Cara sat in silence, appalled and humiliated. She had done something awful. She knew there was no one, absolutely no one, she could tell about this. Nobody would believe her and even if they did, they would despise her. The kids at school would never speak to her again. The teachers would treat her like she was trash. Karen would hate her. Mrs. Walker would hate her. Her own parents would never forgive her. The only thing she could do was make sure it never, ever happened again.
Cara put her ear against the door, listening for any noise in Karen’s room. She didn’t hear anything, but that didn’t mean Mr. Walker wasn’t out there, waiting. She lay on the floor, turning her head sideways so she could look under the door. As far as she could tell, the room was empty. Cara left the bathroom and stuffed the booklet in Karen’s bottom drawer, along with the box of tampons. She glanced out into the hallway.
Downstairs people laughed and told jokes; enjoyed their cocktails. She could hear ice clink in the glasses. Smoke from their cigarettes wafted upwards, creating a gray-blue haze that swirled into spirals along the high ceiling.
The Christmas party meant nothing. It was mere noise. The people there meant nothing to her. She didn’t even want to go home. She wanted to vanish completely. Disappear. Drift unnoticed like the smoke eddies above. Cara stood at the railing for a long time before she made a decision. Without catching anyone’s eye, she walked down the stairs and straight out the front door, opening and closing it behind her without a sound. Her grandmother lived a few miles away. Cara decided she would walk to her house tonight. She didn’t know what else to do.
Christmas Day 1967
“How dare you!”
Cara staggered back a few steps from the force of her mother’s slap.
“How dare you worry us like this? What’s wrong with you, Cara? Can’t you think of anyone beside yourself?”
Her mother was crying. First she had seemed to be crying tears of relief, but now she seemed furious.
“Louise . . .” Cara’s father grabbed her hand. “I don’t think it’s necessary to get physical with her.”
“What would you know?” Her mother turned on him. “You’re not the one who’s had to put up with her for the past six months. Put up with her pouting and her screaming. Change your busy schedule just to accommodate her. Run the selfish little brat to the doctor all the time for no good reason.”
“Cara, come here.” Her father beckoned to her. “Why did you run off last night? You had us scared to death.”
Cheeks flaming, Cara approached. She cleared her throat, attempting to steady her voice despite the fact that she was about to burst into tears herself. “I-I didn’t run off. I went to Grandma’s. We tried to call you, we did. We called the Walkers’ and later we called our house but no one answered. Grandma said she would talk to you first thing in the morning.”
“But why would you do such a thing? Walk off into the snow without even a coat on Christmas Eve, without a word to anyone?”
Cara stared down at her shoes, ruined from walking in last night’s snow and the salty slush in the street. She watched a tear dot the dirty black patent leather.
“She’s a manipulative little witch,” hissed her mother. “The sooner you realize it the better off we’ll all be. This is her fault!” She stormed out of the room.
Cara’s father leaned back on the sofa. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He tipped one out of the package and lit it with his silver cigarette lighter. Cara stood before him, watching him inhale deeply. He blew the smoke off to the side, away from her.
“We didn’t answer the phone last night, Cara, because there was a problem.”
Cara blinked at him.
“I’m going to ask you a question and I want an honest answer. Did Mr. Walker ever touch you?”
Cara’s legs began to shake. She pressed her knees together to try to stop them, but that seemed to make the shaking worse. “What . . . ? What do you mean?”
“Did Mr. Walker ever touch you in places he wasn’t supposed to touch you? Parts of your body other people aren’t supposed to see? This is important Cara. I need to know. I want the truth.”
“Why?” Her voice was a whisper.
Her father inhaled again, a long slow inhale followed by an even longer exhale.
“Cara, do you know what rape is?”
Cara shook her head.
“It’s when a man does something to a woman he’s not supposed to do, something she doesn’t want him to do. It’s a very bad thing and it’s against the law. Did Mr. Walker do that to you? Did he make you do things you didn’t want to do?”
Cara wanted to slide under the rug, or melt into a pool of water like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.
“Just shake your head Cara. Shake your head yes or no.”
Eyes locked on her shoes again, Cara nodded her head. Yes.
“How many times?” her father asked her, his voice hoarse now.
Cara looked up at him. She met his eyes then she looked away.
Her father rose from the couch. “That’s all I need to know.” He put a big hand on Cara’s shoulder. “We won’t ever talk about this again.”
∗ ∗ ∗
The Walkers moved out before New Year. Cara watched from her bedroom window as the three of them climbed into their car and drove off. The moving van had already gone ahead with their furniture. They were moving to Nevada. Mr. Walker had found a new job with another law firm. Between Christmas Eve and the day they moved, she only saw Karen once. Karen’s eyes were red from crying. She deliberately looked at Cara and mouthed I hate you before she turned away and disappeared into her house.
It was weeks before Cara found out what had happened on Christmas Eve. Her parents hadn’t discussed it, but her grandmother told her the story.
