My Dark Vanessa

by Kate Elizabeth Russell

  I throw up my hand, cutting him off. “Which hand did you use?”

  He blinks in surprise.

  “When you touched her. Which hand?”

  “Why does that matter?”

  “Show me,” I say. “I want to see exactly what you did.”

  There on the couch, I make him demonstrate. I scoot away from him, leaving a chaste distance, and press my knees together and sit up straight—the nervous pose my body remembers from those times I sat beside him at the very beginning of things. I watch his hand reach down, pat my knee. It’s familiar enough to make me gag.

  “It was nothing,” he says.

  I shove his hand away. “It’s not nothing. That’s how it started with me, with you touching my leg.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “It’s not. You and I started long before I ever laid a hand on you.”

  He says this so forcefully, I can tell he’s said it to himself many times before. But if it didn’t start when he first touched me, when did it? When he told me, drunk at the Halloween dance, that he wanted to put me to bed and kiss me good night, or when I began inventing reasons to talk to him after class so I could get him alone and feel his eyes on me? When he wrote on my poem draft, Vanessa, this one scares me a little, or on the first day of classes, when I watched him give the convocation speech, his face dripping with sweat? Maybe the start can’t be pinned down at all. Maybe the universe forced us together, rendering us both powerless, blameless.

  “It’s not even comparable,” he says. “This student is nothing to me, the so-called physical contact was nothing. It was a matter of seconds. I certainly don’t deserve to have my life destroyed over it.”

  “Why would this destroy your life?”

  He sighs, sits back on the couch. “The administration caught wind of it. They’re saying they need to do an investigation. Over a pat on the knee! It’s puritanical hysteria. We might as well be living in Salem.”

  I stare him down, try to get him to flinch, but he looks innocent—the lines in his forehead creased in concern, his eyes enormous behind his glasses. Still, I want to be angry. He says the touch was insignificant, but I know how heavy with meaning a touch like that can be.

  “Why are you even telling me?” I ask. “Do you want me to tell you it’s ok? That I forgive you? Because I don’t.”

  “No,” he says, “I’m not asking you to forgive me. There’s nothing to forgive. I’m sharing this because I want you to understand that I’m still living with the consequences of loving you.”

  For a split second, my eyes start to roll. I stop myself, but he still sees.

  “Mock me all you like,” he says, “but before you, no one would have jumped to conclusions like this. They never would have believed this girl’s word over mine. These are my colleagues, people I’ve worked with for twenty years. That history means nothing now that my name has been dragged through the mud. Everyone assumes the worst about me. I’ve got eyes on me at all times, constant suspicion. And an uproar over this! My god, a friendly pat on the knee is something I do without thinking. Now it’s evidence of my depravity.”

  Exactly how many girls have you touched? The question sits hot on my tongue, yet I don’t say it. I swallow it, burning my throat all the way down, another stomach ember.

  “Loving you branded me a deviant,” he says. “Nothing else about me matters anymore. One transgression will define me for the rest of my life.”

  We sit in silence, the sounds of his house amplified—the refrigerator hum, the hiss of the steam heat.

  I tell him I’m sorry. I don’t want to say it but feel I have to, like he needs to hear it so badly, he’s pulling the words out of me like teeth. I’m sorry you’ll never get out from under the long shadow I cast. I’m sorry what we did together was so horrific, there’s no path back from it.

  He forgives me, says it’s all right, then reaches over and pats my knee, until he realizes what he’s doing, stops, and curls his hand into a fist.

  When we go to bed on his flannel sheets, we keep our clothes on and I think of this girl he touched, faceless and bodiless, a specter of an accusation and a harbinger of the obvious: that I am getting older, and each passing day brings girls into the world who are younger than me, who might someday end up in his classroom. I imagine them, their bright hair and downy arms, until I’m exhausted, but as soon as my mind tempers down, I recall what he said about Henry, about his wife. Another wing of the labyrinth to get lost in, remembering what I told Henry about Strane, the r-word I used, how he must have gone home that night and told his wife everything. I made him promise not to tell, but the promise was only an extension of his lie. Of course he’d tell his wife. He’d have to—and who would she have to tell? If she’s a counselor, would she be obligated to report it? My mouth goes dry at how easily it could all come back around. I can’t get out of this. I was stupid to think I could say something, anything, without it eventually getting back to Strane.

  Around midnight, we hear sirens. First faintly, then closer and closer, until it sounds like they’re outside the house. For a moment I’m sure they’re coming for us, that police are about to burst through the door. Strane gets out of bed and peers out the window into the night.

  “I can’t see anything.” He grabs a sweater and heads out of the bedroom, down the stairs to the front door. When he opens it, smoke wafts in with the frigid air, so pungent it soars upstairs, fills the house.

  He calls up to me, “There’s a fire down the block. A big one.” After a couple minutes, he returns wearing his parka and boots. “Come on, let’s go see it up close.”

