Their first son, Matthew, came to live with them in the spring of 1994, when Val was 35. Intelligent and articulate, if quiet, Matthew proved to be a natural athlete. He followed in his father’s footsteps to play lacrosse at Hebron Academy and then at Swarthmore College, where he majored in Economics, graduating summa cum laude. He would start at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business the following fall and was taking the year off to bum around Europe.
Their second son, Jacob, joined the family two years after his older brother. The typical middle child, Jacob blazed his own trail, eschewing academics and athletics in favor of more artistic pursuits. He proved to be a talented musician, but preferred hard rock and, later, hip-hop to the classical and jazz his mother would have liked him to study. In high school, Jacob would spend hours laying down beats on the high-tech recording equipment John helped install in his bedroom, against Val’s strenuous objections.
“What’s the big deal?” John had said. “It’s a good outlet for him.”
“It’s not an outlet—it’s acting out.”
“Do you have a problem with hip hop music?”
“I don’t have a problem with hip hop per se. I just don’t see why he has to have such a thing for it. It’s not like it’s his music. It’s not his people’s music, you know? Because we’re his people.” A look of approbation formed on John’s face. “Don’t say I’m being racist. I’m not. I just don’t see why our son has to pretend he’s something that he’s not.”
John hadn’t bothered to point out that the color of their son’s skin and the texture of his hair suggested a substantial African share in his genetic heritage. They never finished the conversation, and it became a moot point, as Jacob’s musical interests took a lateral turn during his first year at the University of Virginia. He had taken up the banjo and formed an Americana quartet called “The Merry Benders,” taking an early advance on his trust fund to tour some folk festivals that summer.
Val fawned over her two sons, showering them with attention throughout their childhood. She gave them the best she could offer, which for a woman of her mental (and financial) means was quite a lot. Then, at Jacob’s second birthday party, Val’s biology had at last caught up with her maternal inclinations. Reaching over the ranch dressing to pick up a Triscuit cracker, she projectile vomited for the first and last time in her adult life. She apologized profusely to the other parents, who quietly steered their toddlers away from the snack table for the rest of the afternoon.
Thirty-seven weeks later, Clara was born. John, who had performed hundreds of deliveries by then, said he felt as if he were witnessing the miracle of childbirth for the first time. Everyone agreed that Clara more resembled her mother, though John would assert that she had the Lavando nose, a claim Clara would reject by the time she was in middle school.
“What’s wrong with my nose?” John would ask her.
“There’s nothing wrong with it for you, Dad,” Clara shot back, “but do you see how narrow my jawline is? I can’t have a nose like yours—I just can’t!”
Val found herself jealous of her husband’s relationship with their daughter. There wasn’t any specific conflict between her and Clara, but their relationship was complicated and a bit cool in a way she hadn’t experienced with her boys.
Perhaps it had to do with her recovery from childbirth—hormones and all that. Or she might be playing out a script received from her parents. Perhaps Val saw in John’s relationship with Clara the kind of deep bond she had shared with her own father, and she worried that she couldn’t compete. So she hung back, as her own mother had with her. This may not be the most emotionally intelligent approach, she realized, but it wasn’t hurting anybody. She hoped, and in her more sanguine moments allowed herself to believe, that this was all there was to it.
Whatever the cause of it, the tension between Clara and Val never flared into open hostility. It remained no more than a mild damper on what was otherwise a scene of robust domestic satisfaction. Val knows of no happier home than theirs.
Now here she finds herself, bound in her daughter’s room, held by a man whose motives she cannot discern, no telling how long she’ll be here or what will happen when the man returns. Everything is falling apart.
Val shakes her head vigorously. Enough of that “damsel in distress” nonsense. She’s got to figure this out.
Her eyes dart about the room, trying to locate something with a sharp edge. She scans the desk in search of the purple-handled scissors Clara had made collages with when she was younger. There are pens and Sharpies, pastel crayons and charcoal pencils, sticking up out of rusting coffee cans and little wicker baskets. There’s a ruler, a stapler, even a compass (the needle fit for jamming in the big guy’s eye maybe, but no help now). But no scissors. There might be an X-acto knife in one of the desk drawers, but there’s no way in hell she’ll be able to get her hands on it while she’s bound like this.
Rock, meet hard place.
Even if there had been a blade in the desk, the man might have removed it. He would have made a sweep of the house when he came in, clearing out anything dangerous from the rooms where he planned to stow them. While they were leading the class not fifty yards away, that man—that ogre in blue coveralls—was in here, in their home, making preparations.
Val tongues the fabric in her mouth, smoothing out a stray thread that’s been tickling her gums.
She looks at the desk again. What else might she find in the drawers if she could get to them? Cigarettes? Condoms? Some kind of drugs—Mary Jane (do they call it that anymore?), coke, or ‘Molly?’ Is Clara into that stuff? Could that be what the girls are up to this weekend at the ‘volleyball retreat?’ Clara hasn’t shown any warning signs, but Val knows how well young woman can hide things from their parents.
