Category Archives: Uncategorized

35.

In November, a deposition was scheduled in Manchester, where our insurance company’s lawyer had his office.  My father and I were required to attend.  Marc drove me home, taking time from his classes to be with me for what we both expected would be a difficult day.

We drove in silence for a while, before he asked me if I’d seen Celeste.  I hadn’t told him about the appearance of Lizzie’s ghost in the library, but he knew that the dream was still bothering me.

“I saw her the other day,” I answered.  There was no inflection in my voice, no invitation to ask any questions or to continue the discussion.

But he did, anyway.

“How was that?”

“Oh, horrible.”

“Is she okay?”

“No.  Not really.”

He made a face.  “It’ll take time, I guess.”

“It’ll take more than that,” I said, a note of defiance in my voice.

He raised an eyebrow.  “Did you tell her about your dream?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And?”

“She wouldn’t confirm or deny,” I said, my voice and expression distant.  I gazed out the window, remembering my promise to Celeste.  I couldn’t say anything about our conversation.  At least not now.  But it was hard to keep it to myself.  I wanted to tell him.  I wanted to share it.  It was a burden, and together with the loss of my friend I was having trouble shouldering it on my own.  I was having trouble understanding how I was just coming upon something so important, so devastating, now.  After her death.  After months without her. Just learning about it now.

But no, I couldn’t tell Marc yet.  I wouldn’t be able to face Celeste again if I did.

“Hmm,” he said, turning the car left to follow another route.  “Well, you’ll be seeing Mr. Verdano soon.  Maybe you can ask him.”  His sarcasm wasn’t lost on me, but I didn’t make an answer.  I was too numb to be pithy or sarcastic.  Too numb to talk around the truth.

Because it would just come out in a stream.

What Celeste had said.

Yes.

Yes, he did it.

She admitted it.

My father and I arrived at the lawyer’s office the next morning early.  We found two lawyers, a stenographer, some other men wearing suits who presumably represented the insurance company, the Verdanos, and ourselves.  All together, we filled a very long, very impressive-looking table completely.  In fact, the stenographer barely fit into the room with her equipment.

Wow, I thought.  What a crowd.  All there to listen to me and Dad talk.  A lot of money riding on our memories and the words we were about to utter.   I sat down nervously.  Dad sat next to me, businesslike, his expression wary.  He was flexing the muscles in his jaw.

The sight of Mr. Verdano was a jolt.  I kept remembering him in my dream, his pants around his legs.  It was hard to look at him.  But it was also hard not to.  It wasn’t the first time I noticed he was a very handsome man.  This I realized grudgingly and with annoyance.  He was very handsome and had a certain magnetism to him that was undeniable.  He was tall and dark, the possessor of a very penetrating gaze, which, at that moment, he turned and fastened on me.

Realizing we were staring at each other, I looked away, going red, despite myself.  My heart was thumping in my chest.  So strange, the effect he could have on people.  I didn’t want to risk catching anyone else’s gaze, so I looked at the table.  It was shiny dark wood covered with glass.  There were no comfort items present.  No flowers.  Not even dusty fake flowers.  No little bowls of candy.  No glasses of water.  No food.  In fact, it smelled suspiciously devoid of foodstuff there.  Even coffee.  I couldn’t smell coffee.  I thought that was strange.  Didn’t these people eat or drink?  Perhaps only outside of the office.  Or maybe they didn’t have feelings, didn’t get hungry.

The art on the walls was all repro pastel landscapes and cityscapes.  No character, no impact to it.  Just something to break up a wall papered in beige textured paper.  I imagined the office administrative assistant had gone to a local discount department store at lunch one day to buy them.

A woman dressed in a skirted suit and sensible low-heeled pumps came in with some files, and gave them to one of the lawyers.  He didn’t thank her.  Her navy suit was unattractive, and I thought, looking at her, that I’d sooner die than become like her after I finished college.   Boring, permed hairstyle.  Pantyhose.  Content to work in an office where they didn’t have coffee and she had to wear ugly, low heeled pumps.

She left.

I was sorry.  That meant the only other woman in the room, other than the stenographer, was Mrs. Verdano.  I was surrounded by older men, and it made me feel vulnerable and awkward.  I felt they would try to use my words for their own ends and this was frightening to me.

I peered toward the other end of the room.

The table was at least twelve feet long.  The lawyers at the other end sat next to the Verdanos.  They wore dark suits over soft, overweight bodies, were cleanly shaven, had hair that was cut short and combed back.  They were looking through legal-size files, pulling out pens briskly, talking quietly.

I wondered what Lizzie, the Lizzie I’d known in life, would say about this whole thing.  My brain tried to recall her, make her present here with me.  Imagine some clever remark she might make, or even just conjure her smile.  But in this serious, sterile setting she seemed a million miles away and I could not summon a memory to comfort me.  I did not want to think of the ghost or wonder if she could hear the proceedings.  Not now.

I cleared my throat loudly.

“Could I have a glass of water, please?” I asked.

It was as if a gunshot had sounded in the room.  Everyone looked at me, startled.  I needed to get out of the seat they’d assigned me.  The lawyer who apparently presided over the office looked annoyed.  He nodded, waving his hand toward the door and got up to show me out.  I felt clumsy following him, but satisfied that I had aggravated him.

“Dad, would you like a glass of water?” I asked, looking at my father.

He nodded, saying “Yes, thank you Rowan.”

Dad watched us leave, jaw still flexing.  I could hear his breathing.  Deep, steady breaths.  Measured.  His hands were folded in front of him on the table.

His tension made me nervous.  I wanted to reassure him; but of course, I couldn’t think of anything useful to say.  And I didn’t want any of the suits to hear me say anything personal to my father.

When I sat back down with my water, I summoned the courage to look at the Verdanos again.

Mrs. Verdano was sitting demurely, her eyes averted from the other people at the table.  Her blonde hair was tastefully pulled back and fastened against the nape of her neck.  She wore champagne colored eye shadow under her eyebrows which made her eyes look bright and attractive.  A flat gold choker-style necklace under a very flattering champagne colored suit accentuated her slim, attractive figure.  I gazed at her for a moment, letting everything I’d learned about her from Celeste sink in, blend with the woman that sat at the other end of the table from me.  Briefly, my mind went to a memory I had of her visiting Lizzie during a work shift one day at the beach early last summer.  I’d had the day off and was lounging near Lizzie’s lifeguard station when Mrs. Verdano appeared on the sand wearing a business suit and pantyhose, anxious to speak privately with Lizzie.  Her skin looked pale and humid.  Puffy.  Like risen dough on a warm day.  She spoke in a hushed voice to Lizzie, her expression anxious and tearful.  I was out of earshot, but I could see that Lizzie’s response was impatient.  After a few minutes Mrs. Verdano seemed satisfied and checked her watch. She came by the spot I was occupying to say hello politely before leaving the beach, her shoes in her hands, sand no doubt working its way into the fabric of her pantyhose and between her toes.

The memory made a sharp contrast to the picture of composure she presented there in the lawyer’s office the day of the deposition.

After Mrs. Verdano left the beach I asked Lizzie if everything was alright.  She’d hesitated noticeably before telling me that everything was fine.  That her mom had a nervous condition that sometimes required treatment.  I hadn’t thought much of it then, but I wondered who was responsible for treating her condition?  Her husband?

Seated comfortably next to his wife, Mr. Verdano was at ease, dressed in a white shirt and tie, his dark hair neatly combed back, cufflinks shining on his shirt cuffs.  His attention was fixed on one of the uninteresting pictures on the wall.  That was fascinating to me, since Lizzie had often told me her father liked to collect art, frequently attending estate auctions and art openings.  Surely most anything else in the room would have been a more interesting object for his attention.  I looked at his hands, folded together, resting on the table in front of him.  He wore a gold wedding band, and I noticed for the first time how carefully cared-for his hands were.  His nails looked as if they had been manicured, buffed.  I stared.  I’d never seen hands like that before.

“Well, I think we can get started, now,” one of the lawyers said.  He motioned to the stenographer, who nodded.  “We’re here taking depositions from Mr. Thomson and his daughter Rowan this morning, on November first, nineteen ninety,” he said.  The stenographer began to click click click at her machine.

