Are You in the House Alone? (12 page)

“I want to vomit,” I said.

“Nurse.” Dr. Reynolds turned around to her, fast.

“No,” I said. “I’m not going to. I just want to.”

He was standing beside me then, taking my arm in his hands, swabbing it with wet cotton. “I’m going to give you a shot of Valium now, Gail, and then you’ll rest.”

I didn’t feel the needle going in, and usually I can feel it before it hits the skin. I hoped I’d be asleep right away, probably permanently. But time passed while the examining table rocked under me like a rowboat.

Everything got very dull except my hearing. The sound of Dr. Reynolds’ voice came very clearly through the screen. He was dictating to the nurse: “Microscopic examinations of vaginal secretions obtained from the posterior
fornix indicate numerous motile spermatozoa.” Then I heard the word “police.” Thinking it was about time for somebody to mention them, I fell away down a dark well, turning as I went.

*   *   *

I opened my eyes again, mad at the Valium for not working. But the glare in the room was from sunlight, and the screens were gone. So was the tube in my hand. It was a hospital room, a very superior one. There was a TV set attached high on the wall, with its screen angled toward the bed. The walls were a restful shade of blue, with framed prints of wild flowers. The bed was very soft, and I thought,
Is this a school day or isn’t it?

There were people in the room, but one of my eyes was plastered shut, and the steel bands that seemed to be running along under the skin of my forehead kept me from looking around. I could only see the man in a chair drawn up close to the bed. And I knew it was the man I’d heard crying before. I focused on him, and he became Dad sitting there.

“You should be at work,” I told him, very stern and businesslike. “And look at you. You haven’t shaved.”

His mouth worked up to a smile, and he said, “But it’s Sunday.”

“I guess I can accept that excuse just this once.” His chin was quivering, and I knew this little word game wasn’t working. I tried to think of something that would.

“Are you going to be able to talk to . . . some people?” he said.

“What people?” I didn’t think I could cope with anybody else. I just wanted Dad there. When did I ever have him to myself?

“Well, Steve for one. When he hears about you, he’ll be battering down the door.”

“I guess I don’t want to see him yet. Later. Pretty soon. Not now.”

“And the police.”

“Where are they when you need them?” I asked, trying to fix him with my one eye and make it sparkle. I knew he was crumpling again, and I was trying to put it off, but that was the wrong thing to say. The worst. His eyes were watering, and he was working his hands together, below the level of the bed.

“They were pretty mad because they weren’t contacted right away—as soon as Mrs. Montgomery came home last night and . . . found you. It was the hospital that reported the—the crime.”

“Are they here now?”

“No. But they’ll be here as soon as we let them know you’re able to talk.”

“Shall we get it over with?” I said, wanting to and not wanting to.

“Whatever you say, sweetheart,” he said in a husky whisper.

“No.” It was Mother’s voice. “Not yet, Neal. She’s not ready. I don’t want her going through that yet, whatever it is.” She walked around the end of the bed. She’d been on my blind side all along. And all I could think of was that I wished she’d go away. I didn’t want any interruptions.

But when she was standing beside Dad, wanting to reach out to me, but not doing it, I saw her face. So I knew she’d sat beside me all night. Under her eyes were the brown smudges that she usually erases before breakfast. And her hair wasn’t combed.

I started to cry then. It was the three of us, grouped
tight. I wanted Mother there. I never wanted to be out of their sight again. I could see us as three little people, three dots in this huge hateful world, and I cried and cried, and the tears made sounds when they hit the pillow.

Then they were gone. A nurse was there instead, badly blurred, with her needle at the ready. Not the night nurse; a different one. And down the well I went again.

When I woke up the second time, it was almost evening. I was starving for breakfast, lunch, dinner, whatever. But I didn’t move because there were people in the room again, and the conversation was about concussion.

Nobody seemed to notice my eye flutter open and close again because Dr. Reynolds was talking. The more medical his monologue, the better I understood it. “We routinely take a culture to check for venereal disease.” This was interrupted by a murmur from Mother, not quite a protest. More a moan. “The darkfield exam for syphilis was negative, but we’ll have to wait until Tuesday for the gonorrheal culture.”

