Jane Doe January (6 page)

I say “I don't know” to most things.
Did he have a beard? Was his hair gray or dark?
That's not what I remember. I remember his round cheeks, his babyish face. I remember him as “big.” That's what I'd told the police, because he'd seemed huge to me. He'd been powerful. I worry now that that could be used against me, because I
can see in court, clearly, that he's not. I'd been warned that he'd lost weight in jail, but it's not just that. He's taller than me, yes, but shorter than my detectives and lawyer. I literally cannot even see him when he's behind them.

The defense attorney points out that it was evening and asks if it was dark in my apartment.
I don't know.
Was a light on?
I don't know.
“Well,” he says in a folksy, skeptical tone, “was there really any opportunity to get a good look at his face?”

Something fills me up. My voice hardens, solidifies from the quivering, careful tone of the rest of my testimony, and I bellow at him, “Yes, while it was bobbing up and down in front of mine
while he was fucking me
!”

No more questions. We return to our seats. I glance at the two newspaper reporters nervously.

I sit through the rest of it and hate every moment. Dan's next, clarifying how the case was investigated these recent months. The defense attorney fishes around for information about the original investigation, asking if that detective is still with the police, or even still alive. I nudge Bill with my elbow and we all titter.

Then there's Georgia, and Aprill, and the criminalist from the lab. I thought I'd be asked to step out when the other victim speaks, but I never am; it turns out that, officially, we're still two separate cases, so I'm as welcome in the room as anyone else. The only time Fryar has any apparent interest or animation at all is when Aprill recounts her interrogation of him in New York; he's leaning in to talk to his lawyer and seems agitated about what Aprill's claiming he said. It doesn't matter. I close my eyes. I whisper to Bill that as soon as we're allowed I want to get out of there.

Predictably, probable cause is considered established and the case bound over for trial. The defense requests that the $400,000 bail be lowered. Kevin requests that it be raised. Lex Luthor casually doubles it, to $400,000 for each victim.

We all stand and mill in the aftermath, debriefing before facing the hallway. There's a cameraman out there. I'm torn between wanting to get away and wanting to hide in this room forever. Kevin tells me and Georgia that we did a good job; I'm assured that my outburst was on point and did no harm; there's lots of verbal back-patting and smug nods over the bail rise.

The arraignment—where the accused will be formally told the charges against him and asked for his plea—and pretrial conference (neither of which requires me) are scheduled together for March 13, at which time a trial date will be set. Aprill, who had slipped out into the hall, comes back and tells us, her face stuck half between shock and laughter, that Dan's wife is out there berating the defense attorney. She hadn't liked how he'd treated me on the stand.

The hallway is long. I try to walk normally but it's hard to do while a huge video camera dogs my feet. Bill puts his hand on my back to push me along faster. When we get outside the air is full of swirls of falling snow.

Bill and I leave the others and walk to a café, in a glass atrium from which I can watch the pretty weather. I worry that between the cash register and table I'll drop my cup of tea from my shaking hands.

Back at the hotel, in the lobby between the elevators, I thank Bill again, and ask him to thank his wife for lending him to me. He says that she's never seen this side of his work before, she's never met a victim from one of his cases, and that last night's dinner meant something to her. I jump up to hug him around the neck, and he hugs back. He says, “This was good. This was . . . this was good for me, too.” He chokes up, and cries.

I leave this home, and return to my other one.

This sense of moving between homes started when I was in Pittsburgh as a freshman in college in 1989. Going back to my parents'
house in New Jersey for Thanksgiving had been, of course, “going home.” Then, strangely, returning to my dorm four days later had also become “going home.” Since then, New England and Silicon Valley have also become home, and, eight years ago, England, too.

I want Cambridge; I want my kids; I want Gavin. I get back to the house at 8
A.M.
after flying all night, and he's arranged for a friend to look after the boys so that I can sleep all morning and he can lie next to me.

The images that stay with me are specific, physical things: Bill's martini, the broken elevators, the judge chewing gum. Most of all, I remember standing in that line before the judge, with Bill, Dan, and Kevin between me and Fryar. They're so big, and Fryar is so insignificant, that I couldn't see him behind them, either literally in the courtroom or figuratively now. Everyone good seems much more important.

An etiquette guide for dealing with me after the hearing:

                
1. Ask me how it went.

                
2. Probe the bits that are interesting.

                
3. Laugh at the bits that are funny.

Very few friends here seem to be able to manage this, despite my efforts to make it easy for them. I call it “the prosecution” or “the hearing,” or even just “my recent trip,” only rarely referencing the crime itself. I smile, and tell bite-sized anecdotes that have black humor or mini story arcs. None of that appears to be enough.

