“So what do you think?” Jerry Virgoli was looking at her, demanding an answer.
“I’m sorry,” Kate said. “I’ve got to go.”
She stumbled across the lawn, shying away from people who stepped in her path and hating herself for doing it. She thought she might cry and how stupid was that? This was all so stupid. It was over, a thing of the past, just a few minutes of a life, so why did she have to keep thinking about it?
She felt again the slam against the table, could hear the repeated thud of his body slamming against hers and smell the blood, feel the blood between her legs. She didn’t want to think about that anymore. She pressed a hand against her temple, pushing, as if she could push all those thoughts away.
Where in the hell was Ian? At that moment the crowd blocking her view suddenly shifted and she caught sight of her husband. He was at the opposite corner of the lawn talking to a willowy-looking woman with bobbed blond hair, and she could see the woman nodding enthusiastically at whatever Ian said.
As she got closer, she heard him say, “The support you’ve generated for the center is truly amazing.”
“Oh, it’s a collaborative effort and of course it means so much to us in Drama.”
Kate was close enough to see that the other woman was lightly tanned, her skin carrying the creamy glow of youth and vibrant health. She moved her arms when she spoke, an intricately woven silver bracelet riding up one thin wrist as she gestured, disappearing into the folds of a lacy white blouse. Long, tanned legs shifted beneath a slim blue cotton skirt.
Ian was smiling, and then suddenly he saw Kate. “Oh, hi!”
“Hi.” Kate lowered the hand pushing against her temple and moved to Ian’s side. She waited for his arm to slide around her waist or his hand to reach for hers, but it didn’t happen.
“This is Kate Corbin. Kate, this is Bethany Forrester. She’s a professor in the drama department.”
Bethany Forrester smiled. She had blue eyes that matched her skirt. “It’s such an honor to meet you,” she said, extending a hand that Kate numbly shook. “I just love your work. You were one of the first artists whose work really inspired me.”
Kate felt suddenly old. Old and fat. And too pale next to this woman. “Thank you,” she said. Yeah, thanks for making me feel my age.
“Ian speaks so highly of your work.”
“Does he?”
“Oh, yes, and you know that painting he’s got in his office? The landscape of the field? It’s just beautiful. Ian’s always telling people it’s your work.”
“We’re each other’s biggest fans,” Kate said with a slight smile. She felt Ian’s eyes on her, but didn’t look at him. It was an old joke between them. Something they’d heard a couple say once on TV, a smarmy thing that they’d adopted years ago because it was so absurd.
“That’s so great,” Bethany Forrester said, not picking up on the irony. “I think that sort of creative, collaborative relationship is very rare.”
“You’re not married?” Kate asked, hand creeping up to press at her temple.
Bethany laughed. “No. Not attached at all.” She lifted a thin-stemmed wineglass to her mouth and the silver bracelet vanished up her arm again. A demure swallow and she lowered the glass, patting her full lips with a cocktail napkin. “I’m not averse to it, just haven’t found the right person.”
“Someone to collaborate with?”
The younger woman nodded. “Exactly. I mean, it’s not as if there aren’t plenty of people out there—”
“Of course.” Kate imagined that Bethany Forrester had probably had her pick of plenty of men. A string of broken hearts from here to Poughkeepsie.
“—but finding the right person just takes so much work.”
Kate nodded as if she understood, but the truth was that she’d been so young when she met Ian that it was hard to remember what it had been like to be single. Being part of a couple for so long meant that her fantasy wasn’t of meeting someone new, but of being alone.
“I’ve devoted more time to my career. Between performing and teaching, I don’t really have much time,” Bethany said, adding to Ian, “And of course there’s fund-raising.”
“And the academic community appreciates that.” Ian’s had a dopey grin on his face.
Bethany laughed. “You mean the money.”
“Not just that. I’ve heard all about your contributions to the drama department.”
Trying not to roll her eyes, Kate stepped closer to Ian and took his arm. “We really need to get home to Grace.”