I was struggling up on my elbows then, though my head was cracking apart. “I don’t have VD,” I said in a loud, clear voice that created sudden silence throughout the room.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Mother said, there beside me again, putting her hands out, trying to cover my ears. “Don’t listen. We’ll take care of . . . it’s a necessary procedure . . . they’ve explained it to—”

“Yes, Mother, but I don’t have VD. I mean it’s very unlikely.”

“But we can’t know that, Gail. How could we? It might have been some degenerate who, who—”

“It was a degenerate, Mother, but I’m pretty sure he isn’t diseased. Not that way. It was Phil Lawver.”

All the clocks in Oldfield Village skipped a beat. Nobody breathed in the room. Nobody moved. I could see better, propped up on my elbows. And I looked all around with my one good eye at the people looking back. Dr. Reynolds in his white coat, Dad with his hand gripped on the foot of my bed. Mrs. Montgomery was farther off with a green glass vase of dahlias from her garden, caught just in the act of setting it down on a table.

Are you sure? Are you sane?
The room was suffocating with questions nobody asked.
Concussion can muddle your thinking. And shock. You’ve suffered The Fate Worse Than Death it ruins your life, starting with your brains.

Mother’s hands hovered over me and pulled back. Her lips repeated Phil’s name, but without sound. It was Mrs. Montgomery who spoke first. She was still wearing her Saturday night dancing dress, black chiffon, under a polo coat. “Let’s not let Steve Pastorini hear that. Not until he has to know.”

“Not a word to anybody,” Mother said quickly, “until we’re sure.”

“Phil Lawver raped me. He sent me filthy anonymous notes. He called me on the phone, wherever I was. He spied on Steve and me and followed us. He tortured me for weeks before he picked his time. And then he raped me. It was Phil Lawver. Can you hear me? I’ll still be saying it when I don’t have concussion and when the stitches are out of my head. It’ll still be Phil Lawver.”

I was tired again, like I’d delivered a much longer speech. “He’ll pay for it,” Dad whispered. But even then I wasn’t so sure.

They stayed with me in the room while my head got heavier. Mrs. Montgomery fussed with the dahlias, shifting the heads of the blossoms around and around, murmuring
conversation to Mother, who wasn’t answering. Dad stood at the window with his back to the room, staring out, except that the Venetian blinds were closed. His hands, clasped behind his back, tightened and loosened, like someone giving blood.

The last thing I really heard was Dr. Reynolds saying, “I think you folks better think about getting a lawyer.” And then they were gone. When I was alone, I was fully awake for a minute, not more. There was a plaque at the foot of my bed, a bronze square. It was framed by the white mounds of my covered feet. I squinted to read the engraved words.

Another sign flashed in my mind when I woke up Monday morning. The one on Connie’s desk in the city: “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

Not a promising day. I hurt everywhere, in places where I’d only been numb. There were bruises up high on my legs. I didn’t have to look to know. They felt purple and yellow. But my mind was clear, smoldering.

Steve was sitting across the room. He was slumped in a chair. I could see everything that morning without having to concentrate. I watched him before he saw I was awake. Light coming through the blinds striped his face and his rumpled hair. He must have slipped in very early when nobody was looking.

There was time to remember things, like the lunatic moments when I’d suspected even him of . . . being the one. It seemed disloyal and very dumb in the cold light of day. There’s such a thing as being too lucid. That was probably
the moment when I knew we were really meant to be friends all along, not anything else. Maybe not even close friends. I’d admired him and liked him and we’d played at being lovers, and even that seemed an innocent experiment, and long ago.

“They’ve got some really weird visiting hours in this place,” I said.

He struggled up in the chair, pretending he hadn’t been napping. He must have said exactly what he’d been thinking. “In books the hero rescues the girl before anybody can . . . harm her.”

“Soap opera,” I said. “Not real. How did you know I was here?”

“I went to Mrs. Montgomery’s after Dad and I got back from Norwalk, but it was late. The house was dark. I thought you’d gone home, and it was too late to call.”

“Mrs. Montgomery had taken me to the hospital.”

