I think pages like this are normally used for administrative information or something like that. Lists of recurring characters. Basic data that should be always accessible. Actually I have no idea how anybody else uses them. But I think I saw that I get only a finite number of them to play with, so I won't do this often. It's just that this story is really, really long.
With only minor edits, this is taken directly from an account that I wrote immediately afterwards in case I needed something to give the police, or the Court. I never used it for that, though.
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Hosea's log, star date March 18-20, 2005.
It is two and a half years before I ever started this blog.
Boyfriend 4 doesn't live with us yet … but after this weekend, hoo boy is he about to! After this weekend it is clear we need all the help we can get.
Friday night
The events of this weekend started Friday night, March 18. Son 1 was due back from his school's Science Camp, though nobody knew when they would get in. He had a Cub Scout dinner at 6:00 p.m. – a rather important one because it was the Blue and Gold dinner when he would get his Bear badge. Son 2 was visiting with his best friend’s family; I was at work. The H family (who was driving Son 1) had sent out a weblink to a map which would allegedly show the position of their car on the road home, via GPS. This was so that we could get some idea whether they would be on time. It didn’t work, as it turned out.
I contacted Wife some time during the late afternoon to tell her that according to the map, the group was still far away from town. So she napped a bit, figuring there was no way they could arrive in time. At 5:30 I called her and woke her, to let her know that I had been asked to stay for a 5:45 meeting with one of my company's Big Bosses. I woke her up. This meant that she had to hurry to get Son 2’s uniform to him over at Best Friend’s place, so that he could wear it to the Scout dinner. But then it turned out that the Science Campers had already arrived at school, and Son 1 had been waiting for 15 minutes already without calling … so Wife had to go get him instead . I called Best Friend's family for her (these are the M's, in what follows) saying they should take Son 2 to the dinner (which was right next door to them) without his uniform and Wife would meet them there; meanwhile she grabbed the uniforms and drove out to get Son 1. She drove pell-mell, got him, and raced back to the dinner, getting there (I guess) about 10 minutes late. It was dark and raining. Son 1 told her to turn in to the parking lot by a side entrance, which turned out to have been an exit only; when she went there, the car drove up over a curb, puncturing the right front tire and badly bending the undercarriage of the car. (In the next couple of days, we were to discover that the impact had also hurt her neck, shoulder, and hip muscles.) Wife managed to coast the car to a stop, but was so stressed and upset that she collapsed into a torrent of profanity directed against everything and everyone. She sent Son 1 running into his dinner carrying Son 2’s uniform, and called me on my cell phone to yell at me about everything that had happened.
By the time I got to the dinner (not a whole lot later – maybe 6:30 or so), Son 2 was in his uniform running around playing with Best Friend; Son 1 was in his uniform – and very dirty from a week of camping – but in tears. Wife was stalking around holding a plate of food and picking at it. Once I had arrived, Wife went outside to call AAA. I tried to comfort Son 1, who was weeping (I think) because of Wife’s temper tantrum at him; Son 1 didn’t want to talk about it. Apparently a few minutes before he had told Wife he didn’t even want to be there, but she said that they couldn’t leave until the car was fixed or I arrived. I went out to try to find her while the boys ate; for the longest time I couldn’t, but finally I did. AAA had told her that they couldn’t get there for a while, and that they would call when they could, so until then she was free to join the dinner again. We watched Son 2 get his Tiger badge and his baseball beltloop. We watched Son 1 get his Bear badge and 5 arrow points for electives. Wife tried to take pictures, but found that the battery in our digital camera was out. We thought they still had to do a bridge-crossing ceremony, because there had been one at each level the year before; but this year they did it only for the Webelos who transitioned to Boy Scouts. Then AAA called and Wife went out into the rain to deal with the car.
