by Richard Peck
Mrs. Montgomery burst out, “But I—”
“You were there later, Mrs. Montgomery. I mean actual on-the-spot witnesses.” She crumpled back in her chair.
“Now then, let’s proceed on the long shot that we managed to get an arrest. The judge may opt against prosecution entirely. In most cases, typical cases, he’ll let the rape charge go if the rapist agrees to plead guilty to a lesser charge: assault, disorderly conduct—any one of a dozen completely irrelevant charges. This is called plea-bargaining, and it’s arranged entirely between the court authority and the defense lawyer. I—we have absolutely no control over it.
“However if we did, by some miracle, bring this to trial, you’d get a public grilling, Gail, a good deal more savage than the chief of police is capable of dealing out. You’d be questioned under oath. If you admitted to having had any sexual relationship with any boy at any previous time, the proceedings are over, and we’ve lost.
“But that key question might come many hours after a lot of other questions, all designed to implicate you as a willing partner. To portray you as provocative, immoral, even delinquent. The defending lawyer doesn’t even have to accuse you of anything directly. He can imply.”
“We can’t have that,” Mother murmured.
“But what about Phil?” I said.
“Phil,” Mr. Naylor said heavily, “would be portrayed as a star athlete, a handsome, gifted, promising boy from one of the best families, whose entire future is jeopardized by a scheming, possibly unbalanced young girl out to ruin him because of some obscure grudge of her own.”
“Ted, I can’t take any more of this!” Dad shouted. “What good—”
“What good am I as your lawyer? Not much, I guess, if you think I can revolutionize the entire legal setup—at the expense of your daughter. I’ll go with this as far as you want me to go, as far as Gail wants. But I wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t tell you what we’re up against.”
“But Phil’s crazy,” I said. “Who knows what he’ll do next? Those letters just show—”
“What letters?” Mr. Naylor said.
“Two of them. Even the guidance counselor said one of them was psychotic. They weren’t signed, but Phil sent them. He admitted it.”
“Where are they?”
I had to stop and think. “Alison. She has one. I mean she had it.”
“Oh no,” Mother said
“Who’s Alison?”
“She’s a friend—a girl I know. But that’s not the point. She and Phil Lawver—”
“Say no more. What about the other letter?” Mr. Naylor said.
“Mr. Sampson. He’s the Dean of Boys at school. He took it.”
“You’d gone with this problem to him—before?”
“Yes. But even at the time I knew he didn’t take it seriously. Probably didn’t even keep the note. And if he found out . . . well, if he had an incriminating letter that could be traced to Phil, he’d destroy it even if he hasn’t already.”
“Don’t sell him short, Gail,” Mr. Naylor said. “He might be able—”
“He got where he is by being appointed by the Lawvers.”
“This is why people take the law into their own hands,” Dad said in a quavering voice.
“Don’t be one of those people, Neal,” Mr. Naylor said. “The situation’s grim enough. In any case, a couple of anonymous letters wouldn’t turn the tide.” He stood up then, and I thought he was finished with us. But he said to Mother and Dad, “Do you think I might have a few minutes’ conversation with Gail alone? No secret deals. Believe me, we aren’t in a position to make any. But I’d like to talk to her quietly if you’ll permit it.”
I’ll never forget the defeated looks on their faces—Mrs. Montgomery’s too. I asked Mother to hand me my robe. It was time to get out of that bed.
When they went out into the hall, I sat on the edge of the bed, picking at the fuzz on my robe to keep my hands busy. Now I know why people smoke, I thought. Still, there was less tension in the room.
“I’m more a bearer of bad news than a lawyer, in your dad’s opinion.
“And I don’t have any more legal options to explore with you, Gail. There are some other considerations, though. Do you feel up to them?”
“I don’t know. I’m getting past the stunned stage, beginning to worry about other people. That’s why you asked my parents to leave, isn’t it?”
“Yes. After all, you’re the injured party, however the law would look upon you. Even if you decided against telling me to try for an arrest, that doesn’t wrap things up. You’re going to have to be very strong. You’re going to have to live in a town where Phil Lawver is walking around free. You’re going to have to put up with the attitudes of other people—including the people who love you. And however positive your outlook, you’re going to face a lot of changes, in other people and yourself. You only think now you’re getting past the stunned stage.”
“The worst is yet to come?”
“Believe it or not, yes. I said you’re going to have to be strong. That involves confronting the past before you look ahead.”
“What does that mean?”
“Knowing that no matter what anybody else thinks, you did nothing to deserve this. There are plenty of people who think like the police chief, that there is no such thing as rape.
“I don’t have you on the witness stand, so don’t answer out loud what I’m about to ask you. Answer to yourself. Apart from going to the counselor at school, why didn’t you tell other people you were being threatened?”
“I—”
“No, don’t tell me. Tell yourself.”
It was like running a film in reverse. The events skipped back in a blur, jumbling up. Alison saying, “It never happened, Gail.” My mother saying, “What has that Steve Pastorini done to you?” Connie saying, “Men can’t afford to fail. It’s like bred into them.” It seemed that everybody had turned blind eyes and deaf ears to me.