The lawyer looked at my father, his hands resting on the table before him.  “Mr. Thomson, we’ll start with you.  I’m going to ask some questions.  Some of them may seem repetitive.  Try to bear with me.  We want to be as precise as we can.”

My father nodded.

“We’ll start with how the car arrived on your property.  Could you please tell us what happened?”

My father cleared his throat.  “Yes.  Our daughter Rowan was frequently in Lizzie’s car.  Often, Lizzie drove them to school in the morning.  At that time, I asked her if she was maintaining the car properly because it was an old model with over a hundred thousand miles on it.  Naturally I was concerned for their safety,” he paused there, taking a sip of his water.

“So when she told me she had never changed the oil in the car, I was concerned.  I offered to do that for her, since I do the same for all of our family’s cars.  It’s always been a hobby of mine to work on cars,” he added.  “She brought the car over and I changed the oil for her.”

It is our understanding that you agreed to do work on the car for Ms. Verdano,” the lawyer said.  “What, exactly, did you do to the car?”

I didn’t like the tone of that question.  His use of the word “to” suggested my father had damaged the car.  I glared at him.

“I didn’t do anything to the car, sir,” my father’s voice was steady.  “I simply changed the oil in the car and changed the brake pads.”  He took a deep breath, regarding the lawyer with his steely blue-gray eyes.

“Thank you,” the lawyer said shortly.  The rest of the questioning continued that way, detailing the extent of my father’s access to her car, which in the end was just to change the oil and brake pads once.  We established that no less than four times.  A half hour later the lawyers seemed satisfied that my father had changed the oil and the brake pads once, with Ms. Verdano’s full permission and knowledge.

We further established that I had been in the car with Lizzie both before and after my father had done the work.  This fact was established three times that I counted.              Fascinating, I thought sarcastically.

By the time they were finished questioning my father my annoyance level was matched only by my boredom.  What a waste of a day.

The lawyers finally turned to me after an hour and a half of asking my father the same questions fifty different ways.

“Are you going to ask me the same questions over and over again, as well?” I asked, disdain evident in my voice.

The lawyer smiled.  “No, Rowan.  We’ll try to keep our questions to you succinct and to the point.”

Phew.  That was a relief.

“Are you ready to begin?  Would you like another glass of water?”

“Yes, please,” I answered, anxious to get up.

I went out into the office and pushed the little blue cold water tab down.  I waited, taking deep breaths and trying to relax.  I disliked that lawyer.  I disliked his questions, his tone, all of it.  I disliked his charcoal gray pinstripe suit and the dandruff that I noticed was collecting on his shoulders.

When I reentered the room everyone sat waiting in the same positions they’d been in when I left.  Was this what happened as people got older?  Did they fossilize?  Or was it just lawyers?

Not everyone in the group was suspended like that.  The Verdanos stood out despite their subdued presentation.  Mr. Verdano leaned toward his wife, his manner languid, the subtlest expression of pleasure there.  He said something to her that I could see pleased her.  The trace of a smile visited her lips and she blushed slightly, looking down at her lap.  Had he said something amusing?  Something suggestive?

My hate for Mr. Verdano rose up into my throat and spilled, sour, into the back of my mouth.   The feeling I had was like nothing I’d ever felt.  A visceral, animal hate for him.  I hated his self-confidence, his devastating good looks, his self-possession.  I knew he was cruel.  I hated him for disguising it.  I wanted to lunge across the table onto him, strangle him, stab him, bite him.  Destroy him.  The intensity of it made me dizzy.  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to control myself.

When I opened my eyes, nothing had changed.  I hated the idea of having to say anything, share a single memory, a single exchange, in front of the Verdanos.

“So, Rowan, we’re going to begin.” The lawyer nodded to the stenographer, who began to click away.  “We’re speaking with Rowan Thomson, November first, nineteen ninety.”

A pause.  “Rowan, what time did Lizzie leave your house?”

“She usually left around 9:30,” I answered non-committally, glaring at him.

“You think that Lizzie left your house at 9:30?”

“About that,” I answered.

“And where was she going?”

I could have sworn the table started to shake then. The whole room started to shake.  I looked at my glass of water.  Still.  Maybe I was shaking.

“She said she was going to work,” I said, resenting his questions.  Resenting the Verdanos.  Resenting the beige room and shiny table.  Pissed off, actually, and getting angrier by the moment.

I looked at the Verdanos, sitting placidly at the end of the table.  Well fuck them, I thought.

“She said she’d had an argument with her mother,” I added in an aggressive tone of voice.  I glared at Mrs. Verdano.  She looked surprised, hurt.  I wondered if she looked that way because I’d said something damaging or because I’d brought up a painful memory.

“Okay.  Well let’s stick with where Lizzie was going.  She was going to work.  Anywhere else?  Any stops on the way?”

“Not that she talked about.  Her shift at the lake would have been starting within a half hour, so I don’t know where else she would’ve gone other than to a gas station or convenience store,” I said.  “You know, the accident took place on her way to the lake, right?  So why are you asking me these—forgive me—stupid questions?”  I was letting my anger spill over into my voice, onto the table, into the air, and it was getting the best of me.

Carrying me away in a stream of poison.

This was probably a bad idea.

But it was too late, and nobody had given me the choice.  The lawyer didn’t call the house and say “Do you think Rowan would mind talking to us?  Giving a deposition?  Would she be comfortable with that?  Do you think she’d like to give us her version of the day’s events privately?  Would that be easier?”  I smiled at the ridiculous nature of my fantasy.  The thought of these lawyers respecting my feelings was ridiculous.

This added fuel to the fire that was threatening to blow the room up.

I leaned forward.  “You know, she wanted to be a nurse,” I said, glaring at the lawyer.

Dad touched my arm, took a sharp breath in.

Too late.

“A nurse!” I added, a laugh escaping.  “Imagine that.  She wanted to help people, even with a father that abused her.”

There.  I’d said it.

No going back now.  I glared at Mr. Verdano.  “Sexually abused her, as a matter of fact.”  I added, a laugh that sounded both spiteful and hysterical erupting.

Out of control.

I wanted to make him react.  But he sat there composed, cold, a trace of a smile there on his handsome face.  He looked at me, held me there with his eyes like a rag doll.  Looking almost as if he was amused with my outburst, but certainly not rising to my accusation.  I glared vainly.  Ineffectually.  Bored, he dropped me with his eyes and turned his gaze on the lawyers, his expression indicating he didn’t have any idea where I could have gotten such an absurd idea.

The lawyer cleared his throat.

I looked at Mrs. Verdano.  She was white.

“Rowan, I understand this is difficult for you, but please, let’s try to stick with the events of that day, okay?”

“Difficult?” I asked, my voice rising.  “Difficult?  You understand this has been difficult for me?  I don’t think you understand anything.”

I knew I sounded juvenile and out of control but I couldn’t help it.  I had to say these things.

The lawyers exchanged looks, eyebrows twitched.  Suited rear ends shifted in their seats.  Glasses were adjusted.  I looked at Dad, who was regarding me with something like interest, cautious fascination, even.

“Okay.”  The lawyer kept a calm exterior but I could see he was becoming upset.  By my impertinence?

It was too much to hope that my accusation had upset any of the cadavers at the table.  If they had responses to what I’d said, nothing was evident on their faces.  Except for Mrs. Verdano’s.  She looked like she was about to faint.

“Rowan, can we continue?” the lawyer asked, his annoyance seeping out now.

“Sure.  Fire away,” I said, getting comfortable with the tone I’d adopted and pleased to be punishing Mrs. Verdano in whatever small way I could.

My voice in the deposition would reflect the truth of my situation.  If they didn’t like it, they could spend some more money and reschedule their precious deposition.

“So Lizzie was going to work at the lake,” he parroted again.  “And when she drove away, did you notice anything unusual about the car?”

“Yeah, the wheel was wobbling wildly.  I yelled ‘Hey, Lizzie!  I think your wheel’s come loose!’  She said, ‘No worries, Rowan, I’m going to have that fixed this afternoon!’”  I finished, my voice alternating between a strained attempt to keep from crying and hysterical laughter.

I was trying, but I couldn’t control my voice or my expressions.  Looking at Mr. Verdano only made it worse, made me feel more desperate in my hate and desire to expose him.

