My Dark Vanessa

by Kate Elizabeth Russell

  “I think I’m going to get a dog.”

  “You don’t have a yard.”

  “I’ll take walks.”

  “Your apartment’s so small.”

  “A dog doesn’t need its own bedroom.”

  She takes a bite, pulls the fork between her lips. “You’re like your dad,” she says. “Never happy unless he was covered in dog hair.”

  We stare out at the snow.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot,” she says.

  I don’t move my eyes from the window. “About what?”

  “Oh, you know.” She heaves a sigh. “Regrets.”

  I let the word hang there. I set my fork in the sink, wipe my mouth. “I should pack my stuff.”

  “I’ve been paying attention to the stories,” she says. “About that man.”

  My body starts to shake, but for once my brain stays in place. I hear Ruby telling me to count and breathe—long inhales, longer exhales.

  “I know you don’t like to talk about it,” she says.

  “You’ve never been that eager, either,” I say.

  She sinks her fork into the uneven wedge of pie left in the pan. “I know,” she says quietly. “I know I could’ve been better. I should’ve made you feel like you could talk to me.”

  “We don’t have to do this,” I say. “Really, it’s ok.”

  “Just let me say this.” She closes her eyes, collects her thoughts. She takes a breath. “I hope he suffered.”

  “Mom.”

  “I hope he’s rotting in hell for what he did to you.”

  “He hurt other girls, too.”

  Her eyes flash open. “Well, I don’t care about other girls,” she says. “I only care about you. What he did to you.”

  I hang my head, suck in my cheeks. What does that mean to her, what he did to me? There’s so much she can’t know: how long it went on, the extent of my lies, the ways I enabled him. But the small part she does understand—that she sat in the Browick headmaster’s office and listened to him call me damaged and troubled and then watched photographic evidence of him and me fall to the floor—is enough for a lifetime of guilt. Our roles reversed, for the first time in my life, I want to tell her to let it go.

  “Dad and I used to talk sometimes about what that school did to you,” she continues. “I don’t think either of us regretted anything more than how we let them treat you.”

  “You didn’t let them,” I say. “You weren’t in control of it.”

  “I didn’t want to put you through some horror show. Once I got you back home, I thought, ok, whatever happened is over. I didn’t know—”

  “Mom, please.”

  “I should’ve sent that man to prison where he belonged.”

  “But I didn’t want that.”

  “Sometimes I think I was looking out for you. Police, lawyers, a trial. I didn’t want them to tear you apart. Other times I think I was just scared.” Her voice cracks; she holds a hand to her mouth.

  I watch her wipe her cheeks even though they aren’t wet, even though she’s not really crying because she won’t let herself. Have I ever seen her truly cry?

  “I hope you forgive me,” she says.

  Part of me wants to laugh, pull her in for a hug. Forgive what? It’s fine, Mom. Look at me—it’s over. It’s fine. Hearing my mother implicate herself makes me think of Ruby and the frustration she must feel sitting there, listening as I cloak myself in blame. After a while, she gives up repeating the same lines, knowing there comes a point when they no longer matter, that what I need isn’t absolution but to hold myself accountable before a witness. So when my mother asks me to forgive her, I say, “Of course I do.” I don’t tell her again she couldn’t have stopped it, that it wasn’t her fault and that she didn’t deserve it. I swallow those words instead. Maybe somewhere deep in my belly, they’ll take root and grow.

  It keeps snowing. I do my best to dig out my car, drive the gravel road, but when I gun the engine to get up the hill and onto the highway, the tires just spin. I turn the car around and spend another night. While we watch TV, commercials for the Winter Olympics play, the spray of snow from a freestyle skier, a gleaming bobsled careening down an icy track, a figure skater launching her body into the air, arms crossed tight and eyes squeezed shut.

  “Remember when you used to skate?” Mom asks.

  I try to think: fuzzy memories of cracked white leather, the ache in my ankles after an hour of balancing on the blades.

  “For a while, it was all you wanted to do,” she says. “We couldn’t get you to come inside, but I didn’t want you on the lake without me watching. I was too scared of you falling through. Dad went out with the hose and flooded the front yard. Do you remember that?”

  Vaguely, I do—skating after dark, maneuvering around the tree roots that jutted through the rough ice, trying to work up the courage to attempt a jump.

  “You weren’t scared of anything,” Mom says. “Everyone thinks that about their kid, but you really weren’t.”

  We watch the skater glide across the rink. She turns on the tips of her blades, suddenly backward, arms outstretched, ponytail whipping across her face. Another change of direction and she’s on one leg, launching off into a tight spin, her arms stretched above her head now, her body seeming to grow longer the faster she spins.

