I stood next to the main door wondering if I should call the police or rouse one of my neighbors. I’d feel stupid if it was just typical landlord miserliness, but I’d seen too many serial killer movies to discount my gut fear. I decided to climb halfway up the stairs, which would give me a sightline down the second floor hallway and still leave a safe exit if Wayne stood drooling in the shadows, clutching a chain saw. Fighting a nearly overwhelming need to pee, I moved forward, alternating between a stealthy crouch and the pee-pee dance.
The hallway was clear, but an object splotched with garish red dangled from the doorknob of my apartment. My mind registered it as blood, but a closer inspection showed a gift bag decorated in bright red Japanese anemones. A present?
I poked at the bag.
Some tissue shifted and a cloth doll with black button eyes peered up at me. Her face, round and sweet, peeped out from under a bonnet fashioned from an antique lace hankie. One arm rose out of the froth of tissue, waving.
I smiled. It really was a present. I reached to free her from the garish wrapping when my fingers closed around smooth metal. I gasped at a sharp pain. The bag dropped, spilling the contents to the floor.
Blood dripped from my ring finger, dotting the carpet and forming uneven blotches on the tissue paper. A fillet knife had been driven deep into her back, slicing through the rose-patterned dress, skewering a scrap of white paper to her tummy.
I wouldn’t cry—part of me believed the bastard would somehow know, and I refused to give him that—but I couldn’t stop the broken whimpers that slipped past gritted teeth. I nudged the doll over with my toe, kicking the tissue around, looking for more booby-traps. Apparently the bag had disclosed all its secrets—just the doll and the knife.
And the square of paper.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Since it wasn’t an emergency, it took the police an hour and a half to show up. While I waited, I bandaged my finger and took a picture of the knife and doll in situ. Not wanting my neighbors to trip over—or even see—the pile, I brought it all in to the kitchen table. I debated about 2.5 seconds before pulling the knife out and reading the note.
Being your flaue what fhould I doe but tend,
Vpon the houres and times of your defire?
I haue no precious time at al to fpend;
Nor feruices to doe til you require.
Whoa. I stopped after the first four lines. After a few moments of studying the scrawling calligraphy, I figured out that, yes, it really was English. Once I deciphered out that the letter “F” was an “S” and that “U” often meant “V,” it made a wee bit more sense. I started over again.
“Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend
Nor services to do ‘til you require.
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu.
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save where you are how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love that in your will,
Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.
I copied it. I also took a few moments to delete all references on my time line to AA and just left “club.” Let ‘em think it was a health club. In a way, it was.
There wasn’t a whole lot the police could do when they showed up, but I hadn’t expected a whole CSI crew anyway. It was a different pair than had been by before; one older and fairly fit, the other a young, pre-obese rookie. They took the knife and sonnet to hold in case there were further developments but warned me that Chippewa Falls just didn’t have the forensic resources to work up every case. Small town, small budget. However, if a “serious incident” occurred, it would help build the case. My finger throbbed in silent protest.
“Have you considered a restraining order?” Sgt. Durrant, the older cop, asked.
“I’ve considered it, but…” I shrugged helplessly.
“I know. There’s not much a piece of paper can do, but it does give us a heads up when we respond to things like this.” He held up the paper bag holding the knife. “For some creeps, an R.O. really is a deterrent.”
“And sometimes it pisses the guy off even more,” the slightly pudgy cop added. His partner gave him a dirty look.
“I wasn’t sure if I had enough for a restraining order, and the fact of the matter is”—I took a deep breath—“I’m in AA. I can’t have that made public knowledge. It would really hurt me in my job.” I swallowed with a suddenly dry throat. When I met the older cop’s eyes, they were crinkled in a sun-weathered smile that made my stomach uncoil.
“I’m a friend of Bill W. myself,” Sgt. Durrant said. Bill W., along with Dr. Bob, is a founder of AA; a reference to either is short-hand for a fellow Twelve Step member. “You don’t have to mention it when you get the R.O.”