The lawyer put his pen down and sat back in his chair, bringing his arms up to the back of his head.  The other lawyers looked at him.  “Ms. Thomson, this is a serious matter.  Jokes are not appropriate here.  If you can’t answer the questions then we will simply reschedule the deposition for a time that is more,” he paused, clearing his throat, “conducive to a productive outcome,” he finished.

“Sure thing.  Whatever works for you guys,” I said, the pitch in my voice continuing to rise, my expression a tight attempt to keep my laughter in check.

“I’m all about productive outcomes.  Rowan Productive Outcome Thomson.  See?  My middle name.”

Now Dad’s concern registered on his face.

“And while you’re at it, why don’t you depose Mr. Verdano?  Ask him how many underage nurses it takes to blow a sick psychiatrist?”

Dad went white.  But he didn’t say anything.  He just flexed his jaw, his eyes roaming from my face to the faces of the lawyers and back again.

“Let’s take a break,” the lawyer said, getting up and walking out.

I put my head down on the shiny table.

It was cold.

Everyone stood and walked past me.  I could feel them looking at the back of my head as they passed by me on their way out of the room.  I was embarrassed, self-conscious.  And I felt sorry for my father, who was undoubtedly embarrassed by my bizarre display.  I kept my head down, not daring to look at him.

Dad sat there beside me, drumming his fingers on the table.

“Honey, you’re scaring me,” he said after a few minutes.  “Do you think maybe you should talk to someone?  A psychiatrist, maybe?”

I raised my head, leaving tears on my arm and the table.  “Sure.  Why don’t we institutionalize me?  Then we could dispense with the bad jokes and hysterical behavior.” I didn’t look at him when I said that, because I knew he wanted to help me and didn’t deserve to be talked to that way.

But it was really my best answer.  I didn’t have any other response to that question in that moment.  The irony that he’d suggested I go to a psychiatrist — the very thing that Mr. Verdano did for a living — was not lost on me.

We sat silently there, together.

Finally the lawyers all filed back into the room.  Followed by the Verdanos.  Haggard now, I looked at my nemesis.  He returned my gaze comfortably, an eyebrow raised, a gesture of greeting on his face.

Red.  A veil of red descended on the room.  I nearly went wild with frustration at the sight of his face, digging my nails into the flesh of my palms to keep from screaming.

The lawyer that had been questioning me did not pick up his pen when he took his seat.  He still had dandruff on his shoulders and his suit looked rumpled.  Didn’t he have a secretary to tell him he was snowing on his shoulder?  I thought cruelly.  I contemplated pointing it out to him, feeling vicious.

He sat down, leaning on the table.  “We think, perhaps, we can do without any further testimony from Rowan,” he said, sounding tired.  “We realize this has been very traumatic for you,” he said, looking at me, “and we believe that we can settle this matter with the information we have.  Would that be acceptable to everyone?” he asked, looking around the table.

I nodded, relieved to be released.

Neither of the Verdanos gestured in any way, but the lawyers all nodded their agreement.

We were free to go.

When we stepped outside, the year’s first dusting of snow had fallen.  The lawyer’s office was on a hill.  We stood on his brick stoop and looked over the calm white quiet magic of the snow.  Powdery, swirling in some places.

We stood looking.

Dad buttoned his coat, pulled his lapels up against the cold and put his hands in his pockets.

“First snow,” he said.

I looked at our feet, side by side on the stoop.  No other footprints leading in or out of the office.  We would be the first footprints in the snow.

“Yup.  Pretty.” I sniffed.

He looked at me.  “Are you okay, Rowan?”

“Yup.”  Nope.

He put his hand on my back in a gesture of help and reassurance and we stepped off of the stoop together into the snow.

Dad did not ask me about what I had said.  I didn’t know why.  And I didn’t bring it up again.  That night at dinner we all tried to make light conversation.  Kori was quiet, and Billy tried to make a joke.

“How many Texas Aggies does it take to screw in a light bulb?” he asked.

I groaned.

Mom grinned.

Dad answered.  “Four, son.  One to hold it and three to spin him around.”

Billy smiled, clearly pleased with himself.

Inevitably, though, the conversation turned to the day’s main event: the deposition and its possible outcome.

Kori asked the question.  “Will Mr. Verdano get a lot of money?”

“Possibly,” Dad said, chewing.  “He could get the extent of our homeowner’s policy, which is about a half a million dollars.”

I thought that over.  In light of what I had learned about Mr. Verdano and his family it seemed beyond criminal.  The thought made my throat start to tighten again.  I pushed myself back from the table, feeling sick.

Everyone was watching me.  I couldn’t hold back my tears.  They came in a river.  It was too much for me to hold onto.  “It’s wrong, so wrong,” I said, my chest heaving up and down with the effort of controlling myself.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Mom got up and came around the table to hold me.

“No.  You don’t know what happened.  You don’t understand.” I said, the tears blurring my vision and what I was trying to say.  I felt like an erupting volcano, anger oozing everywhere.  I couldn’t articulate.

They were silent, watching and listening.

“He … ” I burst into a fit of crying that completely obscured my words.  I burbled a bit, trying to speak, and couldn’t.

They waited.

“He was abusing her.” I finally spat, shaking my head and clenching my fists.

“You said that today,” My father said, putting his fork down and folding his hands calmly.  “Where do you get the idea that Mr. Verdano was abusing Lizzie?”

Taking deep breaths to regain myself, I glared at Dad.  It wasn’t that I was directing my anger at him, but it was spilling out.  Everyone sat silently staring at me.  Billy’s food was on his fork in mid-air, suspended there.

“I had a dream about it.  I went to see Celeste, to see if it was true.” I said, trying to affect some calm, through clenched teeth. My nose was running, and there were little paths where the tears were making their way over my cheeks.

“She said it was.  True.”

Everyone’s jaws hung open, stunned.

“Oh, God,” my father said, leaning back in his chair to rest his head against the wall behind him. From there he looked at me, his expression registering a mix of disgust and pain.

In a flash, the image of Lizzie’s ghost came back.  The grip of the vision jolted me, a realization slamming into me.  At the launch.  He.  Look what he did to me.  He, he, he. Could it be?

I jumped up and ran from the room, pursued by the ghost.

Note to readers:  The main character’s name has been changed for publication (to protect the innocent 😉

34.

 

I have a memory of Lizzie dancing.  We were hanging out in our family room, talking about school, boys, vacation plans.  She had brought the new Madonna album with her, and we were listening to it on the stereo.  She jumped up and started to dance around, singing along with the song, her hair flying wildly as she spun around and around, wiggling to the Spanish rhythm.  Saying she couldn’t stand to have me sit there and watch her, she pulled me up off the sofa to join her.

She did that sort of thing whenever the mood struck her, sometimes while she was driving.  Holding onto the steering wheel with both hands, she would bounce up and down or wiggle back and forth in her seat, singing along with the music.

Or just walking along, wherever we were, at the beach or on our way to school, she would dance.  Being so openly happy, so often, really wasn’t normal, I told myself.

And there was something else:  She never had anything unkind to say about anyone.  That, also, was surprising and seemed abnormal.  I didn’t know anyone else, again, including myself, who didn’t indulge in a little mean-spirited gossip now and then.  I never really understood that about her.  Always happy, never a mean thing to say.

I compared my schoolmate with the apparition I saw on the boat launch, of the girl whose father had violated her.  The intensity of her ghost was not like my school friend.  I compared the Lizzie I remembered to the dreams I’d been having, to Celeste’s description.  But it was hard to compare an apparition that made her own sister feel threatened to the Lizzie I had known.

Somehow, I couldn’t accept that dying had made my happy friend unhappy.  And where had she found the strength to go through life as if everything was all right when it wasn’t?

I lay in my bed thinking of her, a book covering my face.  I groaned, a renewed realization of her physical absence sweeping over me.

“You all right?

I took the book off of my face, annoyed at the interruption.  One of my classmates, a girl named Sue, stood inside the door looking like perhaps she was somewhere she wasn’t sure she should be.

“Sort of,” I said.  “What can I do for you?”

“I just wondered if you had finished your Astronomy homework.  I’m having some trouble with it.”

I laughed.