A wave of helplessness washes over her. She hasn’t felt this way in decades, not since they built their magnificent home and populated it with a trio of beautiful children, allowing Val to feel empowered, to feel she was in control—a feeling she now fears she’ll never know again.
No. That’s the despair creeping into her brain again. That’s weakness, a lack of resolve—two qualities her Daddy would be ashamed to see in her. She must not allow herself to think that way.
There is a way off of this chair. There’s got to be. She’s spent thousands of hours over the years learning to bend her body in unbelievable ways. Now is the time to put it to the test.
Come on, baby, she tells herself, let’s see what you’ve got.
John catches his breath. The blood slowly drains from his inflamed cheeks. He settles down, collects himself, and looks around.
John has always liked the guest room. It’s probably his favorite room in the house. Sometimes when he’s up late, unable to sleep, he’ll sneak in here to read or catch up on emails, and end up crashing on the guest bed. It’s almost like staying at a hotel, and John loves hotels—owing to some nomadic instinct, he fancies, passed down from his ancestors in Italy and Scotland.
When John was in med school at Harvard and he and Val were honeymooning in a one-bedroom apartment in Cambridge, they would sometimes set up an air mattress on the living room floor and pretend to be slumming it at a cheap motel. They would eat popcorn and peanuts, drink cheap wine, and make love under the glow of the television set, falling asleep to old movies or reruns of I Love Lucy.
Years later, when they had reached the point when couples naturally start to wonder if one another’s affections might be fading, Val would feign suspicion over John’s taste for sleeping in other beds, asking if his promiscuity extended to his choice of sleeping companions. But there has never been anything to worry about in that department, as he is quick to assure her. After 34 years of marriage, he remains utterly faithful to her.
At 56 years old, her freckled skin housing deep wrinkles, her toned frame at last beginning to yield to gravity, Val still gives herself to their lovemaking with the vitality and hint of mischief she did when they were
twenty years old and just beginning to map out each other’s anatomies. What would he want with another woman? Sex with anyone else would be awkward and groping at best, if not ugly and debasing, like in the hard-core porno clips he’d occasionally watched when they’d first gotten an internet connection in the house (feeling guilt-ridden as soon as he’d satisfied himself).
John takes in his surroundings. The texture and hue of the blue-grey walls varies subtly to give the room an undulating, aquatic feel—the kind of effect you might get in a hip Manhattan hotel. The bedding is elegant but lacks warmth. The artwork is pleasing but generic, insipid. There may as well be brochures for local eateries out on the desk, a Gideon Bible in the drawer of the nightstand.
Those videos he used to watch—the ones he would look over his shoulder before viewing, double-checking that he was alone in the house—they were often shot in rooms like this one. Rooms that are tastefully but impersonally appointed. Places where no one really lives. The women sometimes bound and gagged as he is now.
It’s been years since he’s watched anything like that, but some of the images have stayed with him. They’re with him now, imposing themselves on him, penetrating his consciousness.
Oh God, it’s coming on again—the rage…
Banded as his brain has been by decades of marriage and fatherhood, he can’t get those images of commingled sex and violence out of his head. And here they are, flashing before his mind’s eye like a horror reel as he imagines what that monster bleeding into his ski mask might be doing to his wife in one of the other bedrooms down the hall. It’s all he can think about, try as he might to focus on his own predicament. When he’s in the delivery room, all distractions and anxiety fall away, dissolve. Time is suspended, his sense of self seems to evaporate, leaving him a hollow, well-honed vessel for the action of the moment. It’s the best damned feeling in the world—the source of his success as a doctor. And now, when he needs that precious clarity more than ever in his life, when he’s asking for it, willing it, begging it to come to him, he finds his mind in absolute revolt, unable to fix itself on anything other than what that goddamn son-of-a-bitch might be doing to Val—get off of her, you bastard! If you lay a finger on my wife, I swear to God I’ll—
He writhes, raging madly against his bonds but barely moving, as feeble and feckless as a squealing newborn, wishing to God he had heeded Val’s unspoken request and done something when they had the chance.
Take what you want! The paintings! The cars! The jewelry! It’s all yours—just leave my wife alone!
He goes on like this for another ten minutes—burning off his excess energy in intermittent fits of outrage, straining uselessly against the plastic ties and duct tape, chafing the skin of his arms and legs, sending out muffled cries through the hand towel stuffed into his mouth—before at last he comes to his senses. The way he’s acting is stupid. He needs to conserve his strength, not use it up. He needs to be ready in case an opportunity arises to act.
He goes quiet and still. His breath slows to a steady, silent stream. He listens for signs of activity beyond the door and begins to plan his escape path should he be able to overtake his captor.
The first thing to do—even before he looks for Val—is to trigger the panic alarm. If he can do that, the police will be here in minutes. The nearest button is in the master bedroom, at the far end of the hallway. He can get there easily.
Except… the man seems to know something about the security system. How else could he have gotten into the house? The entrances are all protected by a code, the windows armed with motion sensors. It’s a top-of-the-line system; John oversaw its installation himself. Is it possible that the man has found a way to disconnect the panic alarm? To disable the system altogether? He would have had to tear open the walls and pull apart the wiring, but it’s not out of the question. How much does the man know?
