Hanging by a Thread by Monica Ferris Page A

fooled me, ever; more than once I saw him smiling when there was nothing funny or happy going on. But as I said, I saw Angela looking unhappy when she thought no one was noticing. That worried me, and I offered to help her any way I could, but I wasn’t the pastor’s wife anymore, and anyway, I don’t know how to be subtle, so I only scared her more. Then one Sunday I saw her talking to Foster after church. It seemed an innocent conversation, but friendly.” Alice made a sudden curved gesture with a large hand, startling Betsy. She nodded. “Like that, Paul swooped in and just yanked her away. He was smiling, but for just a second there was a look on Angela’s face that frightened me, she looked terrified. I phoned her at home that evening, pretending I wanted a recipe, and she seemed almost all right, you know what I mean?”
    “Not exactly.”
    “I mean she wasn’t crying, but she seemed anxious to get off the phone. Then all of a sudden I was talking to Paul, as if he’d snuck up and yanked the receiver out of her hand. I think he thought he’d caught her talking to a man, and when I said, ‘Hello? Hello?’ he said something like, ‘Oh, it’s you.’ It was then I knew I had to do something.”
    “Why?” asked Betsy. “I mean, I understand completely how you could believe she was in danger, but why did you feel responsible for rescuing Angela?”
    “Because I was the only one who thought she was in danger. I had talked to our pastor that Sunday, but he was a young man and—well, he was sure Paul was a good man and I was an interfering old woman. I couldn’t call the police, they won’t go over unless there’s a loud fight going on that minute. And that organization that protects battered women won’t take someone else’s word there’s a problem. There was no one else to tell; when people looked at Paul Schmitt, all they could see was that smile, all they noticed about him was how helpful he was to their neighbors.”
    “But you were sure he was a thoroughly evil man.”
    “Not thoroughly evil. He was like a lot of people, he put different parts of his life into different boxes. There was the Paul who programmed computers, the Paul who built cabinets for money under the table, the Paul who drove people home from the hospital. But I believe that at home there was a Paul who made his wife’s life a living hell.”
    “Do you know why he did that? Not that she provoked him, nothing should provoke a man to behave like that, but what was it about him?”
    “I don’t know. Abusers happen for different reasons. In Paul’s case, it may be because he needed to live up to that smile, he needed to make people think he was a good and happy man. And all the while, inside, he was afraid he wasn’t good at all. Or that he wasn’t good enough for Angela, who was a very sweet and gentle person—too sweet and gentle for her own good in this wicked world. Perhaps he was afraid someone would take her away from him. Do you know what I mean?”
    Betsy nodded. “It’s what used to be called an inferiority complex and today is called low self-esteem. Some people are sure that if people saw what they really are, they’d despise them.”
    Alice nodded back. “And he was sure Angela couldn’t really love him, or that one day she’d meet someone truly good, and begin to see him for his real self. When my husband was pastor of our church, he dealt with abusive husbands surprisingly often. And even once an abusive wife, a dreadful person who terrorized her children and nearly killed her husband one night with a frying pan full of hot grease. I learned that you don’t look only at someone’s face, you look at the spouse’s face as well. Paul was a smiler, but what I saw in Angela’s face told me that she needed to leave him, or find someone to protect her from him.”
    “Did you ever see any bruises?” asked Betsy.
    “Only once, the very next Sunday. She had finger marks around her wrist. She saw me looking