Homework.  I hadn’t put much energy into that so far this semester.  Even an earnest attempt to do research for Food and People had come to nothing when Lizzie’s ghost appeared in the stacks.

“Uh, no.  I can’t say I’ve even looked at the assignment.  When’s it due?”

“Tomorrow,” she said, shifting on her feet and looking around.  “Well, sorry to bother you.  I guess I’ll see if I can find someone who’s looked at it,” she turned and left.

I put my book back over my face, resuming my brooding state.

A mother who chose not to protect her children: that aspect alone, Mrs. Verdano’s unexplainable choice to allow her daughters’ continued abuse, was more than I could understand and made me very angry.  Even if Mrs. Verdano was medicated, how could she do this?  And Lizzie’s super-human ability to disguise the situation …I was sure there was some psychological model that would explain all of this, but I couldn’t recollect a single memory of anything Lizzie had said or done that would have clued me into the bizarre picture that was emerging of the Verdano family.  How was it all possible?

It seemed to me that I had never really known Lizzie.

My mind returned to Mrs. Verdano.  Bake sale volunteer, flower shop owner.  She always bought the most stylish clothes and jewelry for her girls, always looked elegant herself.  I had jokingly called her the PTO queen.  She’d never missed a meeting.  She’d also never had a spare moment for any of us.  It seemed to me that perhaps she was always busy as a means of avoiding what was happening at home.  Had she used her many business and volunteer commitments as a kind of shield?  A means of removing herself from something she could not or would not deal with?  Why?  Was Mr. Verdano so important to her, did she feel so invested in that relationship that she would sacrifice her daughters to it?

And her father.  Polished, sophisticated, charming.  All of Lizzie’s friends harbored little crushes on him.  An Italian-American from New York, he’d graduated from an Ivy League school and ran the psychiatry department at Manchester Hospital.  He was well-known in our little community, well-respected.  Had even donated a room to our local library.  As I contemplated him, though, I realized that part of his mystique and appeal had always been a kind of smoldering mysteriousness.  He was never available to anyone I knew for anything more than the most casual, passing conversation and cordialities.  Even at social functions he chose to attend, he rarely appeared on time, preferring instead to arrive late enough to avoid introductions and idle chatter.  Unless he was a benefactor or speaker.  At those events he shone.  All generosity and humility.

I thought about school ball games.  Celeste had been a cheerleader for the football team.  I hadn’t thought much about it before, but if memory served correctly, he often disappeared early from games.  I remembered Mrs. Verdano and the girls getting into her car on their own; Mr. Verdano’s Mercedes was almost always gone by the time the rest of us reached the parking lot.  Still, my parents had always considered the Verdanos friendly acquaintances.  And now he was filing a lawsuit for wrongful death against my father.  It seemed like a work of fiction too surreal to be believed.

I tensed again as the image of the ghost, an image that was always there, burned into my mind.  The vision of her apparition visited me over and over again, causing my heart to leap.  Always accompanied by her words.

Look what he did.

Breathing consciously, listening to the very real physical event of air rushing into my body and then out again against the book still lying on my face, and doing it a second time, noticing the pages flapping during my second out breath, I thought about being halfway though the semester.

Lizzie would have been halfway through her Biology class and the Food and People class I was enrolled in.  Probably the sight of fat deposits wouldn’t have made her throw up, and it was a safe bet that she would be earning good grades.  She’d always been an honors student.

Most likely, I wouldn’t have been lying there with a book on my face if she’d come to school with me.

I reflected.

And I certainly would have been earning at least passable grades as well, if things had been different.  I hoped.

Probably, she would have made a habit of dancing around our dorm room with a Madonna album playing.   And, she most certainly wouldn’t have let the badly intentioned Steve drag me, sick, out of a fraternity party and up a set of stairs.

 

 

33.

The next day I went to the library.  I had a paper to write for my Food and People class that required some research, and I needed to immerse myself in something mundane.  All the talk of dreams, visions, druggings and rapes was starting to get to me.  I felt like I was living a Gothic novel.

The dark hue that fell over my days was preventing me from doing any homework.  I didn’t even know what material we were studying in Astronomy, and Probability and Statistics was so far over my head I’d given up on it. I no longer bothered with labs and incomprehensible jokes in Japanese.  I felt guilty, and I felt a need to ground myself, to do something constructive.

So I went to the library and entered the stacks.

There’s something comforting about the smell of old books.  Rows and rows of hardbound books in dimly lit corridors.  All written in English.  Or mostly, anyway.  The feeling that they’d been there, reliable, sanctioned, cared for by the establishment, was reassuring to me.  I was someplace safe, surrounded by books that had endured school year after school year, ministering to young minds, accounted for in the library’s catalogue.  I breathed deeply, trying to absorb the smell into my pores, my eyes, my hair.  I had always loved libraries, from my earliest memories of the brightly lit children’s room with its low shelves and colorful picture books right up through my travels in reference, fiction, and eventually nonfiction.

I had a short list of call numbers, and all the books I was looking for were on the same floor.  I began my hunt.

I walked along the corridor, reading the call number labels.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move behind me, into one of the corridors.  A faint rustle in the air.  A breath, perhaps.

Another student.

I continued and found the aisle for my first call number.  Good.  I turned right, saw something move behind the stack to my right.  I turned and glanced across casually, expecting to see another student there.  No one, though.  Sure I’d seen something, I stopped and bent my head forward to look over the books into the aisle there, but I couldn’t see anyone.

Feeling a chill and taking a breath to steady myself, I looked down at my call number and began hunting along the shelf, squatting to read call numbers one row up from the bottom.  As I did, a breeze came up from behind me, accompanied by the sound of rustling paper.  This time the movement seemed to be in the aisle behind the left side stack.  Again, I peered over the books, through the shelf, trying to see the source. But there was nothing.

Suddenly, it was beginning to feel cold. The lights in the ceiling flickered.  Determined not to be spooked, I continued my search for the first book on my list.  Finding it, I pulled it from the shelf.  It was hardbound in burgundy leather binding with white Courier style typeface on the cover.  I opened it, the smell of an old book reaching my nose.  I breathed it in, closed it, and ran my hand over the cover, my fingertips pausing over the title painted in white on the hard cover. Then I tucked it under my call number list.  One down.

Leaving the aisle, I continued along, looking for the second book.

I caught a glimpse of someone passing at the other end of the stacks, no doubt whoever I’d been seeing out of the corner of my eye.  Continuing along until I came to the next aisle labeled with the call number range on my list, I turned, and hunted along the shelf for the next book.  The pleasant feeling of being among these old books began to give way to a feeling of anxiety.

I looked around.  No one there.  I told myself the chill I was feeling was silly.  All the same, I was ready to leave the stacks.  Finding my book I pulled it from the shelf, stacking its blue cover over the red one. Feeling the weight of the books I decided two was enough.  These would occupy me for an evening. I hadn’t intended to leave with just two books, but my mood had shifted.  I put the call number list in my pocket.

I would come back for the others.

Turning to exit the aisle, I found I was blocked.

Eva stood in the aisle before me, preventing my exit on that end.  Not again.  Why?  Why here?  I felt the cold that seemed always to be there when the apparition appeared surrounding me. Instinctively I turned to reassure myself that the other end of the aisle was clear.

I started to back up, but she advanced.  “Rowan.”

“Eva, please.” I felt short of breath, still instinctively afraid despite her repeated appearances.

“It’s okay, Rowan.  It’s okay,” she whispered, holding her hand out to me.

The ring.  She was wearing her ring.  I stopped, felt my own ring against the books, which I held crushed against my chest, a kind of shield.  I stood looking at her, wondering if I should run.  But I didn’t.

“Rowan, remember the dream.  What you saw was the truth.  Remember what you saw!”

She stopped advancing, looking sad.  Sad and intense.

“It isn’t over,” she said.

I looked at my friend.  She was incongruous standing in the library stacks with her cutoffs and guard shirt.  She still wore the clothes she’d worn every day of the last summer of her life.  Here, in the library stacks at UNH.  I wondered if she was aware of that.  Aware, as she’d been of the ring I’d left in her casket with her.

“Eva, I don’t understand what you want,” I said.  “Do you want me to accuse your father?  I don’t have any evidence!  Nothing!” Tears sprang to my eyes at the sight of her.  I missed her so much.

