Are You in the House Alone?

by Richard Peck

  THE FURNITURE IN THIS ROOM OF OLDFIELD VILLAGE MEMORIAL HOSPITAL HAS BEEN DONATED THROUGH THE GENEROSITY OF THE LAWVER FAMILY

  Another sign flashed in my mind when I woke up Monday morning. The one on Connie’s desk in the city: “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

  Not a promising day. I hurt everywhere, in places where I’d only been numb. There were bruises up high on my legs. I didn’t have to look to know. They felt purple and yellow. But my mind was clear, smoldering.

  Steve was sitting across the room. He was slumped in a chair. I could see everything that morning without having to concentrate. I watched him before he saw I was awake. Light coming through the blinds striped his face and his rumpled hair. He must have slipped in very early when nobody was looking.

  There was time to remember things, like the lunatic moments when I’d suspected even him of . . . being the one. It seemed disloyal and very dumb in the cold light of day. There’s such a thing as being too lucid. That was probably the moment when I knew we were really meant to be friends all along, not anything else. Maybe not even close friends. I’d admired him and liked him and we’d played at being lovers, and even that seemed an innocent experiment, and long ago.

  “They’ve got some really weird visiting hours in this place,” I said.

  He struggled up in the chair, pretending he hadn’t been napping. He must have said exactly what he’d been thinking. “In books the hero rescues the girl before anybody can . . . harm her.”

  “Soap opera,” I said. “Not real. How did you know I was here?”

  “I went to Mrs. Montgomery’s after Dad and I got back from Norwalk, but it was late. The house was dark. I thought you’d gone home, and it was too late to call.”

  “Mrs. Montgomery had taken me to the hospital.”

  “I know that now. Your dad called me.” We thought our separate thoughts for a few moments. I knew Dad hadn’t told him everything, not that it was Phil.

  “I wasn’t there when you needed me,” Steve said.

  “It would have happened, sometime, someplace.” I could see that confused him. “At least you were with your dad—and out of town. Nobody can make you take the rap.” I was making perfect sense, and he was wondering if I was talking out of my head. I was, partly. My mind was floating somewhere above my body.

  “Do you feel all right?”

  “Damaged. Maybe not beyond repair. I don’t know. I think I’m still tranquilized.”

  “Can you . . . put it behind you?”

  “Forget? Pretend it didn’t happen? No. That’s what my parents are going to want me to do. I can tell. I made too many mistakes before. I’d better learn from them. Anyway, I couldn’t forget if I wanted to. I have to talk to the police and probably a lawyer.”

  His glasses threw flashes of sunlight when he pulled them off and rubbed his temples. Still he didn’t think to come over to the bed, and I didn’t expect him to. “How did the . . . attacker get in the house?”

  “I let him in. I thought it was . . . I thought it was Mrs. Montgomery coming home.”

  “No, you thought it was me, didn’t you? It was too early for Mrs. Montgomery, wasn’t it?” He looked like a little boy, and I wanted to spare him. But I settled for the truth.

  “Yes, I was hoping it was you. Let’s not blame ourselves. We’re not the culprits.”

  “Can you identify . . . him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then whatever you have to go through with the police is worth it.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What can I do? Tell me something. I feel—useless. Worse than useless. I know what my dad would do. He’d go down to the VFW and get up a posse to rid the county of perverts.”

  “My particular pervert would slip through their net. Just stay here and don’t say anything. This is going to be a long day. It’s important to me to start it with a friend.”

  “Is that what we are now—friends?”

  “Don’t sell friendship short. It’s too rare.” We didn’t say any more until the rattle of the breakfast carts echoed along the hall. “Go on to school,” I said then. “Don’t cut. They’ll only throw you out of here in a minute or so.”

  He lingered in the doorway until I wanted to scream. “Shall I . . . do you want this kept quiet?”

  “It probably couldn’t be. It probably shouldn’t be. But yes, keep it quiet if you can.”

  “Maybe nobody’ll have to know,” he said. “Except what about Alison? She’ll wonder where you are. What’ll I tell her?”