But that wasn’t quite right. I’d sealed myself off from them too. Why? Embarrassment? Panic? That stupid, babyish feeling left over from childhood that, no matter what, nothing this bad could really be happening to me?
“It’s too much to sort out at once,” I said to Mr. Naylor.
“I know,” he said. “But you’ve begun. Don’t try to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders from now on. And don’t pretend everything’s fine when it isn’t.
“Yell bloody murder if anybody does or says anything you don’t like. There are many ways of being assaulted apart from what you’ve already been through—and that includes the police chief as well as Phil.
“On the other hand, you can’t go around making accusations you can’t prove. You’ll be walking a tightrope, no matter what. Am I overburdening you with advice?”
“No, I don’t believe so. I’ve got to start thinking.”
“Good. That’s enough for now. I’m going to talk to your mother and father. I’ll tell them that you’re going to have to make most of your own decisions. Maybe they’ll understand, maybe not. We’ll see. You’ll see.”
“Did you know my dad’s out of work?”
“Yes. But I didn’t know you did. Why bring that up?”
“Because it makes everything harder for him, I suppose. He probably thinks he was so bogged down by his own problems that he couldn’t see . . . anything else. Will you do something for me? When you talk to him, tell him I know about his losing his job. That even though I was worried about it, I couldn’t do anything to help him. There’s a kind of parallel there.”
Mr. Naylor looked at me a moment, gave me an appraising look. “I think you’re going to manage to get through this, Gail.” Then very abruptly he said, “Do I try for an arrest or not? I’ll do what you say. And I’ll do my best to convince your family that they should abide by your decision.”
“I don’t want to be raped again—in a courtroom. I don’t want to go through that without a hope of getting satisfaction.”
“Satis
faction was your father’s word. Think about what you want first of all. Just because I painted a dark picture of what would happen, I don’t want to sway you too much. I’m not exactly Don Quixote, but I’m willing to tilt with a windmill or two if so directed by my client.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I’ll fight a lost cause if you say so.”
“No. Because if we lose, the Lawvers win.”
“Then that’s about it. But remember, they win anyway.”
“There’s just one more thing you can tell me,” I said. “Why does the law protect the rapist instead of the victim?”
“Because the law is wrong.”
CHAPTER
Twelve
“Planning to put bars on that window?” I asked Dad. While I thrashed around in my own bed, he spent hours taking out the screens and putting in the storm windows. He’d given up going in to New York every day, and I guess winterizing the house was an ideal way for him to patrol the place. He worked in slow motion at the top of a ladder, wearing a boyish navy-surplus knit cap on the back of his head. “And listen, Dad, soldiers with mild concussion get up in about two hours and go back to the war. It happens on M*A*S*H all the time. The doctor wouldn’t have let me come home if he thought I had to be bedfast.”
“Don’t cite M*A*S*H to me,” he said, peering in the window. “I was in the real Korean War. Anyway, it’s only been a few days, and besides—”
“Besides, you want me where you can keep an eye on me.”
“I guess so,” he said, pretending to keep busy. “And what’s the hurry? Those stitches won’t be coming out for another ten days, at the earliest. You can’t go back to—go any place looking like that.” He closed the conversation by hammering in a storm window, and then lingered a little longer, looking at me, making a funny face, before his head disappeared below the sill.
None of us had mentioned my going back to school yet. It seemed like a cold July instead of November. The stitches did look like railroad tracks running into my eyebrow. They turned my stomach whenever I looked in the mirror, which was too often. Mother limited her side of conversations strictly to concussion and scarless stitches. Rape wasn’t mentioned in the sanctuary of my room. Neither was the future. But every night I heard the mutter of talk downstairs between Mother and Dad, far into the night.
“If by some chance I did get pregnant because of this,” I’d said to Mother in a low moment, “I’d have an abortion.”
“Don’t talk like that,” she said.
“I would. I’d be a very peculiar mother because I’m never going to have anything to do with men for the rest of my life.”
“Don’t . . .”
“You said to me once that if I had everything now, what would I have to look forward to. Well, I’ve had IT!”
“Don’t, don’t talk like that,” she said, sounding strangled.
The florist delivered a huge foil-covered pot of yellow chrysanthemums on the day after I came home. They were like sunshine, overpowering Mrs. Montgomery’s drooping dahlias that came home from the hospital with me.
Flowers—from the best florist in town. They were like a signal sent from the outside world. Mother looked worried. But the doorbell rang again just as she set them down, and she dashed out again. She was at her best when she could keep busy, when she was darting from task to task with her skirt snapping around her legs.
An envelope peeked out of the satin bow around the flower pot. I ripped it open, wondering. Inside, a florist’s card with a signature: PHIL LAWVER
My head whirled while down below Mother admitted a visitor. I was deaf to the conversation as they climbed the stairs. When the door opened, I slipped the card under the sheet and wished for Valium.
