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    Rose Madder
    Rose Madder
    Rose Madder
    Ebook669 pages11 hours

    Rose Madder

    By Stephen King

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The #1 national bestseller about a woman who escapes an abusive marriage is “one of Stephen King’s most engrossing horror novels. Relentlessly paced and brilliantly orchestrated...fueled by an air of danger immediate and overwhelming” (Publishers Weekly).

    Rosie Daniels leaves her husband, Norman, after fourteen years in an abusive marriage. She is determined to lose herself in a place where he won’t find her. She’ll worry about all the rest later.

    Alone in a strange city, she begins to make a new life, and good things finally start to happen. Meeting Bill is one; and getting an apartment is another. Still, it’s hard for Rosie not to keep looking over her shoulder, and with good reason. Norman is a cop, with the instincts of a predator. He’s very good at finding people, even if he is losing his mind.

    Fixed on revenge, Norman Daniels becomes a force of relentless terror and savageness, a man almost mythic in his monstrosity. For Rosie to survive, she must enter her own myth and become a woman she never knew she could be: Rose Madder.

    “Riveting, engrossing...packed with suspense” (People), Stephen King infuses this novel with an edge-of-your-seat, chilling atmosphere. Rose Madder is “an eerie, remarkably mature and moving novel” (The Washington Post).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherScribner
    Release dateJan 1, 2016
    ISBN9781501141287
    Author

    Stephen King

    Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes Never Flinch (May 2025), the short story collection You Like It Darker (a New York Times Book Review top ten horror book of 2024), Holly (a New York Times Notable Book of 2023), Fairy Tale, Billy Summers, If It Bleeds, The Institute, Elevation, The Outsider, Sleeping Beauties (cowritten with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy: End of Watch, Finders Keepers, and Mr. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel and a television series streaming on Peacock). His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. His epic works The Dark Tower, It, Pet Sematary, Doctor Sleep, and Firestarter are the basis for major motion pictures, with It now the highest-grossing horror film of all time. He is the recipient of the 2020 Audio Publishers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, the 2014 National Medal of Arts, and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King. 

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    Related categories

    Reviews for Rose Madder

    3.5/5

    1,792 ratings41 reviews

    What our readers think

    Readers find this title to be a mix of positive and negative. Some readers appreciate the depth and nuance of the book, while others find the symbolism too intricate. It is considered an under-rated book by some, with a slow start but unique twists. However, readers are warned that the book may be triggering for those who have experienced domestic violence or sexual assault. Overall, it is recommended as a must-read for fans of Stephen King.

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Quite simply unputdownable
    • 5/5
      Everyday horrors blended with a touch of unreal supernatural make Rose Madder hard to put down. King's skilful story weaving had me in tears at some points and wanting to scream "look out!" at others. This is an example of horror that's all the more spine chilling because of its everyday nature. Brilliant, plain and simple.
    • 5/5
      This is one of Stephen King's more disturbing books. It deals with domestic violence in which a wife tries to escape of husband who is a cop in order to start her life over. There are some supernatural aspects of the story. But the disturbing aspects of the story is really how he creates the nightmare through the wife's point of view.
    • 4/5
      This was good. Mr. King loves using portals/doors into other worlds that can always turn sinister in less than a second.
    • 3/5
      A brutal read, due to the main topic - domestic violence. Norman, the abuser, is a sick, sick man who does terrible things to his wife, Rosie. She escapes and he follows. And with a super natural painting, she escapes again. It's a good story, with great characters (I loved Gert!), and its slow pace benefits its complexity! I wasn't a fan of the "through-the-painting" parts of the tale, and the epilogue did nothing for me. Still, it thrilled me and chilled me, and really, what's not to like when it's Uncle Stevie? Viva Ze Bool!
    • 1/5
      I'm afraid this is quite lazily written. Norman's condition is one dimensionally drawn. If you've read The Shining you know he can do this better. The love affair reads like a badly written romance. If you've read 'Salem's Lot you know he can do this better too. Early on the story reads well but the fantasy seems arbitrary and any meaning he wants to find in it comes too late to save the novel.
    • 3/5
      I listened to this as an audio book, and that's probably why I actually finished it. Good stuff up until Rose goes into the painting the first time (had I been reading this instead of listening, I probably would have put the book down here. And not because I don't like supernatural--I quite love fantasy--but for some reason I'm less fond of SK's supernatural elements than I am of his real world elements.). Gets better once she returns to the real world again: actually, it gets really good, but then things get solved by going back into the supernatural world and so the ending felt lackluster for me. I was pleased to see that characters I really liked survived Norman's pursuit of Rose (Gert and Bill); I was really afraid that King was going to axe at least one of them.
    • 4/5
      I was taken in by the painting, too. This was an imaginative piece. Perhaps not as suspenseful as some, but I enjoyed it.
    • 2/5
      A total misfire. The rape survival story is bland and Harlequin Romance quality. The Greek mythology aspect is interesting, but the marriage of the two is overworked. King tried too hard on this one.
    • 4/5
      A very underrated novel for King, this book gets a lot of negative feedback, and while it definitly has its flaws, it is still a very wonderful book and a must read for any fan of Stephen King. Really shows King's mastery of characterization, Rosie and Norman are both amazing characters, one being the heroine, one being the villian. Rosie's journey and the transformation she makes is stunning, and King uses some beautifully descriptive writing to take us through it, especially in the supernatural parts of the book, his imagination is astounding. The bad part is, around the middle of the book, it becomes rather bloated and a little boring, but the rest of it was very interesting and nicely paced, followed by a pretty good ending. Also, it would have been better as just a psychological thriller, rather than just that but with a supernatural theme, which is why i only give it 3 and a half stars rather than 4+ stars. All in all though, as i said its a wonderful read, especially for diehard fans of King and Dark Tower since it has some connections to it as well.
    • 4/5
      A woman on her own, a painting that may be a gateway -- to another world, or to her subconscious? Is she going crazy? Is her husband already there? Who's the woman in the painting? Is the Minotaur real? Who can be trusted, under what circumstances? Great read, evocative imagery.
    • 5/5
      Rose Madder is my favorite stephen King book I think it is the show of stregnth and independance in the main charecter to get away from a bad situation. Stephn King is one of main authors of books read in my familly and all though my brothers will tell you IT is the end all be all of books I prefere Rose Madder.
    • 4/5
      My favorite Stephen King book to date. It's a little 'out there,' and probably not as "good" as a lot of his other novels, but it sucked me into it. It takes endurance to get through it if you're not used to the fantasy-mythological stuff. It was confusing, and has a less-than-perfect ending, but I found it entertaining regardless. 4 out of 5 psychotic cops on a major head-trip.
    • 4/5
      This is the first of four books SK wrote while he was in early sobriety. You may note the absence of blood and gore in this, the Girl who Loved Tom Gordon, Hearts in Atlantis, and Gerald's Game. A different more sane insane King!
    • 4/5
      This is an excellent thriller, again King's strong theme of domestic violence and male abuse of family, harrowing, like Delores Claiburne.
    • 4/5
      Good book, but symbolism got too weird and intricate at the end for me.
    • 5/5
      My favorite King of all time! This is a must read!
    • 4/5
      Starts out a bit slow for a Stephen King book. But it’s pretty good. Not his usual horror but it has his own twists to it.
      However, if you’ve experienced DV or SA, please read with caution. This book may be triggering for some.
    • 5/5
      One of my favorite King books. And I think maybe one of the most under-rated. Some paintings do hold a certain kind of magic and you wish you could really step right into them. Some books are the same way and this is one of those for me.
    • 5/5
      My favorite king book of all time. I even bought it for a friend going through something similar.
    • 3/5
      Not his best, but not time totally wasted. Nominally about domestic abuse and King doesn't flinch from descriptions. It was fairly predictable.
    • 4/5
      Rose is a woman on the run from her super abusive husband. As the story goes along, the reader learns what a truly terrible person he is. He's a cop so she has to really hide. After Rose finds a painting, things take on a supernatural twist. The story has suspense, thriller, dark fantasy and horror-ish elements.
    • 4/5
      Better than I remembered. I had read it when I was very young. Now that I have many more years under my belt, I find I could understand the nuances and read about abuse without cringing away.
    • 4/5
      Rose Daniels is an abused woman. Her husband, Norman, is a cop and likes to bite. That was enough to grab my attention from the first page. As the story progresses, Rose becomes Rosie McClendon, a woman on the run in search of a new life. Throw in some King-style shocking language, a supernatural painting you can get lost in, and a demonic killer, and you have a thoroughly entertaining book.
    • 3/5
      I have to say that this is not one of my favourite books by him but readable non the less.
    • 3/5
      This was a difficult one for me to get through and the only way I could manage it was to skim the Norman parts. While fascinating to see the world through such a twisted and vicious perspective, it was way too much and I just couldn’t put that into my head. Incredible for King to have created such a deviant psychopath when he himself holds such opposite views. From everything I’ve read either by him or about him, he admires, respects and genuinely likes women. He credits his mother and wife for making him the man he is today and so it must have been nauseating to create Norman in all his insane glory. So it was pretty tough going for me, but I got there in the end.

