Balance of Power

ONE Feeling the gun against the nape of her neck, Joan Bowden froze. Her consciousness narrowed to the weapon she could not see: her vision barely registered the cramped living room, the images on her television--the President and his fiancee, opening the Fourth of July gala beneath the towering obelisk of the Washington Monument. She could feel John's rage through the cold metal on her skin, smell the liquor on his breath. "Why?" she whispered. "You wanted him." He spoke in a dull, emphatic monotone. Who? she wanted to ask. But she was too afraid; with a panic akin to madness, she mentally scanned the faces from the company cookout they had attended hours before. Perhaps Gary--they had talked for a time. Desperate, she answered, "I don't want anyone." She felt his hand twitch. "You don't want me. You have contempt for me." Abruptly, his tone had changed to a higher pitch, paranoid and accusatory, the prelude to the near hysteria which issued from some unfathomable recess of his brain. Two nights before, she had awakened, drenched with sweat, from the nightmare of her own death. Who would care for Marie? Moments before, their daughter had sat at the kitchen table, a portrait of dark-haired intensity as she whispered to the doll for whom she daily set a place. Afraid to move, Joan strained to see the kitchen from the corner of her eye. John's remaining discipline was to wait until Marie had vanished; lately their daughter seemed to have developed a preternatural sense of impending violence which warned her to take flight. A silent minuet of abuse, binding daughter to father. Marie and her doll were gone. "Please," Joan begged. The cords of her neck throbbed with tension. The next moment could be fateful: she had learned that protest enraged him, passivity insulted him. Slowly, the barrel traced a line to the base of her neck, then pulled away. Joan's head bowed. Her body shivered with a spasm of escaping breath. She heard him move from behind the chair, felt him staring down at her. Fearful not to look at him, she forced herself to meet his gaze. With an open palm, he slapped her. Her head snapped back, skull ringing. She felt blood trickling from her lower lip. John placed the gun to her mouth. Her husband. The joyful face from her wedding album, now dark-eyed and implacable, the 49ers T-shirt betraying the paunch on his too-thin frame. Smiling grimly, John Bowden pulled the trigger. Recoiling, Joan cried out at the hollow metallic click. The sounds seemed to work a chemical change in him--a psychic wound which widened his eyes. His mouth opened, as if to speak; then he turned, staggering, and reeled toward their bedroom. Slumping forward, Joan covered her face. Soon he would pass out. She would be safe then; in the morning, before he left, she would endure his silence, the aftershock of his brutality and shame. At least Marie knew only the silence. Queasy, Joan stumbled to the bathroom in the darkened hallway, a painful throbbing in her jaw. She stared in the mirror at her drawn face, not quite believing the woman she had become. Blood trickled from her swollen lip. She dabbed with tissue until it stopped. For another moment Joan stared at herself. Then, quietly, she walked to her daughter's bedroom. Marie's door was closed. With painstaking care, her mother turned the knob, opening a crack to peer through. Cross-legged, Marie bent over the china doll which once had been her grandmother's. Joan felt a spurt of relief; the child had not seen them, did not see her now. Watching, Joan was seized by a desperate love. With slow deliberation, Marie raised her hand and slapped the vacant china face. Gently, the child cradled the doll in her arms. "I won't doPatterson, Richard North is the author of 'Balance of Power' with ISBN 9780375432088 and ISBN 0375432086.