A lot of my friends won't ask me about it at all, even though I e-mailed them from the airport to say how it went. I think they don't want to “bring it up” when they see me, but I'm already
thinking about it. It's already “up.” If they would just ask me then I could share it out. I think they reason that I'll introduce the subject if I want to talk about it, but that's a lot to put on me. I already introduced it by e-mailing them. Making the traumatized person beg, over and over again, for every individual interaction, is a bit much.

A small few of my friends do ask about it, generally, but leave the interesting bits just lying there. Don't they want to know what I shouted at the defense attorney? I tell them that I shut him down and the next words out of their mouths aren't “What did you say???” I feel hurt, angry, and sarcastic, thinking meanly,
How do such incurious people get to adulthood without dying of boredom?
At least my kids cheer me on over my small outburst on the stand. I even tell them that I used a swear word, but not which one. They think that that's awesome.

Literally only one person asks for everything. It's Alice, the choir's administrative assistant. She's the only one in the first week who acts the least bit interested in what's happened. She knows how to ask, and then ask for more, making me feel more welcome in her office than I do anywhere else in Cambridge besides my home. Even she, though, can't laugh at the judge's gum chewing, or at Dan's wife's sweet interference, or at the camera following my feet out of the courthouse. Instead, she looks like she's going to cry the whole time we talk.

My accent has suddenly shifted back to broad American after an eight-year slide toward posh mid-Atlantic. I have to consciously stop myself from saying “crap” and “goddamn.”

Ben, the senior organ scholar, who's just an undergraduate but had been told about the hearing in case my kids acted out or brought it up while I was gone, has a terrified, tight smile every time he sees me in passing now, as if I might be contagious or explosive.

This is my thank-you note to everyone at Carnegie Mellon University Drama in 1992: It would have killed me if I'd had to go through it here at Cambridge. Thank you for being goddamn human beings when I needed you.

The second week gets better.

John the chaplain suggests that perhaps not every friend here, not even every good friend, is up to the task of acknowledging the case, never mind actually discussing it. Though that's exactly what I've just described to him, said back to me in different words, I fight it. I decide to prove it wrong. Surely we're all just people,
even the British,
I add in my mind, only half seriously, annoyed by the tightly controlled self-sufficiency all around me. I just need to figure out where the winder is that makes them go. I'd tried being open myself, as an invitation to their natural compassion and curiosity, but that didn't work for most.

Being a week away from it helps all of us; me, too. I'm a word person, and I'd been unwilling to accept their kind body language, their sad expressions, as communication. I'd wanted them to talk. I'd been unwilling to repeat myself in person, having already explained things in e-mail, but they were nervous, and needed a push. We'd been at a standoff, them waiting for words from me as much as I was waiting for them to talk. I give in. They answer with generosity and relief. I make an appointment to gloat to John that he was wrong, and that my friends function as they're supposed to. They just needed a little help.

I draft a script for them that I'll e-mail out before the trial:

                
1. Before I go, wish me good luck.

                
2. When I come back, welcome me home.

                
3. If you're willing to talk about it, please do. I want you to.

While the Americans tend to respond to my story by saying “wow” and “Jesus Christ,” the British literally say “crikey” and “blimey” to me, which makes me laugh.

Even now, with people at last willing to talk, it's hard to tell the difference between someone faking interest out of kindness over their own discomfort, and someone feeling embarrassed that their genuine interest might be prurient. The ones who ask questions and help me along to tell it are my favorites, whatever their motivation.

It's funny to me that even those who talk to me about it don't talk to each other. There appears to be a huge taboo against “gossiping” about me. (I hate the word “gossip.” It makes being interested in people sound ugly.) Back in Pittsburgh when it happened, a spontaneous phone tree had been put into action within a day to make sure that all of my class knew as quickly as possible. Ours was a small, intimate department and we took it for granted that everyone would have to know, would both need to and want to. I was grateful; it spared me having to explain individually, and mobilized people to look after me. The reticence here may be a difference between the British and Americans, or between middle age and college age, or between academics and actors. Most likely, I think, is that, at this stage of life, we're not a group, except within our immediate families. There's no “us,” only individuals attached to me by spokes, even if they're also attached individually to each other.

There are two words that come out of people's mouths a lot: “brave” and “closure.”

I'm not brave to be doing this. Testifying would be brave for someone who doesn't want it, but I do. There's nothing “brave” about doing exactly what one wants to do, even if it's awful, even if the defense attorney jabs and jabs, with questions like pointed sticks. If Fryar pleads guilty and takes the trial away from me, I'll feel robbed.

