My Dark Vanessa

by Kate Elizabeth Russell

  Like a cop, I bang on his front door rather than knock because I want to scare him, and I half expect him not to answer, to stand unmoving in the middle of his living room and hold his breath until I give up and leave. It’s possible he doesn’t want to see me ever again; maybe that was his goal when he had me sent away, to thrust me out of his life along with all the life-ruining repercussions I embody.

  But no—he opens the door right away, like he was waiting on the other side. He throws it open wide, reveals himself, looking older and younger at the same time, more gray in his beard, longer hair. His arms are tan. He wears a T-shirt and shorts, boat shoes with no socks, pale legs covered in dark hair.

  “My god,” he says. “Look at you.”

  He brings me inside, his hand on my back. The scent of his house, something I hadn’t thought to miss, fills my head, and I hold up my hands to ward it off. He asks if I want anything to drink, gestures to the living room and tells me to sit down. He opens the refrigerator, pulls out two bottles of beer. It’s barely past noon.

  “Happy birthday,” he says as he hands me a bottle.

  I don’t take it. “I know what you did,” I say, trying to hold on to the anger, but the words come out as squeaks. I’m a mouse already on the verge of tears. He touches his hand to my face to soothe me. I jerk away, and as I do I think of the line from Lolita, when Humbert finds Lo after so many years: “I’ll die if you touch me.”

  “You had them kick me out,” I say.

  I expect his face to go pale and slack, the look of someone caught, but he barely flinches. He just blinks a few times, like he’s trying to find an entry point into my anger. Once he gets there, he smiles.

  “You’re upset,” he says.

  “I’m pissed.”

  “Ok.”

  “You’re the one who got me kicked out. You threw me away.”

  “I didn’t throw you away,” he says gently.

  “But you got me kicked out.”

  “We did that together.” He smiles with a furrowed brow, like he’s confused, like I’m being ridiculous. “Don’t you remember?”

  He tries to jog my memory, says that I told him I’d take care of everything, that he can still see the determined look on my face, resolved to take the fall. “I couldn’t have stopped you even if I’d wanted to,” he says.

  “I don’t remember saying that.”

  “Well, regardless, you did. I remember it perfectly.” He takes a drink of beer, wipes his mouth on his wrist, and adds, “You were very brave.”

  I try to remember the last conversation he and I had before I left—in his backyard, night falling around us. How panicked I was, begging him to tell me it would be ok, that I hadn’t ruined everything. He seemed horrified by me; that’s what I remember most about that conversation: his look of repulsion as he watched me fall apart, hiccups and snotty nose. I don’t remember saying I’d take care of anything. I just remember him saying we would be ok.

  “I didn’t know I was going to get expelled,” I say. “You never told me that was going to happen.”

  He lifts his shoulders. My bad, oh well. “Even if it wasn’t spelled out, it must have been obvious that was the only way we were going to wrangle our way out of the utter hell that threatened us.”

  “You mean it was the only way you were going to get away with not going to jail.”

  “Well, yes,” he agrees. “That was absolutely part of my thinking. Of course it was.”

  “But what about me?”

  “What about you? Look at you. Aren’t you ok? You certainly look ok. You look beautiful.”

  My body reacts even if I don’t want it to. An intake of breath so sharp, air whistles through my teeth.

  “Look,” he says, “I understand that you’re angry, that you feel hurt. But I did the best I could. I was terrified, you know? So instincts kicked in. I wanted to protect myself, sure, but you were at the forefront of my mind as well. Getting you away from Browick saved you from an investigation that might’ve wrecked you. Your name in the papers, a notoriety you have no control over following you like a pall. You wouldn’t have wanted that. You wouldn’t have survived it.” His eyes travel over me. “All this time, I assumed you understood why I did it. I even thought you’d forgiven me. Wishful thinking, I guess. I could’ve projected too much wisdom onto you. I know I did that at times.”

  Something cold trickles down my spine—embarrassment, shame. Maybe I’m being dense, simple-minded.

  “Here.” He puts a beer bottle in my hand. Numbly, I say I’m not old enough. He smiles and says, “Sure you are.”

  We sit in the living room, on opposite ends of the couch. Little things are different—the pile of junk mail moved from the kitchen counter onto the coffee table, a new pair of hiking boots lie kicked off by the door. Otherwise, it’s the same—the furniture, the prints on the walls, the position of the books on the shelves, the scent of everything. I can’t get away from the smell of him.

  “So,” he says, “you’re heading to Atlantica soon. That will be a good place for you.”

  “What does that mean? That I’m too stupid for a good school?”

  “Vanessa.”

  “I couldn’t get into any of the ones you picked out for me. We can’t all go to Harvard.”

  He watches me take a long swallow of the beer. The familiar floaty fizz travels down my throat. I haven’t drunk alcohol since Charley moved away.

  “And what are you doing with yourself this summer?” he asks.

  “Working.”

  “Where?”

  I lift my shoulders. The hospital cut its budget so I can’t go back there. “My dad has a friend who says I can work at this car parts warehouse.”

