by Joy Fielding
— TEN —
“Okay, Bailey,” Detective Marx is saying. “Let’s go over what happened one more time.”
The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I know this is how Detective Marx works, that she believes repetition often loosens fresh memories. But I’ve already told her at least three times what happened in the exercise room this afternoon.
“It’s the last time. I promise.” Detective Marx smiles as if she knows what I’m thinking and adjusts herself at the foot of my bed. Her partner, Detective Antony Castillo, is standing at the window, staring out at the street below. It’s night, almost eight o’clock, and it’s dark. Detective Castillo is in his late thirties, of medium height and weight, with black curly hair and eyes so incongruously blue I wonder if they’re contacts. I also wonder if Castillo could be the man who raped me. He fits the general description.
“You want some fresh ice?” Claire asks, adjusting the pillow behind my head as I push myself up in bed, steadying the melting icepack I’m pressing against my chin.
“No. I’m okay.”
“Take a deep breath,” Claire instructs, and I do so, feeling the air painfully scratch at my lungs. She covers my free hand with hers, holds on through the remainder of the interview. She is still wearing her pale green nurse’s scrubs, having come right from the hospital after Finn’s phone call. Luckily for me, she found someone willing to take over the balance of her shift.
I clear my throat and start my story at the moment when David enters the gym, but Detective Marx stops me, makes me go back further. “What made you decide to exercise today?” she asks.
This is the first time she has asked this, and the question surprises me, even though I know that unexpected questions are another method she uses to help retrieve memories. I think about my answer for a few seconds, mutter something about it feeling like the right thing to do, a way of taking back control of my life. She doesn’t bother writing this down.
“Tell me about the visit from Travis,” she says, knowing from talking to Finn that he was here today. “I understand you two were arguing.”
“No.”
“According to the concierge …”
“We weren’t arguing,” I insist. “Travis was understandably upset about your coming to see him at work, that you consider him a suspect.…”
“He has no alibi for the night you were attacked,” she tells me.
“Travis didn’t rape me.” I stop, wondering why I’m defending him, why I haven’t told the police all the nasty details of our breakup, how I can be so sure it wasn’t Travis, when I’m sure of so little else.
“Okay. So Travis left, and you decided to take control of your life by going to work out,” Detective Castillo says from his position at the window. “Did David Trotter threaten you in any way?”
“No. He just accused me of being jealous. And then he said something about the women in Miami being the most beautiful in the world. Even the hookers.”
“An odd remark.” Detective Marx scribbles it down in her notebook. “You didn’t mention that before.”
“I didn’t think it was important.”
She smiles. The smile says, Let us decide what’s important. “What else did he say?”
I shake my head, as if some other salient facts might be clinging to the inside of my skull. “Nothing I haven’t already told you. Just that I was going awfully fast, that my shoelaces were coming undone.”
“So he tried to warn you,” Detective Castillo states.
Did he?
“Did he sound like the man who attacked you?” This, from Detective Marx.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Did his breath smell of mouthwash?”
“Not that I noticed.”
“But you did notice his sneakers.”
“Yes. They were the same ones as the man who attacked me.”
“Do you have any other reason to suspect David Trotter might be that man?”
Claire answers for me. “Well, he lives in the building, so he could easily have followed her. She rejected his advances.…”
“That was two years ago,” Detective Marx interjects.
“Some men can harbor a grudge a very long time.”
I wonder if Claire is thinking about our father or our brothers when she says this, but I decide this is not the right time to ask.
“He fits the general description,” Claire adds weakly. We both know that every second man in America fits my rapist’s description.
“Did he try to touch you?” Detective Castillo asks.
“Only after I fell,” I admit.
“So, it’s pretty much the sneakers.”
I can feel Detective Castillo’s disappointment. Claire squeezes my hand. She feels it, too.
“We’ll pay Mr. Trotter a visit after we look at the surveillance tape.”
“But you don’t think it’s him,” I say.
“We’ll definitely check him out.” Detective Marx remains seated, reading over her notes, as if contemplating more questions.
“That’s enough for one night.” Claire lets go of my hand and slides off her side of the bed. “You’ll let us know where things stand after you talk to David Trotter?”
“Of course. And if we have any more questions …”
“You can ask them in the morning,” Claire says, now firmly in control. She leads the two detectives down the hall to the door. “Thanks for stopping by,” I hear her say. It was Claire who insisted that I report my suspicions to the police, Claire who got me washed up and into a fresh pair of pajamas, Claire who dried my hair into something vaguely presentable while we waited all day for the detectives to arrive, Claire who tended to my bruises, Claire who brought me icepacks for my ankle and chin. She wanted me to go to the hospital, but I refused.
I climb carefully out of bed, mindful not to put too much weight on my sore ankle, and switch off the overhead light, pick up my binoculars, and hobble toward the window. I raise the binoculars, direct them at the building behind mine, focusing on the apartment three floors from the top, four windows from the left. The lights in the bedroom are on, although the apartment appears empty.
“Our guy up to anything interesting?” Claire asks, coming up behind me to peer over my shoulder.
