Disappear.
It’s the right word. The word for what I’d like to do now if I had the power. All I can do is think about Rosaria Delgado and Joe’s baby and all the other ones I made disappear. And someone else. A memory I suppressed long ago.
Nurse Mender is back and holds a paper cup of water to my lips. “There you go, dear,” he says. “Nice and slow. Small sips.” His hand is cool against my forehead, soothing. He takes it away after I drink and presses me back against the exam table, then tells me to scoot down a bit. My feet move into the stirrups without my help.
“This should take less than a minute,” Alex says, pushing the speculum in, opening me up artificially.
I lie still, and for the first time in my life, I allow my body to be violated. In a way, I deserve it.
SIXTY-TWO
THEN:
I started hating Mary Ripley when I was in the twelfth grade, a few months after Mary transferred into the new private high school where I now found myself running with the in crowd of lipsticked and hair-sprayed girls I’d always thought I wanted to be a part of. Every day, I had to sit behind her in Mrs. Hill’s AP English class; every day, I had to watch flakes of dandruff fall from her scalp onto the same black pullover she wore.
She was a thin, redheaded girl from the other side of town, not stupid, but not like the rest of us, just one of the half-dozen charity cases Rockville Academy took on each year. Mary brought her lunch in a crumpled paper bag, worn soft from folding and unfolding and refolding. Her shoes were scuffed and a size too small, so Mary would slip her heels out of them sometimes during class, revealing threadbare socks whose heels had been rubbed to translucency. But I didn’t hate her for being poor, or for being one of ten siblings.
I hated Mary Ripley because she was going to drag me right back to the bottom of the barrel I’d tried so hard to climb out of.
The girls I hung out with called her Scary Mary. They flinched away from her in crowded hallways, worried they might catch something; they huddled at cafeteria tables over bags of chips and hoagie sandwiches they bought with their allowances; they whispered epithets about her overbreeding Irish parents when they thought she couldn’t hear.
“She’s not that bad,” I said that early November Tuesday at lunch. Three pairs of mascaraed eyes flashed at me.
“Maybe you should take her to the homecoming dance instead of Malcolm if you like her so much, El,” Susan joked. She slid down into her chair. “Oh, God. Here she comes.”
Mary was on her way over to us.
“Hi, El,” she said, ignoring the rolling eyes of the other girls. “Maybe we could hang out on Saturday if you’re not doing anything.” Mary had a soft voice, the kind I associated with a dog that had been kicked one time too many.
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s homecoming.”
Susan tittered, elbowing first Becky to her right, then Nicole to her left. When Mary was gone, she said, “You have to get rid of her, El. I mean, people are staring at us.”
On Wednesday, Mary bumped into me after gym class.
One minute I was up, forcing a comb through a still-wet mass of hair, yelling to—I don’t know—Becky or Susan or Nicole across the room. Homecoming was this Saturday, and we were in full what are you wearing? mode, worrying over shoes (strappy or closed toe) and lipsticks (matte or gloss) and what color polish to put on our nails (French mani or classic vixen red).
“I’m going for a Midnight Mauve lipstick this time,” Susan called out from under a towel.
Nicole reached over and snapped the waistband of Susan’s panties. “Like that’s a surprise. They might as well call it Midnight Missionary Position. Or Midnight Billy Baxter’s Cock, since that’s where it’ll end up.”
Susan came back with something equally catty, Nicole howled a laugh, and I started across the locker room to show off my latest makeup acquisition. That’s when Scary Mary, head bent in avoidance or supplication or self-loathing, walked into me.
Give it up, Elena. You walked into her. You didn’t see her because she was invisible and you walked right into her.
And we both went down in a tumble of towels and gym shorts.
Nicole howled again. “Watch it, Len, or you’ll get those Catholic cooties on you.”
I could have said something. Well, I could have said something other than what I said. I could have said anything besides what I said. I could have said something different from the last words I ever said to Scary Mary, words I haven’t dared let myself remember.
Because, after all, Mary wasn’t as important as whether I’d be back at the bottom of the fish barrel.
I think we all have a built-in defense mechanism, a protective shield that kicks in when we make stupid mistakes. Mine kicked in that morning like some fucking force field out of a bad science fiction movie, a gravitational pull that sucked me in and wouldn’t let go. I stood, leaving Mary bewildered and probably shattered forever on the tile floor, as if she had been some delicate crystal ornament teetering on the edge of a mantelpiece while spoiled children played around her, never caring what devastation a wild hand or a quick turn of the head might bring about. I stood and I walked away and I said to myself that I’d rather die than be her.
All of this is true. Except I said something far worse. And I didn’t say it to myself.
After that, Mary turned into a ghost of a girl, so none of us was surprised when Mary turned into exactly that.
I don’t mean a real ghost—I don’t believe in that shit. But one day in early December, Mary stopped coming to school. The next week during assembly, we found out why.
Someone said it was pneumonia. Someone else, cancer. Someone from the football team, coarse as always, spread around a story that Mary looked in the mirror one morning and died of fright. It being high school, all the someones went to her funeral—the principal handed out free passes.