That realization brought me face to face again with the unfairness of it all.  I was attending school here alone, without her.  The sight of her here in the library that she would have used gave me pain in my chest, made my throat tighten.  I felt robbed.

Our exchange was cut short by the sound of someone entering the stacks at the end of the hall.  Turning to see another person intruding on our privacy, she disappeared.

Eva’s appearance impressed the urgency of the matter upon me, and I realized that I needed to help settle whatever was disturbing her.  Or I would continue this way.  My life and mind disrupted, effectively shattered.  Unable to accept, much less embrace, my grief.  Wasting time and money in a place that could never be anything other than a ruined dream, drowning in disappointed expectations.

Another trip across campus, this time unannounced.

She’d lied to me about being at the party.  For all I knew, Celeste and Venus were dealing drugs.  Meanwhile I was tormented with the possibility – or rather, a ghosts’ insistence — that my dream of Eva’s abuse had been real.  What, if anything, did Eva’s abuse have to do with date-rape drugs?

I was missing something.  Some answer.  Some link.

Ghostly visits by my bed and in the stacks were taking my mind over with shadows and realities that weren’t tangible.  It seemed whenever I tried to reach for a concrete idea, it disappeared.  I was a stranger in my own world; Eva’s visitations had taken over the landscape.  There was only one other person who had a place in the dark world I was traveling in.  Celeste.

I had to see Eva’s sister to find out the truth.

I knocked with determination on Celeste’s door.  She was at home, clad in sweats, hair in a bandana, gold-rimmed glasses on.  I didn’t know she wore glasses; I’d never seen her wearing them.

She invited me in, her surprise at seeing me so soon evident in her expression.  A biology book lay open on the pink ottoman in the living room.  I didn’t sit, my voice spilling out ahead of me as I paced the room.    “Celeste, I’ve just seen Eva again.”

Celeste’s eyes widened in surprise as she followed me into the living room.  I didn’t pause, charging on with what I had to say.  “And I had a strange dream last night about her.  And your father.  Maybe it wasn’t a dream.  I don’t know.  Maybe it was Eva … I didn’t know who else to talk to about it,” I said in a rush, hopeful that the truth, however confused, abrupt, and straightforward, was the right avenue.

She looked puzzled, seated herself, and waited for me to continue.

“The dream was about Eva,” I repeated deliberately, “and your father.”

Her eyes flashed.  She picked up a book nervously.  Opened it.  Closed it.              “I don’t see what this has to do with me,” she said, getting up.

“Celeste, please.  I need to know what happened.”

“Don’t you think this is horrible for me?” she demanded.  “She was my sister!”

“Of course,” I answered, wondering if coming had been a mistake.  But it was too late.  I had started this, and I had to know if the dream was true.  “But I feel like something happened — something bad … ”

“Yes, something bad happened.  Eva is dead.  Isn’t that bad?  Really, Rowan, what could be worse?” she demanded, anger flaring in her voice.

I wasn’t getting anywhere.  I had to be more explicit.  “Celeste, I need to know what was going on between Eva and your father.”

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing?  Nothing was going on between them?” I asked.

She looked at me coldly.

“No, Rowan, nothing was going on between them.”

I stared, not sure where to go next.  “Abuse.  I dreamt your father was sexually abusing Eva,” I said, going for broke because she had risen and was walking toward the door.

“That’s disgusting.” She turned to glare at me.  “I can’t believe you would suggest something so … ” She broke off, shaking her hands in frustration, her jaw clenching.  “Especially with everything else I have to deal with!” Her voice was rising.  She stopped, stopped talking, seemed to stop breathing.  And then I watched as her anger turned the corner to grief.  The hostility disappeared as she gathered a great breath.  She filled her chest, held it there, her face contorting as she tried to hold it, whatever it was, in.

I watched, transfixed.  She was transforming.  The cool, beautiful veneer I had grown so accustomed became a mask of pain as the muscles in her face tightened, drawing the corners of her lips down toward her jaws, her forehead into a crumple.  Her eyes were like the ocean during a storm: turbulent, angry, wet.  Celeste’s pain.  A silent eternity passed, she remained frozen, her face contorted, holding her breath and whatever was behind it, in.  The breath finally expressed itself from her chest in a wail.  As I stood there, I watched and listened to her crying escalate to the kind of keening tears you hear on recordings from the east.  She slumped against the wall, holding herself.

I was stunned.  Guilty and ashamed of exposing her, full of fear, regret, and remorse at the sight of her.  Her pain was scary, hard to watch, even ugly.    Lost, I tried to touch her shoulder, looking for a way to bring back the Celeste I knew.  But she shrugged my hand away violently.  “I’m sorry, Celeste, I … ”

“No!  You don’t know what happened!” she spat, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Crying violently, now.

“You would never understand!  You have no idea what it was like growing up like this!” She was sliding down the wall to the floor.  “With a mother that never protected us.  She left us there, with him, all those years, one night after another, he did these things to us! She knew … ”

Huddling there, crumpled, she cried piteously.  Shocked at her sudden disintegration, I started to cry, too, kneeling down next to her.  Both of us were now awash in tears, mirrors of each other’s pain.

“Celeste, I’m so sorry …”

But it wasn’t enough.  What had I done?  Exposed an already suicidal girl’s source of pain.  Sorry didn’t begin to touch the truth of the situation.  Suddenly I could see how Celeste truly felt, what her world was really like.

“I am sorrier than I can ever tell you …”  I began again, reaching out to touch her shoulder.  She didn’t throw my arm off, but just continued to cry, her shoulders shaking.  Her face streaked with tears, her expression wrenched with pain, she continued.  “He raped us over and over.  Since junior high school he’s forced us — made us do things — sometimes to each other.  His own father did the same things to him.”

She looked at me then, awash in silent tears everywhere.

“She knew, Rowan.  My mother knew.”  She looked at me, her face laid open with frustration, pain, anger.

“Please.  Come sit with me in the living room,” I said, consumed with shock, wanting to regain dry land, bringing my own crying under control.  I had opened a Pandora’s box for Celeste and I had to try to calm her down, comfort her, help her if I could.

I led her back to the couch and sat down next to her.  We sat there for some time, Celeste crying, me watching helplessly.  “I’ve tried killing myself,” she said between sobs.  “Once I took some pills but Eva found me and they rushed me to Emergency.”

I sat there, disbelief taking me captive.

The elasticity of my mind had been stretched to its capacity and here it was stopping, contracting, perhaps.  Her father abused.  Abusing.  Eva had never let on.  How could I have imagined I was so close to her?

Celeste’s last suicide attempt was not the first.  The girls had all been sexually assaulted by their father.  For years.  It ran in the family.

Poison in the soup.

All along.

“Celeste, what can I do?” I asked, wanting to help, but not knowing what she needed.  “Eva never told me.  I didn’t know,” my voice trailed off.

I felt impotent and stupid.

Who did I think I’d been in Eva’s life?  And who could I be to this girl?  Celeste peered at me, her eyes dark pools of still water.  Haunted.

“Can you help Eva?  Can you help her rest?  Can you take away everything that he’s done?  Go back in time and wipe away the ruin and filth?”

I went cold, stared silently.

Realized that Celeste and Eva were linked, attached, to each other by the family, by their common experiences.  Their lives stolen from them.  Together in the despair of ruined hope, ruined innocence.  A ruined childhood.

Together.

Eva was haunting Celeste in vain.

Celeste was capable of doing that for herself, to herself.  She didn’t need the reminder from her dead sister of what was wrong, unfinished, unpunished.  For Celeste, hell was right here on Earth.  And the devil was at large.

“I don’t understand how your Mom,” I started to say, and thought better of it.  She looked at me miserably.  “I’m sorry, Celeste.  I never knew your father did this.  Eva never gave me the slightest indication,” I let the sentence hang there unfinished.

“Rowan, my father controls everything.  My mother, my sister, me, his clients, business associates.  Everyone.  Before him, it was his father.  That’s all.”  She turned away, then, trying to compose herself, wiping at her eyes delicately and taking deep breaths.