Mr. and Mrs. Engels, neighbors who lived two doors down, had left the party early because they were expecting a long-distance Christmas Eve phone call from relatives. Their fourteen-year-old daughter, Connie, had stayed at home to watch her baby brother. When they entered the house, they’d heard Connie screaming. They ran to her room and found her struggling with Mr. Walker. He’d ripped off most of her clothes and he was trying to rape her. Mr. Engels hauled Mr. Walker off his daughter, and he slugged him, knocking him unconscious. Mrs. Engels called the police.
A police officer had appeared at the Christmas party, asking for Cara’s father. The officer escorted him to the Engels’ house. Cara’s dad had found Mr. Walker half-dressed, his thing hanging out of his pants. Connie was covered with bruises, and the police insisted she go to the emergency room.
Cara’s grandmother said Connie wasn’t badly hurt, just scared out of her wits. Cara learned she’d told her parents and the police officers that among other things, Mr. Walker yelled at her that Cara never gave him so much trouble.
“That was how your dad found out.”
Cara’s face turned beet red when she heard her grandmother utter those words.
“You came here because of him, didn’t you?”
Cara could only nod.
“I don’t blame you,” said her grandmother. “He should be in jail.”
“Why isn’t he? If what he did is illegal why isn’t he in jail?”
“Because your father is a big name in this town and it would be bad for business. Your mother doesn’t want a scandal. She’s afraid of losing her country club membership.”
“But what about the Engels?”
“They agreed that if he’d leave town they wouldn’t press charges.” Cara’s grandmother shrugged. “They didn’t want Connie to go through a trial. They didn’t want her to be forced to see him again. Your father felt the same way about you. He wants you to forget about it.”
Cara saw sympathy in her grandmother’s eyes. “What if I can’t forget it?”
“I’m sorry for you,” she said. “But you can’t undo what he did. You’ll have to find a way to live with it.”
Cara tried and failed to stop
her words. “Mom hates me for it. She thinks everything is my fault. She said the other day that I had ruined her life.”
Cara’s grandmother patted her shoulder. “I know it’s hard, honey, but as time passes things will get better. You’re a smart girl, smarter than your mother. She’ll come around.”
April 1971
Cara’s head lolled forward.
“Damn, that’s good shit.” She gazed around the cluttered Volkswagen van, trying not to slur her words. Randy and Jackie spooned on the ratty old mattress. Her friend John leaned against the wall, his eyes half-closed; bong resting in his lap. Cara couldn’t remember how long she’d been there. Fifteen minutes? An hour? Two? That was the thing about dope, you lost track of time. She had a final in art class today.
Shit! She had a final in art class.
“John.” Cara poked at him with her foot. “John, what time is it?”
John stirred and glanced at his wrist. “I don’t know,” he said with a grin. “It’s upside down.”
Cara slid over to the other side of the van and held up his arm. She tried to make sense of the hands on his watch.
“I gotta go. Art final. I’m late.” Cara looked for her bag, the multi-colored paisley shoulder tote she’d sewn herself from remnants she found at the fabric store. She grabbed for it and slung it over her shoulder, pulling the dime bag out, tossing it in John’s direction. “Keep it for me.”
“Sure thing,” he mumbled. He stuffed the baggie into his backpack. She could trust John with her dope. Randy and Jackie were a different story. They would smoke what they wanted then sell the rest.
Cara climbed out of the van, keeping an eye peeled for Mr. Ringer, the assistant principal, also known as the resident fascist. He was always on the lookout for students skipping class. Cara was on his hit list because she hung with the hippies and druggies and she’d been tear-gassed at an anti-war protest over the winter.
He hated the fact that she had a dispensation from her shrink to come and go as she pleased, yet she managed to maintain straight A’s in every one of her honors classes. He spent an inordinate amount of time trying to catching her smoking pot or doing something untoward, something he could use to suspend her, but he couldn’t pin a thing on her. Cara had him pegged. Whether he realized it or not, Mr. Ringer followed a pattern. Where he would be, when he would be there and what he would do, was all very predictable. Cara made a point of studying his pattern. Once she had it figured out, she pretty much ignored him. Still, one had to be on guard, she never knew when he might change his pattern, so she just to be on the safe side she checked the parking lot for his big protruding gut, his white shirt and his skinny black tie.
He’d tried to get her suspended for refusing to adhere to the strict dress code rules. Cara had walked away when he’d ordered her to get down on her knees in the hallway so he could measure her skirt. He had responded by phoning her parents and firing off a letter to the FBI, accusing her of being an anti-American subversive. The call to her parents got her grounded for a month. The letter to the FBI had made her the talk of the high school. Well that, and her relationship with notorious bad boy Rick Shea. That relationship had been over for a while and Rick had graduated last May, but it had lasted nearly a year and it seemed like everybody at all three high schools in town knew about their relationship, following its progress from the day it began to the day it ended.
Yeah, everyone knew about the nightmare ending.
Cara reached the door to the art room without any interference from the assistant principal. She’d have to stay late if she wanted to complete her painting. Her teacher wouldn’t care. She loved to have students spend time with her after school and in any case, she had a soft spot for Cara. Thanks to her art teacher, Cara had been admitted to a senior art class at the beginning of her sophomore year. The principal couldn’t very well say no, since a watercolor Cara painted had been chosen to hang in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington D.C. by none other than the President of the United States himself. It was the painting that had brought her into contact with Rick Shea.
