Anna drives straight to her parent’s house and starts making a list of lawyers she knows personally that she can call for a reference for a divorce lawyer. Obviously Erik is losing his mind. She has to get the divorce settled and get the kids away from him.
She has a total of sixteen names jotted down when the doorbell rings. Anna puts down her pen and skips to answer it before the annoying bell went off again. She opens the door and finds herself laid flat on her stomach with some man pushing on the back of her head, slamming her face into the foyer tile. Anna struggles and kicks and tries to draw the attention of anyone who might be walking by outside with their dog. What she sees in the doorway frightens her more than the potential rapist on her back. She sees shiny black shoes and navy blue uniform trousers. Beyond that she sees a police car has pulled straight up onto the front lawn.
“Hold still,” the rabid rapist perching on her back shouts in her ear. “Hold still, or we’ll take you into the station.” Anna stops struggling. It’s no rapist ramming her head into the floor, it’s one of Cambridge’s finest.
She hears the other cop standing in the doorway hiss under his breath saying, “Enough…Ricky…enough.”
That prompts one more solid head shove into the ground before ‘Ricky’ gets off Anna’s back. Then she feels the cold metal slip around her wrists. She tries to jerk away one last time before she hears the click. It takes both of them to drag her out the door and throw all five foot, one hundred pounds of her up against the car. The more level-headed cop is looking around at the crowd gathering in the street. Neighbors, dog walkers, passers-by, all start assembling to rubberneck. Anna tries to scan the faces for someone she recognizes, but the way they have her pinned she can’t see clearly.
“So rich bitch tried to kill her husband this afternoon and thinks she can just walk away? Huh? That right?” says Ricky, who turns out to be not much bigger than her.
Anna says nothing. It’s her instinct to shout, to call to the people on the street for help, to struggle, to fight, to do something. But she stands stock still, staring straight at the other officer’s fourth brass button and saying absolutely nothing.
When Officer Ricky stops shouting and poking his finger in her face, she calmly looks Officer ‘Not Ricky’ in the eye with a cool level stare. Officer ‘Not Ricky’ looks about as old as her stepson Greg. She can see that he still misses spots shaving.
As the silence grows more and more uncomfortable and she can feel Officer Ricky starting to twitch next to her, she finally says, “If you’re charging me, take me to the station. But before we go I want you to write down your badge numbers for me, fellows.”
As she suspected ‘Not Ricky’ goes pale, drags her five feet away from the car, unlocks her cuffs, and walks around to get in the driver’s seat.
Ricky steps up into her face and says, “My badge number is six- six- six, bitch. I bet you’ll never forget it.” And then he scrambles to the cruiser with his head down.
Once she slams the front door behind her Anna leans against the thick sturdy wood thinking, ‘Thank you, oh thank you, thank you.’ She’s fully aware things could have been far worse. Anna recognizes that in other countries even today women are dragged from their homes and murdered in the street for less. But this isn’t Baghdad. This is the capitol city…law and order rules here. Anna thinks ‘I’m going to report those little snot-nosed wanna-be cops… how dare they…don’t they know who—ah yes. Of course.’ She’s no longer the wife of one of the wealthiest attorneys in the city, in the state even. No longer Mrs. Reinhardt, wife of prominent attorney and philanthropist…well fair’s fair. Now that Anna’s gone Erik will no longer be a philanthropist. It was Anna who managed all the charity work and donations. As his wife, his better half she’d become a professional volunteer, one of the ladies who lunch.
As the full impact of the day’s events sink in Anna slides to the floor, relieved when the sturdy ground lands under her. What was the story with the cops? A gentle signal sent by Erik to remind her what it’s like to be out from under his wing of protection?
Officer Ricky and his pal obviously weren’t serious. Otherwise she’d be in custody, down at the station facing charges. What charges would they be...battery…assault at worst? Would his accusations require proof ? Would Erik need to come forward to display his alleged bruises or broken bones? Any judge in the world seeing her five-foot, hundred nothing next to his six-six in cowboy heels would look at him cross eyed for wasting the court’s time… right? Anna could no longer guess what Erik might be capable of, what else he was up to.
Impotent tears of rage come as she sits with her back pressed up against the front door. Sobs wrack her as the fragility of her position, the limits of her resources, creep into full realization. Her impulse is to call someone, but who? Her parents are in Florida. Besides, all she’d do is worry them. Her brother…well, her brother now worked for Erik at the firm. He’d be hamstrung by the new house, the arrival of the twins, and his wife’s predilection for shoes; expensive shoes. Brother or no, it’s unlikely he’d threaten his cushy position to help her at the moment.
Her sister all the way in Chicago…she’d only say ‘I told you so.’ Anna’s sister Katherine despised Erik on sight. In the few weeks Anna brought him around before their wedding, her sister Katherine practically growled at him whenever he entered a room. When Anna pressed her, Katherine said “I just feel it, he gives me the creeps. There’s something seriously not right with that man sister. My advice, run as far as you can in the opposite direction.”
Of course, it was easy for Katherine to say. Even back then Katherine was already well on her way to following in Mom’s footsteps. Twenty years ago, when Anna married Erik, Katherine’s husband ran for state representative. Part of Erik’s appeal way back then was that he seemed to have the same potential. He appeared to be cut from the same cloth as men like her father and brother-in-law, only more raw and flashy. In fact, Katherine’s husband was no longer a mere state representative as the girls’ father had been. He’d eventually won a seat as a state’s senator in Washington D.C. Considering her current hysterical state, Anna reasons that calling her sister is unwise.
Anna needs someone to encourage her to scream and yell, someone to feed her vodka (heavy on the orange juice) and stay until she falls asleep. Anna needs a friend. She dials Janet, but no answer. She doesn’t bother with a message. Anna needs help but only too late she realizes the bulk of her relationships, her friendships somehow revolve around Erik, either through his business, his political intrigues, or his farm and livestock interests.
Nearly everyone Anna spends any time with, beyond planning charity events or sharing a fundraiser table, is the hired help. Housekeepers at one time came and went through a revolving door. Anna eventually gave up on the idea of ‘help.’ After she’d get a new one all set up in the family routine and with good rapport, Erik would lose his temper or otherwise scare them away. Anna wasn’t particularly interested in the details.
Back when Anna’s hopes were still high, when her kids were toddlers, there was Dorthea, who stayed longer than any others. Dorthea was the one who found Anna a few times a week hiding her tears from the kids by crying in the back basement stairwell. Dorthea, unlike the rest of the planet, was not fooled by the grandiose size of the house or the garages full of shiny cars.
“What’d that man do this time? Huh?” Dorthea’d ask. “You know, one of these times he’s going to make that leap from shouting and waving his arms in the air to putting his hands on you…or one of those babies of yours. Before that, you better stand up and muzzle him once and for all. Show him who’s boss