  We dress in so many layers we become anonymous, only our eyes showing above our scarves. Walking down the snow-packed sidewalks, he and I could be anyone, could be ordinary. We follow the sirens and smoke, not finding the fire until we turn a corner and see the five-story Masonic temple both ablaze and encased in ice. Six fire trucks park around the perimeter of the building, all hoses on full blast, but the night is too cold. The water, every last bit of it, freezes as soon as it hits the building’s limestone exterior while the flames rage inside. The longer the firefighters try to douse the building, the thicker the ice shell grows.

  While we watch, Strane reaches for my mittened hand and holds it tight. The firefighters eventually give up and, like us, stand back and watch the building burn—a small crowd gathers, a news truck arrives. Strane and I stay for a long time, holding hands, both of us blinking back tears that collect in crystals on our eyelashes.

  Later, in his bed, body and mind exhausted, I ask, “Is there more you’re not telling me about that girl?” When he doesn’t answer, I ask it plainly: “Did you fuck her?”

  “Christ, Vanessa.”

  “It’s ok if you did,” I say. “I’ll forgive you. I just need to know.”

  He rolls toward me, holds my face in both hands. “I touched her. That’s all I did.”

  I close my eyes as he strokes my hair and calls her terrible names: a liar, a little bitch, an emotionally troubled girl. I wonder what he would call me if he knew all the things I’ve called him in my mind over the years, if he finds out what I told Henry. But I say nothing. My silence is so reliable. He has no reason not to trust me.

  At three in the morning, I wake and slip out from underneath his heavy arm, pad barefoot on the cold wood floors out of the bedroom, downstairs to the kitchen where his laptop sits on the counter. I open it and the browser loads his Browick email inbox. Weekly newsletters, minutes from faculty meetings—I scroll until I see the subject “Student Harassment Report.” I freeze when I hear something, one hand hovering over the trackpad, the other poised to slap the laptop closed. When silence settles again, I click open the email and scan the text. It’s from the board of trustees, written in language formal to the point of impenetrable, but I don’t want to know the details anyway. I’m just looking for a name. I scroll up and down, eyes darting back and forth across the screen, an
d then I see it on the second line: Taylor Birch, the student making the claims. I close the email and sneak back upstairs into bed, under his arm.

  2017

  Taylor works in a new building five blocks from the hotel, a shock of glass and steel amid the limestone and brick. I know the name of the company, Creative Coop, and that it’s described as a creative work space, but I can’t figure out what anyone does there. Inside, it’s all natural light and leather couches, expansive tables where people sit with open laptops. Everyone is smiling and young, or if not, then cool in a way that masquerades as youth—trendy haircuts, eccentric glasses, normcore clothes. I stand gripping my purse until a girl with round wire-framed glasses asks me, “Are you looking for someone?”

  My eyes dart around the room. It’s too big, too many people. I hear myself say her name.

  “Taylor? Let’s see.” The girl turns and scans the room. “There she is.”

  I look where she points: bent over a laptop, thin shoulders and pale hair. The girl calls, “Taylor!” and her head lifts. The shock on her face sends me backward toward the door.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I made a mistake.”

  I’m already outside and half a block away when I hear her call my name. Taylor stands in the middle of the sidewalk, white blond braid hanging over her shoulder. She’s wearing a turtleneck sweater with sleeves so long they fall past her wrists, no coat. As we study each other, she reaches up, fingertips poking out of her sweater sleeve, and tugs at the end of her braid. Suddenly, I see her as he might have—fourteen and unsure of herself, worrying the ends of her hair as he gazed at her from behind his desk.

  “I can’t believe it’s really you,” she says.

  I came prepared with rehearsed lines, sharp ones. I wanted to slice her to the bone, but there’s too much adrenaline pulsing in me. It turns my voice shaky and high as I tell her to leave me alone.

  “Both you and that journalist,” I say. “She keeps calling me.”

  “Ok,” Taylor says. “She shouldn’t have done that.”

  “I have nothing to say to her.”

  “I’m sorry. Really, I am. I told her not to be pushy.”

  “I don’t want to be in the article, ok? Tell her that. And tell her not to write about the blog. I don’t want any of this to touch me.”

  Taylor watches me, loose wisps floating around her face.

  “I just want to be left alone,” I say. I throw all my strength into the words, but they emerge like a plea. This is all wrong; I sound like a child.

  I turn on my heel to go. Again, she calls my name.

  “Can we just talk to each other?” she asks.

  We go to a coffee shop, the one where I met Strane three weeks ago. Standing in line, I take in the up-close details of her, the thin silver rings on her fingers, a mascara smudge below her left eye. The scent of sandalwood clings to her clothes. She pays for my coffee, her hands shaking as she takes out her credit card.

  “You don’t need to do that,” I say.

  “I do,” she says.

  The barista starts the espresso machine, a din of grinding and steam, and after a minute our drinks arrive side by side, identical tulips drawn in the foam. We sit near the window, a buffer of empty tables around us.

  “So you work at that hotel,” she says. “That must be fun.”

  I scoff out a laugh and a blush immediately takes over Taylor’s face.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “That’s a stupid thing to say.”

  She says she’s nervous, calls herself awkward. Her hands are still shaking, her eyes looking everywhere but at me. It takes effort to stop myself from reaching across the table and telling her it’s fine.

