Evelyn was having one of those days that just couldn’t find its way to sunshine and roses. Not only was it heavily overcast, which inspired her SAD disorder, but she kept coughing so hard to clear her throat she dropped two stitches while knitting. She had Covid, and even though she felt better after a solid week of illness, she was still exhausted by its continuing symptoms. In fact, she’d fallen asleep while cooking her dinner, which resulted in a very dry, slightly burnt roast surrounded by blackened potatoes and carrots in the pot. Her dinner was still somewhat edible, but even knowing she had a mild case compared to many who had suffered through this pandemic, she felt disappointed her skills were so deeply affected by the disease in this way.
This was a day she decided to distract herself by reading posts on Facebook. She’d been on her computer about ten minutes, catching up with the news of her friends, when her daughter, Charlotte, sent a DM on Messenger. She read: “Hi Mom – Can you take a phone call? I finally have a day off.”
Delighted she was being reaching out to, she responded, “Sure. Do you want me to call you?” She knew her daughter didn’t have a long-distance plan on her phone. A few minutes later, Charlotte answered her call.
“Mom?” Evelyn was thrilled to hear her middle daughter call her Mom They’d grown closer over the past two months, as Charlotte recovered from an incident of domestic violence. She was no longer living with the man, and was pretty much healed physically, though the emotional scars remained.
“Hi Cupcake!” Evelyn cooed. “How’s my baby doing?”
“Mom, please don’t call me baby,” Charlotte pouted. “I’m a grown woman!”
“Sorry, I know you are. But you’ll always be my sweet baby.”
“Okay, I know it. But I want you to address me like I’m a grown-up, someone who can take care of myself. Everyone makes me feel like I should have seen it coming.”
“Alright, agreed.” Evelyn wished one of those who surrounded her daughter, especially those who’d seen the potential for violence, had spoken up before it arrived on her doorstep. “I may slip up from time to time, though.” She knew she needed to give herself some leeway.
“Are you over your bout with Covid, Mom? Is it going to be a quick case?”
Charlotte was so pretty she looked like a dark-haired celebrity, but her looks hadn’t swayed her character. She had a heart as big as the moon and could never think badly of someone until they’d crossed about a dozen lines with her. Evelyn knew her daughter really cared about her. Yet, she also knew it would be unusual — given Charlotte’s tendency to live a drama-filled life — for her to call and not share some part of her story. Maybe she’s checking to see if I’m well enough to bear up under today’s news, was her next thought.
“I’m over the infectious stage now, and able to go back out in public as long as I wear a mask anywhere there are indoor gatherings. But I’m still fighting to get my old energy back. It took four tries, hours apart, for me to clear my driveway of a foot and a half of snow yesterday.”
“So you’re just tired? The cough has gone away?”
“No, I still have the cough. And it’s more than simply being tired, but I’m on the mend. The nurse practitioner I talked to said this is how it will be for a while. I’m so easily exhausted now, I feel like I have a quarter of my previous energy. In fact, I’m tired whenever I try to do anything except walk around inside the house. Why? What’s your news?”
“Mom,” she began to protest. “I wanted to check in on you.”
“Sure. I know that, Pumpkin. But it’s not your only reason for phoning, is it?”
Charlotte sighed. “You’re almost my mean mother, the way you do that, you know. Okay, I wanted to let you know that Gordon had his trial this past week. It ran from Tuesday through to Friday.”
“Did you go?”
“I went the first day, but I had to work. I couldn’t afford to take the whole week off. I asked the lawyer to call me when the jury was ready to deliver its decision, so I went back for that. I told my boss, I wanted to look him in the eye when they told him he was guilty.”
Gordon was Charlotte’s last live-in boyfriend. They’d broken up around two months ago. First, he cheated on her with someone he met cashing a cheque at the MoneyMart in town. That time, he’d stayed out all night, returning home at 5:00 in the morning. Somehow he thought he could fool her into believing a story about playing cards with his friend James. She didn’t buy it. She’d called all of his friends the night before, looking for him, and no one — including James — had known where he was. She told him this.
Gordon stepped forward making a face that looked like he wanted to apologize, which is how he’d tricked her. When he was close enough, he grabbed both wrists and pulled her into his arms, turning her back against his chest. He whispered into her neck, thinking he could quell her objections with love-making as he kissed the side of her face. She elbowed him, turned, and managed to push him away. Her anger was inspired by the fact she could smell he’d had sex recently. She was incensed to think that he thought taking her for a romp in bed before she went to work would placate her. She surprised him by pushing him out the door and locking it.