      I haven’t read this since it came out in the 90s and so I’m not sure what my reaction was then or if I could stomach the Norman parts. I had a memory of Rose looking out of the picture to Norman in her apartment with him wondering where she went, but that’s not exactly right. There is a time when she (and Bill) are in the painting and he is outside of it, but he soon follows. That’s the overtly magical part of the book - that the painting contains a world governed by the mad laws of Rose Madder, vengeful goddess and mother.

      The subtler magic is what happens with Rose herself, Rosie Real. Her life with Norman was unimaginable to me. I’ve never been in that situation and so don’t know how I’d react, but I really hope I wouldn’t put up with it for 14 seconds, never mind 14 years. The descriptions of his abuse were sickening, but her flight and landing at the Daughters & Sisters was really wonderful to read. Slowly, over months she healed physically and made great strides to heal mentally as well. I loved that she became an audiobook narrator. Such a fun thing to happen to her. And the painting as well as Bill’s sincere gentleness and caring did even more to help Rose come into herself and shed the constant fear and pain of her marriage.

      As with all King books, there are beautiful friendships and bonds that you ache to have in real life. Characters like Gert and Pam who make everything a little brighter and a little weirder. And like he does, he destroys most of it and makes you watch. As Norman gets closer and closer to finding Rose, he does so by tripping over and abusing her new friends and support system. I couldn't even read what happened to Anna. I did read most of the fight with Gert though and wish she’d beaten him to a pulp, but at least she lived.

      Norman’s end at the hands (?) of Rose Madder was great, but maybe not enough. I wanted more mental suffering especially. I wanted his view of himself, the world and the rightness of his thinking to come crashing down in a more destructive way - I wanted his psyche broken even more than his body. Men like that make me sick and I think about how lucky I am to have escaped them. My husband is wonderful and has never given me a moment of worry for my safety. Sure, the possibility is always there, but his psyche would never allow it to happen. Anyway, I can’t say that I’ll ever read this again, but the way Rose sheds the remnants of Rose Madder and lives her life with Bill was positive, if a little unsettling.
    • 4/5
      This is the official first book of my Great Stephen King Re-read, Part Two.

      A few years back, I read about the first twenty years of his novels and short story collections, from CARRIE straight through to INSOMNIA, skipping only the Dark Tower stuff, as I'll tackle that as a separate read all on its own. This time around, the plan is to tackle the next fifteen years and go from this novel straight through to UNDER THE DOME.

      Having said that, I started into this novel with a lot of trepidation, because, while I remembered the basic storyline about it, it wasn't one of his novels that really stuck with me, or left a lasting impression, in that I remember it being one of his "middling" novels.

      And it seems to be one of his more forgotten ones...never really mentioned much, never made into a movie. It feels like it just came and went and got overshadowed by his next, brilliant release.

      Reading it for the second time, I find that kind of a sad fact, as this book is far better than I remember it being.

      And it's strange that this novel never stuck with me, as there's two somewhat personal connections. The first is, Rose is stated to have been born in 1962, so she's the same age is me. The second, far more disconcerting connection—and one I would have been keenly aware of when I read it the first time around—is that her husband Norman...?

      Yeah, he's more violent, and he's more a biter, but mentally? Every diseased little thought I read that went through Norman's mind? All the thoughts about homosexuals and non-whites, and Jews and everyone else that crossed his eye of judgement? But most especially, Norman's views on women?

      Yeah, Norman could have been modeled straight off my own father.

      So, for those reasons, at least initially, this novel truly grabbed me and frightened me and sickened me. Forty years after his death, I felt like I was hanging out with my father for a few hundred pages.

      But the book would need to have far more than that to keep me going. And this novel delivers. It's easily one of King's nastiest, most horrible, and horrifyingly real, villains, and I wonder if it was more than readers were used to from King and that's why this one never attained the status of some of his others. But King also delivers on the compelling story and character of Rose. Yes, she tends to get fantastic lucky break after lucky break, making the book a little too much fantasy, a touch too much to fully suspend disbelief.

      But still, the story that King constructs in harrowing. The only false note, for me at least was the extended first trip into the painting. I know it's required for the end, but it did tend to drag on a little too long.

      But overall, I have to say, reading this novel almost thirty years later?

