Someone Is Watching

by Joy Fielding

  As if my thoughts have suddenly appeared in bright lights across my forehead, he softens. “I’m sorry,” he says, hand over his heart. “That was insensitive. Even for me.” He offers his best “forgive me” little half-smile. “I don’t mean to dump on you. I know things have been kind of messed up for you lately.…”

  Heath has never been good at dealing with any kind of unpleasantness. I understand that he has to keep what happened to me at arm’s length, minimize its trauma, or he will fall apart.

  “It’s just that I’ve been dealing with this sort of crap all my life,” he continues, returning to his comfortable oblivion as my legs grow weak and I sink down on the edge of the bed to keep from crumpling to the floor. “I’m either too handsome or not handsome enough,” he is saying. “Either too tall or too short, too thin or too muscular. Whatever it is, I’m never just right. I’m never good enough.”

  I know he’s referring to more than his erstwhile career, that he is no doubt referencing the look of disappointment he claimed he always saw on our father’s face, but I don’t have the strength to go into that now. “It’s the nature of the business,” I offer instead, my heart aching for my brother despite his profound self-involvement. “You knew that going in.”

  “It’s not that I’m sitting around on my ass. I’m going on auditions; I’m putting myself out there.”

  “What about your writing?”

  “What about it?”

  “That screenplay you’ve been working on—”

  “Still working on it,” he says, cutting me off. “What are you getting at, Bailey? Are you saying that I should give up my dreams and settle for some stupid nine-to-five job? Is that where this is leading?”

  “No, of course not.” I say this despite what I am really thinking, that regardless of what you hear on TV shows like American Idol, where the tearful winner urges all those watching from their living rooms to hang on to their dreams, no matter what—forgetting about the thousands of other contestants, the millions of other desperate wannabes whose dreams of stardom will never come true—that sometimes it’s just better to choose another dream, that living an actual life is better than just dreaming about a life that will never be. “It’s just that there’s no money coming in, and all our assets have been frozen.…”

  “All I need is a couple of national spots and I won’t have to rely on Dad’s money, no matter what the courts eventually decide. I’ll even have enough money to take care of you for a change, the way you’ve always taken care of me. Please don’t be mad at me, Bailey. I can’t stand it when you’re mad at me. I love you more than anything in the world. You’re all I’ve got.”

  “I love you, too.” I fight the impulse to take him in my arms. “I was just thinking it might be smarter in the long run to settle this thing.…”

  “Are you kidding me? Is she kidding me?” he asks the surrounding walls.

  “Heath, listen to me. It’s not like there isn’t plenty of money to go around. We’re talking about millions of dollars. Tens of millions …”

  “I’m not giving those vultures ten cents.”

  I lower my head. This is not what I wanted to talk to Heath about, although I no longer have any idea what I wanted to talk to him about. I almost smile. Heath has that power.

  “It’s just that if Dad wanted to divide his estate evenly,” my brother continues, “he would have done just that.”

  “I know.” In truth, I know no such thing. The fact is that there was nothing our father relished more than a good fight. Claire would probably say that this lawsuit is what he’d been hoping for all along.

  “And we have to respect Dad’s wishes,” Heath is saying. “We can’t just take the easy way out. In spite of everything we’ve been going through lately.”

  Everything we’ve been going through, I repeat silently. What I say out loud is, “You’re sure you don’t know Paul Giller?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  I have no choice but to believe him. “Promise me you won’t do anything like this again? That you’ll respect the court order and stay away from here?”

  “I’ll be a good boy from now on. I swear.”

  “You don’t have to swear. Just promise.”

  He gives me one of his most genuine smiles, one he once confided he spent hours, if not days, perfecting in front of his mirror. If I were a producer looking to cast the part of the hapless heroine’s sensitive, deeply misunderstood older brother, he’d be perfect for the role. The smile deepens. “I promise,” he says.

  — TWENTY —

  “I’m really upset with my brother right now.”

  I am perched on the tan sofa in Elizabeth Gordon’s inner office, and she is sitting in the navy chair across from me, in virtually the same positions we occupied a week ago.

  “What is it that’s upsetting you?”

  I tell her about the incident at my parents’ house.

  “What upsets you more—the fact that your brother disobeyed a court order or that he was there at all?” she probes.

  “That he disobeyed a court order,” I answer quickly. Too quickly, I think, understanding she is probably thinking the same thing. “It’s more than that,” I continue, although I have no idea what I’m about to add.

  “I can see you’re conflicted,” Elizabeth says. “Try to put whatever you’re feeling into words.”

  How many times have I overheard young parents encouraging frustrated three-year-olds to “use their words”? Has my rape rendered me so infantile? “It’s not just that he was in the house. It’s that there was something so sordid about the whole thing.” I tell her about the state of the various rooms and the hangers-on my brother surrounds himself with. I don’t tell her my gut says that Heath is hiding something from me.

  “Were you frightened?”

  “No. Why would I be frightened?”