“But she’s spending—” Ian stopped short, and Kate knew he’d remembered. It was a code they’d invented when Grace was a baby, a way of politely signaling to one another that they wanted to leave whatever social event was boring them. It had been a long time since either of them had used it.
“Yeah, okay.” Ian said. He hid his annoyance from Bethany, but Kate could feel it. Twenty minutes later, they’d made the rounds of thank you and good-bye and were in the car heading toward home. Ian drove fast, with sharp, jerky turns that broadcast his mood as clearly as if he’d yelled at Kate. She hugged the passenger seat and pressed her aching head against the cool glass of the window.
“You didn’t have to do that,” he said finally.
“What?”
“Act so superior to Bethany Forrester.”
“I thought I was nice to her.”
“Bullshit. You didn’t like her. Why? Because she liked you?”
“She likes you, Ian, not me.”
He laughed, but it was a hollow sound. “If you were so determined not to enjoy yourself, why did you bother to come?”
“I thought you wanted me there.”
“I want you there if you want to be there, not if you’re going to have a miserable time.”
Kate shifted her head to stare at him. The movement intensified the thudding, and she had to blink it back. Did he really think she willed herself to be unhappy? “I did want to be there,” she said. “I wasn’t feeling bad, not at first. I ran into Jerry Virgoli.”
Ian made an exasperated sound. “That’s enough to give anyone a miserable night. What did he want?”
“Something about having an exhibit. He said he’d told you about it.”
“He’s part owner of a rinky-dink art gallery in town and acts as if he’s curator at the Met. It’s very small and not at all prestigious despite his delusions of grandeur. I didn’t think you’d be interested.”
Kate felt her stomach unknot a little. So it wasn’t that he’d hidden it from her because he thought she couldn’t handle the pressure.
“Everyone seemed to be talking about Lily Slocum.”
“I heard that, too. I guess it’s natural, people are always curious about things like that. Is that what upset you?” He glanced at her and reached out a hand to cup hers and give it a reassuring squeeze. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s horrible.”
“Yes it is. Poor girl. Everyone’s worried that the publicity is going to be bad for the campus. You don’t want parents to think they can’t send their kids here.”
He turned onto their street and she was struck, as always, by how quiet and dark it was at night, so unlike the city. “Wickfield’s a safe community,” he said. “What happened to Lily Slocum is awful, but that’s one homicide in what, a hundred years? It’s not like there’s a pattern here.”
It was unusually quiet in the house. Grace was sleeping over at a friend’s. A year ago that would have meant uncharacteristic freedom with sex. They could do it in the living room if they wanted to, in front of the fireplace like a bad romance.
In the way that he seemed to have of reading her thoughts, Ian tugged at Kate’s hand, pulling her into an embrace. “I was checking you out at the party,” he murmured in her ear, stroking her hair. “You’re looking pretty hot, woman.”
He kissed her neck, a small butterfly kiss that she shivered under but didn’t pull away from. His lips moved upward to her jawline,
then her mouth.
She let her lips part and took him in, willing herself to taste only him. They moved together into the room, though she didn’t know until he pushed her back that they’d reached the sofa. She landed among its cushions and he came with her, his hands unbuttoning her blouse, his lips coming back to rest on hers and then parting again to plant rapid kisses along her collarbone, and then dipping lower to the triangle of flesh between her breasts.
When it changed she didn’t know, just that it became not Ian above her, but the stranger, and that the couch was the hard edge of her studio table. She didn’t stop him, she couldn’t find the words, but something must have changed, something must have signaled her distaste to him, and he pulled back.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” But she couldn’t meet his eyes.
“I’m not him. I’m not the guy who attacked you.”
“I know that.”
But when he moved to kiss her again, she couldn’t help her involuntary flinch. Ian reeled back and clambered off the sofa, rubbing at his face.
“Wait.” Kate sat up, reached for him, but he pulled away. “I’m sorry.”