  He tries to hide his surprise, but I see how his brows jump. “Honest work,” he says. “Nothing wrong with that.”

  I take another long swallow.

  “You’re quiet,” he says.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “You can say anything.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t feel like I know you anymore.”

  “You’ll always know me,” he says. “I haven’t changed. I’m too old for that.”

  “I’ve changed.”

  “I’m sure you have.”

  “I’m not naive like I was when you knew me.”

  He tilts his head. “I don’t remember you ever being naive.”

  I take another drink, a third of the bottle gone in two swallows, and he finishes his, goes to the fridge for another. He gets one for me, too.

  “How long are you going to be angry with me?” he asks.

  “You don’t think I should be?”

  “I want you to explain why you feel this way.”

  “Because I lost things that were important to me,” I say. “While you lost nothing.”

  “That’s not true. To many, I lost my reputation.”

  I scoff. “Big deal. I lost that, plus tons more.”

  “Like what?”

  Tucking the beer between my legs, I count off on my fingers. “I lost Browick, my parents’ trust. There were rumors at my new school as soon as I got there. I never even had a chance to be normal. It traumatized me.”

  He makes a face at traumatized. “You sound like you’ve been seeing a psychiatrist.”

  “I’m just trying to make you understand what I’ve gone through.”

  “Ok.”

  “Because it isn’t fair.”

  “What isn’t fair?”

  “That I went through all that and you didn’t.”

  “I agree that it’s not fair that you suffered, but me suffering alongside you wouldn’t have made it fair. It only would’ve resulted in more suffering.”

  “What about justice?”

  “Justice,” he scoffs, his expression suddenly hard. “You’re looking to bring me to justice? To do that, honey, you have to believe that I unduly harmed you. Do you believe that?”

  I fix my eyes on the unopened beer bottle sweatin
g on the coffee table.

  “Because if you believe that,” he continues, “tell me now and I’ll turn myself in. If you think I should go to prison, lose all my freedoms, and be branded a monster for the rest of my life just because I had the bad luck of falling in love with a teenager, then please, let me know right now.”

  I don’t think that. That isn’t what I mean by justice. I just want to know he’s been miserable, a broken man like Jenny described. Because here, in front of me, he doesn’t look broken. He looks happy, the teaching award propped up on the bookcase.

  “If you think it hasn’t been painful for me, you’re wrong,” he says, as though he knows my thoughts. Maybe he does, always has. “It’s been agony.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I say.

  He leans toward me, touches my knee. “Let me show you something.” He gets up, goes upstairs. The ceiling creaks as he walks down the hallway into his bedroom. He returns with two envelopes, one a letter addressed to me, dated July 2001. The first lines turn my stomach inside out: Vanessa, I wonder if you remember me, last November, moaning into your soft warm lap, “I’m going to ruin you”? My question for you now is, did I? Do you feel destroyed? There’s no safe way to get this to you, but guilt may make me willing to risk it. I need to know you’re ok. Inside the other envelope is a birthday card. He’s signed the inside Love, JS.

  “I was going to work up the nerve to mail the card this week,” he says. “My plan was to drive to Augusta and drop it in a mailbox there so your parents wouldn’t see a Norumbega stamp.”

  I toss both envelopes on the coffee table as though I’m unimpressed, force myself to roll my eyes. That isn’t enough. I need more evidence of his agony—pages and pages of it.

  He sits beside me on the couch and says, “Nessa, think about this. By leaving, you got to escape. Meanwhile, I had to spend my days in a place that only reminded me of you. Every day, I had to teach in the room where we met, watch other students sit at your spot at the table. I don’t even use my office anymore.”

  “You don’t?”

  He shakes his head. “It’s full of junk now. Has been since you left.”

  I can’t shrug off that detail. His office sitting unused seems a testament to the power my ghost has wielded. Every day, I haunted him. And he’s right about me being able to escape; the public high school hallways and classrooms offer zero reminders of him, something I had viewed with endless grief, but maybe I had it easier by being thrown into an unfamiliar environment. Maybe there were benefits to what I went through compared with what he endured.

  I drink the second beer. When he sets a third on the coffee table, I protest, say I have to drive home, but take a long swallow anyway. My tolerance for alcohol is shot; after only two, my face is flushed, my eyes slow. The more I drink, the further I drift from the anger I came in with. My rage is left onshore while I’m pulled into deep water, floating on my back, little waves lapping against my ears.

  He asks what I’ve done over the past two years, and, to my horror, I hear myself tell him about Craig, the men I talked to online, the boy who took me to the semiformal. “They all made me sick,” I say.

  He smiles wide. There’s no hint of jealousy in his reaction; he seems pleased that I tried and failed.

  “What about you?” I ask, my voice stumbling, too loud.

  He doesn’t answer. He’s all smiles as he evades. “You know what I’ve been up to,” he says. “Doing the same thing as always, right here.”

  “But I’m asking about who you’ve been doing it with.” I take a swig, smack my lips against the bottle. “Is Ms. Thompson still here?”

  He gives me his tender-condescending look. I’m being charming. My demand for answers is cute. “I like your dress,” he says. “I think I recognize it.”