  “What about you?” I ask. “What kind of company is that exactly?”

  She flashes a smile, relieved at the easy question. “It’s not a company,” she says. “It’s a cooperative work space for artists.”

  I nod like I understand what that means. “I didn’t realize you were an artist.”

  “Well, not a visual artist. I’m a poet.” She lifts her coffee and takes a sip, leaving a pale pink stain on the rim.

  “So being a poet is what you do?” I ask. “Like, for money?”

  Taylor holds her hand up to her mouth, like she’s burned her tongue. “Oh no,” she says, “there’s no money in that. I have side hustles. Freelance writing projects, web design, consulting. Lots of things.” She sets down the coffee, clasps her hands. “Ok, I’m just going to go ahead and ask. When did it end with you and him?”

  The question catches me off guard, so pointed and yet banal. “I don’t know,” I say. “It’s hard to pinpoint.” Her shoulders seem to fall in disappointment.

  “Well, he ended things with me in January oh-seven,” she says, “when the rumor really started to circulate around school. I always wondered if he cut things off with you then, too.”

  I try to keep my face arranged in a patient smile as I think back to that year. January? I remember his confession, the burning building encased in ice.

  “Obviously I didn’t have it as bad as you,” Taylor continues. “He didn’t get me kicked out or anything. But still, he made me transfer out of his class, stopped acknowledging me. I felt abandoned. It was awful—so, so traumatizing.”

  I nod along, not knowing what to make of her, what she says or how willing she is to say it. I ask, “So you weren’t in touch with him at all over the past ten years?” I already know the answer—of course she wasn’t—but after she twists up her face and replies, “God no!” she asks, “Were you?” And that’s what I want, the chance to say yes, to differentiate myself, to draw a line and make clear that we are not the same at all.

  “We were in contact right up until the end,” I say. “He called me right before he jumped. I’m pretty sure I was the last person he talked to.”

  She leans forward; the table rattles. “What did he say?”

  “That he knew he’d been a monster, but he loved me.” I wait for realization to cross her face—that she’d been wrong about him, about me, and about whatever it was he did to her, but she only snorts.

  “Yeah, that sounds like him.” She gulps her coffee, throwing back the mug as though it were a shot. Wiping her lips, she notices my expression. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t mean to mock. It’s just so typical, you know? That way he’d berate himself to make you feel sorry for him.”

  My head tips back as though the weight of my brain has suddenly changed. He did do that. He did it all the time. I’m not sure I’ve ever summed him up so neatly.

  “Can I ask you another question?” Taylor asks.

  I barely hear her, my brain busy righting what she’s thrown off balance. It must’ve been a guess, what she said, extrapolated from some moment of him slipping out of the teacher role and revealing himself. It’s hardly profound, describing him that way. Beating yourself up in the hopes of gaining sympathy—what person doesn’t do that every now and then?

  “How much did you know about me at the time?” she asks.

  Still far away, I answer, “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  I blink and she comes into focus, her face so sharp it hurts to see. “I knew you existed. But he said you were . . .” I almost say again nothing. “A rumor.”

  She nods. “That’s what he called you at first, too.” She tucks her chin, lowers her voice into an impression of Strane: “‘A rumor that follows me like a black cloud.’”

  It’s stunning how much she sounds like him, his exact cadence and the metaphor I remember him using to describe me, the image it always put in my head of him relentlessly pursued by the threat of rain. “So you knew about me?”

  “Of course,” she says. “Everyone knew about you. You were practically an urban legend, the girl he’d had an affair with who disappeared after it all came out. But the story was so vague. No one knew the truth. So I believed him at first, when he said the story wasn’t true. It’s embarrassing to admit now, because of cou
rse it was true. Of course he’d done it before. I was just . . .” She lifts her shoulders. “I was so young.”

  She goes on, explaining how eventually he told her the truth about me but waited until she was “fully groomed.” He called me his deepest secret, said he loved me but I’d outgrown him, we didn’t fit together anymore the way we did when I was Taylor’s age.

  “He seemed genuinely brokenhearted,” she says. “This is really screwed up, but he had me read Lolita at the beginning of things. You’ve read it, right? The way he talked about you reminded me of the first girl Humbert Humbert is in love with, the one who dies and supposedly makes him a pedophile. At the time, I thought a man being wounded like that was romantic. Looking back, the whole thing was just deranged.”

  I try to pick up my coffee, but I’m trembling too much so it just clatters back down, spills all over my hands. Taylor jumps up and grabs some napkins, still talking as she wipes the table. She explains how she eventually suspected Strane was still seeing me—that she snooped on his phone and saw all the calls and texts, figured out the truth.

  “I used to get so jealous when I knew he was going to see you.” She stands over me, sliding a soppy napkin across the table, the end of her braid grazing my arm.

  “Did you have sex with him?” I ask.

  She stares down at me unblinking.

  “I mean, did he have sex with you? Force you? Or . . .” I shake my head. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to call it.”

  Tossing the napkins in the garbage, she sits back down. “No,” she says. “He didn’t.”

  “What about the other girls?”

  She shakes her head no.