When I joined her a bit later, it was apparent that changing the tire would make no difference; enough damage had been done that the car would have to be towed. The mechanic from AAA made preparations to tow the car to our house. Wife was very upset by this development – which she had kind of expected – because the damage might well be enough that it would not be worth fixing the car, meaning we would have to total it. Since it is the only car we own that she finds comfortable to drive, she was very unhappy about this. When the car was ready to go, she asked me to follow in my car and then drive her back to the dinner. I asked Mrs. M (Best Friend’s mom) to keep an eye on our two boys while we were gone. Then I drove home, getting there before Wife and the tow truck. Mrs. M called saying that the ceremony was over, and that we should get the boys at her place. As I drove Wife back to her place, Wife said that if we were going to fight over the evening we had better start now … and really tried to pick a fight over the events of the night. I tried not to engage, but in the end said that I thought it had been a bad choice for her to sleep until 5:30 (because even if she didn’t know that I was going to be delayed at work she would have had to be getting ready before then, and it would have meant she could have been less rushed); that it had been a bad choice for her not to sleep in her clothes (because it meant that it was harder for her to get ready once awake); and obviously that it had been a bad choice to drive the car up over the curb. She argued that these choices were not so obviously bad, and that they went wrong because of other people’s faults; I said they indicated bad judgment. But I also kept trying to extricate myself from the fight altogether (which I was a fool to have joined in the first place), saying that we couldn’t discuss it sensibly while we were both so upset and we ought to wait till later. Wife asked if I thought her judgment was so awful, why I didn’t divorce her; I replied just by saying that that [i.e., the threat of divorce] was her trick, not mine. Anyway, we finally got to the Ms's apartment, chatted briefly, collected Son 1 (Son 2 was due to stay for a sleepover), and went home. Son 1 had a long bath to soak the dirt off, while I did his evening chores for him. Then he went to bed, falling asleep almost instantly. I forget whether Wife and I stayed up later, or not.
Saturday
Saturday there were supposed to have been Little League photos taken and games played, but it rained all day and so all that was cancelled. This should have made the day less stressful, and indeed it started out slowly. By mid-morning we were up, and by noon we had eaten; I formulated a list of things I wanted to do during the day. Son 1 asked for help with one of his models; Wife said she would like to help him, but had all these errands to run. I offered to run her errands so that she could help Son 1, and I left to do so. By the time I came back, she was scrubbing the woodwork in the kitchen and helping him with his model. Later that evening, though, it became apparent that earlier in the day Son 1 had been fiddling with the digital camera, and had pulled the memory chip out once, immediately reinserting it. Wife said that the instructions explicitly said never to do this before downloading your pictures to a computer, because otherwise they would all be lost. She started screaming at Son 1, red in the face, in a totally uncontrolled way, to the effect of What did she have to do? Why couldn’t he ever leave anything alone? Because now all the photos since Christmas were lost forever!! I tried to reassure her that they were only pictures, and therefore didn’t matter this much, but she would not be consoled. She went on to say that when she was a girl she would never have messed with her parents’ stuff the way Son 1 does, for fear that they would beat her bloody. I asked if that was what it would take to get her to stop the tantrum – beating Son 1 bloody? I pointed out that this was insane, because inflicting pain on him wouldn’t bring the pictures back; but I added that if this is what she wanted so badly and it would get the pain out of her system, then maybe that is what we should do. I called Son 1 over to her and asked her again if that is what she wanted. Son 1 started crying again, begging her please please please not to hurt him. She raged for a while longer and then elaborately said “Never mind Son 1, I give up. Break anything of mine that you want, destroy it all, I don’t care any more, I just give up.” Son 1 continued to weep, saying that no, he was the one who gave up and continuing to beg not to be hit. Finally I intervened, breaking off the conversation. But later, when I talked to Wife about “shrieking” at the boys like she had just then, she remarked in effect that that was nothing. Apparently this whole scene had played itself out earlier too, while I was out running errands: Wife had discovered the loss of the photos and had shrieked at Son 1 – her word, this time, not mine. Then she had slammed the door to her room and shrieked into her pillow, fighting with the bed until she wore herself out. So this had already gone on once that day before the events I witnessed.
In the evening we ate take-out and watched “In Harm’s Way”. The movie ended late, so the boys went to bed late, with promises that they would wash in the morning before church. Originally Boyfriend 4 had been scheduled to arrive that night, but he called at 12:30 to say that his flight had been cancelled because of weather and that he would call us later with his new plans.
Sunday morning at church
Sunday morning we went to church. Wife left before the sermon started, and sat out in the lobby distressed and suppressing tears. I sat with her, occasionally trying to talk and sometimes just sitting there. She recapitulated all the things that had gone wrong for her recently, laying special emphasis on the ones related to church – e.g., that she had wanted to join Worship Team after choir had dissolved, and that she felt that “Mike” (who appeared to be organizing it) was rejecting her out of hand without having ever heard her. Wife didn’t know why he would do this, except that he had decided to follow other people in just not liking her. I explained that I didn’t know anything about choir, but that I had already helped her with some of the other things on her list or else I could. But she was sad enough that I felt I couldn’t leave her to get the boys (and her purse, which she had left in the sanctuary) after the service, unless somebody else was there. I saw Mrs. B (one of her friends from church) leaving and motioned her to come over; she sat down, put an arm around Wife, and talked to her while I got the purse and the boys.
