A House on Eden

6. Monday

"This pasta is delicious!" Beth said. "What did you put in it? Other than the shrimp, I mean?"

"Just some fresh herbs," I smiled. "I found some growing in the garden."

"Yes," she said, "Marjorie loved herbs. She grew them everywhere. Cooked with them all the time. Gave some to me to grow but they never thrived. That's it with this house, Jessie! Everything that comes into it thrives!"

We sat silently for a while. I loaded my fork with Fettuccini.

"Does he beat you, your husband?" She asked softly.

"Yes," I said. It was so easy now to admit it. "He gets drunk and then he gets mad and then he hits me. Hard. Kicks me too. When we were first married he kicked me so hard in the stomach that I lost the baby. Lost the whole works, too."

"My God!" She said. "Why didn't you press charges?"

"There's an Old Boys system down at the station," I said. "It wouldn't do any good, they'd cover for him."

"He's a cop?"

"Yes," I said.

"A cop with a temper is like a wild animal on the prowl," she said. "He has the training, the coward. What will you do when he comes beating down your door?"

"I haven't thought that far yet," I said. "I'm enjoying the tranquility. When I do think about it I only get the nerves."

"Then don't think about it, dear," she said. "All in its time."

"So how did you find Max?" I asked.

"Max found me," she said. "He had been holing up in my garden for weeks. I would see him and he'd slink away. I have a friend who is a vet who saw it and said that kind of behavior in a dog is indicative of abuse. She said that somewhere in his life a human treated him abusively and now he was too afraid to get close to one."

"What did you do?" I said.

"One night I watched him lie down on the ground near the porch," she said, her eyes remembering. "I thought he was asleep so I walked slowly toward him but then he sat up and started barking, only it wasn't a bark. It was a scream of agony.

I laid myself down on my back, making myself low to the ground, and he came and stood over me. He howled for a long time, but I just lay there and didn't move.

Then he let out a deep breath and lay beside me. No, crouched was more like it. I made myself even lower and he did the same. It was like a contest of who could be the lowest on the ground. I didn't say anything or move the whole time. I just let him do what he was doing.

Finally when I couldn't get any lower he sat up and began licking my face. We've been the greatest of friends ever since."

"That's an incredible story," I said.

"There's something very humbling about knowing that your dog would give his life for you," she said, removing a tear from her eye. "And now that he's met you he would do the same for you, I know it. Max chooses his friends carefully."

"What possesses a man to beat a woman?" I asked.

"His knowledge that she's so much more powerful than he is," she smiled.