“Closure” is too vague. It's not sharp enough or physical enough for what I'm after. “Vengeance” isn't quite right either; I'd feel guilty about that. “Justice” is too impersonal. I guess what I want is just really specific: I want him sentenced long enough to guarantee that he'll die in prison. Mental gymnastics just aren't satisfying. I want something to happen in the actual world, not just in my head.

Bill warned me that putting a bad guy in prison is great but it's still just . . . putting a bad guy in prison; it doesn't change anything that happened. I'm fine with that. If this were a murder case, I would agree with his caution about expectations. That kind of loss is unfixable. This, though, is really, really fixable, not so much by the man being in prison as by the cooperation of all those who are pulling together to put him there. They do undo what happened, they do, at least the part of what happened that makes the world seem dangerous and unfair, and the part that makes me worry that I'm just weak and overreacting. Those are big parts.

It feels great to see what he did to me called “felonies” in the official charges. I take a screenshot of the docket so that I can look at it whenever I want: five felonies and three misdemeanors, all mine; Georgia has four felonies and one misdemeanor. Calling them crimes, specifically felonies, the worst kind of crimes, means that I'm not crazy to be so affected, not lazy for being so distracted. It's difficult to shake the feeling that my weakness is a fault, but the serious charges show that he's the bad person, not me.

I'm glad that the people around me know now.

All of my friends knew then, too, but my “everyone” has grown by a lot in twenty-two years. It wasn't until the arrest that I had a reason to tell the new people.

I worry, though, that people will read my novels differently now and, when coming across any sexual or violent scene, look for me there, look for the rape seeping in. It
is
there, I admit it, but the
truth is that I'm everywhere in my books. I'm in the investigators and witnesses and even the baddies as much as the victims. My rape is there, but so is my upper-middle-class New Jersey childhood, my dad's decision to ditch a law career to design board games, my mother's roots in wartime Germany, my training as a performer, my grad school work in art history and curatorship, my faith, my doubt, my travels, my happy marriage, my motherhood. The rape is not a secret. It's a fact from my life, like my eighties adolescence and my Gen-X twenties. I'm made of a lot of things.

I've been asked, and I've wondered myself, why it is that, even in my fiction, I choose to write about terrible things. Wouldn't I rather spend my energy on stories that aren't violent and awful? But crime stories are not only, or even mostly, about the crime itself. They're a little about what came before the crime, and mostly about what comes after. What comes after can still be pretty terrible, but, like growing old, it beats the alternative profoundly. That there is an after, maybe even a long after in which the crime lingers but isn't the only thing in the world, is itself a comfort.

There was a lot after the rape itself, even just immediately after. I wrote about the 911 operator who snapped at me to “Stop crying!”; about having to give my clothes to the police and so changing in the crook of my closet door for privacy in my one-room apartment; about the hospital, busy with nurses and uniformed police and plainclothes detectives, all of them with their own forms that required the same information over and over. I'd left blood, right through my blue sweatpants, on chairs all over the emergency room, at all those different desks, only realizing it later when they finally put me in an exam room with a toilet.

I wrote about the nurses being distraught over me, trying to cover their upset with efficiency but not quite managing it. I wrote about the doctor telling me that I'd done well to keep my head, that my control and sensible thinking had saved my life:

“But . . .” I blubbered, tears falling into my mouth. “But that's my
acting
problem
!” I blurted, because my teachers always told me that I never let myself get carried away enough, that I'm too cautious and watchful, too much in control.

I wasn't even joking when I said that to the doctor, then I realized it was funny and laughed to spit out the tears.

Just hours before, lying on the carpet next to my big white couch, not able to breathe, not allowed to scream, trying so hard to keep my hands on the floor, I'd fantasized a scene like this: cops, a hospital, being dressed. Being alive. I'd never wanted anything in the world as much as I'd wanted to get up off my floor, and print blood on waiting room chairs, and have a doctor stick her hand up me, and to tell jokes to nervous nurses who weren't sure if they should laugh or not but ultimately leaned to the side of humoring me.

My friends came out to take me home. The nurses pointed to a jar of candy canes on the sign-out desk: Merry Christmas.

I don't much like candy canes, but it's like when someone offers to buy me popcorn at the movies: Even if I'm not hungry I sometimes take it, just to accept the kindness. Just to be spoiled by the gesture.

I hope those kind, emotional nurses and good doctor know how much they meant to me; and Bill, too, for his gentle, purposeful questioning, and the friends who took me home to live with them so I'd never have to live in that apartment ever again. Now it's John and Alice who listen, and Gavin who accepts all of my moods and strangeness without question. There's a lot of
after,
most of it good after, years and years and years.