He stood with his back to her, breathing hard, and she watched him press a hand against his head in a gesture reminiscent of her own.
“I didn’t mean—” she began, but he cut her off.
“It’s okay.” He sighed, a long, shaky sound, and then he turned to her. “I know, Kate, it’s okay.” He sank down on the sofa next to her and reached for her hand. “Maybe it’s time to get some help.”
She pulled her hand away. “I’ve already done therapy.”
“Maybe another therapist—somebody different, somebody you’d like better.”
“No! It’s not like it didn’t help, Ian, it just doesn’t change overnight.”
“Maybe medication then—”
“I’m not going back on the pills! They make me dopey. I couldn’t paint, I could barely stay awake. I’m not going through that again!”
“Well you need to do something!” he shouted. Fists clenched, face red, Ian looked capable of violence, and for one awful moment Kate thought he was going to hit her. Her hands flew up to block his fists, and Ian’s face drained of color.
“Oh, God.” He backed away, hands falling loose at his sides. “I wouldn’t hurt you. You know that, right? I’d never hurt you.”
“I know, I know.” She stood up and reached for him, to show him that measure of trust, to reassure the man that she’d held and loved for so many years that it was all going to be okay. Only she couldn’t tell him that because she didn’t know if that was the truth anymore.
They were cautious around each other getting ready for bed, like strangers in their courtesy, deferring to each other near the closet and in the bathroom. She caught him watching her several times as she hung up her clothes and brushed her teeth, but whatever he was thinking remained locked inside him.
They lay next to each other in the vast bed, the sheet a weight on this hot night, but she pulled it up anyway, covering the lower half of her body. She didn’t want to think anymore about sex and the lack thereof in their marriage.
They read instead, clutching their books like life-lines, until it was past midnight, when by unspoken agreement they set their books aside and turned off the lights. Ian fell asleep quickly as he always did. Stress never seemed to follow him into sleep and Kate envied that.
Tired but overwhelmed by what he’d said, she lay awake thinking about what she could do. She’d done therapy, as much of it as she could bear—the stupid concerned look on the woman’s face and the special, muted tone adopted for talking to people in crisis. She couldn’t stand it.
Maybe it was her Yankee forebearers, but she had a deep and instinctive dislike of discussing her personal problems. She’d always poured those feelings into her art, and now she didn’t have that; all that had been taken away in twenty minutes. Twenty horrible, time-dragging minutes, but still just twenty of them. It was such a blip and yet it had taken over everything.
So she’d sat through hours of therapy divided into fifty-minute chunks. It was all so strange, to sit there and pour her heart out to a stranger. She had no idea if Dr. Bennett was married or in a relationship or had children or grandchildren. She knew she’d graduated from Boston University because of the diploma hanging on the wall. Otherwise, the office was curiously devoid of personal effects. And despite the cozy setup of couch and armchairs and warm rug, strangely sterile.
For fifty minutes every Tuesday, she sat and talked to Dr. Bennett, who listened and took notes on a legal pad and occasionally asked how she felt about whatever it was she’d just said.
What had she learned? That her pain was normal, that the only way past grief was through it, that it would take time for the nervousness to go away. That medication could help the agoraphobia.
So she’d dutifully started a course of the recommended medication because at that point she was desperate about painting again and anything that promised to restore her art was a positive.
Only it didn’t work, not entirely. It had helped somewhat with the anxiety. She hadn’t flinched at doors slamming or jumped when Ian or Grace came into a room suddenly. But it made her tired and it didn’t help her paint, and once she’d had an embarrassing crying jag in the coffee shop closest to their apartment because she’d forced herself to make the trip only to discover that they were out of her favorite blend. That was the day she decided to go off the medication—it wasn’t worth it.
Not long after that, she stopped seeing the therapist, too. She’d gathered all the information she could on how to survive life after assault, and now it was just a matter of time. Only, Ian didn’t understand that. He thought therapy and medication were magic bullets that would fix his wife.