This is what I remember about that day:
I sat in the back pew, all the way to the left, not really wanting to see Mary’s parents when they entered, definitely not wanting to approach the plain wooden coffin, slathered with varnish to make it look more expensive than it was. I studied my hands, the hymnal in the little rack, the kneeling bench that creaked when my foot absently rocked it up and down, up and down. I did everything I could to keep my mind off Mary’s body in that box as her five brothers carried it down the aisle, weeping like children.
Word made its way around our town, speculations about how she did it, whether it happened quickly or slowly, who found the body and where they found it. Bathtub? Garage? Basement?
By the spring term, when college acceptances began rolling in and the first daffodils replaced slush and snow, everyone had forgotten about the girl who wore the same moth-eaten sweater and the hand-me-down Thom McAns with soles as thin as early winter ice.
Almost everyone had forgotten.
SIXTY-THREE
When he’s finished, Alex removes the speculum with a swift pull, hurting me intentionally, leaving me open and slick with lubricant. I don’t have words for what I feel like.
“Get her cleaned up and get her out of here,” he says to the nurse. And then he leaves, not looking back at the broken woman on the table. He’s gotten in and gotten out, and the worst part is that this perfunctory business is his job.
Nurse Mender turns his attention to me. “All done, dear,” he says, wiping me clean with a gentle hand. He’s the good cop in this moment, tidying up the mess made by his bad-cop colleague.
While I lie here with chemicals inside me, already working to re-form my insides, Nurse Mender tells me what I can expect over the next few hours, days, weeks. My right hand clicks the pen twice.
“You may experience some cramps. Hopefully, it won’t be much worse than typical menstrual cramping. If it becomes debilitating, take one of these. Motrin.” He takes two prewritten prescriptions from his p
ocket and places the first on the table next to me while continuing with his list of side effects.
“Loss of appetite is normal.”
“I’ll live,” I say.
“This is important, though.” His eyes are calm and serious. “If you experience fever or elevated heartbeat at any time—even if it seems normal to you—you must seek immediate medical attention. Understand? The risk is low, but the sooner you report to an urgent care facility, the better.”
One word plays on my lips, and I find myself saying it out loud. “Sepsis.”
Mender sighs. “Like I said, the risk is infinitesimally low. But it isn’t zero.” I’d like to tell him what Alex said. He might rework his risk calculations. “That’s what this one is for.” He taps the other slip of paper, already typed out and signed. “You can have it filled when you get home and start the course tonight.”
“What is it?”
“Just Augmentin. High dose, strong antibiotic. Should zap anything.”
Doctors and nurses are not politicians. They don’t have time to watch their words. As Mender tidies up the remnants of my treatment, disposing of the speculum and insertion device in a lined container marked Biohazard, he talks. I suppose he thinks he’s being soothing.
“You won’t be alone, dear,” he says, patting my hand. “A lot of women will be making the same choice as you before long.”
“Doing what?”
He shrugs. “Going in for an appointment at WomanHealth. If the trials work and the risk assessment is as low as we think it will be, hell, my wife’ll be thirty-five in December. Christmas baby, actually. She’ll go to her local clinic and take care of things. All for the good, if you ask me. I mean, the prevention’s easier than the cure, right?”
“So it’s on a volunteer basis, then?”
Mender continues. I hope to hell this contraption of Lissa’s has storage capacity larger than it looks like it does.
“Oh, I think so. In most cases. Everyone wants to keep the breeding with the young and fit. Thirty-five’s too old, they say. Too many things can go wrong.”
In most cases. “What about the other cases?”
He clears the rest of the debris from the stainless steel countertop and washes up. “Don’t you worry about that, dear. There’ll be plenty of incentives.”
I really hope Lissa’s pen is getting all of this.
Because as soon as I get back to Washington, I’m going to make sure it’s blasted over the airwaves so loud they’ll hear it on the fucking moon.
SIXTY-FOUR
I sleep through most of the three-hour flight from Kansas City to Washington. When I’m not sleeping, I’m pretending to, so I don’t have to look at Alex. We step off the plane near the general aviation building into a field of tarmac and concrete. I wrap my coat around me, tight against the windchill, as Malcolm emerges from one of the doors and begins a slow walk toward us. I don’t remember DC ever being so cold in early November.
Inside the building, Malcolm and Alex leave me for a moment. I can’t hear them, but I watch my phone exchange hands. I’d forgotten about it, sitting in that little storage room next to Martha Underwood’s office, keeping company with others of its kind. There’s a bit of backslapping and laughter before they part.
Malcolm’s mood matches the weather when he takes me by the arm and leads me out to the hourly parking lot. Without a word of greeting, he opens the passenger-side door and watches me climb in before rounding the front of the BMW and taking his own seat. When he starts the engine, I’ve got so many words I want to scream at him I don’t know where to start.
He seems to read my mind. “Just don’t say a word, Elena. Not a goddamned word.”
I turn up the heat on my side and stay quiet, counting the cars we pass as he navigates us out of the airport and onto the parkway, thinking about what I’ll say to Anne when we get home. Really I’m thinking about what she’ll say to me, if she says anything at all.