I paused, wanting to say something encouraging but realizing that was probably a futile inclination.  Especially now.  I decided to try anyway.  “You are beautiful and brilliant, Celeste.  Don’t leave the world.  I don’t think Eva would want that.”

She smiled, an ironic, tragic smile.  “I think, Rowan, it’s too late for that.  But I’ll think about what you said.”

“Promise?” I asked.

“Promise.”  She took a deep breath then, seeming to realize the weight of what had been said for the first time.  Her hands came up to cover her face.  She sobbed, taking several deep breaths.  Back and forth, I could see she was trying to regain control.

“Oh God, I shouldn’t have said anything,” she said, looking at me with red eyes.  “Rowan, please don’t say anything.  Please,” her voice was imploring.  “My father, Venus … they’ll kill me.”

She looked at me, fear evident in her wide-eyed expression.  “Venus would kill me, never forgive me.”  Her tear-streaked face was a mask of dread, misery.

“For telling?”  She nodded, sniffing, tears resuming in a trickle.

“Okay,” I said, defeated.  “I’ll keep this to myself.  But Celeste, do you want things to stay the way they are?  When you go home –”  Ghosts flitted through my mind.  Horrible whispers of what it must be like for her.  A reality that had endured generations.

She looked up at me.  “We don’t have to go home anymore.  We support ourselves,” she said, her voice almost a whisper.

“Support yourselves?” My voice raised to make the words a question.

She nodded emphatically, sobbing.

“How?” I asked, the question of dealing drugs springing into my mind like a nimble cat.  She looked at me, her eyes almost black with the weight of everything.  This was all too much for her.

Too much for us both.

I decided to back off the question.

“Please,” she whispered.  “Just forget your dream and this discussion.  Forget all of it.  Please.”

I gave an exhausted nod of consent.  “I promise,” I said.

“I’ll come and see you again.  Will you be all right?”

She nodded.  “I’ll be fine.”

I’ve finished editing the book and am in the process of formatting it on create space.  If anyone has any tips feel free to chuck them my way!  In the meantime, here are a few more chapters for anyone who hasn’t given up waiting for me to post.  🙂

29.

Marc returned that afternoon to find me curled up in bed.  Not sleeping.  Just curled up on the bed with my hands under my head staring out the window.  Staring at the russet trees that announced the autumn.  The last harvest.  Halloween.  Death.  Trying to keep warm.  Trying to ward off the shadows of Venus’ visit.  In her wake, she’d left many.

He sat down beside me.

“What’s happening?” His tone was gentle.

I shook my head, my eyes dry, staring.  The shadows fled with his warm, familiar presence.  I moved to rest my head on his lap.

“Marc I’m so tired.”

“What’s happening, Rowan?” he asked again.

It was hard to speak.  I didn’t have the pulp.  Whatever energy I had was spent in my discussion with Venus and the hours following, in which I sat alone, brooding.  Feeling guilty that I wasn’t doing homework and brooding over the cruelty and unfairness of everything.  “Celeste is in the hospital.  She tried to kill herself.” The words required a Herculean effort.

“What happened?”

“Venus said she took some pills.  Yesterday.  She’s in the hospital in Portsmouth.”           The fatigue that overcame me with Venus’ departure was more than I could bear.  I couldn’t move.  Why didn’t she seem to care about her sister?

“Oh, Rowan I’m sorry.  She’s okay?”

“I guess she’s as okay as someone who tried to kill themselves can be,” I said without humor.

“Right,” he sighed.  “Eva’s accident has been hard on everyone,” he observed reflectively.  His voice was almost a whisper.

“Mmm.”

“Do you want to go see her?” he asked, rubbing my hands, which were ice cold.  As usual.  I had such horrible circulation.  I’d been that way all my life.  Susceptible to the cold.  Cold when my energy was low.  As if my fingers and hands were too far from my heart.

“Yeah.”

The hospital was quiet.  The walls were gray and when we emerged from the elevator, the hall lights were low.  Or dirty.  I looked up at them noticing there were dead flies inside the plastic light covers.

I felt nervous that Celeste was here in this place.  Just on the heels of losing her sister.  We passed room after room, people lying in the beds quietly.  No voices.  Just televisions and the blips of machines.  It seemed like there was no escaping darkness and death.  It catches up with everyone eventually.

Marc carried some flowers we’d picked out down the street at a florist. We looked for the room number we’d gotten from the woman at the information desk.

We passed the nurses’ station.

Several women in scrubs sat behind a tall desk talking.  There were some dim monitors on, their screens displaying patient beds in black and white, several three-ring binders with what appeared to be charts or medication records lying open, and a bowl of candy on top of the counter.

The nurses did not look up to acknowledge us when we passed.

We kept going.  The floors gleamed.  One ceiling light flickered.

We came to the room.

Hesitating outside the door, I craned my neck around to peer in.  I could see the end of a bed, feet poking up under a thin white cotton blanket.  The room lights were not on, but some late afternoon light filtered in through the window.

There was one bed, a TV on the wall, and a chair.  I knocked tentatively on the door.  Three little knocks.

No answer.

“Celeste?” I asked softly.

I saw the feet move, but she didn’t answer.

I took a step forward, Marc standing still behind me with the flowers.

“Celeste?” I repeated.

“Yes?” Her voice sounded tired, and unhappy to be disturbed.

We advanced cautiously.

The top half of the bed was raised to support her in a sitting position and her extended arm was hooked up to an IV with white tape covering the needle.  She looked pale, her eyes had dark circles under them, her hair lay flat against her head.

She turned her head to look at us, her eyes like murky pools, no light there.  She did not look happy to see us.  Rather, she seemed embarrassed and sad.

“Hi,” I said, not sure we should have come.  Perhaps sending flowers and a note, waiting for her to come home, would have been better, I thought suddenly.  Too late, now.  “Venus told us you were here, and we thought we’d just come see how you’re doing,” I said, trying to sound relaxed and casual.

“Great.  Never better,” she answered sarcastically.  I noticed her pale lips were dry, cracking.  She looked away.

Marc put the flowers down on a table and stepped back to stand near the wall by the door.  He didn’t speak.

She looked at the flowers.  “You didn’t have to do that,” she said, a note of defeat in her voice. The room itself seemed full of defeat, I noted, looking around, with it’s dirty walls and dim light.

“We know.  We just thought they would brighten the place up.  Hospitals are so gloomy,” I said, pasting a smile on my face.

She didn’t answer.  The six o’clock news came on the television.  She turned away from us and stared at the television.

“Can I sit down for a minute?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said indifferently.

I did.

Marc shifted his weight to the other foot, but he didn’t sit.  I looked at Celeste’s hand.  The IV was just above her wrist, a testimony to what had happened.  Proof that she needed help or support.  Proof that she couldn’t nourish herself.  Her arm lay flat on the bed.  It looked pale, a little swollen.  I was unaccustomed to seeing Celeste without any jewelry.  No rings.  No earrings.

“Celeste, what happened?  Did you see Eva again?” I asked.  I wanted to help her, but I didn’t know what she needed.  Only that she clearly was not all right.

She looked at me, her eyes suddenly wide and dark.  Her lips parted to speak, but she was silent.

I put my hand on hers.  It was cold, dry, seemed to have shriveled.  I waited for her to speak, to give me some idea of why she’d hurt herself, and what she needed.         “She was in my apartment,” she whispered.

She closed her eyes and laid her head back against the pillow, as if the memory of the event exhausted her, and swallowed hard, trying to moisten her dry throat.

“Do you want some water?” I asked.

She nodded.

Glad to have something to do and an excuse to leave, Marc nodded and shot out of the room to find a glass of water for her.

I leaned forward, pulling the chair toward the bed, and picked her hand up, cradling it in my own and covering it with my other hand.  She took a deep breath, relaxing, her eyes still closed.  She wore a deep frown that made her look old.

“I saw her in my apartment,” she said, unable to move past that piece of information for the moment.  She opened her eyes and looked at me.  Her eyebrows came together and she pursed her lips, as if she was stifling tears.

“She isn’t gone.” This came out in a whisper.

Then she closed her eyes again, swallowing hard against her dry throat.

“Can you talk about what you saw?” I asked.

She shook her head no.

