 10 when she arrived, all three children were awake and looking at her expectantly.

"Why aren't you guys in bed?"

Her mother replied on their behalf.

"I let them stay up until you got home. They're keen to know how their father is."

"I...I...I don't know."

"WHAT! Didn't you go and see him tonight?"

Ann's silence answered for her.

"So what did you do? Surely not. Tell me you didn't get me to cover you here while you went to see your lover while Dave is in the hospital."

"I never told you I was going to the hospital."

Her mother swung around, grabbed her coat and headed for the door. With one hand on the handle, she threw over her shoulder.

"You disgust me. I'm ashamed to call you my daughter. Don't ask me to look after your children again, unless it's so you can go to your husband and beg his forgiveness."

Ann thought she was learning to cope with three hours broken sleep a night. Like I said, I never got to know Dave, but from how other people describe him, he maybe would have forgiven Ann up to this point, if she'd just abandoned her plans. She didn't. From what she told me later, she thought she'd caused so much pain at that point that to back out would have made it all pointless.

When Ann's mother rang her at work the next day, she thought it might be to apologise. It wasn't.

"Ann, how could you be that heartless?"

"What are you talking about Mum?"

"Your husband finally gets out of the ICU and what does he get? A visit from his loving wife? No. An ugly process server and divorce papers. Who are you Ann? What have you done with my daughter?"

In her pain, Ann had totally forgotten that her divorce process was on auto pilot. The lawyer had obviously followed her instructions and had Dave served as soon as the papers were ready. As a reflex, she tried to remove the immediate thorn in her side.

"Mum, can you look after the kids tonight so I can go and see Dave?"

"No I bloody can't, Ann. Your father is in the same hospital as your husband. He had a heart attack today. They're going to put in stents tomorrow. Goodbye Ann."

Ann rushed home early to be there when the children got off the school bus. The bus arrived devoid of three familiar faces. Again, calls to two of their phones went straight to message bank. Two hours later she got a text to pick them up at the hospital. They'd all walked there after school. On the way home, she scolded them for making her worry. They all just remained silent and stared out the car window.

It was shortly after this that I became aware of the tragic story of Ann, Dave and Donny. I was sitting in my office wondering where my next story was going to come from. The world was going through an unusually quiet, peaceful period and news was hard to find. My phone rang. It was an old mate I'd gone to journalism school with, Matt Nigrum. He was good at what he did, but tended to shun the bigger organisations to concentrate on small town issues where he could make a difference. He'd been in the regional centre where our story occurred for about a year.

The doctors and nurses at the hospital where Dave was served, were so appalled by his wife's behaviour, that they contacted Matt. With his normal talent, Matt quickly spoke to several people from the dealership and found out about Ann and Donny's affair in addition to the two beatings Dave had suffered. No one came out and directly said it, but the fact that Dave was seen by three witnesses being carried out of the dealership by two known associates of Donny, led to its own conclusion. Matt tried to talk to Dave but he refused to speak. He then contacted the police to see where their investigation was at, only to be told there was no active investigation on the matter. He submitted the story to his editor and had the pleasure of seeing it torn up in his face. No negative stories would be published about Donny in that town. He immediately resigned and sent the story to me. I saw my editor and Matt received an offer from my paper the next week. I cleared my desk and left for assignment in Hicksville two days later.

From what Ann told me, the next week was a very uncomfortable one for her. Her children treated her like a leper and her social life was curtailed by not having her mother available to look after the children. She picked them up from the hospital every night. Donny was away on business every day during business hours and the only time she saw him was one night when he managed to sneak into her house after the children were in bed. That was the first time they spent the whole night together. She certainly craved the company.

On the Friday, Ann got a call from the school to come in for a semi-urgent discussion. That was when she found out that they were very worried about Sarah's rapid weight loss. Ann couldn't believe she'd been so negligent to not notice. They moved on to tell of Michael's sudden propensity to violence and that little Pete was being bullied because he was always crying. Ann cried herself at that. All she could think to do was advance the divorce as quickly as possible and hope it blew over.

