The Enemy We Know

by Donna White Glaser

  “My boss. I’ve talked about him. It was his birthday last night, and I was his designated driver. My intern Mary Kate set up a surprise party at the bowling alley. So, yes, there was drinking there, but I didn’t drink. I was careful. I wouldn’t have gone if I didn’t think I could handle it, but it really didn’t bother me. At least, not in the sense that I thought I might drink.”

  “In what sense did it bother you, then?”

  I thought for a moment. “For one thing, I didn’t like seeing what people look like when they’re drunk. I mean, most of them were just happy and a little silly. But one or two kind of slid over the line, if you know what I mean.”

  “Oh, I know what you mean all right. So, it was a reminder?”

  “Yeah. Of what I don’t want.”

  “Okay then. That’s good. What else bothered you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said, ‘for one thing.’ That implies there were other things. What are they?”

  “You’d make a good therapist, you know that?” I shifted my eyes away. “I’m kind of attracted to Marshall.”

  “Mm-hmm?”

  “Not that I would act on it, of course.”

  “Oh no. Of course not.”

  “You’re mocking me, aren’t you?”

  She sighed and shook her head. “Look, kiddo. You know how I feel about relationships in the first year of sobriety—you’re too vulnerable to make good decisions—and now you’re asking for a double helping? Let’s look at the big picture here, okay? What is it you like about Robert?”

  “He’s got a nice butt.”

  “Yes. I’ll grant you Robert’s nice butt.”

  “Marshall’s butt is nice, too.”

  “I’m happy for him. But we’re not talking about Marshall now. Keep to the point.”

  “All right. I guess… I liked how he picked me out of all the other girls.” I blushed at the admission. “He could have asked anybody out. Instead he asked me.”

  “We’re going to have to do something about your self-esteem. Why wouldn’t he ask you? As far as him asking anyone out, I guess he could have. But, believe it or not, there are actually some women who think Robert’s an egotistical pinhead.” She raised her hands defensively. “I’m not saying me, mind you. Just in general.”

  “You don’t think he’s an egotistical pinhead?” I teased.

  “Of course I do. But I also think he thirteen-stepped you, and that’s what pisses me off.”

  Thirteen-stepping is a serious offense. Technically there is no real Step Thirteen, but the term is used around AA to describe what happens when someone—usually a man, but not always—preys on a newcomer, exploiting her sexually and sometimes financially. The implication is that the newcomer is being victimized, which didn’t fit with my view of either myself or Robert, and I said so.

  “Maybe not in any extreme sense,” Sue said. “But you turned your whole world upside down when you got sober—your way of thinking, your coping skills, your social network, and, most importantly, your way of thinking about yourself—everything changed. You can’t have that kind of upheaval and not, to some extent, be vulnerable. You’re a shrink. You know better.”

  “I’m a therapist, not a psychiatrist,” I nitpicked. I hated that she might be right.

  “Whatever. Being a therapist probably makes it harder for you to accept that you can be taken advantage of. I call it ‘Terminal Uniqueness.’ It’s that voice that tells you that you’re different from other drunks, that you can handle it yourself. Whatever ‘it’ is for you. Maybe it’s dating when you’re still trying to figure out the program, maybe it’s hanging out with your old drinking buddies at the bar, maybe it’s telling yourself you can drink just one, just a little.

  “But the bottom line is, Letty, that you are in a relationship with an arrogant jerk, you’re flirting with your boss, and Willard the Rat Boy is stalking you!”

  I shuddered. I’d always hated the movie Willard.

  “Look, kiddo. You need to make your own decisions here, but don’t pretend all this isn’t getting to you. That’s when you’ll get yourself in real trouble and try to find the answers in a bottle. Go back to the First Step and the Serenity Prayer. Figure out what you can control and what you can’t. Change what you can; let go of the rest.”

  I smiled at Sue, reaching across the table to grip her hand. Blunt and ornery, but she had the gift of distilled wisdom.