“Okay,” I said quietly.  We sat there in silence for a few minutes, the news anchor churning out the day’s depressing events.  The bad news of other people’s lives.  People who lived around us but whom we didn’t know.  Three family house burned to the ground.  Woman missing.  An accidental shooting in a nearby small town.

“How long do you think they’ll keep you here?” I asked.

She shrugged slightly and blinked.

We watched the news some more.

Marc returned with the water, handed it to me, and resumed his position against the wall.

I gave it to her and watched her drink.  “When,” I paused, correcting myself, “if, you feel like you want to talk about what you saw, I can always listen,” I said, wondering if that was likely to happen.

She made no reply.  Her eyes were fixed on the television.

“Do you want us to stay or would you rather we leave?” I asked.

“I think you should go.  There’s nothing you can do for me,” she said, her tone tired and utterly, deeply resigned.

I didn’t like the sound of that.

“We could bring you some decent food.  Or a book or something,” I said, realizing this was for people whose bodies were sick, not their minds.

But she seemed ready to end the conversation.

“And you’ll call me if you need or want anything?” I asked, hoping to convey that I was fully available to her.  Feeling responsible, somehow.

“Yes,” she said, her voice despondent and tired.  Hollow.

“Okay.  I’ll check in again,” I said, and got up to leave.  Something told me she wasn’t going to be all right.  I was reluctant to go.

“Rowan?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t tell Venus about the ghost, okay?” she asked quietly, looking up at me with round, dark eyes set into her pale face.  She turned back to the television.

My heart sank.  Now wasn’t the time to tell her that Venus had already come to see me.  That I’d already spoken with her.  That the information had already been shared.

I hesitated.

“Okay,” I said, feeling afraid.  It was a lie to agree to her request.  But what else could I say?  I wondered how this mess would all fall out.  “Do you mind my asking why?”  I asked.  It was the wrong question at the wrong time, but if I had made a mistake, I needed to understand what the implications were.

“Yeah,” she said, without turning to look at me.

“I do mind.  Please, just don’t tell her.”

30.

That night there wasn’t any rest.

I dreamt the accident.  Eva’s accident.  Or I had a vision of it.  One or the other.  Impossible to say which, but I was there.

Trying to pull the car over.  The wheel grinding and wobbling.  Pulling over but something has gone wrong.  The tire has come off.  A horrible crushing and glass.  The sound of metal crunching, crushing.  Screeching.  There is glass everywhere, flying past my eyes, filling them.  I am kicking violently, bringing my knees and shins up against the steering column, the bottom of the dash, kicking because I can’t stop, kicking because it hurts.

Oh God it hurts.

My legs are jerking violently.  I’m not kicking anymore, they’re just jerking up over and over again, hitting the steering column.  I can’t stop them.  Please, no.

The windshield has collapsed, crashing in on me.

I can’t breathe.  Can’t see.  Can’t move.  Can’t be happening.  This pain is an explosion.  Someone else’s pain.  This isn’t real.

Still in the car.  The car.  The wheel of the car.

I stay inside the car.

Stay there forever.  Stay because I can’t move.  Stay because I can’t get out.  Stay because I don’t know what’s happening.  Stay because none of this is happening and I don’t know where I am.

Where am I?

Someone tells me it’s time to go.  Time to leave the car.  It’s time to come out of the car.   The wheel of the car is off.

But I can’t let go.  My fingers are clamped to the steering wheel, with its blue leather driving grips and twine.  Curled around the wheel.  I can’t loosen my hands.  They’re holding on.  I can’t get up.

I’m stuck here, blood stuck to the seat, cemented to the seat behind me.  The wheel of the car has come off.

I can’t move.

Who are you?  The tire is gone.

There is a light suddenly rising above a nearby hill off to my left.  A path into it.  It’s beautiful, a golden light there, shining over the hill, filtering through trees and onto a hillside of golden grass.

I look away from it.

The voice is soft.  Get up.  Stand up.  Come out of the car.  Come with us.  I look at the handle of the door.  Pull the handle open.

I can’t.  I’m waiting for tomorrow.  I’m waiting for tomorrow to come.

Crying.

The steering wheel is here, in my hands. I have to wait for tomorrow.  Everything will be all right, then.

But tomorrow never comes.

Not for Eva.

I awoke the next morning confused.  Not sure if I’d actually been in the car.  An experienced psychic could have told me that those things sometimes happen.  Those visions.  Re-experiencing a violent event.  An event that’s stopped some poor soul dead in its tracks.  An event that hasn’t been settled.  Dealt with.  Released.

But I wasn’t an experienced psychic.

31.

Course work was becoming impossible.  I thought about Celeste ceaselessly.  And when I wasn’t thinking of Celeste I was thinking about Eva.

And death.

Looming mortality.

I was thinking of anything but school unless I was brooding about failing.

Still, I tried, going to class, reading, attempting to do assignments.

A few weeks of going to Probability and Statistics class passed.  I tried to listen and understand, did homework, went to lab, and repeatedly found that my work was painfully wrong.  I did not learn Japanese and sat in my seat silently hating the TA, who incessantly tried to make jokes in English that no one could understand.  After each little bomb he would laugh excitedly in Japanese at his own good sense of humor.  I looked around at my lab mates and wondered if any of them understood anything he said.  It was hard to tell.  I noticed one girl picking at fuchsia nail polish that was well past its sell-by-date on her fingers.  It didn’t seem like she was listening to him and I wondered why she had come to the lab.  For that matter, why had I come?

Writing class wasn’t much better.  I was blocked, writing stuff even I didn’t want to read, when I wrote anything at all.  We were asked to write an analysis of Yeats’ The Lake Isle of Innisfree and I came away mumbling “for peace comes dropping slow,” over and over again.  It was the only line that registered in my mind and rather than taking up the beautiful image of a bee-loud glade or the quiet imagined symmetry of nine bean-rows, I wrote three pages about peaces dropping slow.  Pieces dropping slow.  Pieces of what?  I contemplated the slow dropping of peaces fifty different ways.

My teacher did not find it clever.

Astronomy:  I definitely understood everything but hadn’t done well on a quiz that required far more memorization than I had either interest in or concentration for.  Somehow being able to regurgitate the mathematical formula for the speed of light failed to ignite my interest.  As a result I failed the quiz, our only grade recorded so far this semester.

Food and People, which I opted for at the last minute as a kind of tip of my hat to Eva’s dream of becoming a nurse, had been fun until the professor showed us a movie that contained graphic detail of human biology and fat accumulation.  Actual footage of an autopsy.  I got sick and ran out of class to throw up.

In short, my usual academic prowess was toast.  And my grades were going to reflect it.  Which didn’t leave me much to fall back on or be cheerful about.  There was, aside from Marc, a silver lining in my overcast, gloomy existence, though:  I was making friends with some of the girls on the floor.  Every evening Belinda and a varied smattering of other floor mates that reliably included a girl named Mary, came to call on me for dinner.

Belinda was pretty, and popular with our floor mates.  She had good hair.  Blonde and worn long.  Mary was a very nice Italian girl from a big family who was studying to become a nurse.  When Belinda introduced us I liked her immediately.  She was a calm girl, without affect, and in a small way she reminded me of Eva.  She smiled a lot and always seemed anxious to avoid conflict or judgment.  Both Belinda and Mary were also taking Food and People and we found lots to talk about related to our experience of fat calipers and learning about the lack of nutrients in canned vegetables.

“I never knew how unhealthy I was!”  Mary proclaimed as we left class one sunny day to walk to lunch together.  “I don’t know how I’ll break the news to my mother that she’s been feeding us nutritionally defunct, unhealthy food all these years.”  She seemed genuinely concerned.  “Maybe I shouldn’t tell her,” she said, her lovely brown eyes resting on us worriedly.

“They’ll be happy to hear their tuition money is being well spent!”  Belinda said cheerfully.  Mary and I stared.

It wasn’t clear whether she was being sarcastic or she meant it.

We went to the dining hall, exchanging comments about our homework assignments, standing in line together and making fun of the food.  We put our new food awareness to work in the hot plate line at the dining hall, guessing at the identities of the dishes.  Like all of the other students, I realized with some surprise.  I seemed to be integrating.  At least in a shallow way.  Having new friends was a relief.  It got me out of my own troubled head.