      It's so much better than I ever gave it credit for.
    • 4/5
      this is a book i was not sure at first i would be into but after knowing about how it combines weird supernatural to a drama kinda fascinated me i ended up liking it more than i thought.

      i loved seeing where the Rosie journey to get away and then shifts to see norman going the same path. it was very fun and thrilling and once they finally see each other its quite surreal but also cool. i also like the aspects with the painting in this one. i think Rosie is a well written character and Norman is made to be super unlikable and makes you hate him but i wish we got to know more about his backstory. you gets hints at a little wich works but i think it would have been better to get a bit more. the other characters are decent but it is mostly a Rosie story wich makes sense.

      i know some people were not a fan of where this book goes for that its so off the rails but honestly i actually really liked that. it was part of the reason i read this and enjoyed my time with. that being said as much as i like this one, i dont consider it to be top tier king book but i think i do like it more then a lot of people give it credit for.
    • 5/5
      One of my very favorites along with Desperation, the Stand, & Gerald's Game.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Mwah. I suppose it was ok, but I felt it dragged a bit. The storyline is not highly exciting, and aside from the exact shape of the supernatural, most of it is sort of expected. Especially since you see everything from two view points. I thought it could have been a bit faster. And I found the ending a bit weird, the whole tree thing.

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    Rose Madder - Stephen King

    Prologue

    SINISTER KISSES

    She sits in the corner, trying to draw air out of a room which seemed to have plenty just a few minutes ago and now seems to have none. From what sounds like a great distance she can hear a thin whoop-whoop sound, and she knows this is air going down her throat and then sliding back out again in a series of feverish little gasps, but that doesn’t change the feeling that she’s drowning here in the corner of her living room, looking at the shredded remains of the paperback novel she was reading when her husband came home.

    Not that she cares much. The pain is too great for her to worry about such minor matters as respiration, or how there seems to be no air in the air she is breathing. The pain has swallowed her as the whale reputedly swallowed Jonah, that holy draft-dodger. It throbs like a poison sun glowing deep down in the middle of her, in a place where until tonight there was only the quiet sense of a new thing growing.

    There has never been any pain like this pain, not that she can remember—not even when she was thirteen and swerved her bike to avoid a pothole and wiped out, bouncing her head off the asphalt and opening up a cut that turned out to be exactly eleven stitches long. What she remembered about that was a silvery jolt of pain followed by starry dark surprise which had actually been a brief faint… but that pain had not been this agony. This terrible agony. Her hand on her belly registers flesh that is no longer like flesh at all; it is as if she has been unzipped and her living baby replaced with a hot rock.

    Oh God please, she thinks. Please let the baby be okay.

    But now, as her breath finally begins to ease a little, she realizes that the baby is not okay, that he has made sure of that much, anyway. When you’re four months pregnant the baby is still more a part of you than of itself, and when you’re sitting in a corner with your hair stuck in strings to your sweaty cheeks and it feels as if you’ve swallowed a hot stone—

    Something is putting sinister, slippery little kisses against the insides of her thighs.

    No, she whispers, "no. Oh my dear sweet God, no. Good God, sweet God, dear God, no."

    Let it be sweat, she thinks. Let it be sweat… or maybe I peed myself. Yes, that’s probably it. It hurt so bad after he hit me the third time that I peed myself and didn’t even know it. That’s it.

    Except it isn’t sweat and it isn’t pee. It’s blood. She’s sitting here in the corner of the living room, looking at a dismembered paperback lying half on the sofa and under the coffee-table, and her womb is getting ready to vomit up the baby it has so far carried with no complaint or problem whatsoever.

    No, she moans, "no, God, please say no."

    She can see her husband’s shadow, as twisted and elongated as a cornfield effigy or the shadow of a hanged man, dancing and bobbing on the wall of an archway leading from the living room into the kitchen. She can see shadow-phone pressed to shadow-ear, and the long corkscrew shadow-cord. She can even see his shadow-fingers pulling the kinks out of the cord, holding for a moment and then releasing it back into its former curls again, like a bad habit you just can’t get rid of.

    Her first thought is that he’s calling the police. Ridiculous, of course—he is the police.

    Yes, it’s an emergency, he’s saying. You’re goddam tooting it is, beautiful, she’s pregnant. He listens, slipping the cord through his fingers, and when he speaks again his tone is testy. Just that faint irritation in his voice is enough to renew her terror and fill her mouth with a steely taste. Who would cross him, contradict him? Oh, who would be so foolish as to do that? Only someone who didn’t know him, of course—someone who didn’t know him the way she knew him. "Of course I won’t move her, do you think I’m an idiot?"

    Her fingers creep under her dress and up her thigh to the soaked, hot cotton of her panties. Please, she thinks. How many times has that word gone through her mind since he tore the book out of her hands? She doesn’t know, but here it is again. Please let the liquid on my fingers be clear. Please, God. Please let it be clear.

    But when she brings her hand out from under her dress the tips of her fingers are red with blood. As she looks at them, a monstrous cramp rips through her like a hacksaw blade. She has to slam her teeth together to stifle a scream. She knows better than to scream in this house.

    Never mind all that bullshit, just get here! Fast! He slams the phone back into its cradle.

    His shadow swells and bobs on the wall and then he’s standing in the archway, looking at her out of his flushed and handsome face. The eyes in that face are as expressionless as shards of glass twinkling beside a country road.

    Now look at this, he says, holding out both hands briefly and then letting them drop back to his sides with a soft clap. Look at this mess.

    She holds her own hand out to him, showing him the bloody tips of her fingers—it is as close to accusation as she can get.

    I know, he says, speaking as if his knowing explained everything, put the whole business in a coherent, rational context. He turns and stares fixedly at the dismembered paperback. He picks up the piece on the couch, then bends to get the one under the coffee-table. As he straightens up again, she can see the cover, which shows a woman in a white peasant blouse standing on the prow of a ship. Her hair is blowing back dramatically in the wind, exposing her creamy shoulders. The title, Misery’s Journey, has been rendered in bright red foil.

    "This is the trouble, he says, and wags the remains of the book at her like a man shaking a rolled-up newspaper at a puppy that has piddled on the floor. How many times have I told you how I feel about crap like this?"

    The answer, actually, is never. She knows she might be sitting here in the corner having a miscarriage if he had come home and found her watching the news on TV or sewing a button on one of his shirts or just napping on the couch. It has been a bad time for him, a woman named Wendy Yarrow has been making trouble for him, and what Norman does with trouble is share the wealth. How many times have I told you how I feel about that crap? he would have shouted, no matter what crap it was. And then, just before he started in with his fists: I want to talk to you, honey. Right up close.