∗ ∗ ∗
One Saturday morning Cara received a call informing her that one of her paintings had been entered into a national competition by her art teacher. What Cara found most astonishing was not that her work had been chosen by the President, but that it had been selected in the first place from among the hundreds of works submitted to the governor of the State of Iowa by every public high school.
To Cara it was just another abstract painting, no better and no worse than anything she’d done before. Cara hadn’t given much thought to the results at the time. What she recalled was that while she painted it she’d been completely oblivious to the world around her. Sometimes that happened when she painted or worked on a sketch, she could shut off her brain and let her hand move of its own accord. Cara had known her teacher liked it, but she never expected the work to end up anywhere besides the classroom wall. She was surprised and a little uncomfortable at the unfamiliar surge of pride she felt upon hearing the news. Cara spent most of her time flying under the radar. She worried that any mention of her name would remind everyone of David Walker.
When she’d called, the teacher had asked Cara to come to the school so they could take a picture for the yearbook. She’d also said she was making arrangements for Cara to meet with the mayor and a reporter from the local newspaper.
Cara’s mother agreed without hesitation. She loved that kind of publicity.
Aware that she hadn’t done much her mother could be proud of, instead of wearing her usual baggy jeans and letting her thick hair dry into the natural waves her mom hated, Cara styled her hair, blowing it straight and tucking the ends under. She donned a cute blue seersucker miniskirt with a baby-blue sleeveless top and matching seersucker jacket. She declined her mother’s offer of pantyhose, but she wore a pair of wedges that lengthened her long legs even more.
To Cara’s astonishment, she was joined at the photo shoot by Rick Shea. Apparently his sculpture had been the other work of art chosen.
She knew who Rick Shea was, despite the fact that he was a senior while she was a freshman. His reputation definitely preceded him. He was the boy every girl in town wanted to get with. Cara had heard a lot about him. Who hadn’t? He was the epitome of cool.
He was tall, broad shouldered and well-built. His hair was almost jet black, a gift from his Cherokee grandmother, along with his high cheek bones, an angular nose and a chiseled jaw, but his eyes were a cool ice-blue, inherited from his Irish father. He had strong hands. His father was a cabinetmaker and Rick was his apprentice.
Although she’d occasionally seen him at the soda fountain after school, usually with one girl or another, Cara never considered approaching him. The guy was way out of her league. Besides, she’d kept her distance from boys. Teenage boys touched teenage girls and they expected to be touched back. Cara figured she understood the concept better than anyone.
Rick made small talk all during the photo shoot and the interview. Cara found him pleasant enough. He was polite and kept a respectful distance making Cara wonder if his reputation was exaggerated. The interview finished, Cara sat in a chair, watching her mother through lowered lids as she chatted away with the mayor and the reporter, expounding upon Cara’s wonderful qualities as a daughter. Cara wanted to laugh. She knew what her mother really thought of her.
“You want to go outside for a smoke?”
Cara hadn’t even heard Rick come up behind her.
“Sure.”
They exited the newspaper offices through the side door, walking around to the back of the building so her mother wouldn’t see. Rick stuck a Camel unfiltered in his mouth, struck a match, lit it and handed it to Cara. Then he lit one for himself. Cara felt an unexpected thrill go through her as she took the lit cigarette from his hand. His gesture unnerved her. It slid like silk through the barriers she’d erected over the past few years. She had never smoked an unfiltered cigarette before. It seemed quit
e daring. She put the cigarette to her lips, feeling the dampness from his mouth, inhaling deeply. She did her best to look dainty as she picked a piece of tobacco off her tongue before she exhaled. Rick leaned against the old red bricks, blowing smoke rings into the chill spring air.
“I’ve seen you around.”
Cara didn’t respond to his comment, she just looked at him, keeping her expression carefully neutral.
“I’ve seen you at the soda fountain after school. You play basketball in the gym at night. I’ve watched you play. You’re pretty good, you know, for a girl.”
“Thanks.” It was all Cara could think of to say. Rick Shea had noticed her?
“I saw your painting before your teacher sent it off,” he said. “It was on display in my art class for a couple weeks. It was well done. Nice choice of colors.”
Cara was surprised by her own reply. “Tell me about your sculpture.”
“Not much to tell,” he said, taking a drag from his Camel. “I sculpted a woman out of clay. Abstract of course. I think it was the combination of glazes I used that got their attention. The judges, I mean. Or whoever chose the two works from Iowa.”
“Weird coincidence that the two final selections are from Iowa, from the same town,” said Cara.
“Yeah,” Rick said. “It is interesting.”
Cara heard her mother calling for her. She dropped her cigarette on the sidewalk, crushing the lighted tip.
“Thanks for the smoke,” she said. “I gotta go.”
“Yeah, see you around.” Rick leaned back against the building.
Cara had the distinct feeling that he watched her walk away, watched her until she rounded the corner. She was too shy to turn around and wave.
Come Back To Me Page 3