Malcolm cracks the driver’s window; I turn up the heat to eighty. He lowers the window a further two inches; I twist the dial again until the digital readout glows eighty-five. We argue in this way for the half-hour drive to the house, a wordless battle of wills, and the cold air curling around the back of the car and hitting my right side tells me I’m losing.
“Can you please shut that window?” I say.
He responds by pressing a button to his left, and the window slides all the way open.
Our house—I suppose it’s Malcolm’s house now, or soon will be—is as cold and dark as the night. Not even the back porch light is on. At after midnight on a Friday, Anne might still be up, if not studying then watching a movie. But if Malcolm’s told her I’m arriving, maybe she decided to stay in her room. Still, the house seems wrong.
I unbuckle my seat belt and think of running. Up the street to Sarah Green’s house. In the opposite direction toward the Delacroix’s or the Morrises’ or the Callahans’. Through the empty playground. Hiding inside my Acura that’s parked in its usual space in the driveway. Anywhere, really. Anywhere that isn’t this dark house with only my husband for company.
Malcolm kills the engine and comes around to my side, opening the door for me and taking my arm, squeezing it. He holds me like this until we reach the back door. His key slides into the lock, the door swings open, and I’m pushed inside.
“Go to bed, Elena,” he says.
“There are some prescriptions I need to fill.” I take the slips from my pocket, feeling Lissa’s pen nestled in the folds of material, and Malcolm takes the papers from me.
“I told you to go to bed.” Then, only slightly more civilly, “I’ll take care of it in the morning.”
“I need them now. There’s an all-night pharmacy down by—”
“Elena, I said Go. To. Bed.”
I expect Anne to poke her head into the hall at the sound of his voice, but there’s no opening of a door or feet running down a hall. We’re alone in this darkened house, with the shades pulled and the lights on their dimmest setting.
“Where’s Anne?” I say.
“Staying with some friends.”
“Which friends? When is she coming home?” I don’t know why I ask this; the answer seems pretty clear to me.
“Soon.”
What follows is five full minutes of a standoff until I finally leave him and go toward the hall to my room. A part of me expects him to stop me, to tell me I’m no longer welcome in his bed, to sleep in Freddie’s. But he doesn’t say a word.
My finger finds the wall switch and flicks it to the up position. This room is mine, and it isn’t. The dresser has been wiped clean, bare wood where photos of my family once sat in their frames, where a round silver tray used to hold my perfumes. I open the bottom drawer, where I keep pajamas and nightgowns. It’s empty. Every single one of my dresser drawers is empty, only the floral shelf paper liners covering the bottoms. One hand automatically goes to my mouth and stifles a scream.
Breathe, El. Just breathe. But I can’t.
In the mirror’s reflection, my walk-in closet beckons me to open it, to check inside, to see that all of my stuff is hanging on rods or folded on wire organizer shelves and that shoes are lined up in neat rows the way they always have been. I answer the door’s call, crossing the room, one hand still over my mouth, the other reaching out for the door lever. A hideous Let’s Make a Deal scenario plays through my mind: What’s behind Door Number One, Elena? Want to take a guess and win the big prize?
No. No, I don’t.
I do.
The white wire frames are there, in the same place they’ve been since I paid some consultant from a bed and bath store to design and install them. They line the side and back walls of the closet, virgin territory waiting to be piled with wool and denim and cotton. The carpeting is freshly vacuumed, stripes of beige pile shimmering under the light.
I spin away from the closet, reaching the window on Malcolm’s side of the bed in three steps, pushing the curtains aside and rolling up the roman blind, hearing it snap and spin. The shade pull taps a monotonous rhythm against the glass, then loses momentum and goes silent. I don’t bother sliding the latches and lifting the window before letting the curtains fall back into place. The lock on the casement, and the keyhole on that lock, tell me not to bother.
I am a prisoner in my own house.
It’s impossible to know how long I’ve been standing here with my hand to my lips, how long I’ve been staring at the geometric print of the comforter and the blue of my pajamas neatly folded on my pillow. Minutes? Hours? Somewhere in between? And I don’t know how long Malcolm has been standing in the doorway, leaning casually against the frame, watching my desperation.
“The windows and doors are alarmed, Elena,” he says. “And the glass. You should go to bed now.”
“You fucking monster,” I say.
“Well, you should know, I guess. See you in the morning.” He turns and closes the door, and the key in the lock clicks.
SIXTY-FIVE
I was on fire when I woke up a few moments ago. Now a wintery chill runs through my bones, and I roll to one side, burying my head under the comforter to block out the sun. Someone opened the curtains. Malcolm, I suppose.
Malcolm.
My hand reaches over to his side of the bed. It’s cold and dry, and any fantasies about the past few days being no more than a nightmare fade away. I think they do. I’m not sure. The same invisible hands that drew the curtains and rolled up the shades may have been at work filling my head with cotton while I slept. Every part of my body tells me to stay here under the covers. Except one part—one part tells me I need a bathroom and I need it now.
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