The Wrong Kind of Woman

by Sarah McCraw Crow

  A moment later, when he opened the frat’s library door, a thin veil of smoke rolled over him, and a sharp smell of something burning, of singed fabric or carpet. The device must have caught on fire. But that couldn’t be right—the alarm wasn’t due to go off yet. He’d done something wrong, and he’d fucked up the fuse too.

  * * *

  Rebecca was still feeling wonderful and floaty, but a distant corner of her brain gave a little ping of alarm.

  “Hey, I like you, you know that?” Teddy pulled her close, putting a hand on her back and then her bottom, pressing her to him. She liked him too, even though she shouldn’t—he was way too old for her.

  He kissed her, and even in her floaty state the kiss wasn’t what she’d expected. It was sloppy and spitty and gross, his tongue pushing into her mouth. He smelled like chemicals, like alcohol was coming out of his skin. She pulled away.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “I thought you liked me. I mean, I really like you. I think I love you.”

  “I—uh—” But no more words would come. She found that she was sitting next to him on the bed in the corner. He tugged on her shirt, pulling her down, and she felt her T-shirt rip around the armhole. She was horizontal on the bed now, staring up at the ceiling, his body too close, his hand under her shirt, and with another tug he pulled on her bra until it ripped in the back. He turned away, and she felt him fumbling with his jeans. Something cut through her dreamy fog—her own brain, maybe—and she came to, awake and scared now. She rolled away from him and onto the floor, landing on her hands and knees. She caught her breath and started to scrabble away from the bed, but he rolled onto the grubby carpet as she’d just done, and she felt his too-big hands grab her ankle and tug. Her chin banged on the floor, burning as it rubbed against the carpet.

  With his hand on her hip now, he flipped her over, and she looked up to see him smiling down at her, a sleepy, horrible grin, as if this were a game. She was going to die here.

  She heard a thunderous sound, the sound of someone running through the hallway, banging on doors. The door swung open. “Get out!” a guy yelled into the room. “There’s a fire! Fire department’s on the way!” Teddy had let go, distracted by the sound, and she shoved him away with both knees, pushing up to standing, and then lurched toward the guy at the door. It was Sam the college guy, Mom’s friend.

  “Fuck, what are you doing here, asshole?” Teddy said from the floor.

  She saw Sam’s gaze taking in both her and Teddy, and she heard Teddy behind her, getting to his feet. She darted under Sam’s arm and through the open door.

  “Are you okay?” Sam asked. She tried to nod an answer. “I gotta check the third floor, but you need to get out.” He slammed the door to Teddy’s room and covered the hall in two big steps and ran upstairs to the third floor. She ran too, taking the hall in two steps like he’d done, and then down the curving stairs in a jumble.

  A few seconds later she was in the frat’s front yard, shaking, and college boys were going in all directions around her, yelling and calling to one another. She had to get away from this hideous place, and Molly had left her behind. Molly must have gone home. Molly hadn’t even bothered to check if she was alive or dead. She started to cry.

  “Bec!” she heard. “Rebecca!” It was Molly, on the lowest level of the frat’s fire escape. Molly hadn’t left, thank God. “What should I do?”

  Rebecca darted over to the fire escape. It would be a long jump down. “Swing down and hold on, pretend it’s a jungle gym. I’ll catch you.”

  “I’ll get her,” a college guy said. Ugh, God, no, it was Teddy again, and she shuddered and started to move away from him. “Just drop through,” he called up to Molly. “I’ll catch you.”

  Before Rebecca could tell her not to, Molly dropped into horrible Teddy’s arms, and he staggered and fell under her weight. Rebecca whacked him on the head as best she could and grabbed for Molly, pulling her up and away. They started to run again, but Rebecca was off-balance and her legs went wobbly as Molly moved too fast. They’d barely reached the sidewalk when a police car pulled up in front of them, its headlights blinding. “New Hampshire State Police,” the policeman called. “Don’t move.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  In her rush to get out of the house, Virginia had forgotten her bra, and now she kept her coat buttoned, arms crossed over her chest. And she was cold after waking in the middle of the night. The girls were fine, the girls were fine, the girls were fine, she repeated, just as the policeman had said on the phone. But that knowledge didn’t stop her shivering, didn’t stop her teeth from chattering, as if it were a January night, ten below zero, instead of late May. Paul, Eileen’s husband, leaned against the wall, tapping his foot. The Westfield police station at the back of town hall was so small that the waiting area held only two chairs. She sat next to Eileen, the two of them silent.