Not that she blamed him for that. She’d certainly hoped for that result, too, but it didn’t work that way. It was like smoking pot in college, how you could get a nice little buzz going but the paranoia came later to bite you in the ass. Everything came at a cost. What she resented was how he didn’t care that the cost was her sense of self, as long as she wasn’t freaking out. What she resented was how he expected it all to be gone by now because on his timetable eight months was long enough to deal with having been sexually assaulted. And then he acted as if she somehow wanted to be agoraphobic.
At some point in her worrying, she drifted off.
She was in her studio again, hearing the clang of the battered metal door closing behind her, moving toward her work and registering too slowly that she’d left the blinds open and now they were closed. She thinks, that’s odd, and then suddenly he’s there, a silhouette in black stepping from the shadows, the silver glint of his knife. She screams and he shoves a dirty rag in her mouth to stifle her. She chokes on the taste of linseed oil as he slams her back against the table, his hands tearing at her clothes.
Brutal, efficient, he strips her bare like ripping leaves from a tree. His voice crawls over her skin, a vicious whisper, promises of what he’ll do with the knife if she looks at him. She struggles anyway and he hits her, a gloved fist against her face. Stars explode in her eyes, she swallows blood. He pries her legs apart and forces his way in, ripping against the dryness. The fast, painful thud of his body slamming against hers. Thud, thud, thud, and she can smell blood, feel its trickle down her legs. She turns her head and sees Lily Slocum spread out on the chaise surrounded by flowers. Lily’s eyes pop open and she smiles.
Kate woke in a sweat with the sheet knotted around her leg. Ian stirred and mumbled something, but he didn’t wake up. She sat up and untangled the sheet, hands trembling and heart pounding in time with her head.
She needed Advil, but there was none in the bathroom cabinet. She padded down the stairs to the kitchen to get a glass of milk and some pain relievers. Glancing out the kitchen window, she was surprised to see that the light was on in Terrence Simnic’s basement. The clock on her stove said that it was almost three a.m.
Weird.
Standing at the window and sipping her milk, she watched for any sign of odd Mr. Simnic, but other than a moment when she thought she saw a dark shadow, there was no movement of any kind.
Kate noticed that all the windows in the house were covered. Had it always been that way? She had a sudden vision of hulking Mr. Simnic hunched over a workbench in the basement, his large hands cradling the head of an empty-eyed porcelain doll.
A sudden chime startled Kate. Milk splashed from her glass onto the counter as the sound came again. She steadied her hands and took a deep breath. It was only the clock in the living room.
During the day she was barely aware of the noise, but at night it seemed very loud. Everything seemed heightened at night. When she looked back at Terrence Simnic’s house, the lights suddenly went out.
Chapter Eleven
The reverb from the sound system followed Elizabeth Hirsh out of the party and onto the back porch of the old house on Hampton. A couple deep in an embrace stood in a corner, pressing hard against the wooden railing.
The slap of the screen door behind her startled the guy, who pulled back, detaching with a sound like a suction cup from the mouth of the girl. He frowned at Elizabeth, but the girl merely glanced around at her, giggling, and then tugging at his hand, led him down the cracked concrete steps and into the darkness of the garden below. The sound of her giggling faded away.
Elizabeth leaned against the railing and drank in air free of the smell of cigarettes, beer, and sweat. It was still warm outside, but cooler than the crowded house. Her head ached. She didn’t know why she came to these things. It wasn’t like she could have any conversation, not with the mammoth speakers someone always set up, and it wasn’t a lot of fun for people like her who didn’t smoke and could nurse the same beer for an hour or more.
She picked at the chipping paint on the rail and thought about what she could be doing instead. It wasn’t as if she had a boyfriend, not anymore. A year ago she might have enjoyed snuggling up with Joel on one of the saggy couches, content to watch him play beer pong with his buddies.
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