  “A bedroom full of stoned, naked men,” she remarks. “I can certainly understand why that might be intimidating to you.” She tilts her head, her frizzy brown hair falling across her right shoulder, revealing a delicate diamond stud in her left ear.

  “You’re wearing different earrings,” I say.

  Her left hand reaches absently for her earlobe. “What earrings did I have on last time?”

  “Small gold hoops.”

  “You’re very observant.” She leans forward. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re experiencing.”

  “That’s just the problem.”

  “What is?”

  “I’m not sure what I’m experiencing anymore.”

  “How so?”

  “I just feel so strange all the time.”

  “How so?” she asks again. “Are we talking panic attacks?”

  “Sometimes. But it’s more than that.”

  “How is this different? You can trust me, Bailey,” she says after a pause. “I understand you’ve had it very rough lately—”

  I interrupt. “Rough doesn’t begin to sum it up.”

  “What does?”

  “It feels as if I can’t breathe. It feels as if I’m losing my mind.”

  “This is good, Bailey.”

  “How is this good? What possible good is this doing?”

  “Listen to me.” She leans forward in her chair. “It’s hard for people to understand how this process works. But by explaining things to me, you’re also explaining them to yourself.” She lays her pen across the notepad in her lap. “Picture yourself on a skating rink. You’re worried about falling through because the ice is so thin. Therapy allows the ice to get thicker so you can skate better. With confidence. Right now you’re not skating on very thick ice.” She pauses to let the image set. “I understand that these things are very upsetting for you to think about, let alone talk about, but it will be helpful to you if you can just put it out there.…”

  I glance down at the beige shag carpet at my feet. “I don’t know if I can. I don’t know.”

  “It’s better to share whatever’s going on ins
ide you right now—to put those feelings into words—than to try to keep those feelings all bottled up, waiting to explode. Now I know you don’t have a lot of trust in people right now. But the important thing is, can you trust me? Can you trust me—and yourself—enough to put these feelings into words? If you can, I promise it will help relieve your intense anxiety.”

  “How can you promise that?”

  “Because I can help you, Bailey, if you’ll let me.”

  “I just don’t know if I’m ready to do this.”

  “I’m here, Bailey. Whenever you’re ready.”

  “You can’t imagine what’s been going on with me.”

  “Well, then, tell me precisely what’s been going on.”

  “I don’t sleep. I have such awful dreams. But then I wake up, and I’m even more anxious.”

  “Tell me about your dreams. Describe them in as much detail as you can.”

  I recount my recurring nightmares: of sharks swimming beneath my feet in placid waters; of faceless men waiting for me on the shore; of a woman watching me through a pair of binoculars from the balcony of her apartment, the woman’s face my own.

  “These are anxiety dreams,” Elizabeth tells me. “You feel helpless and confused and frightened, maybe even a little guilty.”

  “Guilty?”

  “I sense you feel some responsibility for what happened to you.”

  “I know I shouldn’t.…”

  “Forget about ‘should’ and ‘shouldn’t.’ The fact is, you do. Just what do you think you could have done differently, Bailey?”

  “I could have been more observant, more aware.”

  “I could have been shorter,” she says with a shrug.

  “It’s not a valid comparison. You have no control over how tall you are.”

  “And it’s important to feel in control?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  She scribbles the word control across the middle of the piece of paper on her lap before she catches me looking and gently shifts the pad out of my line of vision. “I think everyone likes to feel in control.”

  “Except there is no such thing, is there? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? That I had no more control over the situation than you had over your height?”

  “I’m not trying to tell you anything. You tell me something,” she continues. “Would having been more observant that night, more aware, have changed anything?”

  “I might have heard him earlier. I might have seen him. I might have stopped him.”

  “Really?” she says. “Realistically. You think you could have stopped him?”

  I see myself crouching in the dark inside a clump of flowering shrubs, staring through my binoculars at the building across the way. I hear the sound of twigs snapping behind me and experience the slight shift in the air. Once again, I taste the gloved hand that covers my mouth and blocks my screams and feel the flurry of fists at my stomach and face, overpowering my resistance and bringing me to the brink of unconsciousness. Could I have done anything differently? “I don’t know.”

  “I do,” she says. “Nothing you could have done would have stopped him.”

  “I could have screamed.”

  “You think anyone would have heard you?”

  “I don’t know.” It was late. Most people would have been in bed or glued to their TVs. Their windows would have been closed to the outside heat, their air conditioners on full-blast to keep out the humidity. Even if anyone had heard me, chances are my screams would have been discounted or ignored. Even had people glanced out their windows, the odds are they wouldn’t have seen anything. I had been well hidden.

  I suddenly remembered the feeling I’d had of being watched by someone in one of the overlooking apartments when I’d gone to scout things out that morning. I’d dismissed the feeling as professional paranoia, but maybe it hadn’t been. Maybe someone had been watching me. Maybe even the man who raped me.

