Guilt by Association

by Susan R. Sloan

  Natalie threw back her head and roared.

  “I’ll want an autographed copy of that one,” she said.

  “I’d like you to meet Nancy, if you have time.”

  “I’ll make time,” Natalie asserted with more than a hint of sarcasm. “That is, if I can tear myself away from the Willie Smith rape trial.”

  “Oh … that.” Karen stiffened imperceptibly, but good psychiatrists were trained to see imperceptibles, and Natalie Shaffer was very good.

  “Not planning to watch, eh?” she said.

  “No,” came the short reply. Then a shrug. “He’ll be acquitted.”

  “Why do you say that? Do you think he’s innocent?”

  “I think he’s guilty,” Karen replied. “But he’ll be acquitted anyway. The jury will say it was her fault because it was three o’clock in the morning and she went with him.”

  “Come on,” Natalie argued. “This is the 1990s and rapists are getting convicted every day.”

  “Acquaintance-rapists?”

  “All kinds, although admittedly acquaintance rape is a lot

  harder to prove.”

  “He’ll be acquitted,” repeated Karen.

  * * *

  “Nancy’s coming out in December,” Karen told Ted when he came home that evening.

  Her husband grinned. “The new book?”

  “She liked my idea about water.”

  “So do I.”

  “Would you like a glass of wine?” she asked.

  “Sure,” he replied, heading toward the study.

  Since coming to California, the Donigers had been making a conscientious effort to switch from Scotch to wine. On evenings when Amy was in her room doing her homework, Ted would drink a glass with the national news, and Karen would sip at hers as she fixed dinner.

  It was just past seven and the newscast was in full swing. As usual, Karen was not paying attention. She inserted a corkscrew into a chilled bottle of chardonnay.

  “… surprise move, an unexpected hat has been thrown into the Presidential race,” the anchor was saying.

  With a practiced jerk, Karen pulled the cork free.

  “Robert Drayton Willmont, the charismatic senator from California, made his announcement at a press conference held in Washington late this afternoon.”

  She half-filled two glasses.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” another voice said. “My wife Elizabeth and my son Adam have set their hearts on being the next residents of sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue.”

  The voice paused for a titter of appreciative laughter. Karen took Ted’s glass and started down the hallway that ran from the kitchen to the study.

  “Since I have always made every effort to give these two very special people in my life everything they ask for, I am today declaring my candidacy for President of the United States.”

  She reached the door of the study and, for some reason, an icy shiver slid down her spine.

  “It should come as no surprise to anyone that this country is in very serious trouble,” the candidate continued. “To be more specific, we are standing on the brink of moral, intellectual, and economic bankruptcy. I believe that America deserves a leader who will first recognize that, second, admit to it, and third, do something about it.”

  It was something about the voice, something familiar. She was sure she had heard it before, and the memory pushing its way into her consciousness was not a pleasant one.

  “I saw a bumper sticker the other day,” the voice went on. “It read: ‘New World Order—Same Old Lies. ‘ Now if that’s what you want for four more years, then turn off your television sets and put aside your newspapers for the next twelve months, because I’m not interested in anyone’s megalomani-acal new world order at the cost of those who are suffering in America now.”

  She took three steps into the study and stopped. The television set was behind her, so that the voice seemed to come through her rather than toward her.

  “I say you’ve been lied to enough. I say you’ve been deceived enough. I say you have the right to know what’s going on. After all, it’s your country. And it’s in trouble. But I think we can keep it viable. Yes, even after twelve long years of trickle-down leadership, even after decades of neglect, I’m not ready to give up on America yet. But I can’t do it without you. So I’m going to take advantage of every opportunity the media will give me to tell you the very unpleasant but necessary truth about what has been done to you and what is still being done to you, and exactly what we have to do to fix it.”

  “That would be different,” drawled Ted.

  As though the whole world were now running in slow motion, Karen turned to face the face on the television screen. The once-dark hair was almost buried in silver, and the crevices of middle age etched his face. After twenty-nine years, she might not have remembered the set of the jaw or the shape of the mouth or the angle of the nose or even the little black mole on his right cheek—but she would never ever forget those eyes.

  The wineglass shattered against the hardwood floor.

  It was ten o’clock the following evening when Karen crossed the street and pressed the Shaffers’ doorbell. It was the dream that drove her there—the dream about being chased through the fog that she hadn’t had in years, but which had come back last night.

  She had stayed indoors all day, drinking cup after cup of tea laced with brandy, not even bothering to dress until just before Amy came home from school. Dinner was a scramble of leftovers.

  It was the unbelievability of it that she couldn’t seem to grasp, that after all these years she should have to come across him again—and the unfairness that he had not only escaped retribution of any kind but had become so successful.

  “I’m sorry to bother you so late,” she apologized when Natalie answered the door in her bathrobe, “but you said—if I ever needed to talk…”

  “Come on inside,” the psychiatrist replied instantly, leading Karen to the back of the house and the room they had turned into a cozy office.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Karen whispered. “I thought it was all over and done with long ago, part of the past—and now it’s all back, just like before, and I don’t know what to do.”