  In the morning, the sky is blue and the snow so bright it hurts our eyes. We sprinkle kitty litter and rock salt on the road and the tires are able to grab. At the top of the hill, I stop and watch Mom walk slowly home, pulling behind her a sled stacked with bags of litter and salt.

  * * *

  The air is sharp with ammonia as I walk through rows of kennels, the concrete floor painted gray and hospital green. One dog starts barking, setting off the rest of them, a range of voices echoing against cinder block. When I was a kid, Dad and I used to joke that when dogs bark all they’re saying is I’m a dog! I’m a dog! I’m a dog! But these barks are desperate and scared. They sound more like please please please.

  I stop at a kennel holding a mutt with a blocky head and ghost-gray fur. The sign hanging on the kennel lists the breed as Pit bull, Weimaraner, ??? The dog’s rose ears pitch forward as I press my hand against the cage. She gives my palm a sniff, two licks. A cautious tail wag.

  I name her Jolene after she tips back her head and howls along to Dolly Parton on her first night home. In the mornings, I take her out before I even brush my teeth, and we walk from one end of the peninsula to the other, ocean to ocean. When we wait at crosswalks, she leans into my legs and mouths my hand out of pure joy, her panting breaths clouding in the cold air.

  We’re walking on Commercial Street, past the city pier, when I see Taylor emerge from a bakery doorway, coffee and wax paper bag in hand. It takes a moment for me to believe it’s truly her and not my brain’s wishful thinking.

  She sees Jo first; her face lights up as Jo’s tail thumps against my legs. Then a double take when she notices me, as though to make sure her own mind isn’t playing tricks.

  “Vanessa,” she says. “I didn’t know you had a dog.” She drops to her knees and holds her coffee above her head as Jo launches forward and licks her face.

  “I just got her,” I say. “She comes on a little strong.”

  “Oh, that’s ok.” Taylor laughs. “I can be intense, too.” In a singsongy voice she repeats, “That’s ok, that’s ok.” It makes Jo’s back arch, her entire body wriggle. Taylor smiles up at me, flashing small straight teeth. Her canines are pointy, like little fangs, same as mine.

  “I know I failed you,” I say.

  It’s the chance meeting that makes me say it, having her in front of me when I didn’t expect it, didn’t prepare. Taylor frowns but doesn’t look up at me. She keeps her eyes fixed on Jo, scratching behind her ears. For a moment, I wonder if she’ll ignore me, pretend I never said it.

  “No,” she says, “you didn’t fail me. Or, if you did, then I did, too. I knew he’d hurt other girls and it still took me years
to do anything about it.” She looks up at me then, her eyes two blue pools. “What could we have done? We were just girls.”

  I know what she means—not that we were helpless by choice, but that the world forced us to be. Who would have believed us, who would have cared?

  “I saw the article,” I say. “It was . . .”

  “Disappointing?” Taylor rights herself, adjusts her purse. “Though maybe not for you.”

  “I know you invested a lot in it.”

  “Yeah, well. I thought it would bring me closure, but now I’m angrier than before.” She scrunches her nose, fiddles with the lid of her coffee cup. “Honestly, she was kind of sleazy. I should’ve known better.”

  “That journalist?”

  Taylor nods. “I don’t think she actually cared. She just wanted to ride the wave, get a good byline. Which I knew going into it, but I still thought it would make me feel empowered or whatever. Instead I feel taken advantage of all over again.” She smirks, scratches Jo behind the ears. “Been thinking about starting therapy. I tried it before and it didn’t really do much, but I need to do something.”

  “It’s helping me,” I say. “But it didn’t fix everything—hence the dog.”

  Taylor smiles down at Jo. “Maybe I should try that, too.”

  She seems fragile in a way I wasn’t able to see before, not when she and I were in the coffee shop or in any of the stuff she posts online. I see now what should have been obvious, that she was lost and looking for a way to understand it all—him, herself, what he did, and why it still means so much despite it being so seemingly small. I can hear Strane asking, impatient and impenitent, the question that must still ring through her head: When are you going to get over this? All I did was touch your leg.

  Taylor looks to me. “At least we’re trying, right?”

  It feels like this is the moment when I’m supposed to open my arms and embrace her, to start thinking of her as a kind of sister. Maybe that could happen if our stories were closer, if I were nicer—though it seems absurd to expect two women to love each other just because they were groped by the same man. There must be a point where you’re allowed to be defined by something other than what he did to you.

  Before she leaves, Taylor gives Jo another scratch behind the ears and me an embarrassed little wave.

  I watch her walk away, not a rumor but a real person, a woman who used to be a girl. I’m real, too. Have I ever thought that about myself so plainly before? It’s such a small revelation. Jo tugs on the leash and, for the first time, I can imagine how it might feel not to be his, not to be him. To feel that maybe I could be good.