In the process, I also saw “Mike” wandering around outside, and so I asked him if he was organizing things and if he had made a decision to rule Wife out. He said no, he wasn’t responsible, he was just pitching in during the music pastor’s absence in a very superficial way. He also said no decisions had been reached at all about what would happen musically after Easter. He hadn’t heard Wife and had no opinion about her musically at all. His only concern was to see where people could plug holes: they already had singers, so the need for another singer was not that great; they did not have anyone who could play keyboards, so they needed that more. His one worry about Wife – and it was a small one – was that she seemed more concerned with being on the stage than with helping out wherever help was needed. He said he hoped for more of a “servant heart” (or something like that), so that if – e.g. – the biggest need were for somebody to play the piano she would do that rather than insisting on being on stage. But really nothing was decided.
Sunday afternoon
After church, we stopped by the hardware store to get some gardening supplies for school projects. We went home, and I took Son 1 to his practice. After coming back, I talked with Wife about my conversation with “Mike”. I tried to make it encouraging, although Wife didn’t take it that way. She got very angry at Mike’s remarks questioning her motives: were they to help, or to show off? When I tried to calm her anger, it got worse; at one point she picked up a pair of scissors and sliced them along her left arm starting at the elbow, giving herself a nasty scar but not drawing blood. She stopped and put down the scissors because I walked over to the telephone and made as if to pick it up; and if she had indeed continued trying to kill herself I would have dialed 911. She remarked that she never wanted to be put away for a 72-hour psychiatric watch, because that was worse than suicide. She continued, though, to make many remarks about how her life was not worth living and how everyone would be happier to see her dead; but instead of cutting her arms she could just end it with medication. At that point she ran into the bathroom and made as if to close the door. I blocked it until she stopped trying to close it, and urged her not to kill herself. Finally she relented enough that she just took enough clonazepam to induce a nap, lay down, and went to sleep. Somewhere in here, before she lay down, Boyfriend 4 called. His tentative plans were to arrive Monday night, and Wife told him angrily how much she had been counting on his arrival to keep her from falling apart. He urged her to go to the hospital; she explained that she would resent being locked up against her will, but that she would be willing to go in voluntarily. When she hung up the phone, I suggested that I could drive her to the hospital right away, but she made a 180-degree turn and said that she absolutely refused to go, because they would necessarily put her on Suicide Watch. She added that if I called an ambulance to put her on Suicide Watch against her will, she would never forgive me. I couldn’t understand the total change of heart inside a couple of minutes, but concluded from this that she was no longer at all predictable in her behavior.
Early evening
Later that afternoon we were out front, and she started arguing with me about throwing away some stuff, including the old rusted pieces of a gazebo she had bought years before. As she went on, she became less and less connected to the original subject, and more and more just plain angry. She accused me of hating her and despising her, and said she hated and despised me. She picked up one of the poles from the gazebo, and made as if to hit me with it. I stopped it with my hand but then apologized for stopping it and told her to go ahead. If hitting me with it was what she really wanted to do, she should do it. She finally did hit me with it once or twice – not very hard. I hoped that this would discharge some of her anger and anxiety, which were starting to make me very frightened – but no such luck. Later we went inside.
After dinner
Things came to a head after dinner. (BTW, Boyfriend 4 called back to say he would be getting in that night.) Once the boys had gone safely to bed, she started to talk about the business with the church choir again. I tried to get her to calm down; when that didn’t work, I tried to explain that getting along in organizations is like a game with its own rules. She insisted that Worship Team was closed to outsiders, and that they hated her irrationally. I tried to explain that it is possible for outsiders to enter any organization and rise inside it; there is always a way. She demanded very belligerently what she should have done instead; I replied that I had no idea because there are no step-by-step rules for this sort of thing, but that it is always possible. When she mentioned that she had told “Mike” that the music pastor had treated her unfairly by offering her chances he never followed up on, I said she shouldn’t have told him that. I said that by telling him, in effect, that she already had a grudge against the choir (through the person of the music pastor), she had torpedoed any chance of ever getting on Worship Team. This enraged her, and she threw the contents of her wine glass across the room. When she put down the wine glass she reached for the rest of the bottle; not wanting her to throw the wine bottle somewhere, I restrained her hands, brought her back to the sofa (we were eating in the living room), and held her down. She demanded that I let her go, and I said not while she was going to throw things. She twisted her head around and started to bit my right hand very hard. I asked her to let go. She didn’t. I asked again. She didn’t. I bit her cheek to make her let go – pretty lightly, and when it had no effect I desisted immediately. She continued to bite harder. The phone rang. She demanded through clenched teeth that I go answer it. I asked how can I answer the phone if you are biting my hand? Finally she relented, and I fled into the back room. Whoever was on the phone had already hung up, so I dialed 911. The dispatcher asked me what I wanted. I tried to explain that my wife was biting me and tearing the place up (I could hear smashing out there), but I was pretty incoherent. The dispatcher asked should they send out an ambulance? I did say that I was frightened and didn’t really know what I wanted. The dispatcher decided to send out police, and asked me to keep the line open. I set down the phone and went back to the front of the house.
