by Noir, Stella
Paul shakes his head. “I keep telling you those drugs they give you are no good.”
“Yeah, well-”, Ethan says. “I guess it was partly the drugs”, he pauses to take his glasses off and clean them, giving us an up close and personal view of his injuries. When he realises - I wince a little, whistling air sharply in through my mouth - he quickly puts them back on again with an apology. “I’ve been meaning to get the brakes fixed for a while. Plus I’m a little out of practise. It’s ok though, I’m fine.”
The session passes quickly. Paul talks about his theatre production and is over the moon when Ethan says that we have decided to go along and support him. He even has the tickets with him to sell.
Emily is disappointed she can’t make it, but both Patricia and Carmen agree to come along too after a little bit of jovial peer pressure.
Ethan talks about his training plans for the new year, speaking earnestly about what he wants to achieve, and I talk about vacation plans to Cincinnati to be with my parents and how much I’m actually dreading it.
I’m not looking forward to the Christmas break at all. I’m dreading the forced celebrations with family and old school friends, the inability to have my own space and lose myself in it, the unavoidable talks about my court case, and more than anything else, and I know it sounds stupid to say, but the time away from this group.
I’m fond of everyone in here, of Patricia’s candid remarks, of Paul’s mood swings, of Emily’s idiosyncrasies, Katy’s comforting tone, and Ethan’s calming presence. It’s Ethan I feel like I’m going to miss the most. I have a fear that I’m going to lose him. That when I come back from Christmas, Ethan will be gone and I won’t have anything else to look forward to.
We leave the group together, say goodbye to the other members and trudge through the cold up to the point where I go one way and Ethan, the other.
“I think Paul’s excited”, I say.
“I know, right?” Ethan responds. “I wonder how terrible it’s going to be.”
“I’m glad you came today”, I say, turning at the same time he does, so we walk for a moment looking at each other.
“I told you I wasn’t going to miss it”, he says. “It’s my favorite part of the week.”
“Mine too”, I say, without hesitation. After a while I add, “You know, there’s no reason why we can’t meet outside of the group. I mean, I guess we all live quite close together.”
“That would be nice”, Ethan says, but I don’t know whether he’s just being polite.
We walk a little bit further without either one of us saying anything else.
“What will you do for Christmas?”, I finally ask.
“I hadn’t even thought about it”, Ethan says. “Just getting by is as much as I can cope with at the moment. You know, Alice not being here and stuff, I don’t really feel like celebrating. Martin may have something planned, but, I don’t know, it doesn’t feel right somehow.”
We pause at the intersection, cold biting at us. I can see the air condensing in front of me, and the day already falling away over the buildings to the skyline beyond.
I feel sad again, as though something good is coming to an end. As though there is something I want to say but can’t, as though I have a network of conflicting feelings and emotions going on inside me.
“Alice would have liked you”, Ethan says, kind of out of nowhere. “You’re a good person. You’re kind and thoughtful. It’s a shame she’s not here so you two can meet.”
“I would have liked that”, I say.
“Do you have a phone?” Ethan asks, and the question is so unexpected, it kind of confuses me for a moment.
“A phone?”, I ask.
“Yeah”, Ethan says in his inimitable way. “Unless you want me to knock on every door in Pittsburgh to find you.”
I smile. “You’d do that for me?!”
“I might”, Ethan says. “I can be quite dedicated when I want to be.”
I take out my phone and we swap numbers. This is a normal thing that new friends do, so i’m not entirely sure why it feels like I’m doing something wrong, or exciting or unexpected. Ethan drops his phone back into his pocket.
“Just call me if you want to meet up”, he says. “You know, if you need to chat about something or if you’re feeling low or, whatever. I’m usually busy in the evenings, but I’m pretty free in the day after I’ve gone running and worked out in the morning. And now I can’t do the bag work-.” He holds up his bandaged right hand as evidence of his inability to box, “-I’m a little more flexible with my time.”
“Thanks, Ethan”, I say. “I appreciate it.”
“No problem”, he says. “Of course, if you need me to cook for you, that’s another thing entirely.”
“Don’t worry”, I say, without skipping a beat. “As long as I’ve got a microwave, I’ve got that covered.”
I watch him trudge away up the hill again, his hands tucked into his pockets, maybe against the cold, maybe just to hide them. I turn towards my house with the feeling that something has just started, as though the clock has been reset again, and I’m excited to find out exactly what that might mean.
Chapter Twenty Three
Ethan
12 December 2015. Ninety days after.
Three months have passed. A quarter of a year. 2160 hours. 129,600 minutes. I’m taking the photos of Alice down for a second time. I took them down shortly after it happened, because I couldn’t bear to look at them. Then I put them back up after a month or so and now, for a second time, I’m taking them off the shelves and packing them into boxes that I’m storing away in the attic. Traces of Alice will always remain within this house, and in my head and my heart, but with Christmas around the corner, I can’t cope with having those memories prodded every time I walk into a room. I want to start the new year with a clean slate until all of the loose ends are tied up. Then, and only then, can I begin to allow Alice to filter back towards me. We no longer have the relationship we used to, and I know that. Knowing that and accepting that are two entirely different things though. What I’m doing now is both for Alice and for me. It’s so Alice can rest in peace and it’s so I can get on with my life without her. Without Alice. The words are so potent I have no idea whether or not I’ll ever get used to saying them. I say them a lot in the group, and each time I do, I feel like I’m betraying her memory, as though I myself form a part of keeping her buried.