  Natalie closed the door behind them. “Sit down,” she invited and watched Karen squirrel into a deep leather chair. “Now, what don’t you know what to do about?”

  Shadowed eyes peered out of the chair. “I want to kill him,” Karen said.

  “Kill who?”

  “I didn’t want to tell Ted. I thought he might kill him and I couldn’t let him do that. I couldn’t let him ruin his life. But my life is already ruined—he ruined it, so what difference would it make if I did it… if I killed him?”

  “Ruined what?” Natalie asked. “Kill who?”

  Karen suddenly giggled, a high, shrill, scary sound.

  “Here he is, after all this time, and he’s running for President, can you believe that? He’s running for President! I could have gone the rest of my life never having to see him again, and what happens? I end up in California, and he’s running for President.” The giggle turned to a groan and she began to shiver. When she spoke again, her words stumbled over chattering teeth. “He doesn’t deserve to be President. He doesn’t even deserve to be alive.”

  Natalie hustled over to a tray on a sideboard and poured a glass of brandy.

  “Here,” the psychiatrist ordered. “Drink this down.” She had to hold the glass herself to keep it from spilling.

  “I never thought I’d see him again,” Karen went on. “I thought I was done with it all. The nightmares had gone away. Ted and I were starting to put our marriage together. Sometimes, days went by and I didn’t even think about it. And then there he was, big as life, coming right through the television screen, talking about truth, for God’s sake—truth!”

  With a gasp, Natalie sank into the opposite chair. “Are you talking about Robert Willmont?” she asked in disbelief. “You want to kill Robert
Wilmont?”

  “Why not?” Karen flared. “He almost killed me.”

  The words hung in the air for a moment, until Natalie was able to absorb them.

  “Why don’t you tell me about it,” she suggested calmly, although she felt anything but calm.

  “I never knew who he was—that is, his whole name,” Karen began. “No one had a last name back then. So he was just Bob when I met him. Bob from Harvard Law School.”

  Natalie knew the California senator had gone to Harvard Law School.

  “Do you remember,” Karen asked, “when I told you I’d had an accident and because of it I could never have any children of my own?”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, he was the accident.”

  The psychiatrist listened in silence to the story that Karen had to tell, and Karen told it all, beginning with the party at Jill Hartman’s, describing the assault in Central Park, detailing her months in the hospital and the biased police investigation, moving on to her parents and their incredible reaction, and ending with Peter Bauer.

  She told it as she had never been allowed to tell it, not just chronicling the bare facts, but clothing them in her deepest-buried feelings, exposing her fears, revealing her humiliation and degradation. Even though she was recounting something that had taken place more than half her life ago, she could recall every detail as vividly as though it had happened yesterday.

  From a quarter of a century of professional practice, Natalie Shaffer had learned the art of detached listening, a method of filtering information without betraying anything other than objective interest. But the technique failed her now. Robert Drayton Willmont, the man she had voted for in two senatorial contests, the man she intended to support vigorously in the upcoming presidential campaign, the man she looked upon as the one real hope for the country, was turning into a monster before her very eyes.

  “He told the police that you initiated the sex and then refused to leave the park with him?” she asked when the story was finished.

  “That’s what the investigator said.”

  “And you’re positive this is the same man? You couldn’t be mistaken? After all, it was such a long time ago.”

  “There are some things you never forget,” Karen said stonily. “Maybe I could have mistaken the face, or even the voice, but as long as I live, I’ll never forget those eyes.”

  Natalie got up from her chair and went to pour a brandy for herself. “I think I need one of these now.”

  “I didn’t mean to burden you,” Karen apologized, “but I just needed to talk to someone. You know, someone who would maybe understand my side of it.”

  “What’s not to understand?” Natalie shrugged. “It’s the old guilt-by-association ploy. You were there—ergo, what happened must have been your fault.”

  “In all this time,” Karen confessed, “you’re the first person I’ve ever told.”

  “Besides Ted, of course.”

  Karen shook her head. “I couldn’t tell him. I was too afraid he wouldn’t want me if he knew, that he’d run away, like Peter.”

  Natalie sighed. She desperately wanted Karen to be mistaken, to find some loophole in her story that would show that the man responsible for the terrible things she had described was someone other than the charismatic senator from California who had come forward to lead the nation back from the brink of disaster. But the psychiatrist had been trained to detect even the hint of duplicity, and Karen’s years-old recollections were far too clear, far too detailed to leave much room for doubt.

  “In December,” she mused aloud, “voters in Louisiana will go to the polls to choose between a crook and a racist. If what you say is true, next year this country may be asked to choose between an incompetent and a rapist. I’m not sure I know what’s to become of us.”

  Karen’s eyes widened. “You called him a rapist,” she whispered.

  “Of course I did,” Natalie replied. “What else would I call him?”

  Karen began to laugh and cry at the same time. “Are you saying you don’t think it was my fault?”