  “Alison? Oh Lord!” I said. “I’d forgotten about Alison. Go on, Steve, get moving—quick!” He gave me another bewildered look and was gone. The door just closed behind him before I began to laugh in terrible, tinny peals. I laughed until I was crying into a knot I made out of the pillow. I had hysterics all by myself and didn’t even try to stop. And they were triggered by Alison, of all people. Yes. Whatever will we tell Alison?

  * * *

  The day nurse was tight-lipped and looked me over like something in a jar at the Harvard medical school. She bristled and bustled. And I wondered if she disapproved of all patients or just rape cases. She combed my hair, washed my face around the swollen stitched part, and refused to let me have a mirror. But she gave me two breakfasts. I might have gotten a third one out of her except that the door opened, and there stood a man who could only be the police chief.

  I think I’d seen him drifting around the village in the police cruiser with the brace of red lights clamped on the roof. He was big-bellied and bullnecked and looked his part. The room was instantly heavy with dead cigar smoke. There was another policeman behind him, an apple-cheeked kid standing in the big man’s shadow. They were both armed to the teeth. At least they had guns in holster belts. And that seems overdressed for a hospital call.

  “Hold it right where you stand!” the nurse barked. She could have wrestled both of them to the floor. “Doctor say you could come in here?”

  “You can cut on out,” the chief said, not quite meeting her eye. “We got a report on this the night before last. Been hampered in our investigation long enough—too long. We got to get us some information out of this girl, if she’s the one who says—”

  “You’re not talking to this girl alone, mister,” the nurse snapped.

  “Officer to you, lady.”

  “Nurse to you, buddy!”

  “Okay, okay.” The officer hitched up his belt and tried to stake out territory in the doorway. “What are you, one of them women’s libbers? You can stay in the room with her if you want to make this your business.”

  “It’s my business to see my patients aren’t hassled. And that’s big business around this place. You talk to this girl when the doctor says so and when her parents say so. Until then—out!”

  I was almost as afraid of her as the police chief was, once we were alone again. She jerked hospital corners in my bed sheets until I felt bound like a mummy. Still she said nothing. After a quick look around the room, she marched out.

  I was lying there thinking what a poor place a hospital is for peace and quiet when the door opened very slowly and the police chief and his partner were standing there. They were looking for the nurse, and when they didn’t see her, the chief swaggered in. He snapped his fingers, and the young kid took out a note pad and a ballpoint.

  “Okay, honey, we want to get on top of this matter. A couple of questions.”

  “I don’t think . . . maybe Dr. Reynolds ought to be here.”

  “He’s making his rounds about now,” the chief said. “He’ll be along before we’re finished, most likely.”

  “My parents—”

  “Little early for visiting hours. What’s the matter, honey, don’t you want to cooperate?”

  Is there an answer to that when two hundred pounds of the law is leaning over your bed? I started a long version of the story, hoping somebody would come in pretty soon. The story took longer than I’d planned, with his questions breaking in.
“You baby-sit for this Mrs. Montgomery regular?”

  “Yes, every Saturday night.”

  “What’s a good-looking kid like you baby-sitting for Saturday nights? Haven’t you got a boyfriend?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “But what’s that got to do with anything?” The young cop was forgetting to take notes. He kept looking back and forth at the two of us.

  “Your boyfriend ever come over and keep you company when you’re baby-sitting?”

  “No.”

  “Well, go on. Tell it like it was, just in your own words. I’m all ears.”

  “I’d called St . . . my boyfriend, and his mother answered so I asked her to have him come over when he got home because—”

  “Because you were feeling kind of lonesome, right?”

  “Because I was feeling scared.”

  “Scared of what, the dark?”

  “I’d been getting phone calls, notes. I was scared because a boy was trying to scare me.”

  “You’re kind of grown up to let a thing like that worry you, aren’t you?”

  “No, I don’t think anybody is.”

  “So somebody comes to the door, and you let him in, and he pulls a gun on you, right?”