    Don’t you understand? she whispers. I’m losing the baby!

    Incredibly, he smiles. You can have another one, he says. He might be comforting a child who has dropped her ice-cream cone. Then he takes the torn-up paperback out to the kitchen, where he will no doubt drop it in the trash.

    You bastard, she thinks, without knowing she thinks it. The cramps are coming again, not just one this time but many, swarming into her like terrific insects, and she pushes her head back deep into the corner and moans. You bastard, how I hate you.

    He comes back through the arch and walks toward her. She pedals with her feet, trying to shove herself into the wall, staring at him with frantic eyes. For a moment she’s positive he means to kill her this time, not just hurt her, or rob her of the baby she has wanted for so long, but to really kill her. There is something inhuman about the way he looks as he comes toward her with his head lowered and his hands hanging at his sides and the long muscles in his thighs flexing. Before the kids called people like her husband fuzz they had another word for them, and that’s the word that comes to her now as he crosses the room with his head down and his hands swinging at the ends of his arms like meat pendulums, because that’s what he looks like—a bull.

    Moaning, shaking her head, pedaling with her feet. One loafer coming off and lying on its side. She can feel fresh pain, cramps sinking into her belly like anchors equipped with old rusty teeth, and she can feel more blood flowing, but she can’t stop pedaling. What she sees in him when he’s like this is nothing at all; a kind of terrible absence.

    He stands over her, shaking his head wearily. Then he squats and slides his arms beneath her. I’m not going to hurt you, he says as he kneels to fully pick her up, so quit being a goose.

    I’m bleeding, she whispers, remembering he had told the person he’d been talking to on the phone that he wouldn’t move her, of course he wouldn’t.

    Yeah, I know, he replies, but without interest. He is looking around the room, trying to decide where the accident happened—she knows what he’s thinking as surely as if she were inside his head. That’s okay, it’ll stop. They’ll stop it.

    Will they be able to stop the miscarriage? she cries inside her own head, never thinking that if she can do it he can too, or noticing the careful way he’s looking at her. And once again she won’t let herself overhear the rest of what she is thinking. I hate you. Hate you.

    He carries her across the room to the stairs. He kneels, then settles her at the foot of them.

    Comfy? he asks solicitously.

    She closes her eyes. She can’t look at him anymore, not right now. She feels she’ll go mad if she does.

    Good, he says, as if she had replied, and when she opens her eyes she sees the look he gets sometimes—that absence. As if his mind has flown off, leaving his body behind.

    If I had a knife I could stab him, she thinks… but again, it isn’t an idea she will even allow herself to overhear, much less consider. It is only a deep echo, perhaps a reverberation of her husband’s madness, as soft as a rustle of batwings in a cave.

    Animation floods back into his face all at once and he gets up, his knees popping. He looks down at his shirt to make sure there’s no blood on it. It’s okay. He looks over into the corner where she collapsed. There is blood there, a few little beads and splashes of it. More blood is coming out of her, faster and harder now; she can feel it soaking her with unhealthy, somehow avid warmth. It is rushing, as if it has wanted all along to flush the stranger out of its tiny apartment. It is almost as if—oh, horrible thought—her very blood has taken up for her husband’s side of it… whatever mad side this is.

    He goes into the kitchen again and is out there for about five minutes. She can hear him moving around as the actual miscarriage happens and the pain crests and then lets go in a liquid squittering which is felt as much as heard. Suddenly it’s as if she is sitting in a sitz bath full of warm, thick liquid. A kind of blood gravy.

    His elongated shadow bobs on the archway as the refrigerator opens and closes and then a cabinet (the minute squeak tells her it’s the one under the sink) also opens and closes. Water runs in the sink and then he begins to hum something—she thinks it might be When a Man Loves a Woman—as her baby runs out of her.

    When he comes back through the archway he has a sandwich in one hand—he has not gotten any supper yet, of course, and must be hungry—and a damp rag from the basket under the sink in the other. He squats in the corner to which she staggered after he tore the book from her hands and then administered three hard punches to her belly—bam, bam, bam, so long stranger—and begins to wipe up the spatters and drips of blood with the rag; most of the blood and the other mess will be over here at the foot of the stairs, right where he wants it.

    He eats his sandwich as he cleans. The stuff between the slices of bread smells to her like the leftover barbecued pork she was going to put together with some noodles for Saturday night—something easy they could eat as they sat in front of the TV, watching the early news.

    He looks at the rag, which is stained a faint pink, then into the corner, then at the rag again. He nods, tears a big bite out of his sandwich, and stands up. When he comes back from the kitchen this time, she can hear the faint howl of an approaching siren. Probably the ambulance he called.

    He crosses the room, kneels beside her, and takes her hands. He frowns at how cold they are, and begins to chafe them gently as he talks to her.

    I’m sorry, he says. It’s just… stuff’s been happening… that bitch from the motel… He stops, looks away for a moment, then looks back at her. He is wearing a strange, rueful smile. Look who I’m trying to explain to, that smile seems to say. That’s how bad it’s gotten—sheesh.

    Baby, she whispers. Baby.

    He squeezes her hands, squeezes them hard enough to hurt.

    Never mind the baby, just listen to me. They’ll be here in a minute or two. Yes—the ambulance is very close now, whooping through the night like an unspeakable hound. You were coming downstairs and you missed your footing. You fell. Do you understand?

    She looks at him, saying nothing. The pain in her middle is abating a little now, and when he squeezes her hands together this time—harder than ever—she really feels it, and gasps.

    Do you understand?

    She looks into his sunken absent eyes and nods. Around her rises a flat saltwater-and-copper smell. No blood gravy now—now it is as if she were sitting in a spilled chemistry set.

    Good, he says. Do you know what will happen if you say anything else?

    She nods.

    Say it. It’ll be better for you if you do. Safer.

    You’d kill me, she whispers.

    He nods, looking pleased. Looking like a teacher who has coaxed a difficult answer from a slow student.

    That’s right. And I’d make it last. Before I was done, what happened tonight would look like a cut finger.

    Outside, scarlet lights pulse into the driveway.

    He chews the last bite of his sandwich and starts to get up. He will go to the door to let them in, the concerned husband whose pregnant wife has suffered an unfortunate accident. Before he can turn away she grasps at the cuff of his shirt. He looks down at her.

    Why? she whispers. Why the baby, Norman?

    For a moment she sees an expression on his face she can hardly credit—it looks like fear. But why would he be afraid of her? Or the baby?

    It was an accident, he says. That’s all, just an accident. I didn’t have anything to do with it. And that’s the way it better come out when you talk to them. So help you God.

    So help me God, she thinks.