  “Not from what you’ve told me,” Natalie declared, and then turned a thoughtful glance on her visitor. “Why? Do you think it was your fault?”

  “Everyone seemed to think it was,” sobbed Karen. “They said I went with him and so I must have been looking for trouble. I must have teased him and led him on. They said he was a fine upstanding citizen, so why would he have done such an awful thing unless I had provoked him. The police, my parents—they told me what was past was past and to forget about it and get on with my life. But I guess I never did.”

  “Of course not,” said Natalie. “You’re still struggling with what happened to you because no one ever let you deal with it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, when a person is assaulted, as you were, it isn’t just the body that needs to heal. The mind also has to heal. The doctors mended your body, but no one understood how important it was for you to mend your soul as well.”

  “I never thought of it that way,” Karen marveled.

  “You were never allowed to talk about it, you were never allowed to confront your attacker, you were never allowed to work through your fear and anger. Instead, you were made to feel guilt and shame, because that’s what the people around you were feeling.”

  Tears ran down Karen’s cheeks. “I always felt exactly that way,” she whispered, “even though I never really thought I did anything wrong.”

  “What was that?” Natalie asked.

  “I said I felt that way even though I didn’t think I did anything wrong.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that last part.”

  “I said I didn’t think I did anything wrong.”

  “Once more,” the psychiatrist urged.

  Karen took a deep breath. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” she almost shouted.

  Natalie sat back in her chair. “You’ve just taken the first step toward healing.”

  “But how can I heal when he’s still out there, walking around as free as the wind? When there are still people—my own family—who think that what he did was my fault?”

  “As long as you know it wasn’t,” the psychiatrist said, “does it really matter what anyone else thinks?”

  “It matters,” Karen said bitterly. “Because it isn’t fair. My whole life, ever since that night, I’ve felt so unworthy, so dirty. All my parents wanted to do was sweep it under the rug—sweep me under the rug. They couldn’t even call it what it was, you know—they always referred to it as my ‘accident.’ “

  “You can blame them, if you need to,” the psychiatrist replied. “But the truth is, they probably didn’t know how to deal with it any more than you did.”

  “Maybe not,” Karen conceded. “But that’s no excuse for them not believing me, is it—my own parents? All these years, I doubted myself because of them. I had no confidence in my own judgment. I could hardly bear to look at myself in the mirror. I was never able to have a decent relationship with a man. I believed the most important thing was that no one ever find out, that as long as no one knew, everything would be all right. But all the time I thought I was coping, I wasn’t coping at all. Everything is still churning around inside of me, like a volcano waiting to erupt.”

  “Let it,” Natalie advised.

  “You don’t mean I really should go out and kill him, do you?”

  “Is that your only solution?”

  “I can’t deny the idea has real appeal,” Karen declared.

  “I don’t doubt that,” Natalie replied reasonably. “But, on the other hand, what will killing him accomplish? Will it give you back what he took from you? Will it justify all your years of torment? Will it restore your self-respect?”

  “Well, I won’t really know until after I do it, will I?”

  Natalie stared at her visitor for a minute before she began to chuckle. “Well, at least you still have your sense of humor.”

  Karen sh
rugged. “I feel like I have to do something.”

  “I agree,” Natalie assured her. “But now that capital punishment is back on the books, killing Robert Willmont will only succeed in ending what’s left of your life, too, and where’s the justice in that?”

  “Maybe I don’t care,” Karen said. “Can you honestly tell me he deserves to live?”

  “Perhaps not, but you do,” the psychiatrist observed. “Despite the years of pain and anguish and betrayal you’ve suffered, look what you managed to create. You have a marriage with real potential, you’ve raised three beautiful girls, you’re producing a series of wonderful books. Now, I’m certainly not saying that you wouldn’t have had a happy life if you’d never met up with Robert Willmont. I’m only saying that, on balance, you’ve done very well for yourself, and I’d think long and hard before I decided to throw all that away on a momentary act of revenge.”

  “Tell me the truth,” Karen urged. “Do you think the man who did those things to me deserves to be in the White House?”

  There was a long pause.

  “I’d like to think that people can change,” Natalie said slowly. “That a man who raped you and beat you half to death at twenty-three could have learned how to build rather than destroy at fifty-three. But to be honest with you, even though I sometimes think the White House has become little better than a whorehouse, no, I guess I have to say I don’t think Robert Willmont belongs in it.”

  Karen smiled an almost luminous smile. “I can’t believe how good it feels to finally tell someone, to say all the words right out loud, for God and the whole world to hear.”

  “Don’t stop there,” Natalie suggested.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, go home. Talk to Ted. It’s time, and if I’m any judge of character, you may be in for a very pleasant surprise.”

  The idea of telling her husband dredged up all the painful memories of Peter in Karen’s mind. But she knew Natalie was right. Ted was a good man—understanding, compassionate, supportive, and they had lived with the lie between them long enough.

  “In spite of myself, I guess I’m a lot stronger now than I was then,” she said, knowing it was true. “If Ted turns away from me—like Peter did—it’ll hurt, but I can handle it.”