I still blame myself for what happened. I can’t not. I wasn’t there. If I had been, she would still be. It’s a simple equation. Me, here in the house equals Alice still alive. My life would be completely different if she were still here. We’d be putting up decorations, putting presents under the tree, getting all Christmassy with each other. I miss that. I don’t think about it much, but I miss it. I miss the connection, the comfort of having someone be there with me. It’s not even the sex, although there is that too. It’s more than just the sex, it’s the bits in between the sex that I find appearing like holes in the plot of a story. My story. My life essentially.
Martin is no longer with me. It’s better that way. He’s got his own life to think about without having to worry about mine. He wanted to stay until the new year but I told him I wasn’t celebrating Christmas anyway, so it didn’t matter. The house feels kind of empty without him, but like I say, it’s better this way. I’ve got my work to do, my training, it’s kind of taking over, and then there’s Jo to think about. I gave her my number, so we could hang out. Which I guess is kind of a weird progression for me. I like her, and I wanted to help, so it seemed like the right thing to do.
Her number sits there in my phone and I think about calling it a lot. I think about her a lot actually. She’s a good distraction. A good person. I want to help her because she seems just as lonely as I am. It’s difficult to connect, I get that, because I feel it. She’s definitely got friends outside the group, like I have, but I know that it’s not the same thing.
Sometimes friends just don
’t understand, or they are just not the right people to try and get to understand. I wonder if she’d understand what I’m doing for Alice. I wonder if she’d understand what I’m doing for justice. I wonder if she’d want me to do it for her too.
I have gone through six names on my list. Six lives of six men in six million pieces. Christmas is coming, the new year, change. I can feel it deep within me. I can feel something on the horizon, something important. I know he’s close. I know, I’ll find him soon and I’ll finally be able to move on. I’ll kill this darkness inside me and I’ll finally be able to breathe again.
The phone ringing snaps me out of another moment of disconnection. I’m at the sink this time, my bruised face half shaved. The water in the sink has gone cold, and the shaving foam soft and watery. When I look at the display I see that it’s Jo.
Chapter Twenty Four
Jo
16 December 2015. Eighty days after.
Is this one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done in my life in the pursuit of normality? If what happened hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t even think twice about it. I did. I thought more than twice about it. I thought a hundred and twice about it. I took the phone out, went to dial his number, stopped, put it back in my bag and let the day roll on around it, the thought never tucking itself away completely. It sat there at the back of my mind pawing at me like a dog trying to get into a closed door. ‘Call him’, the rational part of my brain said. ‘Don’t be stupid’, the other part said. ‘You’ve just been raped.’
I wouldn’t even know him if I hadn’t have been. Life mocks us sometimes. It stands there an innocent bystander throwing coincidence after incident as though the whole thing is a big joke at our expense.
A walk in the park. I couldn’t think of anything else that could be more appropriate to the situation. It wasn’t a date, although plenty of people went for dates in the park, it was a friend calling another, to have a chat, to disconnect, to reconnect, to feel part of something again. At least that’s what I told myself. I didn’t expect him to say yes.
Ethan has come on his bike, and I wonder briefly if it’s so he can perform a quick exit if he needs to. The panic that I felt on the way, over what it was I was doing here exactly, quickly subsides when I see his familiar smile. It’s kind of like a nervous thing I think, but it’s sweet and it makes me feel welcome and immediately at ease. Apart from the day we bumped into each other at the supermarket, when Ethan was stood for about half a minute in what looked like a kind of deep meditative state over the decision whether or not to buy on orange, this is the first time outside of the context of the group session we have found ourselves together. With those pretenses stripped away, I feel anxious, and I worry about how we should greet each other.
Ethan solves that problem immediately by putting the bike strategically between us, a kind of physical barrier to our ability to get too close to each other. I have no idea whether he does it on purpose but I silently thank him for it. When the moment has passed, and we’ve begun to walk together, he positions himself so the bike is on the side that faces away from me.
I’m conscious I’m hugging my chest, my arms folded across myself, and try my best to relax.
“Thanks for coming”, I say.
“That’s ok”, Ethan says. “You sounded pretty upset on the phone. Is everything ok?”
As if Ethan doesn’t have enough of his own problems, I’ve got to load him up with mine.
“I’m sorry, Ethan”, I say. “It’s not fair for me to put all my shit onto you. You’ve got your own stuff to deal with, it’s just, I’ve got nobody else to talk to about this. My parents don’t understand, and I still haven’t told anyone else. I know we’ve got the group and Katy, and I’ve got my therapist but it’s just, I don’t know, you seem like you’re the kind of person who understands me.”
“Hey”, Ethan says. “You know I’m happy to help. I don’t mind at all. It’s good to listen to someone else’s problems for a while-”, he pauses to flash me that grin of his again, “-therapy’s good, but its pretty one sided. I’m not sure I’ll be able to help, but I’m happy to try.”