  Shortly after, I made my way across town to my apartment and my hungry cat. Sue had given me plenty to think about. I whispered the Serenity Prayer over and over in my cold car, across the parking lot and up the stairs to my place.

  “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

  The courage to change the things I can,

  And the wisdom to know the difference.”

  Straightforward, a bit of a cliché, but packed with good common sense—a lot like Sue herself.

  Things I couldn’t change: that was easy to figure out. Wayne spread over that list like a malignant tumor. My stomach coiled into a knot just thinking about him. I anticipated lots of nightmares about rats. But I couldn’t change that, at least not tonight.

  I could, however, change how I’d been reacting to his harassment. I’d been sticking my head in the sand, pretending that Wayne wasn’t getting to me, ignoring his escalating behavior. Sue was right. Although what she didn’t know was that it wasn’t just because I was a therapist that led me to cling to the illusion of control. At some point, I would have to look at how my childhood played into all this.

  But that would have to wait. If I didn’t come to terms with the present, I might not have the chance to work on the past. Wayne had already shown his capacity for violence, for thwarting the law, and for invading the very heart of my life.

  If I were advising a client in this situation, I would have insisted that she document every encounter and develop a safety plan. More significantly, we would have involved the police long ago.

  Just the thought of bringing in the police made me sweat. Against my will, memories bubbled up like blisters on a burn.

  The doorbell is broken, so they knock. Always a light sleeper, I wake in time to hear Ma’s robe whisper against the wall as she hurries to the door. Then the low murmur of a man. Ma’s voice in response, quavering, lilts a question. Her scream cuts through the quiet dawn.

  I wet myself even before Ma rages into our bedroom, hands fisted in her hair, face naked without the coke-bottle glasses she always wore. She never even spoke on the phone without her glasses. Her pale blue eyes had shrunk without them.

  “They did it! Yes, they did! They finally went and did it. What will we do? What will we do now?” Her voice clamped down on the last word, stretching it into an elongated howl of pain.

  “Ma’am?” The door swings open gently, a uniformed policeman fills the entrance. Behind him, shadows and movement indicate the presence of another.

  Oblivious to everything but her private hell, Ma stumbles back and forth in the narrow aisle between my sister’s twin bed and my own, tripping erratically over the litter of our childhood: dirty clothes, naked Barbies, my overdue library books. Kris and I huddle under the blankets, shivering beneath the thin, cotton barrier between us and the craziness loosed in our soft dawn.

  “Ma’am? Please. Why don’t you come out here with me? Please.”

  Ma moans, low and deep, and bends over at the waist. One hand clutches her stomach, the other remains clenched in the tangles of her hair. When Kris starts wailing, the shadow behind the policeman finally moves.

  A woman. No makeup, plain hair pulled back in a ponytail, jeans and a grey sweatshirt. “Mrs. Whittaker? I’m Pastor Sue, the jail chaplain. You’re scaring the children. Come on now.”

  Ma allows herself to be pulled out, the sound of her moans dopplering back from the living room. The policeman stands awkwardly, looking down at Kris and me.

  “Get out,” I say.

  CHAPTER EIGHT
EEN

  Siggy jumped feather-light onto the bed, gliding through the slanting moonlight, settling at the end of the bed between my feet. Trapped, unable to shift around, I lay still, sharing the night with my new friend. Desperate for distraction—from the past and from the malignant craving it awoke—I did the next best thing. I focused on someone else’s problems. Story of my life.

  If my whole life had been upended, the same could be said for Siggy. For both of us, a change for the better. A life-saving change, in fact, but certainly something that took getting used to. A rich sound of contentment—Siggy purring—rose in the dark. I guess he dealt with change better. I fell asleep.

  Typical male, Siggy was gone from my side when I woke early Sunday morning, but he joined me in the kitchen as I ate an English muffin.

  “So, what do you think I should do about Robert?” I asked.

  He looked at me and slowly blinked.

  “I don’t understand,” I confessed. “Let’s do one blink for yes and two blinks for no. How does that sound?”