Gordon got so mad when she wouldn’t open up, he roared in anger like an animal and pounded on the door. She didn’t answer it, so he broke a living room window and climbed in. Their neighbours called the cops when the battle first broke outside. Gordon was so loud, so violent, whenever he was upset. Once he’d made it back indoors, he grabbed her and pounded her in the face, splitting her lip. She’d managed to escape to the bedroom but he followed. Enraged, he broke through that door, his hands grabbing her upper arms and leaving gigantic bruises as he backed her up to the bed. At that point, he pulled out his switchblade to threaten her. He lifted her skirt with his left hand as he held the blade to her throat with his right. He pulled down her panties and unzipped his pants, preparing to rape her. Charlotte was terrified. He’d never risen to this level of abuse before.
She continued to scream and struggled to get away. So he pounded her in the side of the head, breaking her orbital bone on the left side. She’d been knocked unconscious and he was in the process of raping her by the time the Police arrived. Not only did they charge him with rape and assault leading to grievous injury, but the neighbours had heard him uttering death threats, so they had two witnesses for a third charge. Searching the scene later, they found his switchblade tangled in the bedclothes. This meant he was charged with attempted murder, though Charlotte remained unconscious on her trip to the hospital. In fact, for several days afterwards the Doctors kept her in an induced comma to deal with the swelling of her brain.
It was about a week after this incident when Charlotte first called and told her mother about the various charges laid against Gordon. She said one of the officers told her the photographs of her injuries would be used in the court. They knew they were so horrific they’d make people gasp. They included photos of her face with the swelling and bruising from the orbital fracture and his other punches, the defensive wounds on her fingers and arm, and several nicks on her neck from the knife he had threatened her with.
“Please don’t tell me more about your injuries, Charlotte,” Evelyn pleaded. “I think I’ll have nightmares about what that man has done to you! Just tell me you’ll let the Police follow through with this man. Let them charge him with everything they can get him on!”
“I will, Mom. I promise.”
“That’s good. How long did they give him? Did he have his trial yet? His sentencing?”
“No. He appeared to face his charges and the jury decision on his guilt. The judge will deliver his sentence at a separate appearance. I don’t know when that will happen.”
“Okay, that gives the judge time to consider his history with you, too. They did bring up the other domestic violence charges, didn’t they?”
“Just the ones that happened with me. They argued the other stuff, from his past, wasn’t relevant to my case.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I know. But they didn’t need more than they had to get him convicted.”
It was when Gordon sat in jail, waiting for his trial, that the Police had talked to Charlotte about his rap sheet. They’d dug up a record of offenses dating back to his mid-teens in other provinces. This wasn’t his first case of domestic violence as she had thought, either. They told her he had three previous cases with smaller charges against other women before he took Charlotte hostage with his knife. He only bruised those women, but he’d been progressing in his violence for a long time. She also learned that he was wanted in a case of armed robbery at a convenience store. The prosecutor told the judge they thought he was a flight risk because he’d avoided capture for that robbery for years. Plus, his parents had moved to the USA. Thank goodness, he didn’t have money to pay the bail that was set, and no one came forward to help him get released.
“I don’t know everything he was charged with. The policeman who phoned me said he thought he’d get at least ten years, and that was a low estimate.”
“Ten years is nothing, considering what he did to you. And to those other women. But maybe that will knock some sense into him.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Oh, this isn’t television, Honey. I don’t think there are any happy endings to Gordon’s story. He did too many things wrong. Prison isn’t going to go easy for him either. He’s going to get taken down a few notches for his arrogance.”
“Yeah. I was surprised by a message on my phone this morning, though. The women I found out he was cheating on me with, the one from the MoneyMart, said I needed to drop the charges or lawyer up because they’re going to fight me in court.”
“Ha, sure they are. There will be more court for him, but not because anyone wants to charge you! Was she in the courtroom?”
“I don’t know. I don’t actually know what she looks like. But the Police were adamant he was going down. I didn’t know people could do so many illegal things — drug charges, robbery, and domestic violence — and still be walking around like he was. I messaged her backing, saying, ‘I don’t need a lawyer. The Police are taking him to court, not me’.”
“Exactly.”
“So she messaged me again, saying, ‘I’m pregnant. You need to drop the charges’.”
“Oh, God. More fool her.”
“Yeah, apparently she got pregnant after that one night.”
“Really?” Evelyn shook her head. “She’s either a complete fool, or a liar, or she tried to get pregnant that quick.”
“I know. I don’t feel sorry for her.”
“It’s completely unfair to guilt trip you, anyway. Not after what he did to you. You could have lost your life in that altercation!”
“I guess she decided to forgive him for taking up with her when he already had a girlfriend. How can she believe there’s anything to write home about this guy when she only knew him for a week?”
“More fool, more fool… So, I’m curious, Charlotte. Will the Police be keeping you up to date on what is happening with him?”