  “Back here,” a young policeman said, gesturing, and they followed him to a small conference room behind the desk, where the police chief, Gary Barton, stood waiting by the door.

  He greeted them and started to talk as if he knew them all, but she couldn’t listen to whatever he was saying; she could only take in Rebecca seated at the table next to Molly. Rebecca let out a sob and Virginia rushed around the table, leaning down to clutch at her daughter, who flopped onto her like a baby. After a minute, Virginia pulled back to get a better look. Rebecca’s eyes were swollen from crying, her hair was disheveled, as if she’d been sleeping on it, and her shirt was missing a button. Molly looked about the same: runny nose, red-rimmed eyes, generally disheveled. Molly laid her head on her arms, either to sleep or to block them all out.

  “What happened?” Virginia asked, holding on to Rebecca.

  “Let’s have a seat,” Gary Barton said, gesturing at the chairs around the table. “They’re a little intoxicated, so I’m going to run through what we know real quick, and then we’ll have them come back later.” The girls were found by the state police outside a Clarendon frat, drunk enough to be off-balance and slurring their words. They didn’t seem to be with anyone else, although that couldn’t be ascertained for sure as the circumstances of this evening were most unusual. “We were able to intervene and stop what seems to have been some sort of—an attempt at a bombing on campus. I can’t give you details but a fraternity house got hit, leading to a small house fire. Everyone’s safe. We’d have called you all in sooner but this was an extraordinary situation that’s kind of taken over things here, having to sweep the entire campus and all.”

  Virginia felt struck dumb, and she heard Eileen’s gasp.

  “Just minor explosives, more in the realm of a prank, not that we’d call this a prank,” Gary Barton said. “The kids were all out before the fire was contained. The fire department had to call on Bradford, Thetford and Royalton for aid because they didn’t know what they might be dealing with, and the state police are combing the campus. Meanwhile, we got a confession from one perpetrator, and we know who the others are.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Paul said.

  Eileen turned to face Virginia. “I’m sorry, but I have to blame you, Virginia. You’ve radicalized our daughters. I knew something like this was coming.”

  Virginia was too addled to disagree or defend herself. “Wait—you think—that our girls were—what did you know was coming?”

  “Mom.” Molly lifted her head from the table. “KA is where Lacey goes with her friends to buy pot. And Kath has hung out there. I’m not a radical, and neither is Bec.”

  “Lacey? Kath?” Eileen said, as if she’d just this moment remembered she had two older daughters.

  “We just wanted to know what it was like in there,” Rebecca said softly.

  “Well, now you know,” Paul said. “You girls could have gotten yourselves killed, or worse.”

  What could be worse than getting themselves killed? Virginia wondered. She stifled a laugh, which tu
rned into a sob. She should have run out of tears by now, but she couldn’t stop crying. She needed Oliver here, he’d know what to say; he wouldn’t sound as harsh as Paul, or as crazy as Eileen. She put a fist to her mouth, trying to push the crying back inside.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” Rebecca said. “Look, it’s okay. We’re okay. Right, Molly?”

  Molly nodded. “We’re fine.”

  The policeman gave Virginia a form to sign, noting that Rebecca was due back here at two o’clock tomorrow for further questioning. They all shuffled out of the police office, parting on the sidewalk. “We’ll talk later,” Eileen said. “I’m sure we’ll get to the bottom of this.”

  Virginia could only nod. The girls were fine, that was the thing. The girls were fine.