“I know, but Wayne said that he would. I don’t want to take that chance of him sending another letter to the state board. I just can’t.”
“I tell you what: we’ll go talk to him. Sometimes that’s enough, too.”
Meanwhile, Pudgy was trying to decipher the poem, a confused look on his face. “Is this a code?”
“No, it’s just an old-style font, I think.” I explained about the F’s and U’s.
“Is that on purpose?” he asked. “You know, like, F U?” His partner rolled his eyes and sighed.
“I… uh… didn’t think about it that way. I suppose it could. I think it’s more likely from the Renaissance period or something.”
“Well, I don’t get it. It don’t make sense,” Pudgy said.
Changing the subject, I held up the doll. “Are you taking this?”
“We probably couldn’t get fingerprints off that even if we tried. We have the picture,” he held up a copy I’d handed over. “I think this is enough. Unless you want us to?”
“No, I’ll keep her.” I was secretly pleased. Both the doll and I had suffered similar brutalities under Wayne’s hands. I felt a curious—and embarrassing—affinity to her.
Before leaving, Durrant agreed to call me after he’d talked to Wayne. I spent the night on the couch, clutching the doll since Siggy, sensing my anxiety, kept his distance. When I woke in the morning, stiff-necked, the doll was damp from my tears and Siggy lay curled on my belly.
I lay there fretting about the police talking to Wayne. The smart-me knew it was way past due, but my childhood indoctrination of secrecy kept my stomach churning. Instead of feeling better about involving the police, I regretted the decision. Completely illogical, of course.
Sighing, I rolled off the couch, nearly squishing Siggy, and trudged to the desk. The scanned copy of the FU-sonnet lay waiting. Jagged, black blotches defined where the knife had pierced the original, marring the clean, white spaces, top and bottom. A quick read-through of the text made my head hurt. I needed coffee.
Reading it outloud helped, too. While the exact meaning remained fuzzy, themes began to emerge. Slavery, jealousy, bitterness, humiliation—all combined to deny the overt message of devotion.
I couldn’t imagine Wayne writing it, but maybe that was snobbish of me. Even if someone else did write it, which seemed more likely, the choice of the particular sonnet meant something for Wayne. Maybe it symbolized his “love” for Carrie. An abuser often accuses his victim of willfully inciting his anger— hence “deserving” it— portraying himself as powerless to prevent the ensuing violence. “Why are you so demanding?” “Why do you question everything I do?” “Why do you make me hit you?” The sonnet seemed to echo the very questions that are screamed in a woman’s face right before the fist connects.
I could see Wayne’s twisted mind
believing that watching a clock, monitoring his woman’s movements and interactions, proved his devotion. But I continued to struggle with the notion that he would express himself in iambic pentameter. And yet, in our two therapy sessions together, I had thought him a sensitive, hurting introvert.
The knife sure fit. The blade alone was six inches long and thin as a razor blade. Wayne seemed like the type of outdoorsy guy who would gut his own fish. And like it.
The viciousness inflicted on the doll fit, too. I picked her up. The sweetness of her face contrasted sharply with the image of the blade slicing through her from back to belly. I’d been ripped apart, too. A stand-in for someone else, target of an undeserved anger, helpless against the striking fist.
Suddenly determined, I rose and began digging through my junk drawer, searching for needle and thread. Not much for sewing, I dug out white, black, and a strange neon-orange thread that I must have bought when I was drunk. Not satisfied, I went to my bedroom dresser, rooting around the bottom section of my jewelry case where I threw the extra buttons that came with new sweaters. Lots of buttons and several lone, one-of-a-pair earrings, but no thread.
The buttons gave me another idea. I rummaged through the back of my closet, unearthing the heavily embroidered sweater that my brother Neil had given me four Christmases ago. I was pretty sure he had stolen it, and I’d never felt comfortable wearing it. Covered in elaborate, swirly, pink roses, I figured I could scavenge enough thread.