Wife was smashing the plates in the kitchen. And the glasses and a couple of bowls. She was raging loudly against all the people that she thought hated her, including the Church and me. I asked her to stop, and told her I was frightened, several times, but to no effect. When she had smashed all the dinner dishes, she picked up some ruined candles she had made and a large kitchen knife. She started hacking the candles to pieces with the knife. Then she picked up a large onion and threw it in the air, carving it with the knife on its way back down to earth. This was apparently satisfying because she did it a few more times. Then she turned and addressed some remarks to me, gesturing with the knife in the direction of my crotch. She was not close enough to touch me, and although she took a couple of steps towards me I never really felt in mortal peril: I always figured that if I had to defend myself she wouldn’t be very fast with the knife, and that I could grab her hands and disarm her. My grip is stronger than her wrists. But it didn’t come to that; before she got close enough to reach me with the knife, she turned and threw it back onto the kitchen floor.
When the police arrived
About this time the police arrived. (When they came into the house, she did not have the knife in her hands, but was playing with a small piece of broken glass, possibly from one of the wine glasses.) They put us in separate rooms and questioned us about what was going on. I found it very hard to give a coherent account without crying, because I felt so overcome with emotion – I guess mostly fear. Then I heard the police ask Wife to put her hands behind her back while they checked her pockets for other weapons, and they handcuffed her. She asked why did they do that, and they explained that she was under arrest. They did not explain what she was being arrested for, nor (so far as I could hear) did they read her the Miranda rights. I admit that I couldn’t hear everything they said in the other room; but I also strongly believe that I would have recognized the verbal pattern of the Miranda warnings: “You have the right to remain silent, ….”
After they took her out to the car, the other officer asked me for more information by way of a statement; I tried to clarify what had and had not happened. The officer took pictures of the wound on my hand where she bit me. Finally the officer said a social worker would come out to talk to me about domestic violence and to offer counseling; and he went back to his car.
Cleaning up
Once he was gone, Son 2 came tiptoeing out. He was curious, although he didn’t seem very upset. Mostly he didn’t want to get in trouble for being out of bed. I explained briefly what had happened. When the social worker arrived Son 2 hid briefly but then came out hiding behind a stuffed cow. He was cute for her. The social worker gave me some pamphlets but didn’t really say much; I tried to explain again to her what had happened and then we were done.
When she left I started cleaning up the mess (actually I guess I had started that just before she arrived) and sent Son 2 back to bed. This was about midnight. At about 12:50 Wife called me from jail asking me to come bail her out. I said I had to wait for Boyfriend 4 to get into town so he could watch the boys, but that I would come do it. About 1:20 Boyfriend 4 called; I asked him to take a taxi and told him Wife was in jail. When he got here I filled him in on the details and called the jail to see how much bail was set at. It was $25,000. So I decided not to use a bondsman (thus permanently losing 10%, or $2500) but instead to pay for it in full. This wasn’t as easy as it sounds; the jail didn’t take American Express, and we didn’t have $25,000 of credit on the Citibank MasterCard. I also waited about 90 minutes trying to get them to ask Wife to call home where she could talk to Boyfriend 4 who would relay a message to me, but it never happened. Finally I drove home, got a second Master Card, and had the jail split the bail on the two cards. The attendant gave me some directions, and after some more waiting they released Wife.
On the drive home, Wife asked me if I had called 911. I said yes, although I tried to explain that I hadn’t made the choice of police over ambulance. She said she felt very betrayed – that in all the years she [alleged that she] had been afraid of me, she had never called the police on me. (This isn’t quite true, since last year she did arrange for the school to turn in a report to Child Welfare Services about my spanking the children.) She went on to say that if I didn’t help her beat the charge, she had “plenty of witnesses” to “all the times” that she felt in fear of her life from me, and she would bring them forward to ruin me too. This sounded like a threat. After we got home she went to bed, and Boyfriend 4 and I stayed up (it was already nearly 6:00 am) to get the boys started for Monday morning. I stayed home from work that day, having gotten no sleep all night.
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