At first, Ann turned down the invitation to go out with four of her girlfriends that Friday night. Dave was still in hospital and Donny unavailable. She tried everything she could to get the children to speak, but failed. In frustration, she left the children at home and went out with the girls. She left the name of the place she would be with Sarah in case it was too loud to hear her cell ringing.

She'd been there about an hour, fielding questions from her friends that had heard the rumours. Denying all knowledge of the violence visited to her husband. They'd finally relented and moved on to more fun topics, when she saw two of them looking over her shoulder. She turned around and there was Dave. One eye was slightly black, the other jet black. A bandage covered one side his face below the eye and he was stooped, guarding his painful ribs. He was sitting at an adjacent table, just staring at her. In panic, Ann swung around, back to her friends and totally blew it.

"Oh, ignore him."

Her friends saw her immediate facial reaction and heard her flippant comment. They also saw Dave's suffering and could only wonder at the commitment it must have taken to come there and make his silent protest; for that it clearly was. They made up their own minds on Ann's honesty over the last hour. One made an excuse to go to the bar. The two that knew Dave the best, went over to talk to him. The fourth just looked at Ann quizzically. Ann fled again. She paused outside the bar wondering if she should offer Dave a lift. Her own conscience wouldn't allow her to talk to him yet though. Even though it was the decent thing to do, she just couldn't do it. As late as two weeks ago, she'd told the guy she loved him, to divert any suspicion. He now knew it had been a lie. Ann drove home.

Her mother was there, looking after the kids. They hadn't seen each other in a week and Ann suddenly realised she'd never even enquired about her father's health. God, how self-centred had she become? They both got the kids to bed, then Ann asked about her father, but tried to change the topic when her mother raised the thorny issue of Dave. Her mother was having none of that though. She asked Ann if Dave had done anything to warrant her divorcing him. Ann mentioned a couple of petty little niggles, but when she saw her mother was unconvinced, went on to explain that she'd simply fallen out of love with her husband and in love with someone else. She found lying to her mother easy. She certainly wasn't going to mention that she used Donny's attention to her as an opportunity to trade up, as it were.

The older generation woman let her daughter have it on her opinions about bunking out of her marriage and children. No holds were barred. Ann sat through it uncomfortably. She vehemently denied having anything to do with Dave's two beatings. At the end she didn't ask whether or not her mother had discussed with her husband if he would forgive her for the attack on their marriage. In her mind, the plan was intact. She did ask if Dave was coming home that night and was coldly told that he was due to be released in two days, but had rung asking where she was earlier. She realised that Dave must have snuck out of the hospital to go to the bar earlier.

Ann did a lot of thinking in the next two days. She decided that the decent thing to do was apologise to Dave for her infidelity, but to point out that the beatings were the result of his own immature behaviour. She would demand that he spoke to the children and explain that she had nothing to do with his pain. She thought there was a reasonable chance he would go along with that and a small chance he'd beg her to stay. One thing was for sure, any aggression on his part would result in threats of a reduced share of the marital assets in the split. Dave had other plans.

On the night he was released from hospital, Ann and Donny left work early and went to the unit. With no need for secrecy, they both walked out the room together just after 6PM. To be greeted by a silent, Dave, Sarah, Mike and Peter watching them from where they stood across the carpark. Donny immediately strode towards them. All three children stepped in front of Dave. Dave said something Ann couldn't hear, then stepped in front of them protectively. Donny looked at the three witnesses, turned and strode away. Ann slunk to her car and drove away. Dave took the kids out for a meal and returned to his home with them just before eight.

Ann heard them come in, laughing and talking. She kept washing her dinner dishes. When she'd finished, she went into the lounge, meaning to separate Dave from the kids and present her ultimatum. The three children stopped talking when she entered. There was no sign of Dave. When she enquired where he was, she was told that he'd taken his pain medicine and gone to bed. She tried in vain to get the kids to talk to her normally. That failed. She shooed them to bed and rang Donny for comfort.