Sitting cross-legged on the couch, trying not to stab myself with the sharp needle, I made two vows. First, no one would ever know that I had so identified with a child’s toy that I was driven to repair the damage she’d suffered. I absolutely refused to consider what that meant about my own feelings of vulnerability and victimization.
And, second, that I’d named her Anna.
As I stitched, I brooded over the sonnet. The more I considered Wayne’s warped perception of love, the more worried for Carrie I became. Wayne had said she was no longer important. It didn’t take a master’s degree to understand that stabbing Anna in the back, skewering the sonnet to her chest, probably didn’t demonstrate Wayne’s acceptance of the end of their relationship.
Coming to a decision, I called the office and discovered Mary Kate manning the front desk for Saturday’s clients. I had her check Carrie’s file for the emergency contact. As I suspected, Carrie had listed her mother’s name and number. It took some effort to fend off Mary Kate’s curiosity, but I managed.
Feeling clever, I remembered to dial *67 to prevent my number from coming up on Carrie’s mom’s Caller ID. If I got her voice mail, I planned to hang up. My heart started pounding as a woman’s husky, smoker’s voice said, “Hello?”
“Mrs. Torgenson?”
“Maybe. Who’s this?”
“My name is Violet Whittaker. I’ve worked with your daughter Carrie in counseling. She listed you as her emergency contact. Some things have happened recently that make me concerned regarding her physical safety. I understand that you can’t tell me her whereabouts, but do you know if she’s okay?”
She snorted. “Her ‘whereabouts’ ain’t a secret no more. As for if she’s okay, I’d say ‘yes,’ but prob’ly not for long.”
I let that sink in a minute. “She’s back with Wayne?”
“She is. He’s sorry this time. Buncha bullshit, if you ask me. I never raised her to take crap from anyone, so don’t go and blame me. What makes you think she’s in trouble?”
“Wayne’s been causing trouble for me,” I said. “At first, he was after me to find out where Carrie was, which I didn’t know anyway. But now it seems more … personal.”
“Yeah, I saw the TV news. Now that he’s got Carrie back, he’s gonna concentrate on making you pay for running her off in the first place. By the way, you did good there. I wouldn’t be talkin’ to you if I wasn’t happy about her cuttin’ loose from him.”
“Well, if she wants to, please have her call me at the clinic.”
“Sure, but don’t hold your breath. He’s got her reined in tight all over again. Probably take another six years before she has enough. If she lives that long.”
A click told me she’d hung up, but I’d learned what I needed to know. Carrie was no longer important to Wayne because he had her back under his thumb. I figured his continued harassment served two purposes—revenge toward me for daring to help Carrie and a message to her about what would happen to others if she turned to anyone else in the future.
The next call came in around noon. It was Durrant letting me know that they had met with Wayne at his house.
“Was he angry?” I asked. Stupid question, but it translated to: is he going to flip out over this, too?
“He tried to play it off, but, yeah, I’d say so. Of course, he claimed that it was all a big misunderstanding, but they all do that. Nothing new there. Tell you what, though. For what it’s worth, my gut tells me he’ll back off a bit. For a while, anyway. Now, you can’t take that as a guarantee or anything, but he seems like he’s got just enough instinct for self-preservation to know that he’d be stupid to keep it up. He must’ve thought he had your hands tied pretty well over the AA thing—in fact, he brought it up—so he was real surprised that you’d taken this to the next level.”
“What should I do next?”
“You got my card. If anything else happens, call me directly and we’ll see what we can do next. And, hey, maybe I’ll stop in for a meeting or two. It’s been a while for me; it couldn’t hurt.”
I smiled. “I, for one, would love to see you there. I’ll save you a seat.” And I’d love to see Wayne’s face if Durrant walked in one night.
