The paramedics walk out of the yard with Dylan, Meredith trailing behind them. I don’t say anything until they are out of sight.
“What happened?” I ask.
Bishop hops off the table and stands next to me. “He fell. ”
I tilt my head up and look at him. “Did you push him?”
Bishop doesn’t answer for so long I think he isn’t going to. “We were discussing the way he treats Meredith. He got agitated,” he says finally. “A roof is a dangerous place to be if you’re not focused. ”
“Which doesn’t answer my question,” I say, voice quiet.
“No, I guess it doesn’t. ”
“What did you say to him, after?” I can’t get the image of Bishop pushing his hand into Dylan’s chest out of my head. It wasn’t a violent gesture, but there was menace behind it, a warning Dylan would be a fool to ignore.
Bishop’s mouth tightens. “He’s not going to hurt Meredith anymore. That’s all that matters. ”
“But how—”
“I’m gonna go inside and get cleaned up,” he says, cutting me off. He walks away from me and I watch the long, lean line of his body as he goes. He’s strong, I know that. I felt it when he pulled me up the cliff at the river, when he shook the fence in frustration. And now I know he can be ruthless, too. If he had been the first night, it would not have surprised me. But now, after all these weeks, it comes as a shock, a side of him I didn’t know existed. I wonder whether the other parts of Bishop he’s never shown me are as dark and dangerous as the current I sensed today pulsing beneath his calm exterior.
Although it should make me wary, I admire him for his ruthlessness. He isn’t afraid to act, when action is necessary. When we first met, I thought he was apathetic, as if he didn’t care at all about what went on beyond his small, privileged world. But now I realize he feels things just as deeply as I do; he simply approaches them differently, less headlong dive and more deliberate thought.
From the very beginning he has wrong-footed me, upended all my simple, pre-formed ideas about who he is. This is just one more piece of the Bishop puzzle, a piece with jagged edges and no simple place where it slots into the bigger picture. I like that he is complex, that the final result of all his pieces will be something unique and hard to solve. I have no right to wish it, and no hope the wish can ever be granted, but I still long to be the one to decipher him.
We eat a quiet dinner and I don’t ask Bishop where he’s going when I hear the front door open and close softly while I’m clearing the table. Out of the kitchen window, I see Meredith going into her house, and I knock on the window to catch her attention. The face she turns toward me is tear-swollen, her eyes red-rimmed and exhausted. I hurry out the back door before she can disappear inside.
“Hey, Meredith,” I call. “How is he doing?”
Her hands are clutched around the iron railing on her steps as if it’s the only thing keeping her upright. Her hair looks dirty, hanging in lank clumps around her shoulders. “He’s out of surgery. It went well. ”
I stand awkwardly on her bottom step. “Well, that’s good,” I say. I’m not sure what the protocol is, when I’m not sorry her husband was hurt and don’t understand why she is.
“He said…” A tear slips down her cheek and she brushes it away impatiently. “He said as soon as he’s able, he’s going to sign a petition to end the marriage and I need to sign it, too. He said President Lattimer will approve it. ” Her voice breaks. “He said we’re not a good match. He didn’t even ask me what I wanted. ”
So that must have been what Bishop said to him when he was lying on the ground, putting the final nail in the marriage’s coffin. “Isn’t it what you want?” I ask. “He hits you, Meredith. ”
She gives me a look of such withering contempt that I back up a step. “Don’t you think I know that?” she says. “But how is this any better? Our marriage is over. I move back across town with my parents and then what? No one’s going to want me. They say they’ll put me back in the pool for next year, but you know they won’t. ”
“If they don’t, there are bound to be some boys on our side of town who are looking for wives. ”
“Not wives who’ve already been passed over once before. ”
“You don’t know that. Besides, you don’t have to get married,” I tell her. “You can get a job and make a life for yourself where someone isn’t beating on you all the time. ”
She laughs, a harsh, bitter sound that doesn’t match her sweet, heart-shaped face. “I want a family, Ivy. I want children. I don’t want to live with my parents and watch people pity me because I couldn’t keep a husband. ”
“That won’t happen,” I say, although I have no real conviction that it won’t. There are plenty of girls who are never picked and who live their lives alone, not shunned but always regarded as less than, as having been not quite good enough. “And even if it did, if you never have children or get married again, it still has to be better than him hitting you every day. ”
Meredith bites her lip, tears streaming down her cheeks now. “Maybe,” she says. She shrugs. “I guess now I’ll never know. ”
“Oh, Meredith,” I say, torn between frustration and sorrow. “You don’t mean that. ”
“Don’t tell me what I mean. It should have been my choice. ” She pushes open her front door. “I know you meant well, both of you. ” She doesn’t look at me as she speaks. “But it wasn’t for you to decide. ” The door latching behind her is very quiet, and very final.
I’m not sure how we got to this place, where a girl’s only value is in what kind of marriage she has, how capable she is of keeping a man happy. Maybe Bishop is right and it depends on the couple. Stephanie and Jacob appear to love each other. But there’s something fundamentally wrong in a system where a girl like Meredith would even consider staying with a boy like Dylan if she has the chance to be free of him. Meredith doesn’t know her own worth, and in this world we’re living in, she never will. My father might not have held my hand or expressed his love openly, but he taught Callie and me that we had inherent value, that we were fully formed human beings without a boy by our side. For that, I will be forever grateful.
I return to the house and try to read on the screened porch, but the stifling heat and my own restlessness conspire against me. Bishop is still not home when I fall into bed at close to midnight, and I hope he isn’t punishing himself for what happened earlier. Perhaps Meredith is right and it wasn’t Bishop’s decision, but I’m not sorry he made it. And I don’t want him to be sorry, either. My only regret is that I didn’t think of it first.