October 27, 2008 – Is that a rolling pin you’re hiding in your apron or are you just really pissed to see me?
In the last episode, Kirby Hoover confessed to April that his wife, Angel, was beating him. He showed her his bruised back.
“Jesus Christ, Kirby!”
April was stunned. Hoover sat beside her, head in his hands. “I know, I know,” was all he could say.
“Does it hurt?” she asked tentatively.
“Well, I’m pretty sore,” Hoover replied from behind his fingers.
“Have you seen a doctor?”
Hoover looked up with an expression of disbelief. “You’re kidding, right?”
“That bruise looks really bad, Kirby. Somebody should look at it.”
“I’m the mayor. And I’m a man. What do you think will happen if I tell a doctor my wife, who’s half my size, beat me up? “
Kirby looked at her, his voice growing in intensity as he spoke. “I’ll tell you what will happen. The doctor won’t believe me. He’ll think I’m making it up. Maybe I did it myself to discredit my wife when she shows up in ER an hour later with a broken nose. In any event, the police will be called. It’s required, the doc won’t have any choice. Amos and Andy will get haul their asses out of the donut shop and get right down to the hospital. Oh, it’s the mayor. Now there’s no sweeping it under the rug. Gotta make a report. Gotta file a charge. Who’s gonna believe me?”
Hoover was almost shouting now. He waved his arms and his face was red. Strands of blond hair fell over his face and bounced with each gesture. April couldn’t help thinking that at that moment he looked like a man who just might beat his wife.
“No one’s going to believe me, April. The cops won’t. Higgins won’t. Cleo might, but she’d have to run the story anyway. Best case for me is that my picture is plastered all over The Tablet and people think I’m a wife beater. Doesn’t matter if the truth comes out later, I’d be ruined politically. What’s worse for a politician? That he beats his wife or that he’s such a wuss that his wife beats him?”
April put her hand on his shoulder to comfort him. Hoover winced, just a bit. She began to remove her hand, but he begged her not to, as if it was the only human comfort he had felt in recent memory.
They sat on the bench, Hoover hunched over in misery, April gently patting him on the back, not knowing what else to do. Finally, he spoke again.
“The worst part of this is my son. If I do nothing, he grows up watching his father being abused by his mother. No boy should ever see that. If I leave, she probably gets custody and I live with the knowledge that I’ve left him alone with a violent woman. I can’t do that either.”
“Maybe Angel can get help. Maybe both of you can take counseling,” April said helpfully, trying to find a silver lining in this dark and ominous cloud.
“Yeah, maybe, but not likely. She blames me! Can you believe that? She busts up my back and it’s my fault. I leave her alone too much. I drink too much. I’m a lousy husband. I frustrate her so much that she can’t help herself. Talk about blame the victim! She’s abusive and she thinks she’s hard done by!”
Hoover was angry again. Leaning over hurt his back and he sat straight and gentle massaged his lower back.
“Do you want me to do that?” April asked. Hoover nodded tiredly. She took off her gloves and gently kneaded his muscles. Hoover carried some fat around his middle. Angel must have hit him pretty hard to raise that kind of a bruise, April thought.
“People think I drink too much. Well, no goddamned wonder! The miracle is that I’m not drunk twenty-four hours a day. Who wants to go home to that? Especially sober!”
April softened her voice. She knew her next question would be difficult. “Does she ever hit Peter?”
Hoover stared off into the distance for a while. Across the park were some houses. Lights were on and silhouettes were visible against the curtains. He seemed to be studying them, perhaps wondering what was going on behind closed doors in other homes. Perhaps he was imagining them as happy, contented families and feeling sorry for himself. She could understand if he was. He certainly didn’t look happy or contented at the moment.
He ignored her question.
“Funny, the things you learn as mayor. Did you know the mental health centre runs a support group for violent lesbians?”
“I did not know that,” April replied.
“Yup. Lesbians beating up their female partners. I would never have guessed it. We all see the ads. Domestic violence means men beating women. The shelter in town – it only takes women. I don’t know if a man has ever applied to get in. Hell, maybe I’m the only man in town that takes a regular licking from his wife!”
April made sympathetic sounds and patted Hoover’s shoulder. She didn’t know what else to do. Domestic violence was unknown to her. Her mother and father – to the general disgust of the children – still smooched and cuddled on the couch. She had never seen either lift a hand in anger to the other.