  Siggy turned away to look out the window.

  “There’s nothing out there but a brick wall. Stop being inscrutable. Just answer this: should I break up with him?”

  Siggy jumped down from the counter top and padded across the floor to the litter box for some private time.

  That couldn’t be good.

  The breakup went about as well as Siggy predicted. Which is to say that Robert rapid-cycled from stark incredulity to petulance and, finally, hissing anger. He didn’t buy my explanation about needing to focus on the program, either. He summed his opinion up in one word: shit. Maybe he and Siggy had more in common than we realized.

  I’d wanted to keep it amicable, especially since we would continue to see each other regularly at the club. But that wasn’t to be.

  I spent the rest of Sunday in a mood as dark as my apartment, leaving barely enough energy to wrestle with utility companies on Monday. Luckily, after being routed through various departments and false connections, I was transferred to a very nice lady at the telephone company. She even gave me some security tips. In addition to considering an unlisted number, Tammy reminded me to contact my credit card companies, in case Wayne had nabbed those bills, too. She also suggested adding a password—we settled on “1asshole”—before allowing changes to my account statuses.

  In gratitude, I told her about the rat and grossed her out. Didn’t seem like a fair trade really.

  I was surprised at how simple making the change to an unlisted phone number was; it could even be put into effect the same day. Unfortunately, I also learned that every time I called someone I’d have to punch in *67 so my number didn’t pop up on their Caller ID. Not sure I wanted to deal with that hassle, I decided to wait.

  By the time I got to work, I was feeling overwhelmed at the energy I’d have to generate and maintain in order to protect myself. Usually I only needed that level of paranoia with my family.

  Lisa was at her desk when I trudged in. My heart sank further when I saw the expression on her face.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “Good morning to you, too, sunshine. Starting a new reading program, are we?” She waved a magazine lazily back and forth.

  I snatched it out of her hands. Wearing only buccaneer boots and a seriously misplaced eye patch, a chiseled, tan-from-a-can hunk stretched supine on the golden sands of a tropical beach. A three-masted ship topped by a skull-and-cross bones flag rode at anchor in the sparkling waters beyond. From the rigging, a crew of laughing, butt-naked sailors dangled. Literally. To the hunk’s left, a battered treasure chest overflowed with scary-looking sex gizmos that, while not exactly in keeping with the theme, were at least of an adventurous nature.

  I dropped the magazine onto Lisa’s desk before my blush could spontaneously combust it. “That’s not mine!” I said.

  “Is too.”

  “Is not. Why would you even say that?”

  She flipped the mag over, pointing to the white mailing label addressed with my name. Violet Whittaker, it said. Well, damn.

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “Hey, look at this one.” Lisa pointed a pearly pink nail at the pirate standing aloft in the crow’s nest. “Doesn’t he look like Marshall?”

  Drawn like a perverted magnet, I peered closer. “I should be so lucky,” I thought.

  “What?” Lisa asked.

  “What? Nothing. I didn’t say anything.”

  She looked at me with a funny grin, then slid the magazine into her top drawer as Marshall walked in. I fled down the hall, not able to meet his eyes, but unable to keep from hearing Lisa’s “Ahoy, matey!” greeting.

  I was still fluctuating between guilty embarrassment and hilarity that afternoon when Marshall called an unscheduled staff meeting. We tromped into the group therapy room, and I grabbed a seat in the back. A tripod with poster paper had been set up in the front. Marshall stood next to it, a mini-frown creasing his forehead. Lisa leaned over to whisper, “The poop is about to become airborne.”

  “What?” I whispered back.

  “Wait for it.”

  Marshall started the meeting by asking if there had been any additional fall out with our clients from the “incident” two weeks ago. A few patients had canceled and—except for my clowns—there was a drop in first-time appointments, but it was difficult to say if there was a direct connection to Wayne’s blitz attack. For the most part, people were proving unexpectedly resilient or completely oblivious to the situation.

  After a pause in the discussion, Marshall cleared his throat and ran his hand through his hair. Signal for a controversial topic.