    Doors slam outside; feet run toward the house and there is the toothy metallic clash and rattle of the gurney on which she will be transported to her place beneath the siren. He turns back to her once again, his head lowered in that bullish posture, his eyes opaque.

    You’ll have another baby, and this won’t happen. The next one’ll be fine. A girl. Or maybe a nice little boy. The flavor doesn’t matter, does it? If it’s a boy, we’ll get him a little baseball player’s suit. If it’s a girl… He gestures vaguely. … a bonnet, or something. You wait and see. It’ll happen. He smiles then, and the sight of it makes her feel like screaming. It is like watching a corpse grin in its coffin. If you mind me, everything will be fine. Take it to the bank, sweetheart.

    Then he opens the door to let the ambulance EMTs in, telling them to hurry, telling them there’s blood. She closes her eyes as they come toward her, not wanting to give them any opportunity to look into her, and she makes their voices come from far away.

    Don’t worry, Rose, don’t you fret, it’s a minor matter, just a baby, you can have another one.

    A needle stings her arm, and then she is being lifted. She keeps her eyes closed, thinking Well all right, yes. I suppose I can have another baby. I can have it and take it beyond his reach. Beyond his murderous reach.

    But time passes and gradually the idea of leaving him—never fully articulated to begin with—slips away as the knowledge of a rational waking world slips away in sleep; gradually there is no world for her but the world of the dream in which she lives, a dream like the ones she had as a girl, where she ran and ran as if in a trackless wood or a shadowy maze, with the hoofbeats of some great animal behind her, a fearful insane creature which drew ever closer and would have her eventually, no matter how many times she twisted or turned or darted or doubled back.

    The concept of dreaming is known to the waking mind but to the dreamer there is no waking, no real world, no sanity; there is only the screaming bedlam of sleep. Rose McClendon Daniels slept within her husband’s madness for nine more years.

    I

    ONE DROP OF BLOOD

    1

    It was fourteen years of hell, all told, but she hardly knew it. For most of those years she existed in a daze so deep it was like death, and on more than one occasion she found herself almost certain that her life wasn’t really happening, that she would eventually awaken, yawning and stretching as prettily as the heroine in a Walt Disney animated cartoon. This idea came to her most often after he had beaten her so badly that she had to go to bed for awhile in order to recover. He did that three or four times a year. In 1985—the year of Wendy Yarrow, the year of the official reprimand, the year of the miscarriage—it had happened almost a dozen times. September of that year had seen her second and last trip to the hospital as a result of Norman’s ministrations… the last so far, anyway. She’d been coughing up blood. He held off taking her for three days, hoping it would stop, but when it started getting worse instead, he told her just what to say (he always told her just what to say) and then took her to St. Mary’s. He took her there because the EMTs had taken her to City General following the miscarriage. It turned out she had a broken rib that was poking at her lung. She told the falling downstairs story for the second time in three months and didn’t think even the intern who’d been there observing the examination and the treatment believed it this time, but no one asked any uncomfortable questions; they just fixed her up and sent her home. Norman knew he had been lucky, however, and after that he was more careful.

    Sometimes, when she was lying in bed at night, images would come swarming into her mind like strange comets. The most common was her husband’s fist, with blood grimed into the knuckles and smeared across the raised gold of his Police Academy ring. There had been mornings when she had seen the words on that ring—Service, Loyalty, Community—stamped into the flesh of her stomach or printed on one of her breasts. This often made her think of the blue FDA stamp you saw on roasts of pork or cuts of steak.

    She was always on the verge of dropping off, relaxed and loose-limbed, when these images came. Then she would see the fist floating toward her and jerk fully awake again and lie trembling beside him, hoping he wouldn’t turn over, only half-awake himself, and drive a blow into her belly or thigh for disturbing him.

    She passed into this hell when she was eighteen and awakened from her daze about a month after her thirty-second birthday, almost half a lifetime later. What woke her up was a single drop of blood, no larger than a dime.

    2

    She saw it while making the bed. It was on the top sheet, her side, close to where the pillow went when the bed was made. She could, in fact, slide the pillow slightly to the left and hide the spot, which had dried to an ugly maroon color. She saw how easy this would be and was tempted to do it, mostly because she could not just change the top sheet; she had no more clean white bed-linen, and if she put on one of the flower-patterned sheets to replace the plain white one with the spot of blood on it, she would have to put on the other patterned one, as well. If she didn’t he was apt to complain.

    Look at this, she heard him saying. Goddam sheets don’t even match—you got a white one on the bottom, and one with flowers on it on top. Jesus, why do you have to be so lazy? Come over here—I want to talk to you up close.

    She stood on her side of the bed in a bar of spring sunlight, the lazy slut who spent her days cleaning the little house (a single smeared fingerprint on the corner of the bathroom mirror could bring a blow) and obsessing over what to fix him for his dinner, she stood there looking down at the tiny spot of blood on the sheet, her face so slack and devoid of animation that an observer might well have decided she was mentally retarded. I thought my damned nose had stopped bleeding, she told herself. I was sure it had.

    He didn’t hit her in the face often; he knew better. Face-hitting was for the sort of drunken assholes he had arrested by the hundreds in his career as a uniformed policeman and then as a city detective. You hit someone—your wife, for instance—in the face too often, and after awhile the stories about falling down the stairs or running into the bathroom door in the middle of the night or stepping on a rake in the back yard stopped working. People knew. People talked. And eventually you got into trouble, even if the woman kept her mouth shut, because the days when folks knew how to mind their own business were apparently over.

    None of that took his temper into account, however. He had a bad one, very bad, and sometimes he slipped. That was what had happened last night, when she brought him a second glass of iced tea and spilled some on his hand. Pow, and her nose was gushing like a broken water-main before he even knew what he was doing. She saw the look of disgust on his face as the blood poured down over her mouth and chin, then the look of worried calculation—what if her nose was actually broken? That would mean another trip to the hospital. For a moment she’d thought one of the real beatings was coming, one of the ones that left her huddled in the corner, gasping and crying and trying to get back enough breath so she could vomit. In her apron. Always in her apron. You did not cry out in this house, or argue with the management, and you most certainly did not vomit on the floor—not if you wanted to keep your head screwed on tight, that was.

    Then his sharply honed sense of self-preservation had kicked in, and he had gotten her a washcloth filled with ice and led her into the living room, where she had lain on the sofa with the makeshift icepack pressed down between her watering eyes. That was where you had to put it, he told her, if you wanted to stop the bleeding in a hurry and reduce the residual swelling. It was the swelling he was worried about, of course. Tomorrow was her day to go to the market, and you couldn’t hide a swollen nose with a pair of Oakleys the way you could hide a black eye.

    He had gone back to finish his supper—broiled snapper and roasted new potatoes.