  * * *

  At home, Virginia gave Rebecca two aspirin and a glass of water, then bundled Rebecca, still in her dirty clothes, into her own big bed, sliding in beside her. Outside, the night had lightened to gray, with a pale shimmer behind the gray. Rebecca drifted off after a minute, murmuring something unintelligible.

  Virginia let herself cry again, sat up to blow her nose. Nothing happened, she reminded herself. Nothing happened, other than the fact that Rebecca had turned into a teenager without her noticing. She couldn’t imagine why the girls would have gone into a frat, and then she was struck by the memory of her shameful episode with Louise, going into the frat to dance, sealing Louise’s fate. And then her useless meeting with President Weissman yesterday. Weissman’s words about the outside agitators came back to her now. What if Rebecca had still been inside the frat, trapped by the fire? She would never be able to stop thinking about that.

  * * *

  Sam was asleep, fully clothed as if he’d passed out after a night of partying, when he heard the banging on his door. “Sam Waxman,” someone called. “Open up!” He rolled out of bed and opened the door to a policeman. “They need to talk to you downtown.”

  The police car rolled through the early-morning fog as cheerful birdsong floated through the half-open driver’s window. The cop said something into his two-way radio. All those surges of adrenaline last night had left Sam almost too tired to care that he was getting arrested. A minute later, a voice crackled through the radio. “President’s office, not downtown.”

  At the threshold of the office, Sam stumbled from fatigue and confusion, and President Weissman, in a pullover and windbreaker, motioned for him to sit on the couch. A secretary handed him a cup of coffee, and he took a sip; she’d put milk and sugar in it for him. He took in the high ceilings and grand windows, and their view of the fog-obscured green.

  A tall, narrow-framed man in a dark suit leaned against President Weissman’s desk, writing in a notepad. He crossed the room to loom over Sam.

  “Mr. Waxman,” the tall guy said. “I’m Agent Stevenson. FBI. Few questions for you.” He smiled: straightforward but not unpleasant. “Your friends gave us some useful information. Now it’s your turn.” He pulled some photos out of a manila folder. “Tell me who you recognize.” He fanned out the photos like cards in a deck. Sam recognized an enlarged version of Hank’s yearbook photo from freshman year, then Elodie—Elodie in New York, maybe Washington Square Park, walking with some guy—and he said so, feeling like a complete putz. A snitch.

  “None of the others?” Agent Stevenson said. “You sure?”

  Sam could only shake his head no.

  “As I said, your friends gave us some useful information. Mr. Atkins—” Hank “—tried to persuade us that he’d been tricked by a girl. That didn’t sound so good since he was drunk and belligerent, in a stolen car with busted taillights and explosives in the trunk. And him with his rap sheet. I’m sure you won’t waste our time with nonsense, Mr. Waxman.”

  Tricked by a girl.

  “But as I said, Mr. Atkins and Miss Sewall—” Elodie “—have been quite helpful. Tell me what you see here.” Agent Stevenson held up another photo.

  It was a photo of something on fire, smoke billowing into the sky. He stretched to get a better view: a row of New York brownstones, downtown it looked like, with one in the middle mostly gone, dark smoke stretching up and out of a shell, the brownstones on either side untouched.

  “We need to know how many were in there,” Agent Stevenson said.

  Sam’s heart galloped and skittered so much that the pulses had to be visible through his sweatshirt. People had been killed. Miss Sewall has been very helpful. Not dead. He looked up at Agent Stevenson. “I—I don’t know—I’ve never been there, I don’t know what you’re asking me.”

  “You sure you never—”

  President Weissman spoke at the same time. “Just tell the man how much you were involved with these people.” In his chair, President Weissman clasped his hands between his knees; he looked old and tired and sad. So Sam began the story, not the story he’d been telling himself, but the lame story of a guy who wanted to impress a girl. He heard himself going into the details of his relationship, such as it was, with Elodie. Of the cipher, the meeting and of last night. Of Hank disappearing, and of racing back to KA to undo what he’d done, and the fire. Of calling the fire department and trying to get all the guys out, and how most of the guys had just laughed at him. He heard himself talking; he sounded like a lunatic. After a while he noticed Agent Stevenson nod at President Weissman, and the two left the office to talk in private.