I spent the rest of the weekend doing laundry and feeling sorry for Carrie. I couldn’t imagine what had led her back to Wayne after the long, difficult struggle to escape. I hoped she would contact me. Even if I couldn’t work with her myself, I’d have liked to recommend someone else. Maybe even Regina, although I wasn’t sure if my motivation was to enlist her expertise or to sic Wayne on her narrow butt. Mostly, I felt horrible about the regret, maybe even shame, that Carrie must be wrestling with after submitting again to her abuser.
My mistake.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
If I wanted proof that Wayne had my home phone number, I got it Sunday night. Carrie called around 10:30. Pissed.
“Why are you doing this?” She skipped a greeting, not waiting for an answer. “You have no right to bother my mother! And I can’t believe you called the police on Wayne after everything he’s been through. He was your client! Aren’t you supposed to keep his privacy or something?”
“He saw me under a fake name so he could keep tabs on you, Carrie. I only involved the police as a last resort. I’m sorry if you’re upset that I called your mother. I was concerned for your safety and you listed her as your emergency contact person.”
“My safety is my business. I want you to stop harassing Wayne. He’s got enough to deal with and he doesn’t need you spreading lies about him, or following him, or messing with his truck.”
“What? Carrie, you know better. I’m not harassing Wayne; he’s harassing me! He’s furious that I helped you. He wants to keep you—”
“No!” she interrupted. “He’s changed. He’s sober now. He promised to never get mad at me like that again.”
“He didn’t just get ‘mad,’ Carrie. He hurt you, and he’ll do it again. I’m really glad that he’s sober and that’s a good first step, but he needs therapy. So do you. If you want, I can—”
“I don’t want anything from you, except to leave us alone. Don’t call my mother, don’t call me, and stay away from Wayne. And if you touch his truck again, I’ll call the cops on you myself.”
Why did everyone hang up on me?
After the weekend, I figured Monday would only get worse, but it started out smoothly. My clients arrived on time, no sleazy magazines were delivered, and there was a delightful hint of spring softening the air.
I
actually started relaxing until Hannah caught me between afternoon sessions. “Letty? Got a minute?”
She didn’t look troubled, but then Hannah was one of those innately serene people who smile gently at life and adversity. Even her name was well-balanced. Naturally blond and clear-skinned, she was pretty enough to not wear makeup and had the kind of metabolism that let her eat donuts everyday. Not that she would. She was a nature freak, seeming to subsist on nuts and berries and fiber-y muffins that hurt my teeth to chew. If I didn’t like her so much I would hate her.
“I understand Mary Kate is having a little trouble transferring to me?”
“She sure is. I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”
“We set up three meetings last week, two of which she rescheduled, but she blew off the third. I’ve left messages; she doesn’t call back. I’m tempted to pose as an AVON lady and ring her doorbell, but that seems a bit extreme.”
I grimaced. “I’m sorry, Hannah. We talked about her resistance and I really thought she was on board with the change. She’s coming up on finals and is under a lot of stress, but I think most of it has to do with family history. Navy brat and all that. You might want to keep an eye on her when she has to start the termination process with her own clients.”
“Can’t very well do that if she won’t even meet with me. I hate to go through Marshall; it’s such a fuss, and I don’t want to cause her any trouble. Maybe you could try meeting with her again. She might just need more closure.”
Blech. But Hannah was right. Mary Kate displayed textbook passive-resistance and it wouldn’t do her—or her internship—any good if she didn’t get back on track. On my next trip up to the front, I asked Lisa to set up another meeting with Mary Kate.
Mary Kate must have jumped at the chance, because she came in from home in order to see me after sessions. At first she claimed her massive workload and school stress prevented her from following through with Hannah. We shoveled through those excuses fairly quickly, however, circling back to her distress at transferring. Although it wasn’t the best move legally, I finally told her about Wayne’s complaint. As she started to express her indignation, I held up a hand.
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