“I know that now. Your dad called me.” We thought our separate thoughts for a few moments. I knew Dad hadn’t told him everything, not that it was Phil.

“I wasn’t there when you needed me,” Steve said.

“It would have happened, sometime, someplace.” I could see that confused him. “At least you were with your dad—and out of town. Nobody can make you take the rap.” I was making perfect sense, and he was wondering if I was talking out of my head. I was, partly. My mind was floating somewhere above my body.

“Do you feel all right?”

“Damaged. Maybe not beyond repair. I don’t know. I think I’m still tranquilized.”

“Can you . . . put it behind you?”

“Forget? Pretend it didn’t happen? No. That’s what my parents are going to want me to do. I can tell. I made too
many mistakes before. I’d better learn from them. Anyway, I couldn’t forget if I wanted to. I have to talk to the police and probably a lawyer.”

His glasses threw flashes of sunlight when he pulled them off and rubbed his temples. Still he didn’t think to come over to the bed, and I didn’t expect him to. “How did the . . . attacker get in the house?”

“I let him in. I thought it was . . . I thought it was Mrs. Montgomery coming home.”

“No, you thought it was me, didn’t you? It was too early for Mrs. Montgomery, wasn’t it?” He looked like a little boy, and I wanted to spare him. But I settled for the truth.

“Yes, I was hoping it was you. Let’s not blame ourselves. We’re not the culprits.”

“Can you identify . . . him?”

“Yes.”

“Then whatever you have to go through with the police is worth it.”

“Maybe.”

“What can I do? Tell me something. I feel—useless. Worse than useless. I know what my dad would do. He’d go down to the VFW and get up a posse to rid the county of perverts.”

“My particular pervert would slip through their net. Just stay here and don’t say anything. This is going to be a long day. It’s important to me to start it with a friend.”

“Is that what we are now—friends?”

“Don’t sell friendship short. It’s too rare.” We didn’t say any more until the rattle of the breakfast carts echoed along the hall. “Go on to school,” I said then. “Don’t cut. They’ll only throw you out of here in a minute or so.”

He lingered in the doorway until I wanted to scream. “Shall I . . . do you want this kept quiet?”

“It probably couldn’t be. It probably shouldn’t be. But yes, keep it quiet if you can.”

“Maybe nobody’ll have to know,” he said. “Except what about Alison? She’ll wonder where you are. What’ll I tell her?”

“Alison? Oh Lord!” I said. “I’d forgotten about Alison. Go on, Steve, get moving—quick!” He gave me another bewildered look and was gone. The door just closed behind him before I began to laugh in terrible, tinny peals. I laughed until I was crying into a knot I made out of the pillow. I had hysterics all by myself and didn’t even try to stop. And they were triggered by Alison, of all people. Yes. Whatever will we tell Alison?

*   *   *

The day nurse was tight-lipped and looked me over like something in a jar at the Harvard medical school. She bristled and bustled. And I wondered if she disapproved of all patients or just rape cases. She combed my hair, washed my face around the swollen stitched part, and refused to let me have a mirror. But she gave me two breakfasts. I might have gotten a third one out of her except that the door opened, and there stood a man who could only be the police chief.

I think I’d seen him drifting around the village in the police cruiser with the brace of red lights clamped on the roof. He was big-bellied and bullnecked and looked his part. The room was instantly heavy with dead cigar smoke. There was another policeman behind him, an apple-cheeked kid standing in the big man’s shadow. They were both armed to the teeth. At least they had guns in holster belts. And that seems overdressed for a hospital call.

“Hold it right where you stand!” the nurse barked. She could have wrestled both of them to the floor. “Doctor say you could come in here?”

“You can cut on out,” the chief said, not quite meeting her eye. “We got a report on this the night before last. Been hampered in our investigation long enough—too long. We got to get us some information out of this girl, if she’s the one who says—”

“You’re not talking to this girl alone, mister,” the nurse snapped.

“
Officer
to you, lady.”

“
Nurse
to you, buddy!”

“Okay, okay.” The officer hitched up his belt and tried to stake out territory in the doorway. “What are you, one of them women’s libbers? You can stay in the room with her if you want to make this your business.”