At that moment nothing much would have astounded me. But I could hardly believe it when Madam Malevich strode into the room. Mother followed, popeyed. This was as close as she’d ever come to the living legend. She could have kept anybody else out.
“So, you live! The rumors conflict on that point, so Malevich must know for herself!” She stood in the middle of the room, filling it up. An enormous handbag dangled from one large elbow. She was wearing bright purple wool drapings, and her hair was newly blackened.
I was sure I never wanted to see anybody for the rest of my life. But Madam Malevich was the exception to all rules.
“You are asking yourself,” she boomed at me, “what Malevich does outside the walls of the school one hour before closing time. The answer is that she comes and she goes as she pleases. No, no, I do not play the truant officer, only the truant. But the rumors grow like a great whirlwind, and idle tittle-tattle tires me.”
“Oh dear,” Mother murmured, “how does word get around so quickly?”
“Ah, young minds wiz too little to occupy their cranial capacities. And a school is a small village within another small village. And the young who are never told to be quiet therefore never are.
“Moreover, there are doctors in this town who talk of hospital business at their dinner tables, and these doctors also have children.”
“Valerie Cathcart,” I said.
“And if not she, someone else,” Madam Malevich said, dismissing a whole cloud of Valerie Cathcarts. “You are looking well though wounded,” she observed, skewering me with a look.
“What are they saying?” Mother asked faintly.
“Saying? Saying?” Lowered into the only chair in my room, Madam Malevich glanced up at Mother. “They say that Gail was set upon by a gang of dope fiends and thrashed to within an inch of her life. That she lay on the operating table between this world and the next for countless hours. That she will not walk again. That only a machine keeps her alive. That housebreakers intent upon robbing a woman named Montgomery overpowered Gail as she protected this woman’s young ones. That Gail and the boy who is her special friend—that Pastorini boy—I don’t know him, for he’s not my student—that she and he were involved in an automobile mishap and that he alone escaped uninjured. The Pastorini boy is silent as a clam, and this only fans the winds of speculation. They speak too of rape—”
“Can I get you something, Mrs. Malevich?” Mother broke in quickly.
“I can make no claim to the title Mrs., but a nice cup of tea wiz lemon would be welcome,” she said calmly. Then Mother realized she’d made just the wrong move and that she’d have to leave the two of us alone. She wavered as long as she could, but Malevich waited her out.
Madam Malevich was the last person in my life I’d have thought of confiding in. And maybe if it hadn’t been for that florist’s card lying hidden in my bed, I’d have stalled her. Though I don’t know how.
“I am a busy person,” she said unexpectedly. “No. That is not the correct term. I am a busybody. It is true. My friends are gone—who knows where? I have little in common wiz the people in this town. So I make the business of others my own. But also, I care for my students. If I did not, their laughter would anger me. And the world does not need one more bitter old woman. I come here now, for I am concerned about you. Not everyone could have got past your mother who in her kindness seeks to shield you. She would do better to throw open the doors of her house and invite in those who indulge in morbid gossip that puts you at death’s door. But I do not mean to criticize her. Young girls are critical enough of their mothers.
“In any case, you will not grip the public imagination long. Their attention span is too short. Poof!” she said, waving two fingers in the air. “They soon forget.”
“I was raped,” I said, looking directly into her black eyes.
“Ah, so I feared. There is always that nugget of truth in all talk. I was ravished myself many times, in those primitive films I made. You saw one yourself. The old, old stories of the maiden who resists man’s desire and her own, only to be liberated by what she cannot forestall. Harmless myths, I thought when I was young and dazed with dreaming. But not harmless when the myth fixes itself into a sick mind. Who did this to you?”
I
never hesitated: “Phil Lawver.”
“You can’t go around making accusations you can’t prove,” the lawyer had said. But being in the same room with Madam Malevich was very different from being in the same room with Mr. Naylor.
“So,” she said. “It is not entirely unexpected.” Anybody else would at least have gasped. “I knew the Lawvers before you were born. They have always lived too much . . . as if they were the only people on the earth. It does not astonish me that in time they produce a child who cannot live in a world wiz others.”
“But he will,” I said. “He won’t be punished for this.”
“Before you are as old as I,” she replied, nearly sighing, “you will cease looking for justice at every turn.”
Mother was suddenly at the door, holding a tea tray. “You told?” she said to me, horrified.
“Yes, she told.” Madam Malevich lifted herself out of the chair. “Unspoken truths only fester. But I repeat nothing. My words cannot do or undo. Who listens? I will go now, Mrs. Osburne. This is not, after all, the occasion for a tea party.”
She shuffled across the room, looking older, I thought, than when she’d come. But she hesitated at the door, and she wasn’t a woman who hesitated. “I say my words are useless,” she said, looking back at me. “But though you are young, you know already you cannot run from this thing. I will send to you someone who cannot run from it either. That much I can do, and no more.” Then she was gone, waving a hand behind her round back that told Mother not to see her out.
When we heard the front door click behind her, Mother said, “She’s a little eccentric, isn’t she?”
“Not very,” I said.
“Did she send the flowers?”