It doesn’t matter right now. What matters is how the hell John’s going to get out of here. He might have a leg to stand on if he had his medical kit—an old-fashioned brown leather bag, the kind that doctors in old movies would take on house calls. John’s dad gave it to him when he graduated from med school, and although he’s only had two or three occasions to use it, the instruments are functional and sharp. With those tools in his well-trained hands, he could easily extract himself from his restraints.
As if on cue, the intruder comes through the door, holding the medical kit in his hand. His other hand presses an ice pack to his head. Beneath the ice pack is a blood-soaked square of gauze sloppily taped to his temple. The ski mask is gone. Long trails of blood have dried on the side of his face, and the fluid has blackened the collar of his coveralls, which thankfully show no sign of having been removed. Beneath the blood and the bandage, the man is clean-shaven, with pale, putty-like skin covering his wide-jawed, almost trapezoidal face. His mouth hangs slightly open, giving him the appearance of an overgrown child with a bad boo boo.
He holds up the medical kit. “Is this yours?”
John tries to answer, but the gag prevents him from speaking. He nods.
“You’re a doctor, right? I know you are, so don’t bother lying.”
John nods.
“This cut on my head is pretty bad. I think I might need stitches.”
The man steps into the room and sets the medical kit on the desk, then sits in the desk chair, still pressing the ice pack to his forehead. He arches his back with a pained sigh, then wheels the chair over to John, his heavy boots thudding against the carpet. The whole movement is lumbering and awkward—it’s almost painful to watch.
He looks at John. “I’m gonna take that cloth out of your mouth in a minute so we can talk about how we’re gonna do this. If you try anything, that would be very, very bad. Do you understand?”
John nods.
“Okay. I’m gonna take the gag out now.”
He reaches out to John’s face and pulls the cloth and duct tape down over his jaw. The man’s hands are big and meaty and rough. He would make a terrible surgeon.
John licks his lips and takes in a deep draught of air through his open mouth. He looks at the man.
“What are you doing here?” he says. “What do you want from us?”
The man looks at the floor. “We’re not gonna talk about that right now.”
“Please, I’ll tell you where all of the valuable—”
“I said I don’t want to—”
“Just leave my wife alone.”
The man grabs John by the throat—not painfully, but hard enough to get his attention. “I haven’t touched your wife. I’m not gonna touch your wife. That’s not what I’m here for.” He looks John in the eye for a moment, then lets go of his neck and looks away.
“Then what are you here for?” John asks.
The man shifts in his seat. His eyes dart from side to side. “It’s not time for that yet.”
John swallows. “You want to show me that cut?”
The man looks at John, then again at the floor. His diffidence is puzzling. Apart from the brief throat grab—which seemed like it was intended more to calm John down than to threaten him—he’s done nothing to show he’s in charge.
The man peels the bandage away from his brow, stifling a groan as he does. A deep gash, about a quarter-inch wide, runs from the center of his left eyebrow to the front edge of his ear. Val got him good with that bottle.
“What do you think?” the man says, fresh blood trickling from a vein in his temple.
“It’s not good,” John tells him. “You’re definitely gonna need stitches. I’d say fifteen at least, maybe twenty.”
The man nods. “Let’s get to work.”
Years earlier, Val credited her regular yoga practice with helping her to regain her figure after giving birth. She had kept her core toned, her hips and legs lithe and open, throughout her pregnancy; and her post-delivery tummy had cinched up into its former shape in a few short months, enraging the other women in her mom’s group.
E
ven now, closing in on sixty, Val can manipulate her body as well as she could in her twenties, when she would amuse herself by putting those new contortions to use in the bedroom. She’s always maintained that there’s no end to yoga’s practical applications.
Now she’s determined to prove it.
She crosses her ankles and presses her knees apart, as though moving into a lotus pose. The force is enough to stretch and strain the plastic tie until she’s able to slip her feet free. Then, pointing her toes like a ballerina, she slides her calves one at a time out of the loop of tape surrounding them. The ogre had been hasty in binding her and hadn’t drawn the tape as tightly as he could have.
With her legs free, she’s able to slide her hips forward, drawing her torso down through the tape wrapped around her lower chest. (It’s a blessing at the moment that an ample bosom is not among Val’s anatomical gifts.) Deflating her lungs and pushing down hard, she squeezes her chest down through the loop of tape.
Her upper back lies flat against the seat of the chair now. Her arms are still bound, and they point straight down toward the floor; her head is pitched up against the back of the chair, with the tape draped over her forehead. Her arms and head are both perpendicular to her torso. She finds herself in a sort of horizontal shoulder stand—a set-up she sometimes uses to prepare students for the pose (minus the zip ties and duct tape, of course).
She shifts her feet to get a more solid grip on the carpet. The chair tips back slightly, the front legs rising from the floor. She adjusts her position to bring the legs back down before the chair tips over—quite likely snapping her neck. The front legs of the chair land harder than she’d intended, sending a little shockwave through the wood. The tape that had secured her chest scuttles down and settles over her nostrils. A wave of panic washes over her—
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