I shake my head, hand her the binoculars.
“Doesn’t look as if anyone’s home.” She waits a few seconds, then drops them back into the palm of my hand. “I should call Jade. Let her know where I am. Just in case she cares.”
“She cares,” I tell her.
“I’ll use the phone in the kitchen,” she offers. “Anything I can make you for dinner?”
“I’m not very hungry.”
“I’ll open a can of soup. How does that sound?”
“Sounds good.” I return the binoculars to my eyes, hear Claire talking quietly on the phone in the other room. I wonder who else she’s been speaking to, if she’s been in touch with Gene or the others. I ask myself if Heath could be right, that Claire is only interested in my money, that that’s the reason she’s really here, to soften me up, to get me to loosen the purse strings.
I try to imagine how Heath will manage once the money in his bank account runs out. Gene has already succeeded in tying up our father’s estate in court. It could be years before things are finally resolved. Then what would Heath do? He might actually have to get a job. Unless he lands a commercial or two. Unless he sells that screenplay he’s been working on for as long as I can remember. I wonder where he is tonight, if he’s somewhere with Travis, getting stoned. I picture my married lover having a late dinner with his wife and reading his daughters their favorite bedtime story. I wonder if I’ll ever be part of a real family again.
And then there he is.
The man in the apartment behind mine, three floors from the top, four windows from the left.
I watch him as he enters his bedroom, his cell phone pressed against his ear.
He’s laughing, clearly enjoying his conversation. Something about the slouch of his shoulders and the casual thrust of his hips tells me he’s talking to a woman. He is wearing a pair of tight jeans and a white shirt, open to the waist. He approaches the window and presses his forehead to the glass, talking all the while. He rubs his bare chest as he talks, and twists his head from side to side, stretching out his neck. Then he pulls his shoulders together behind him, stretching out the muscles in his back and revealing more of his bare chest. Again one hand moves lazily to caress his skin, sliding from one exposed nipple to the other. “Oh, God,” I moan, feeling a wave of nausea rise in my throat. Will I ever be able to look at a man’s body again and experience anything other than revulsion?
And yet, as repulsed as I am, I am powerless to look away.
“What’s the matter?” Claire asks from the doorway. “Are you in pain?”
Wordlessly, I tear the binoculars from my face, extend them back toward her.
“My, my,” she says, as she looks through them. “Seems like someone’s quite smitten with himself. I think we should call him Narcissus.”
I recall that Narcissus was a Greek god who fell in love with his own reflection in a pool of water and drowned while trying to get a closer look. “What’s he doing now?”
“He’s getting undressed. Off goes the shirt. And now the pants. And now … my, my.” She tosses the binoculars onto my bed. “Okay. Enough of that. Soup’ll be ready in a few minutes.”
“Did you speak to Jade?”
“I did. She said she’ll try to stop by sometime tomorrow after school.”
“I like Jade,” I tell her as we sit at the dining room table eating our soup minutes later. Chicken with rice from a can. But it tastes good and goes down surprisingly easy. “I like her a lot.”
Claire smiles. “She likes you, too.”
“What kind of trouble was she in? You mentioned something about Juvenile Hall.…”
Claire’s smile turns downward, and I am suddenly aware of her resemblance to Gene. “It was stupid. She got into a fight with some girl at school, smacked her over the head with her binder. She was expelled for two weeks, and as soon as she got back, bless her heart, she did it again. This time, she was charged with assault and got sent to Juvenile Hall. Apparently, some people have to learn the hard way.”
“But she’s been okay since then?”
“Okay is a relative concept where Jade is concerned, but we’re hoping for the best.”
“I guess that’s all any of us can hope for.”
“I guess.” She finishes the last of her soup.
“It hasn’t been easy for you,” I venture. “Being a single mom and everything.”
She shrugs off my concern. “I’m no different from millions of other women. It’s not easy for any single parent.”
“Your ex never tries to see his daughter?” I think of my lover’s devotion to his children, find it hard to believe a father could be so callous, so indifferent. I know Claire would dispute me on that.
“Kind of runs in the family,” Claire says, as if privy to my thoughts. “They do say we go with what’s familiar.”
“How long were you married?” I ask, trying to avoid a direct discussion of our father.
“Technically, four years. Accurately, thirteen months.”
I can feel the look of confusion that settles on my face.
“I was pregnant when we got married, as I believe Jade already mentioned. Eliot was more than a little rough around the edges. Not exactly a parent’s dream.”
“I don’t think I ever met him.”
“You were pretty young, and the different branches of the family weren’t exactly close. Dad hated him from the start, said Eliot was bad news—he was only after my inheritance. Dad threatened to cut me off entirely if I didn’t stop seeing him. But hey, it’s not like I saw a whole lot of the man anyway, so I didn’t take his threats too seriously, which wasn’t very smart. Always take a man’s threats seriously.” She takes a deep breath. “Then I got pregnant, which was even stupider, and Eliot and I eloped to Las Vegas. Got married by an Elvis impersonator.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I have the pictures to prove it. Thirteen months later, Eliot took off for good.”