  “No. I mean I let him in, but he didn’t have a gun.”

  “A knife, maybe.”

  “No.”

  “Now wait a minute, honey. Let me get this straight in my mind. You open the door to a perfect stranger and without threatening you, he rapes you, right?”

  I could feel a thickness in my throat. It was the panic I’d felt when Phil Lawver started walking toward me. That same no-place-to-hide feeling. “No, that’s not right. He wasn’t a stranger. I let him in because I know him and he overpowered me, threw me down, and then knocked me out with the fireplace poker.”

  “Oh yeah.” He squinted at my forehead. “You got some stitches up there. How’d it happen?”

  “I just told you.”

  “Okay, honey. I think I got the drift of it now.” He rubbed the back of his big neck and took a deep breath. I barely sensed that he was playing his role for the benefit of the younger cop. “Let me run it back for you. A friend of yours—I’m not saying it’s your boyfriend—a good-looking kid like you knows plenty of boys. Anyway, this particular one drops by where you’re baby-sitting. He knows you’re there because you sit regular. And you and him talk on the phone—keep in touch.

  “It’s just the two of you together. The little kids are asleep upstairs. There’s nothing much on TV. You start horsing around a little, completely innocent. All you kids do it. Then you lead him on a little, and he gets—overheated. Tries to get you to do what you don’t want to do. Or let’s be honest about it. He gets you to do what you both want to do, but you’re a nice girl and don’t give in that easy.

  “So maybe there’s some rough stuff. The two of you tussle around a little, and you bump your head. So here you’ve got you this nasty cut on the head and how are you going to explain that to your folks? So you kind of build up a story around it. That about the way things went?”

  My head began to pound again. And somehow I managed to do the only possible right thing. I reached over to the little bulb-shaped thing with the button in it to ring for the nurse. The chief saw me just before I could touch it.

  “Hold on there, honey. Maybe I got it wrong. Maybe we’d better take it from the top.” He stood there, with a great show of patience while I tried to tell the whole thing again. The only way I could get through it was by fastening my eyes on the young cop who hadn’t said anything and looked uncomfortable. I got right to the end that time, and then the chief said, “Okay now, honey, so be it. Let’s have the name of this boy.”

  “Phil Lawver.” The young cop seemed to come alive and scrawled the name on his pad.

  The chief turned on him and roared, “That’s a helluva time to start taking notes! Scratch that!” He turned back to me and leaned over the bed. I could smell bacon on his breath. “You trying to involve the Lawver boy. Otis Lawver’s son?”

  “He raped me.”

  The chief looked very weary then, and disgusted. “Honey, you’re just asking for trouble. You know that?”

  CHAPTER

  Eleven

  There was screaming that echoed down the hospital halls, metallic echoes bouncing off all the flat, smooth, polished surfaces. My screaming. All I had to do was ring for the nurse, but I screamed instead, loud howls, finally forming words. “Get . . . them . . . out . . . of . . . here!” The screams hurt my own ears and wouldn’t stop.

  The next moment the room was busy with people. The nurse was across the room on squeaky shoes, booming in the chiefs ear at the top of her big lungs. Dr. Reynolds was right behind her. My screams slid into blubbering hiccups. The chief kept clearing his throat. “She was cool as a cucumber up to just a little bit ago. She’s a little mixed up though. Maybe it’d be better if we come on back a little later on.”

  They were gone then, and Dr. Reynolds was beside me, pretending to examine my stitches, trying to swing us both back into the doctor-patient routine. “Don’t give me another shot of Valium or anything. I’ll be all right in a minute.”

  “I won’t,” he said and stood there holding my hand while I tried to stop shuddering and sobbing.

  Down at the foot of the bed, the nurse was shaking out a blanket. She was deep purple and muttering something about a “tin-badge creep” and a few other words.

  Dr. Reynolds gave her an uncertain glance, but I whispered, “That’s my guardian angel down there.” She muttered on, but I think she heard me.

  “Gail, did you tell the police it was Phil Lawver?” Dr. Reynolds asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then I guess you won’t be bothered by the chief again.”