  Sam leaned back against the couch. Outside, the fog had burned off and he took in the Frisbee players on the green, a woman walking a dog past the chapel, the stately old trees at the edge of the green that had probably seen two hundred years’ worth of moronic Clarendon guys.

  President Weissman had returned without Agent Stevenson, and now he stood over Sam. “They don’t know what to do with you at the moment, and neither do I,” President Weissman said. “I don’t think this is going to end well, Sam.”

  Sam considered whether to tell President Weissman that he loved Clarendon, and he loved his classes, at least math and art history, and jazz band and Granitetones. He’d risked it all for a girl, so he could feel normal for a while. Tricked by a girl. But instead he said that he had screwed up badly, and he couldn’t make it right, and he was sorry.

  “I’m sorry too, Sam,” President Weissman said.

  Chapter Twenty

  Virginia woke Rebecca at seven. “Think you can get up and go to school, hon?” Rebecca only shook her head, and rolled over.

  The weekend had passed, but Virginia couldn’t stop replaying all the terrible things that might have happened, outcomes that Rebecca had missed by a tiny sliver of time and space. And Rebecca wasn’t well. No fever, but she was pale and clammy; she hadn’t eaten much of anything these past few days. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll come check on you in a while.”

  In the kitchen, she started another cup of coffee, filled a pan with water to poach an egg. Someone knocked at the side door: Eileen. She turned off the stove.

  They hugged, and Virginia pulled out a chair for Eileen and got out another coffee mug. Eileen asked about Rebecca, and Virginia told her about letting Rebecca stay home from school, that Rebecca was a little worse today, not better.

  “Molly cried all weekend, and now she’s furious,” Eileen said. “Furious at me, of all things. Even though she knows perfectly well that a severe consequence is in order.”

  Severe consequence, good God. “Didn’t they already go through enough?” Virginia asked.

  “We can’t have fourteen-year-olds going into fraternities. Look what happened! Think of what might have happened!”

  “That’s what I mean. The whole thing was so awfully frightening that they won’t do it again.”

  “They’re all hippies these days, Virginia. All of them,” Eileen said. “Kathleen and Lacey are getting their hands on drugs, and who knows what else they’re doing. Molly may end up even worse, starting earlier.” Eileen’s lips q
uivered and she took a sip of coffee. “The world isn’t supposed to be like this.”

  “What’s it supposed to be like?”

  “Like it used to be. Like it always was. When we knew what to do and how to do it. When we knew how to live a good life.”

  Eileen’s words sounded so familiar, Virginia had probably said them herself. I was like you, Eileen, she thought. I understand. This knowledge filled her with a kind of empathy. “I’m not sure I ever knew what to do or how to do it,” Virginia said. “But I think it’s a good sign that Molly is angry.” Anger had to be better than lying in bed, unable to get up.

  When she leaned close to hug Eileen goodbye a few minutes later, Eileen remained stiff, as Virginia had been the other night in Eileen’s kitchen, when Eileen had said Virginia was off-balance and then folded her into a motherly hug. Virginia had lived lifetimes this year; she’d wandered through the dark and the rough, and there might or might not be light ahead to guide her. And no one needed to crack down on Rebecca. She wanted Rebecca to talk to her, she wanted Rebecca to live. She wanted Rebecca to grow up and find out who she was going to be.

  She thought of the way things had gone last week, before all of this, when she’d taken Rebecca out for Mexican night at Mo’s, when Rebecca was working hard to keep up her silent act.

  “How about summer camp? You could go with your cousin Margaret to camp in West Virginia. Margaret’s a CIT this year,” she’d said, and Rebecca had scowled at her. “You need something to do this summer.”

  Rebecca said nothing.

  “I’m sorry, Bec. No one will ever replace Daddy. No one. He will always be my husband and your dad. But I may not always be alone.” She hadn’t meant to say it, not yet.

  Rebecca nodded, crying now.