    There hadn’t been much swelling, as a quick glance in the mirror this morning had shown her (he had already given her a close looking-over and then a dismissive nod before drinking a cup of coffee and leaving for work), and the bleeding had stopped after only fifteen minutes or so with the icepack… or so she’d thought. But sometime in the night, while she had been sleeping, one traitor drop of blood had crept out of her nose and left this spot, which meant she was going to have to strip the bed and remake it, in spite of her aching back. Her back always ached these days; even moderate bending and light lifting made it hurt. Her back was one of his favorite targets. Unlike what he called face-hitting, it was safe to hit someone in the back… if the someone in question knew how to keep her mouth shut, that was. Norman had been working on her kidneys for fourteen years, and the traces of blood she saw more and more frequently in her urine no longer surprised or worried her. It was just another unpleasant part of being married, that was all, and there were probably millions of women who had it worse. Thousands right in this town. So she had always seen it, anyway, until now.

    She looked at the spot of blood, feeling unaccustomed resentment throbbing in her head, feeling something else, a pins-and-needles tingle, not knowing this was the way you felt when you finally woke up.

    There was a small bentwood rocker on her side of the bed which she had always thought of, for no reason she could have explained, as Pooh’s Chair. She backed toward it now, never taking her eyes off the small drop of blood glaring off the white sheet, and sat down. She sat in Pooh’s Chair for almost five minutes, then jumped when a voice spoke in the room, not realizing at first that it was her own voice.

    If this goes on, he’ll kill me, she said, and after she got over her momentary startle, she supposed it was the drop of blood—the little bit of herself that was already dead, that had crept out of her nose and died on the sheet—she was speaking to.

    The answer that came back was inside her own head, and it was infinitely more terrible than the possibility she had spoken aloud:

    Except he might not. Have you thought of that? He might not.

    3

    She hadn’t thought of it. The idea that someday he would hit her too hard, or in the wrong place, had often crossed her mind (although she had never said it out loud, even to herself, until today), but never the possibility that she might live…

    The buzzing in her muscles and joints increased. Usually she only sat in Pooh’s Chair with her hands folded in her lap, looking across the bed and through the bathroom door at her own reflection in the mirror, but this morning she began to rock, moving the chair back and forth in short, jerky arcs. She had to rock. The buzzing, tingling sensation in her muscles demanded that she rock. And the last thing she wanted to do was to look at her own reflection, and never mind that her nose hadn’t swollen much.

    Come over here, sweetheart, I want to talk to you up close.

    Fourteen years of that. A hundred and sixty-eight months of it, beginning with his yanking her by the hair and biting her shoulder for slamming a door on their wedding night. One miscarriage. One scratched lung. The horrible thing he’d done with the tennis racket. The old marks, on parts of her body her clothes covered. Bite-marks, for the most part. Norman loved to bite. At first she had tried to tell herself they were lovebites. It was strange to think she had ever been that young, but she supposed she must have been.

    Come over here—I want to talk to you up close.

    Suddenly she was able to identify the buzzing, which had now spread to her entire body. It was anger she was feeling, rage, and realization brought wonder.

    Get out of here, that deep part of her said suddenly. Get out of here right now, this very minute. Don’t even take the time to run a comb through your hair. Just go.

    That’s ridiculous, she said, rocking back and forth faster than ever. The spot of blood on the sheet sizzled in her eye. From here, it looked like the dot under an exclamation point. That’s ridiculous, where would I go?

    Anywhere he isn’t, the voice returned. But you have to do it right now. Before…

    Before what?

    That one was easy. Before she fell asleep again.

    A part of her mind—a habituated, cowed part—suddenly realized that she was seriously entertaining this thought and put up a terrified clamor. Leave her home of fourteen years? The house where she could put her hand on anything she wanted? The husband who, if a little short-tempered and quick to use his fists, had always been a good provider? The idea was ridiculous. She must forget it, and immediately.

    And she might have done so, almost certainly would have done so, if not for that drop on the sheet. That single dark red drop.

    Then don’t look at it! the part of herself which fancied itself practical and sensible shouted nervously. For Christ’s sake don’t look at it, it’s going to get you into trouble!

    Except she found she could no longer look away. Her eyes remained fixed upon the spot, and she rocked faster than ever. Her feet, clad in white lowtop sneakers, patted the floor in a quickening rhythm (the buzzing was now mostly in her head, rattling her brains, heating her up), and what she thought was Fourteen years. Fourteen years of having him talk to me up close. The miscarriage. The tennis racket. Three teeth, one of which I swallowed. The broken rib. The punches. The pinches. And the bites, of course. Plenty of those. Plenty of—

    Stop it! It’s useless, thinking like this, because you’re not going anywhere, he’d only come after you and bring you back, he’d find you, he’s a policeman and finding people is one of the things he does, one of the things he’s good at—

    Fourteen years, she murmured, and now it wasn’t the last fourteen she was thinking about but the next. Because that other voice, the deep voice, was right. He might not kill her. He might not. And what would she be like after fourteen more years of having him talk to her up close? Would she be able to bend over? Would she have an hour—fifteen minutes, even—a day when her kidneys didn’t feel like hot stones buried in her back? Would he perhaps hit her hard enough to deaden some vital connection, so she could no longer raise one of her arms or legs, or perhaps leave one side of her face hanging slack and expressionless, like poor Mrs. Diamond, who clerked in the Store 24 at the bottom of the hill?

    She got up suddenly and with such force that the back of Pooh’s Chair hit the wall. She stood there for a moment, breathing hard, wide eyes still fixed on the maroon spot, and then she headed for the door leading into the living room.

    Where are you going? Ms. Practical-Sensible screamed inside her head—the part of her which seemed perfectly willing to be maimed or killed for the continued privilege of knowing where the teabags were in the cupboard and where the Scrubbies were kept under the sink. Just where do you think you’re—

    She clapped a lid on the voice, something she’d had no idea she could do until this moment. She took her purse off the table by the sofa and walked across the living room toward the front door. The room suddenly seemed very big, and the walk very long.

    I have to take this a step at a time. If I think even one step ahead, I’m going to lose my nerve.

    She didn’t think that would be a problem, actually. For one thing, what she was doing had taken on a hallucinatory quality—surely she could not simply be walking out of her house and her marriage on the spur of the moment, could she? It had to be a dream, didn’t it? And there was something else, too: not thinking ahead had pretty much become a habit with her, one that had started on their wedding night, when he’d bitten her like a dog for slamming a door.

    Well, you can’t go like this, even if you just make it to the bottom of the block before running out of steam, Practical-Sensible advised. At the very least change out of those jeans that show how wide your can’s getting. And run a comb through your hair.