“Yes, they’ve been really good about that.”
“Wonderful. So you’re going to go back for his sentencing?”
“Yes. I decided I wasn’t going to give him any more of my time, but Frank, this old man I met at the restaurant where I work, told me I that need to go to his sentencing to get my closure on that relationship. I think he’s right. Of course, he has his reasons for wanting me to see the backside of Gord. My boss, Cindy, and Frank, are both encouraging me to go out with Dave.”
“No, you need to take a break from relationships. You’re not out of this one entirely, just yet. But who’s Dave?”
“He’s Frank’s nephew.”
“Oh, take your time, Charlotte. I think you should take a long break from men now. Take the time to collect your thoughts on what’s happened.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s only been two months. But Dave is good people. He’s another customer at the restaurant. I’m just letting you know I’ve got some good friends looking out for me here in Ottawa.”
“Well, it is good to know. It makes me worry less to have you so far away from me when I know you’re surrounded by people who actually care about you.”
“Yeah, they do. It’s almost like family at the restaurant with the staff and the regulars. And it helps that I got a new place to live just three blocks from work. Everyone is so kind and generous to me. It feels like I’m really part of this neighbourhood now, you know? I think that’s why I could tell Gordon’s fling that her pregnancy wasn’t my problem.”
“Yes, certainly it’s not your issue. But I hope she has supportive friends, too. She’s a silly woman, but she’s also going to need someone’s help and attention. And so will the baby. I hope she’ll be a good mom.”
“I told her not to be fooled by Gordon, that he isn’t actually a nice guy.”
“Well,” Evelyn mused, “we don’t actually know his reaction to news of her pregnancy either, do we? I know he’s in jail, but he’ll not claim responsibility for a kid while he’s stuck there. He seems the type to leave a woman if she isn’t entirely focused on him.”
“Yeah, he’s a true narcissist.”
“She may not know she’ll be a single parent yet, Charlotte. She may hope he’ll get a short jail time. I mean, she doesn’t really know him. It’s unlikely she realised what a long record he has with the law.”
“That’s true.”
“Any way, put Gordon in your rear-view mirror now.”
“That’s the plan.”
“In the meanwhile, what’s the word on your therapy?”
“I’m working so much, having two jobs, it’s hard to schedule it in.”
“Except that you should. You really need to talk to someone.”
“I don’t really have time, Mom. And I do talk to people.”
“You know what I mean. You need to talk to a trained therapist. You need to make a commitment to your therapy. You said your boss was understanding.”
“She is.”
“Well, then she’ll understand. Otherwise, this incident will never leave you alone. For one thing, its future repercussions might be more bad choices with regard to men.”
Charlotte was quiet. Evelyn worried her daughter had shut down and tuned her out. Then she heard the sharp intake of her daughter’s breath and the beginning of tears.
“You’re right, Mom. Okay, I’ll talk to her. Maybe I can set up my therapy in the mornings, when it’s less busy at work.”
“That’s my girl,” Evelyn cooed. “I know it’s a balancing act. Keep me informed.”
“I will. I always feel better after I’ve told you what’s happening in my life.”
“Good, I’m glad to hear it.”
“And Mom -”
There was a long pause that caused Evelyn to speak again, encouraging her daughter to share her thoughts. “I’m here, Charlotte -”
“Thanks,” she said. “I know I can count on you, no matter how bad things get.”
“That’s the way it should be, Pumpkin. It’s called unconditional love. You always have my ear and my heart. I’ll always love you to the moon and back.”
“I want to tell you something. It’s my goal that the next time I phone you, I’ll be sharing good news instead of all this shmuck.” She laughed. “Really, I mean it.”
“I look forward to that day, but don’t neglect to call with whatever news you have, even if it isn’t all daisies and roses.”
“Okay, Mom.”
“It’s never goodbye, Darling.”
“Yeah. Never goodbye. But I have to go now before I run out of time to do my laundry before work.” She giggled. “Oh! And I think I’m going to have a new room mate, soon. I’m cleaning up to get ready.”
“Really? That’s pretty quick.”
“Yeah. Frank, the old guy at the restaurant is hooking me up.” She starts to laugh openly then. “He’s short guy with blonde hair and brown eyes, and,” she makes a long, dramatic pause, “he’s the cutest one in the whole litter.”
“Oh! You’re too much,” Evelyn told her. “I was starting to have heart palpitations.”
“I love you, Mommy,” came the teasing voice. Then Charlotte rang off.
Evelyn smiled widely. The tenor of her day was starting to look a whole lot better.
[Image Credit : Photo by Rick Rothenberg on Unsplash ]
by 
Sharon Berg
Latest posts by Sharon Berg (see all)
- Don’t Drop the Charges! - July 2, 2024
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