  “I wore it for you.” I hate myself for saying it. There is no need to be so honest, yet I can’t stop. I tell him I talked to Jenny, that she called him a broken man. “She’s the one who told me about you getting me kicked out. She knew everything. She read the letter you wrote to Mrs. Giles about how I was ‘emotionally troubled.’” I hook my fingers into air quotes.

  He stares at me. “She read what?”

  I smile, can’t help it. Finally, something got under his skin.

  “How did she read that document?” he asks. I laugh at how he says document.

  “She said Mrs. Giles showed it to her.”

  “That’s outrageous. Totally unacceptable.”

  “Well, I think it’s good,” I say. “Because now I know how conniving you really were.”

  He studies me, trying to gauge how much I know, how serious I am.

  “You called me ‘troubled’ in that letter. Right? Like I was crazy. A stupid little girl. I get why you did that. It was an easy way to protect yourself, right? Teenage girls are crazy. Everyone knows that.”

  “I think you’ve had enough to drink,” he says.

  I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “You know what else I know?”

  Again, he just stares. I see the impatience in his clenched jaw. If I push much further, he could cut me off, grab the bottle out of my hand, force me out the door.

  “I know about the other letter. The one you wrote way back at the beginning of everything. How I had a big crush on you, and that you wanted to leave a paper trail in case I did something inappropriate and it got out of hand. You’d barely even fucked me and you were already thinking about how to cover your tracks.”

  His face might’ve gone pale, except my eyes lag, won’t focus.

  “But I guess I understand that, too,” I say. “To you, I was disposable—”

  “That’s not true.”

  “—like garbage.”

  “No.”

  I wait for him to say more, but that’s all he has. No. I stand and take a half dozen steps to the door before he stops me.

  “Let me leave,” I say. It’s a clear bluff; I don’t even have my shoes on.

  “Baby, you’re drunk.”

  “Big deal.”

  “You need to lie down.” He guides me upstairs, down the hallway, into the bedroom—the same khaki comforter and tartan sheets.

  “You shouldn’t use flannel sheets in the summer.” I flop down on my back, again floating on the lake, the bed rocking with the waves. “Don’t touch me,” I bark when he tries to pull my dress strap down my shoulder. “I’ll die if you touch me.”

  I roll onto my side, away from him, facing the wall, and listen to him stand over me. Endless minutes of his sighs, “fucks” muttered under his breath. Then the floorboards creak. He goes back into the living room.

  No, I think. Come back.

  I want him to keep watching, to remain vigilant beside me. I think about getting up and faking a faint, letting my body collapse onto the floor, imagining that he’d run to me, pick me up, stroke my cheek to bring me back to life. Or I could make myself cry. I know the sound of me sobbing will bring him running, turn him tender, even if that tenderness will inevitably turn hard, an erection digging into my thigh. I want the moments before sex. I want him to take care of me. But I’m too drowsy, my limbs too heavy to do anything but sleep.

  I wake to him getting into bed. My eyes fly open and I see the pattern of sunlight and shadows has shifted across the wall. When I stir, he stops, but when my eyes flutter shut and I don’t move again, he eases himself onto the mattress. I lie there, eyes closed, hearing and feeling everything, his breathing, his body.

  When I wake again, I’m on my back, my dress bunched around my waist, my underwear off. He kneels on the floor, head between my legs, his face buried in me. His arms are wrapped around my thighs so I can’t move away. He looks up and locks eyes with mine. My head lolls and he keeps going.

  I see my body from above, ant-small, pale limbs floating on the lake, the water now past my ears. It laps at my cheeks, almost to my mouth, almost drowning. Beneath me are monsters, leeches and eels, toothy fish, turtles with jaws strong enough to snap an ankle.
He keeps going. He wants me to come, even if it means rubbing me raw. A reel starts to play in my mind, a parade of images projected onto my eyelids: loaves of bread dough rising on a warm kitchen counter, a conveyor belt moving groceries while my mother looks on, holding her checkbook, a time lapse of roots extending into soil. My parents washing the dirt from their arms, looking at the clock, neither one of them yet asking out loud, “Where’s Vanessa?” because acknowledging I’ve been gone too long will let in the first pinprick of fear.

  When Strane moves up onto the bed and pushes into me, one hand guiding his penis, the reel snaps. My eyes fly open. “Don’t.”

  He freezes. “You want me to stop?”

  My head rolls against the pillow. He waits a beat longer and then slowly starts to move in and out.

  The waves pull me farther from shore. The rhythm he keeps helps the reel start again, his steady in-out-in-out. Was he always this heavy and slow? Beads of sweat slide off his shoulders onto my cheeks. I don’t remember it being like this.

  I shut my eyes and again see loaves of bread rising, groceries moving forever forward, endless bags of sugar, boxes of cereal, broccoli crowns, and cartons of milk disappearing into the horizon. Pick up some milk while you’re out? Mom liked that, asking me to run an errand for the first time. Maybe it made her feel better about letting me take the car. Everything will be ok, I’ll come back home safe. I had to; I was getting the milk.