    She paused, and was for a moment close to giving the whole thing up before she even got to the front door. Then she recognized the advice for what it was—a desperate ploy to keep her in the house. And a shrewd one. It didn’t take long to swap a pair of jeans for a skirt or to mousse your hair and then use a comb on it, but for a woman in her position, it would almost certainly have been long enough.

    For what? To go back to sleep again, of course. She’d be having serious doubts by the time she’d pulled the zipper up on the side of her skirt, and by the time she’d finished with her comb, she’d have decided she had simply suffered a brief fit of insanity, a transitory fugue state that was probably related to her cycle.

    Then she would go back into the bedroom and change the sheets.

    No, she murmured. I won’t do that. I won’t.

    But with one hand on the doorknob, she paused again.

    She shows sense! Practical-Sensible cried, her voice a mixture of relief, jubilation, and—was it possible—faint disappointment. Hallelujah, the girl shows sense! Better late than never!

    The jubilation and relief in that mental voice turned to wordless horror as she crossed quickly to the mantel above the gas fireplace he had installed two years before. What she was looking for probably wouldn’t be there, as a rule he only left it up there toward the end of the month (So I won’t be tempted, he would say), but it couldn’t hurt to check. And she knew his pin-number; it was just their telephone number, with the first and last digits reversed.

    It WILL hurt! Practical-Sensible screamed. If you take something that belongs to him, it’ll hurt plenty, and you know it! PLENTY!

    It won’t be there anyway, she murmured, but it was—the bright green Merchant’s Bank ATM card with his name embossed on it.

    Don’t you take that! Don’t you dare!

    But she found she did dare—all she had to do was call up the image of that drop of blood. Besides, it was her card, too, her money, too; wasn’t that what the marriage vow meant?

    Except it wasn’t about the money at all, not really. It was about silencing the voice of Ms. Practical-Sensible; it was about making this sudden, unexpected lunge for freedom a necessity instead of a choice. Part of her knew that if she didn’t do that, the bottom of the block was as far as she would get before the whole uncertain sweep of the future appeared before her like a fogbank, and she turned around and came back home, hurrying to change the bed so she could still wash the downstairs floors before noon… and, hard as it was to believe, that was all she had been thinking about when she got up this morning: washing floors.

    Ignoring the clamor of the voice in her head, she plucked the ATM card off the mantel, dropped it into her purse, and quickly headed for the door again.

    Don’t do it! the voice of Ms. Practical-Sensible wailed. Oh Rosie, he won’t just hurt you for this, for this he’ll put you in the hospital, maybe even kill you—don’t you know that?

    She supposed she did, but she kept walking just the same, her head down and her shoulders thrust forward, like a woman walking into a strong wind. He probably would do those things… but he would have to catch her first.

    This time when her hand closed on the knob there was no pause—she turned it and opened the door and stepped out. It was a beautiful sunshiny day in mid-April, the branches on the trees beginning to thicken with buds. Her shadow stretched across the stoop and the pale new grass like something cut from black construction paper with a sharp pair of scissors. She stood there breathing deep of the spring air, smelling earth which had been dampened (and perhaps quickened) by a shower that had passed in the night, while she had been lying asleep with one nostril suspended over that drying spot of blood.

    The whole world is waking up, she thought. It isn’t just me.

    A man in a jogging suit ran past on the sidewalk as she pulled the door closed behind her. He lifted a hand to her, and she lifted hers in return. She listened for the voice inside to raise its clamor again, but that voice was silent. Perhaps it was stunned by her theft of the ATM card, perhaps it had only been soothed by the tranquil peace of this April morning.

    I’m going, she murmured. I’m really, really going.

    But she stayed where she was a moment longer, like an animal which has been kept in a cage so long it cannot believe in freedom even when it is offered. She reached behind her and touched the knob of the door—the door that led into her cage.

    No more, she whispered. She tucked her purse under one arm and took her first dozen steps into the fogbank which was now her future.

    4

    Those dozen steps took her to the place where the concrete walk merged with the sidewalk—the place where the jogger had passed a minute or so before. She started to turn left, then paused. Norman had told her once that people who thought they were choosing directions at random—people lost in the woods, for example—were almost always simply going in the direction of their dominant hand. It probably wasn’t important, but she discovered she didn’t even want him to be right about which way she had turned on Westmoreland Street after leaving the house.

    Not even that.

    She turned right instead of left, in the direction of her stupid hand, and walked down the hill. She went past the Store 24, restraining an urge to raise her hand and cover the side of her face as she passed it. Already she felt like a fugitive, and a terrible thought had begun to gnaw at her mind like a rat gnawing cheese: what if he came home from work early and saw her? What if he saw her walking down the street in her jeans and lowtops, with her purse clamped under her arm and her hair uncombed? He would wonder what the hell she was doing out on the morning she was supposed to be washing the downstairs floors, wouldn’t he? And he would want her to come over to him, wouldn’t he? He would want her to come over to where he was so he could talk to her up close.

    That’s stupid. What reason would he have to come home now? He only left an hour ago. It doesn’t make sense.

    No… but sometimes people did things that didn’t make sense. Her, for instance—look at what she was doing right now. And suppose he had a sudden intuition? How many times had he told her that cops developed a sixth sense after awhile, that they knew when something weird was going to happen? You get this needle at the base of your spine, he’d said once. I don’t know how else to describe it. I know most people would laugh, but ask a cop—he won’t laugh. That little needle has saved my life a couple of times, sweetheart.

    Suppose he’d been feeling that needle for the last twenty minutes or so? Suppose it had gotten him into his car and headed home? This was just the way he would come, and she cursed herself for having turned right instead of left when leaving their walk. Then an even more unpleasant idea occurred to her, one which had a hideous plausibility… not to mention a kind of ironic balance. Suppose he had stopped at the ATM machine two blocks down the street from police headquarters, wanting ten or twenty bucks for lunch? Suppose he had decided, after ascertaining that the card wasn’t in his wallet, to come home and get it?

    Get hold of yourself. That isn’t going to happen. Nothing like that is going to happen.

    A car turned onto Westmoreland half a block down. It was red, and what a coincidence that was, because they had a red car… or he did; the car was no more hers than the ATM card was, or the money it could access. Their red car was a new Sentra, and—coincidence upon coincidence!—wasn’t this car now coming toward her a red Sentra?

    No, it’s a Honda!

    Except it wasn’t a Honda, that was just what she wanted to believe. It was a Sentra, a brand-new red Sentra. His red Sentra. Her worst nightmare had come true at almost the very moment she had thought of it.

    For a moment her kidneys were incredibly heavy, incredibly painful, incredibly full, and she was sure she was going to wet her pants. Had she really thought she could get away from him? She must have been insane.