  With the sun on my face and a dog at my side, I have so much capacity for good.

  There’s nothing else to do but start from here, with the gentle pressure of the leash in my hand, the clink of metal and click of toenails on brick. Ruby says it will take a while to feel truly changed, that I need to give myself the chance to see more of the world without him behind my eyes. I’m already starting to feel the difference. There’s a clearness, a lightness.

  Jo and I arrive at the beach, empty in the off-season, and she lowers her nose to the sand.

  “Have you been in the ocean before?” I ask, and she looks up at me, ears pricked.

  I unhook the leash. At first she doesn’t realize, doesn’t understand, but when I pat her back and say, “Go on,” she takes off across the sand, down to the water, barks at the waves lapping her paws. She ignores me when I call, doesn’t yet know her name, but when she sees me sit on the ground, she bounds over, tongue out and eyes wild. She flops down at my feet, panting happy little whines.

  We walk home under the pale winter sky, and back in my apartment, she checks all the rooms, inspects every corner. She’s still getting used to it, the freedom and space. I lie on the couch and she eyes the empty spot alongside my legs. “You’re allowed,” I say, and she jumps up, curls into a tight circle, and sighs.

  “He’ll never meet you,” I say. It’s a hard truth, carrying within it grief and joy. Jo opens her eyes, doesn’t lift her head as she watches me. She’s constantly taking in my face and tone, noticing everything about me. When I start to drift away, her tail thumps against the couch cushion, like a drumbeat, a heartbeat, a rhythm of grounding. You’re here, she says. You’re here. You’re here.

  Acknowledgments

  First and foremost, I have to thank my agent, Hillary Jacobson, and my editor, Jessica Williams, two brilliant women whose advocacy and love for this novel continue to astound me.

  Thank you to those who worked to bring this novel into the world, to everyone at William Morrow/HarperCollins, to Anna Kelly and everyone at 4th Estate/HarperCollins UK, and to Karolina Sutton, Sophie Baker, and Jodi Fabbri at Curtis Brown UK.

  Thank you to Stephen King, for the early support and for saying yes when my dad asked, “Hey, Steve, would you read my daughter’s novel?”

  Thank you to Laura Moriarty, who read draft after draft and whose generosity and encouragement helped transform this sprawling, nebulous story of mine into a novel.

  Thank you to the creative writing programs at the University of Maine at Farmington, Indiana University, and the University of Kansas for giving me the opportunity to study and write. I’m deeply grateful to the friends I made in those programs who read and loved early versions of Vanessa: Chad Anderson, Katie (Baum) O’Donnell, Harmony Hanson, Chris Johnson, and Ashley Rutter. A special thank-you to my undergraduate advisor, Patricia O’Donnell, who in 2003 commented in the margins of a short story I wrote about a girl and her teacher: Kate, this made me feel like I was reading real fiction. It was the first time I’d ever been taken seriously as a writer, and that feedback was life-changing.

  Thank you to my parents for never telling me to give up and get a real job, for my dad whose immediate response to hearing my book sold was “I never doubted you for a second,” for my mum who filled our house with books so I grew up surrounded by words.

  Thank you to Tallulah, who grounded me and saved my life.

  Thank you to Austin. And here I’m stumped because what is there to say to a partner so relentlessly supportive and good? “For everything” is the best I can do.

  Thank you to my internet pals who have always been my first readers, who supported and encouraged me over the eighteen years I worked on My Dark Vanessa. Some are still in my life and some have drifted out of it, but I’m grateful to all for the years of giddiness, vulnerability, and tough love. You are my best, dearest friends.

  A special thank-you to the brilliant poet, chosen sister, and best writer I know, Eva Della Lana, who has been a constant source of inspiration and reassurance throughout our friendship. That we met as two teenage girls traveling our own dark landscapes and both made it out alive with our voices, genius, and hearts intact—can you believe how remarkable that is, Eva, how profoundly rare?

  And finally, thank you to the self-proclaimed nymphets, the Los I’ve met over the years who carry within them similar histories of abuse that looked like love, who see themselves in Dolores Haze. This book was written for no one but you.

  About the Author

  KATE ELIZABETH RUSSELL is originally from eastern Maine. She holds a PhD in creative writing from the University of Kansas and an MFA from Indiana University. This is her first novel.

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  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  my dark vanessa. Copyright © 2020 by Kate Elizabeth Russell. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, trans
mitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  first edition

  Cover design by Elsie Lyons

  Cover photograph © Wojciech Zwolinski/Arcangel (woman); © Cristina Romero Palma/Shutterstock (butterfly)

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

  Digital Edition JANUARY 2020 ISBN 978-0-06-294152-7

  Version 01292020

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-294150-3

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