And, she had to admit, she was confounded by the idea of petite Angel Hoover beating her husband black and blue. The woman couldn’t have weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet. April tried to imagine the mechanics of the assault. What did she hit him with? A bruise that large likely required some kind of blunt instrument, did Angel keep a pipe or a stick handy in the kitchen, just for the purpose of whacking her husband? And how did she hit him on the lower back only? Did she sneak up on him? That seemed unlikely. Most puzzling of all was why Hoover simply didn’t stop her from hitting him. He was much bigger and stronger. Why didn’t he simply restrain her? Or leave the house when the beating started?
The reporter in her wanted to know more. “I don’t understand. How did she manage to bruise you so badly?” she finally asked.
He sighed. “It’s complicated. And it makes no sense when I actually say it out loud. I mean, how does a skinny little woman beat a guy my size?”
April shrugged. “That is a good question.”
Hoover looked at her for a moment, as if he was searching for something, then turned away. “You probably wouldn’t understand. I’m sorry I brought it up.”
“Maybe I will. I can try,” she said sympathetically.
Hoover sighed again. He took a long time before answering. “Guilt. We get into these huge fights because I’m away from home so much. I can’t help it. Politics is demanding. There ‘s council meetings, events, openings – you wouldn’t believe how much public life there is in a town this small. Everyone expects the mayor to show up. I can’t not be there because my wife is throwing a temper tantrum at home.”
“It must be hard for Angel, being home all alone with Peter.” April said.
“Yes, it is,” Hoover said. “I understand why she’s upset. She didn’t sign up to be a de facto single parent. She’s never been a really social person, doesn’t have a lot of friends. I’m it, I guess.”
“That would be tough,” April sympathized.
“We started arguing. Lots of yelling. Poor Peter, he was really upset. I felt so bad about that. The look in his eyes just about killed me. I couldn’t do it anymore.” Hoover ran his fingers through his hair. He looked like a man unnerved, on the cusp of the abyss and wondering when the next gust of wind will blow him over the edge.
“When Angel lit into me, I started walking away. She was so mad! The first time she ran after me and starting punching me on the shoulders. I hardly felt it, like a mosquito bite. The second time, she was ready. I no sooner turned my back on her and wham! It was like being walloped by a baseball bat. She had gone out and bought this rolling pin, specially to hit me with. It was aluminum and hollow, you fill it up with water. She was able to put in just the right amount of water to hit me with maximum impact. Imagine that. How much time she spent calculating, experimenting, getting it just right.”
Hoover shook his head at the thought of his wife working in her kitchen with the rolling pin, like some mad scientist hell bent on finding the secret to creating life.
“Now she smacks me whenever she gets the chance. Any time she thinks I’m not looking. We don’t even have to be fighting. I think she likes it. Just the thought of me being all bruised up. Maybe she thinks it evens things up somehow.”
“You mean she thinks it’s ok to hit you like that?” April asked incredulously.
“Oh, no,” said Hoover sardonically. “She thinks I deserve it. She thinks it’s my own fault. If I wasn’t such a horse’s ass I wouldn’t need to be smacked around with a rolling pin.”
“Oh! That’s terrible!” April exclaimed.
The two sat in silence. April didn’t know what to say. She was simply overwhelmed. This was more personal drama than she was used to – and of a type totally unfamiliar to her. Hoover seemed to be steeped in his own misery.
Finally, he spoke. “I can trust you, right, April?”
“Of course! she said in a rush.
“I mean, this won’t find it’s way into a news story, will it?”
April was a little affronted. He had shared something intensely private and confidential. And done so in her capacity as a friend – or, at least, as an acquaintance on whom he might have a little crush, one he suspected was returned. Even though she might have been curious about his plight, a curiosity natural to a reporter, she had listened with a friend’s ear, not a reporter’s tape recorder.
He shouldn’t have to ask, was her first thought. But it was quickly followed by the more reasonable conclusion that he was a politician and she now possessed a secret that would ruin his political career. Naturally, he would be nervous. For that she could forgive him.
She looked into his blue eyes, so frightened and pained. “You can trust me. I won’t breathe a word of this to anyone. Certainly no one at the paper.”
He took her hand and squeezed it. “Thank you, April. You have no idea how much this means to me.”
With that, the two friends – for if sharing a secret of such magnitude doesn’t make two people friends, what does? – went their separate ways. Hoover trudged home to face Angel, uncertain of his reception. April walked back to the Buffalo and rejoined the party, not very talkative, her unconscious mind exploring the twists and turns of Kirby’s Hoover’s predicament even as she laughed politely at her co-workers’ bad jokes.
Rhett Charleston might be handsome and dashing and mysterious, but Kirby Hoover was like a wounded puppy, crying out for someone to nurse it. And that, dear readers, is a powerful aphrodisiac for a lonely young woman in the prime of her life.
In the next episode, it’s back to politics for April and the gang at The Tift Tablet.