  “Ultimately what you might have seen or done doesn’t really matter,” Elizabeth is saying, unaware of my inner musings, “because the only thing that does matter is what you did see and what did happen. And that’s more than enough to deal with without trying to deal with what might have been. It’s the might haves that are keeping you stuck, Bailey, keeping you from dealing with your real issues.”

  “Which are?”

  “You tell me.”

  “What if I don’t know?”

  “Then, that’s what we’ll have to figure out,” Elizabeth tells me. “That’s what we’ll have to work on together.”

  I nod, half-expecting her to tell me that our hour is up, that this will be a good starting-off point for our next session. Instead, a glance at my watch tells me the session has barely begun.

  “Perhaps you have more to tell me,” she says.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Aside from the incident with your brother, what else has been happening?”

  Can I do this? Can I really tell her everything? Can I trust her with crazy? I take a deep breath, then release it slowly, the air escaping my body like air from a balloon. I push the words from my mouth. “I think I might be losing my mind.”

  “In what way?”

  “I see him everywhere.”

  “The man who raped you?”

  “Yes.” I shake my head. “I mean, weird, huh? I didn’t see him, and yet I see him everywhere. Every man between the ages of twenty and forty, white or black or anything in between, as long as he’s of medium height and build, I look at him, and I think, it could be him.”

  “Doesn’t sound crazy to me at all,” Elizabeth says. “You’re right. It could be him.”

  “The other day I thought I saw him on a street corner in South Beach,” I continue, refusing to be comforted so easily.

  “Go on.”

  “I think I hear his voice whispering in my ear, telling me to tell him I love him. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, convinced the phone is ringing, but when I answer it, there’s just a dial tone. When I check the phone’s history, I see that yes, somebody did call, and I think it must be the man who raped me. Except maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s just my brother.…”

  “Why would your brother call you in the middle of the night and then hang up?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Surely the police have ways of checking.…”

  “The police already think I’m crazy.”

  “Why is that?”

  I recount the earlier episode with David Trotter. “And then there’s this guy …,” I begin.

  “What guy?”

  What the hell? I think again. I’ve gone this far; I might as well go the rest of the way. “His name is Paul Giller. He lives in one of the apartment buildings behind mine.”

  “Is he a friend?”

  “No,” I say loudly. Too loudly. Elizabeth jots something on her piece of foolscap. “I don’t know him at all.”

  “But you know his name.”

  “Yes. The police told me.”

  “Is he a suspect?”

  “They don’t think so.”

  “But you do.”

  I tell her about Paul Giller, alias Narcissus, how I started watching him, why I continue to do so, how I can’t seem to stop. “I should probably be ashamed to be telling you this.”

  “There’s no reason to be ashamed. You’re just telling me what’s on your mind.”

  “But I’ve been watching him having sex.…”

  “In front of his window, with all the lights on, and his curtains open,” she reminds me.

  “I don’t think he has any curtains,” I correct. “I think they might have just moved in.”

  “They?”

  I tell her about Elena, and about following her to her place of work, of the information I gathered from her during the course of my impromptu manicure. “Crazy, right?”

  “It doesn’t sound crazy to me at all,” Elizabeth counters. “Risky, maybe. But not crazy. You were taking control of the
situation in the best way you know how. You were doing what you’ve been trained to do.”

  I bury my hands between my knees to keep from clapping. She doesn’t think I’m crazy, a voice inside me is shouting. She thinks I’m taking control.

  “And one night you actually caught this man staring back at you through binoculars?”

  “I thought I did. But when the police went to check him out, he claimed he doesn’t even own a pair of binoculars. He offered to let them search his apartment.”

  “And did they?”

  “No.”

  Elizabeth gives her shoulders an exaggerated shrug, as if to say, it figures. “So he could have been lying. Does Paul Giller have an alibi for the night of your attack?”

  “The police claim they can’t ask him that without sufficient cause. You really don’t think I’m crazy?”

  “Well, let’s recap what we know so far, shall we? You discover a man who fits the general description of the man who raped you living in the apartment building directly behind yours; your sister and your niece also see him. Correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “So we know he isn’t a figment of your imagination. We know he’s real. And that he likes to parade around naked in front of his window, for all the world to see.”

  “Well, he is twenty-four floors up.…”

  “Okay. So, for half the world to see,” she amends, with a smile. “And your sister and your niece have witnessed this behavior as well.”

  “Yes.”

  “So we know that’s real. And that he likes to have sex in front of the window.”

  “Well, I’m the only one who’s actually seen him having sex,” I tell her, my voice growing suddenly weak.

  “Are you saying it might not have happened?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think you only imagined it?”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “No,” I repeat, my voice stronger with the repetition.

  “Good. Neither do I.”

  “And you don’t think I’m paranoid? Or psychotic?”

  “You’re hardly psychotic. And I’d say you have good reason to be a little paranoid. You were beaten and raped. Your world has been turned upside down. You have every right to feel the way you do.”