    Too late to worry about that now, Practical-Sensible told her. Its dithery hysteria was gone; now it was the only part of her mind which still seemed capable of thought, and it spoke in the cold, calculating tones of a creature that puts survival ahead of everything else. You just better think what it is you’re going to say to him when he pulls over and asks you what you’re doing out here. And you better make it good. You know how quick he is, and how much he sees.

    The flowers, she muttered. I came out to take a little walk and see whose flowers were out, that’s all. She had stopped with her thighs pressed tightly together, trying to keep the dam from breaking. Would he believe it? She didn’t know, but it would have to do. She couldn’t think of anything else. I was just going to walk down to the corner of St. Mark’s Avenue and then come back to wash the—

    She broke off, watching with wide, unbelieving eyes as the car—a Honda after all, not new, and really closer to orange than red—rolled slowly past her. The woman behind the wheel gave her a curious glance, and the woman on the sidewalk thought, If it had been him, no story would have done, no matter how plausible—he would have seen the truth all over your face, underlined and lit in neon. Now are you ready to go back? To see sense and go back?

    She couldn’t. Her overwhelming need to urinate had passed, but her bladder still felt heavy and overloaded, her kidneys were still throbbing, her legs were shaky, and her heart was pounding so violently in her chest that it frightened her. She would never be able to walk back up the hill, even though the grade was very mild.

    Yes, you can. You know you can. You’ve done harder things than that in your marriage and survived them.

    Okay—maybe she could climb back up the hill, but now another idea occurred to her. Sometimes he called. Five or six times a month, usually, but sometimes more often than that. Just hi, how are you, do you want me to bring home a carton of Half-n-Half or a pint of ice cream, okay, bye. Only she felt nothing solicitous in these calls, no sense of caring. He was checking up on her, that was all, and if she didn’t answer the telephone, it just rang. They had no answering machine. She had asked him once if getting one might not be a good idea. He had given her a not entirely unfriendly poke and told her to wise up. You’re the answering machine, he’d said.

    What if he called and she wasn’t there to answer?

    He’ll think I went marketing early, that’s all.

    But he wouldn’t. That was the thing. The floors this morning; the market this afternoon. That was the way it had always been, and that was the way he expected it to always be. Spontaneity was not encouraged at 908 Westmoreland. If he called…

    She began walking again, knowing she had to get off Westmoreland Street at the next corner, even though she wasn’t entirely sure where Tremont went in either direction. That wasn’t important at this point, anyway; what mattered was that she was on her husband’s direct route if he came back from the city by way of I-295, as he usually did, and she felt as if she had been pinned to the bull’s-eye of an archery target.

    She turned left on Tremont and went walking past more quiet little suburban houses separated from each other by low hedges or lines of decorative trees—Russian olives seemed particularly in vogue down here. A man who looked like Woody Allen with his horn-rimmed glasses and freckles and his shapeless blue hat crushed down on top of his head looked up from watering his flowers and gave her a little wave. Everyone wanted to be neighborly today, it seemed. She supposed it was the weather, but she could have done without it. It was all too easy to imagine him coming along behind her later on, patiently working her backtrail, asking questions, using his little memory-stimulation tricks, and flashing her picture at every stop.

    Wave back at him. You don’t want him to register you as an unfriendly, unfriendlies have a way of sticking in the memory, so wave back and just slide along your way.

    She waved back and slid along her way. The need to pee had returned, but she would just have to live with it. There was no relief in sight—nothing ahead but more houses, more hedges, more pale green lawns, more Russian olives.

    She heard a car behind her and knew it was him. She turned around, eyes wide and dark, and saw a rusty Chevrolet creeping up the center of the street at little more than walking speed. The old man behind the wheel wore a straw hat and a look of terrified determination. She faced forward again before he could register her own look of fright, stumbled, then started walking resolutely with her head lowered. The pulsing ache in her kidneys had returned and her bladder was pounding, too. She guessed she had no more than a minute, possibly two, before everything let go. If that happened, she might as well kiss any chance of unnoticed escape goodbye. People might not remember a pale brownette walking up the sidewalk on a nice spring morning, but she didn’t see how they would be able to forget a pale brownette with a large dark stain spreading around the crotch of her jeans. She had to take care of this problem, and right away.

    There was a chocolate-colored bungalow two houses up on her side of the street. The shades were pulled; three newspapers lay on the porch. A fourth lay on the walk at the foot of the front steps. Rosie took a quick look around, saw no one observing her, then hurried across the lawn of the bungalow and down along its side. The back yard was empty. A rectangle of paper hung from the knob of the aluminum screen door. She went over, walking in cramped little steps, and read the printed message: Greetings from Ann Cosso, your local Avon Lady! Didn’t find you at home this time, but will come again! Thanks! And give me a call at 555-1731 if you want to talk about any of Avon’s fine products! The date scribbled at the bottom was 4/17, two days ago.

    Rosie took another look around, saw that she was protected by hedges on one side and Russian olives on the other, unsnapped and unzipped her jeans, and squatted in the niche between the back stoop and the LP gas tanks. It was too late to worry about who, if anyone, might be watching from the upper stories of either neighboring house. And besides, the relief made such questions seem—for the time being, at least—trivial.

    You’re crazy, you know.

    Yes, of course she knew… but as the pressure of her bladder decreased and the stream of her urine flowed between the bricks of this back patio in a zigzag streamlet, she felt a crazy joy suddenly fill her heart. In that instant she knew what it must feel like to cross a river into a foreign country, and then set fire to the bridge behind you, and stand on the riverbank, watching and breathing deeply as your only chance of retreat went up in smoke.

    5

    She walked for nearly two hours, through one unfamiliar neighborhood after another, before coming to a strip mall on the west side of the city. There was a pay phone in front of Paint n Carpet World, and when she used it to call a taxi, she was amazed to discover she was no longer in the city at all, but in the suburb of Mapleton. She had big blisters on both heels, and she supposed it was no wonder—she must have walked over seven miles.

    The cab arrived fifteen minutes after her call, and by then she had visited the convenience store at the far end of the strip, where she got a pair of cheap sunglasses and a colorful red rayon kerchief. She remembered Norman saying once that if you wanted to divert attention from your face, the best way was to wear something bright, something which would direct the observer’s eye in a different direction.

    The cabbie was a fat man with unkempt hair, bloodshot eyes, bad breath. His baggy, faded tee-shirt showed a map of South Vietnam. WHEN I DIE I’LL GO TO HEAVEN ’CAUSE I SERVED MY TIME IN HELL, the words beneath the map read. IRON TRIANGLE, 1969. His beady red eyes scanned her quickly, passing from her lips to her breasts to her hips before

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