  “Why?”

  “You just won’t.”

  “But why?”

  “Because he’s not going to get involved with an arrest.”

  “The Lawvers are above that, aren’t they?” I think I’d known that for as long as I’d been conscious.

  “It’s not that simple.” But he wasn’t looking my way when he spoke. “You can get up and sit on the edge of the bed.” I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to take one step nearer the world.

  The rest of the morning got no better. I was down from my Valium high, and the screaming had clarified the bleakness of the day. When Mother arrived and heard what happened, she told Dr. Reynolds in very direct terms that “our own doctor wouldn’t have called in the police.” He escaped then, to his pregnant patients, probably relieved for a change of scene.

  Dad came shortly after that, with our attorney. Mrs. Montgomery was back too, standing around in the background, never taking off her coat, looking haunted.

  Finally it got through to me that she felt the whole business was her fault. When she was beside my bed, I said, “Look, it was going to happen. If not at your house, some other place.” (Hadn’t I said this all before, to Steve? How many people was I going to have to reassure?) “I should have—”

  “You shouldn’t have had to do anything, Gail,” she said. “You have a right to . . . to be safe. And I knew you were worried and jumpy. I’ve gone over it a hundred times in my mind. I should have foreseen . . . I’m sick about what happened to you, and yet I keep thinking about my own kids, growing up in this town, growing up anywhere. I’m scared for them, and I want to make this up to you, and—and I can’t do anything for anybody.”

  “But you care,” I said. “That counts.” I had to say something.

  She cried then, and it upset me because I thought of her as a very tough lady.

  Dad approached me with caution, fumbling for my hand. “We’re going to try to get some . . . satisfaction out of this, if that’s the word.” The lawyer stepped up beside him. “This is Ted Naylor. He’s talked to Dr. Reynolds, and he’s more or less in the picture already.”

  Mr. Naylor was young and wore a three-piec
e suit. I noticed he was good-looking, though my interest in the opposite sex was at a very low ebb. Permanently low, I thought. He sat down next to the bed, and Mother and Dad crouched on the edges of chairs farther off. Mrs. Montgomery didn’t know whether to stay or leave, but Mother beckoned her back from the door. I was glad she wanted her there.

  “I understand the police have given you a hard time, Gail,” Mr. Naylor said. I nodded.

  “Before we get into anything else, why don’t you tell me what you think the police chief’s attitude was.”

  It wasn’t hard to put into words. “He thought it wasn’t a . . . rape at all. He thought maybe I was . . . involved with Phil Lawver and trying to get him into trouble because I was—mad at him or feeling guilty or something.”

  “That’s the usual official posture,” Mr. Naylor said. “And if he hadn’t had the medical report, he’d have been convinced nothing happened at all.”

  “Is the medical report a point in our favor?”

  “It would be if . . .”

  “If what?”

  “Several ifs. If the assailant had forced his way in—picked a lock or broken a window.

  “If he’d been a stranger.

  “If you’d been a virgin.

  “If you hadn’t been on birth control pills, because that’s part of the medical report.

  “Even, I’m sorry to say, if you’d been screaming and hysterical and incoherent throughout the police interview. And . . .”

  “And if it hadn’t been Phil Lawver,” I said.

  “Yes, if it hadn’t been Phil Lawver. That may seem the biggest if in our minds, Gail. But the combination of the other factors would work against you anyway, even in the unlikely event that we could take this to court.”

  “What’s so damned unlikely about that, Ted?” Dad said. He was on his feet, pacing around, ready to punch a wall. Maybe ready to punch Mr. Naylor.

  “Sit down, Neal. I can’t offer you a thing you’ll want to hear. But I can give you a pretty accurate projection of the way things work. First of all, our next step should logically be to swear out a complaint against the Lawver boy. We can do this even without the cooperation of the police. But the court can deny our complaint. Moreover, if we succeeded in getting an arrest, there’s the problem of a countersuit. The Lawvers could get us for false arrest. There weren’t any witnesses, for a start.”