  “OK, folks. One of the things I’ve been talking to corporate about is our security situation.”

  “You mean, lack of!” Regina stage-whispered. Next to her, Bob snorted agreement.

  Instead of ignoring their comments as he usually did, Marshall chose to respond. Unlike the rest of us, he displayed no embarrassment addressing Regina by her female-body-part name. In fact, he smiled every time.

  “Exactly, Regina. Thank you. I’m sure none of us is comfortable with the situation, especially since Letty’s experiencing continued harassment. Since we don’t want any repetition of violence, we need to take a look at what can be done internally to promote security.”

  “What do you mean ‘internally’?” Hannah asked.

  “He means without having to beg for money from corporate,” Regina said.

  “Mmm… pretty much.” Marshall admitted. “Let’s face it. There are things we can do on our own that will help. Meanwhile, I will continue lobbying for a better security system, something with a panic button and a hookup to the police. Any suggestions are welcome, but, remember, these things can be very pricey. At any rate, this afternoon I’m looking for solutions that we can implement today, without having to beg corporate, as Regina so astutely pointed out.”

  Having maneuvered his nemesis into the role of ally rather than the negative pain-in-the-butt she really was, Marshall tossed her a wink. From the look on her face, I wouldn’t be surprised if she sued him for sexual discrimination. Or chopped him up into itty-bitty pieces and threw him into the Chippewa River. No sense of humor, that woman.

  While I pondered Regina’s potential for mutilation, Marshall flipped the pages on the tripod. A schematic of the staff parking lot was drawn out in black magic marker. Most of the diagrammed slots indicating staff parking ran along the back fence facing the clinic entrance, leaving the majority of parking spaces open for clients. About a half-dozen squares, however, were clustered around various light posts with the nearest two situated one row back, directly opposite the front doors. My name, in red marker, was centered in the square nearest the clinic’s main entrance; Marshall’s, in the adjacent. I could feel the burn coming off Regina from four chairs away.

  “On what basis were the parking assignments made?” Bob’s pompous tone broke through the silence.

  “On the basis of safety, of
course. What else?” Marshall fake-smiled. “And I want to thank everyone in advance for their cooperation. In fact, I was hoping that perhaps our resident expert in feminist psychology might be persuaded to give a presentation on self-defense strategies at our next staff meeting. Regina?”

  Regina’s face was a study in conflict. She wanted to raise a stink about the parking assignments but couldn’t without sounding ridiculous and petty. Meeting Marshall’s “innocent” eyes, she offered a Mona Lisa smile and a faint nod. Bob harrumphed and started to object, but Regina placed a hand on his sleeve, silencing him. They’d been out-maneuvered; they would withdraw with dignity.

  The meeting ended soon after. Regina and Bob led the charge for the door, while I hung back, feeling awkward. I wanted to thank Marshall but didn’t want to fuel the rumor mills by having a private discussion. After being his designated driver and now getting what some would see as preferential treatment, I knew that there would be speculation—most joking, but some not—on whether I’d slept my way to a parking spot. I’d like to think most of my co-workers would know that I wasn’t that cheap, but some people liked to think the worst. Sad to say, I worried less about the insult to my virtue than about the presumed, bargain-basement value assigned for it.

  Luckily, Lisa stayed behind to gather the poster board and other materials. She’d not only serve as a chaperone, but would spread the exchange around the office like butter on hot toast.

  “Marshall,” I said. “I appreciate your new safety policy, but as soon as this thing with Wayne is settled, I would expect to have the parking spaces reassigned. After all, I don’t have seniority or anything.”

  I became conscious of my lips, possibly because Marshall was staring at them. They were dry. A perverse urge to lick them almost drove me to distraction. Would he think it was a come-on? Would Lisa? Was there a way of demonstrating the innocence of dry lips without looking infinitely stupid?

  Yes, yes, and not a chance.

  Marshall’s smile crinkled his eyes. “Of course. This is just a temporary measure.”