Exhausted, she decided to turn in early as well. At the top landing of the stairs, she saw the light was on in the spare room and that there was a pile of her clothes and her toiletries on the bed. Vowing that this shit had to stop now, she strode to the master bedroom door. It was locked. Going back downstairs, she retrieved the spare key from the kitchen. Thinking how Dave was behaving totally unlike the man she knew, she armed herself with a rolling pin for self-defence, just in case. Using the key, she opened the bedroom door. The light from the hallway revealed Dave on the bed and a form in a sleeping bag, on a mattress, this side of it. As she was processing the sight, the form in the bag arose to reveal Mike standing between her and Dave. Mike looked at the rolling pin then hissed forcefully,

"You will not hurt my dad again."

Ann wanted to say it was all a mistake, that she wouldn't ever hurt Dave. In Mike' eyes, she saw the futility of this. Instead, she retreated weeping to her room. Did she sleep like a baby that night? What do you reckon?

Dave was still unconscious when it was time to leave the next morning. The kids took turns. Two would be eating breakfast in the kitchen, the other would be sitting half way up the stairs. It was so obvious that this one was a guard, that it broke Ann's heart. She left and spent the day planning a speech on how to redeem her children's trust.

She returned home at her usual time. Dave and the children were talking in the lounge. She barked at the kids to go into the kitchen. They looked at Dave, who nodded. When he painfully started to rise, she ordered him to stay away.

Once the three children were settled at the kitchen table, Ann stood glaring down at them, facing the door, the table between her and it. She opened her mouth to begin her prepared speech, when she saw her tormentor standing just outside the doorway.

Almost two weeks of guilt, self-loathing, frustration and sleep deprivation, caused something inside Ann to flip. The neutral expression on Dave's face was the final straw. On pure reflex, Ann destroyed the remnants of her life. With a strength she didn't know she had, she picked up the heavy glass fruit bowl in the centre of the table and hurled it towards her torturer. It slipped in her hand at the last moment. That caused her aim to be off. In slow motion, she saw the bowl heading for the doorframe. Just before it struck, she looked at Dave's face. She swears now that the neutral expression turned to a smile. That was his only muscle movement however, as the heavy bowl hit the frame. It broke into two pieces. One piece smashed harmlessly against the frame. Not so the other piece. It deflected about 30 degrees and hit the undamaged side of Dave's face.

Still in slow motion, Ann watched in horror as bright crimson blood sprayed out of a deep cut, before her husband sank slowly to his knees, then fell on to his side. Like a sick film projector, life sped up again. The children, initially stunned to silence, started shouting concurrently. Mike reacted first, jumped up and protectively stood over his father. Seeing the blood still pulsing from Dave's face, Ann instinctively grabbed a hand towel and rolled it up while striding to her recumbent husband. She intended to use it to staunch the blood. Mike raised his hands to ward her off, but she determinedly pushed him backwards. He fell hard. Ann knelt down and pressed the towel into Dave's face.

In a very un-girl like manner, Sarah tackled her mother off her father. Seeing that his angry sister was more than a match for his mother, Mike arose, went to the medicine cabinet, grabbed a sterile pad, ripped it open and applied it gently to his father's face. Sarah screamed at Peter,

"Phone emergency!"

Knowing how bad this was, Ann ran to the phone. By controlling the call, she hoped to just request an ambulance while keeping the police away. She had just put her hand on the phone, when she heard Mike scream,

"Use the phone upstairs Sarah."

In a moment of clarity, Ann realised that they'd misinterpreted her actions as her wanting to stop the phone being used. Sarah sprinted past her towards the stairs. Ann went to give chase but little Pete stopped her the only way he could. He wrapped his arms around her lower legs. Ann went to take one step but fell heavily when her legs wouldn't move. She lay there screaming hysterically, then removed Pete's arms firmly, stood and ran.

That's the first time I saw Ann in the flesh. One hand covered in blood, running to her car. I'd just arrived to request an interview. Seeing the bloody, screaming woman, I took the liberty of inviting myself in and took over Dave's treatment. The ambulance arrived, followed by the police. While Dave was taken away, the police started asking questions. I arranged for Sarah to ring her grandmother to come and look after them. That's how I heard first hand what had happened to Dave this time, as the children recounted how their mother had attacked their father, then allegedly tried to smother him and stop them calling an ambulance.