We find a bench to sit down on, and I take a seat while Ethan props his bike up against a tree to the side. His bruises are healing, the cut too. I shift along to let him sit down, ensuring there is enough space between us.
“I’m glad you called”, Ethan says. “I’m living on my own again and I was kind of going out of my mind with boredom.”
“You haven’t gone back to work?”
“I’ve been doing stuff in the evening’s you know, but it’s kind of a personal project. I work alone.”
Ethan gives the impression he doesn’t want to talk about it, so I let the subject go. He’s enigmatic, but not in a way that worries me. After what happened, I understand his desire to keep his private life exactly that.
“I have a confession I have to make”, I say instead.
“Oh?” Ethan intones.
“I looked for you on the internet. I’m sorry”, I say, lowering my head. “I just, I wanted to know. It was wrong of me and I’m so sorry. I’ve been feeling guilty about it from the moment I looked. I thought you should know. I didn’t want there to be anything between us.”
“Oh man”, Ethan says, looking away briefly. I expect him to be angry, but when he looks back to me, that smile is back on his face, “Now you know I’m famous.”
I nod, reluctant to look up to him.
“Don’t worry”, Ethan says. “It’s kind of a normal thing to do these days, I get that. I tried to get all of that stuff taken off the internet, but I guess a lot of it slipped back on. There was so much published about what happened to Alice just after she was killed, and, you know, a lot of it was bullshit and made up and didn’t do anything but sensationalize what happened. What did you learn?”
“What happened”, I say, evenly.
“Yeah”, Ethan says, and looks away. “Shit. What happened.”
There is a moment of silence between us. I want to say something, but I know anything that I do end up saying is likely to sound inappropriate. I worry that I’ve hurt him and chastise myself silently for doing so.
“She’s not coming back”, Ethan says. “You know. Every day, I think about her and then I feel guilty if during that day time passes and I realize I haven’t thought about her once, or if I have it hasn’t been enough, I worry about that. Then sometimes I’m secretly relieved when a minute passes and I get it to myself, you know, when I can truly disconnect, because thinking about her so often is just such hard work.” He pauses to clean his glasses, to regard me with eyes I hadn’t even noticed were so expressive before, to smile that nervous smile again. “Then I feel guilty for not thinking about her. It’s like I can’t win.”
“You shouldn’t feel guilty for not thinking about her”, I say. There is little else I can think of that will help.
“Yeah, I know, but I do. That’s just the way it goes. Alice would say the same as well. It’s hard losing someone. There isn’t a manual on how to cope. We don’t cover it at school. We kind of shy away from death in our culture, especially murder.”
“You just have to take everyday as it comes”, I say. “There’s no right or wrong way to cope with it.”
“Well there’s being passive and active”, Ethan says. “You know, I was passive for a long time, expecting the world around me to change, but the day I realised it was me that had to change the world and not the other way round, was the day I started to take control again. I feel better now. Being in shape helps, you know, when I’m not falling off my bike. Having goals, stuff to focus on, distractions.”
“Do you get lonely?” I ask, shifting the conversation slightly. I know what my therapist would say about why I’ve asked, and I expect Ethan is clever enough to realize too. I watch him shift position on the bench, not necessarily squirming, but definitely stalling for time before he responds.
“I just had my wife raped and murdered”, he says. “The
police still haven’t caught the man responsible, which means he’s out there somewhere ready to do it again. It’s Christmas, my family are about a thousand five hundred miles away on the East coast and hate travelling, and I live alone.”
“That was a stupid question”, I say.
Ethan laughs, which I don’t expect. “It’s alright”, he says. “I’ve had a bit of time to get used to it.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s not easy”, I say.
“Yeah. Nothing’s easy right now. It just is. I work on the achievable goals, you know, the running, the training, the little projects I have, I know I can solve them if I work hard enough at them. Loneliness?” Now he looks away for a moment. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to ever get to that point, you know. Where I feel like I’m not alone.”
I drop my head. “That doesn’t mean that you can’t”, he adds.
“It doesn’t mean that you can’t either.”
“I can’t replace Alice”, Ethan says. “Even thinking about getting close to somebody. I don’t know. It’s weird, because sometimes I feel like I need it. You know, not just sexually, but all the other shit too. Sleeping in the same bed, watching a movie, going for walks in the park.”
I realize I’m nodding. “Me too”, I say. I mean, I wanted it before. The night it happened, I was actually having a good night, I met someone and we were getting along really well. And then-.” I have to stop myself. “I’ve been single for a while. I’m one of these women that are perennially single. You know the type? Great for a night, awful for a relationship.”
“I can’t believe that’s true”, Ethan says. “Maybe you just haven’t met the right man yet. Men are fucking idiots. We do nothing to prove otherwise time and time again.”
“I think Alice must have been very lucky”, I say.
“I wish she was still around so you could tell her that. We used to argue like cats and dogs. We were perfect for each other in a way, but then, you know, we used to butt heads over a few things. Relationships are never perfect, not all the time. You might not be missing out on all that much.”