“But you didn’t get divorced for four years?”
“Eliot made things as difficult as he could for as long as he could until our father finally agreed to pay him off. End of Eliot. End of story.”
“Jade’s never tried to contact him?”
“Once. When she was thirteen. She did some kind of Internet search, found out where he was living, tried to reach out. He never bothered to respond.” She looks away. Neither one of us says anything for several seconds. “Can I ask you something and you won’t take offense?”
I brace myself for questions about our father. “Sure. Go ahead.”
She takes another breath, turns her gaze toward me. “How long have you been sleeping with your boss?”
The spoon I’m holding slips through my fingers, bouncing off the glass dining room table before continuing to bounce along the marble floor. “Oh, God. What makes you think I’m sleeping with Sean Holden?”
“I saw the way you looked at him.”
“I was just grateful to see him, that’s all.”
“Oh.”
“Honestly.”
“Okay.”
“I swear.”
“My mistake.”
“Sean Holden and I are not lovers.”
“I’m sorry. Forget I said anything.”
“About three months,” I hear myself say.
“What?”
“It’s been three months.”
“You’ve been sleeping with Sean Holden for three months?” Claire repeats.
The room is spinning. I’m dizzy. I can’t breathe.
Claire is on her feet immediately, coming around to my side of the table. “It’s okay, Bailey. Take deep breaths.”
“I can’t believe I told you that.”
“It’s okay.”
“I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“I’m glad you did. There’s only so much you can keep bottled up inside.”
“Please. Promise me you won’t tell anyone.”
“Of course I won’t.”
“Promise me you won’t tell Gene.”
“I promise.”
“And Jade.”
A slight pause. “I think the cat’s already out of the bag on that one.”
“What do you mean? You told her?”
“She told me. ‘So, it looks like Auntie Bailey’s been banging her boss,’ I believe were her exact words.”
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
“You aren’t going to be sick. Keep taking deep breaths.”
“What she must think of me.”
“She thinks you’re the coolest thing on earth. An affair with the boss was the cherry on the ice cream sundae. And speaking of ice cream, how about a nice big bowl?”
“No, I couldn’t eat anything. Strawberry?”
“You got it.”
Claire leaves my side to go to the kitchen. I push out of my chair, hop to the window, gaze out at the lights of the city. Out there are all sorts of normal people, I think. People who aren’t having affairs with their married bosses, whose siblings aren’t suing them, who don’t fly off the backs of treadmills, who don’t think every man they see is a rapist.
“Strawberry ice cream it is.” Claire deposits two bowls of ice cream on the glass table. “Lots of strawberries. Lots of calories. Just what the doctor ordered. Come on, sit down. Don’t let it melt.”
I return to the table, plop down gracelessly in my high-backed chair. I grab my spoon and shovel a giant heap of ice cream into my mouth. “You think I’m a horrible person.”
“I don’t think that at all.”
“You think I deserved what happened to me.”
“I certainly do not. Do you? Bailey,” she
says, leaning forward, both elbows on the table. “Do you think you deserved what happened to you?”
The phone rings.
“I’ll get it.” Claire is already half out of her seat. “Hello,” she says. “No, this is her sister. Yes, hello, Detective.… Yes, okay.… So what happens now? Okay. Yes. I’ll tell her. Thank you. Goodbye.” She returns to the room. “That was Detective Marx,” she begins, then stops. “Bailey, what’s happening?”
I realize I’ve been holding my breath since she stood up. The room is spinning, becoming a shifting blur, buzzing around my head like a fly. I’m about to pass out. Claire runs around the table and catches me before I fall.
“Breathe,” she’s telling me over and over again.
The room slowly ceases to spin. I am able to sit on my own without falling over.
“How long have these attacks been going on?” Claire asks, pulling up the chair beside me, her arms outstretched in case I start to sway.
“Three years, off and on,” I tell her, thinking of my mother, my father, my rape.
“That’s way too long. You need to see someone, Bailey. You need professional help. I’m going to phone that therapist I told you about and make you an appointment.”
I nod, although I can’t imagine it will do any good. Can a therapist undo what has already been done? Can a therapist give me back my mother, my father, my sense of self? “What did Detective Marx have to say?”
“That they haven’t been able to locate David Trotter. He’s not in his apartment, and he didn’t go back to work after the incident in the gym. They’re going to keep trying till he turns up.” She stares at my barely touched bowl of ice cream. “Anyway, let’s not worry about that now. Let’s just get you into bed.” She helps me to my feet, throwing my right arm across her shoulders, and half-walks, half-carries me to my room. She gets me settled under the covers, then goes to the bathroom, begins rifling through the drawers under the sink. “Where’s the medication the doctor prescribed for you?”
“I think Heath might have taken it,” I say, as a distant memory of Heath swallowing a mouthful of my pills surfaces.
“Lovely. Okay, I think I might have a few Valiums floating around the bottom of my purse. Stay here,” she commands. “Don’t faint. Breathe.” She’s back almost before I’ve had a chance to absorb her words, the palm of her hand open before me, two tiny white pills resting in the middle of her lifeline.