And it kept me from brooding on Celeste, who, for some reason, I didn’t feel I could visit.

One afternoon, Mom called to tell me that a deposition had been scheduled by the lawyers for the insurance company and I would be required to attend and give my story.       This did not sound like good news to me.

I didn’t know what a deposition was, exactly, or what it would be like.  But it seemed obvious that it would be difficult.  After all, it involved lawyers and my father’s homeowner’s policy was on the line.  Dad was wrestling with guilt over something he felt sure he hadn’t done, but couldn’t prove he was innocent of.  Likely it was worse wondering if he’d made a mistake than knowing for certain one way or the other and trying to manage a known reality.  Meanwhile, what if I unwittingly said something wrong?  Something to tip the scales toward my father being at fault?

The situation was loaded.

It became a buzzard on the horizon.  Circling endlessly.

I asked Mom how things were at home.  She told me things had been quiet, Kori and Billy were doing fine in school, Dad seemed to be holding up.

Holding up.  Like Atlas, I supposed.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her about my grades.

She would know soon enough.

A few weeks later Belinda stopped me in the hall to talk.  She looked perky.  Her hair was in ponytails and she was wearing a pretty pink matte lipstick.

“Are you going Friday night?” she asked, referring to yet another fraternity party that was announced via a barrage of flyers hung up all over the dorm.

“I don’t think so, no,” I said, my actual response decidedly more polite than the one I was thinking of, which was ‘Hell, no!’

“Why not?” she asked, all wide-eyed, her lips forming a perfect pink little pout.

“As in why ever not?” I quipped, unable to resist poking fun at her Scarlett O’Hara-like feigned disbelief.

She smiled.  “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“Because the last time I went to one of those things my boyfriend had to carry me out,” I said, still nursing my anger and embarrassment over the episode.

“Too much to drink?” she asked, smiling knowingly.

“No.  The wrong thing to drink.  Someone drugged my beer,” I said darkly, leveling her with my best catch-you-by-the-seat-of-your-pants look.

She looked shocked.  “You’re kidding!” she exclaimed conspiratorially, as if I’d said I had the president of the United States waiting naked for me in my room.

“No, I’m not kidding,” I said, thinking her surprise was the wrong kind of surprise.

“And I’ll answer the question you’re dying to ask: no.  They didn’t rape me, thanks to my boyfriend.  Otherwise I’m sure they would have taken turns on me.”

Here I got the response I was after.  She was genuinely shocked and offended.  I smiled at my success and made use of the moment.  “It does occur to me to wonder, Belinda, when I see these posters up everywhere, how many of these parties they’ll have before they’ve worked their way through the dormitory’s population and exhausted the list of possible victims?”

I smiled sweetly.

Kaboom.  Her revulsion.  My anger.  A bomb.

Oh, yes. Great way to maintain a friendship, Rowan, I thought, angry with myself.  I didn’t wait for her to reply.  I walked away, frustrated.  Mad.  Shooting myself in the foot.  Stupid girls.  Angry that we encouraged each other into dangerous situations.  Certainly not wanting to be right.

Stupid girls.

All of us.

That following Friday night it actually happened.  Mary, my new friend, was drugged and raped repeatedly at the very party Belinda had been talking about.  I wondered if they had gone together.  Even after my warnings to Belinda.

The fraternity brothers had recorded the whole thing on video tape, and Mary was a wreck.  I overheard some girls who lived on our floor whispering outside the bathroom.  She’d taken to her room and she was crying a lot.  To add final insult to injury, she discovered she had crabs as a result of what had happened.

The news made me sick.  My heart sank.  Images of Mary prone on a bed, one brutal aggression after another penetrating her flew through my head, made me dizzy.           And a film of it.

Why?

Why document their own depravity?  It was more than I could understand.  More than I could stand, in fact.  Everything in me cried out silently, images and visions of her victimization rolling over me again and again, upsetting my stomach.  I had to sit and take deep breaths.  When I finally managed to calm myself, I went down the hall to see how she was, share my own experience with her if it would be helpful, or just be sympathetic, caring, supportive, whatever.

I found her in her room surrounded by girls.

No, I thought.  No sharing today.

“Hi, Rowan,” Mary said when I knocked quietly at the door.  “Come in.”

I did, and sat down across the room at one of the desk chairs. Nobody spoke for a while.  It was strange.  So many girls in the room, nobody speaking.  Mostly they just sat quietly staring at Mary. It was a kind of noisy silence.  A few of the girls rocked back and forth, their hair swinging.  It reminded me of pictures I’d seen of 60s sit-ins.

Mary had become a kind of inverse icon.

The martyred Mary.

“How are you doing?” I asked, in part to find out and in part to calm the oppressive soundless clamor in the room.

“Oh, okay, I guess,” she said, looking around at the girls that had planted themselves all around her.  Taken root.  Like so many wildflowers.  It seemed they were there to demonstrate their support or to create solidarity.  Girl power, I thought, with some sarcasm.  So powerful we walked into the lion’s den and came away surprised at being attacked.  Stupid.

“I’m embarrassed that everyone knows,” she said, looking down at her lap.

I wasn’t surprised and didn’t ask how that had happened.  Such news traveled fast.  Nothing like a bit of morbid gossip to remind everyone to congratulate themselves for having avoided peril and disgrace.

My roommate Gretchen was there, sitting in the little crowd.  I didn’t say hello.  In fact, I was so anxious to avoid her that I looked away, pretended I didn’t see here there. But it didn’t work.

“Your friend Celeste was there,” Gretchen said.

Moo.

“Where?” I asked, knowing what she meant.  Wanting to make her work.

“The party,” she said.

“Oh, yeah?” I answered, nodding.  There wasn’t anything to say, but it was an interesting bit of information.

“Yeah, she seems to be very friendly with some of the fraternity brothers there,” she said, her stare turning hostile.  I thought I detected the faintest trace of accusation in her voice.

I stared back at her, but didn’t bother to remark.  I didn’t know anything about Celeste’s associations.

“In fact, I saw her go into a room with some of them early in the night.  She came in alone and had a handbag with her,” she said, her expression flat.  Watching me with her great bovine eyes.

Where was the dour cow-troll going with this?

“Right.  And?” I asked, facing her directly and letting my voice rise to meet her challenge.

“So there were drugs at the party, right?” she asked, meeting my eyes coolly.

“I’m sure there were,” I answered, beginning to understand the direction she was taking.

“So it seems a little odd that an older girl who lives off campus would show up alone with a handbag, disappear into a room with some fraternity brothers and then leave a few minutes later, doesn’t it?” she leveled a self-satisfied gaze on me that was complemented by the faintest smile.

Condescending bitch.

“I’m not sure she lives off campus,” I replied.  “I don’t know where she lives.  But it does seem odd,” I admitted, disregarding her offensive manner for a half a moment.  Thinking the story over.  It was odd, indeed.  Especially since a couple of weeks ago I’d visited Celeste in the hospital after a suicide attempt.

“I don’t know anything about Celeste’s associations, and I have no idea what she was doing there,” I said with all the confidence that a true statement conveys.

But I was thinking of Venus’ appearance at the Zeta party. She had also arrived alone and disappeared into a room.

Mary was watching me.  I looked at her, determined not to let myself be associated with the accusation, completely circumstantial in nature, that seemed to be brewing.  I was not the villain here.

“Mary, I came to see how you are.  I can see you’re surrounded, so I’ll go.”  I glared at Gretchen meaningfully.

“If there’s anything,” my voice trailed off.  “Well, you know,” I said, catching myself as I realized there wasn’t anything any of us could really do, except maybe pretend nothing had ever happened.  But it was too late for that.

“I’m happy to go punch any fraternity brother in the head that deserves it,” I ended, trying to make a joke.  “Just name names and consider it done.”  Feeble, but well-intentioned.  The truth was I felt awful and would have gladly gone along to the fraternity house to make a stand on her behalf.  But it wouldn’t have done any good.  In fact, it would have been laughable to imagine that I could provoke guilt or incite self-examination in the fraternity brothers who had victimized my friend.

Not a chance.

She smiled a bright little smile.  “Thanks, Rowan.  I’ll remember that.”

I walked back down the hall deep in thought.  The shiny floors were so heavily polished and shined they were slippery.  I pushed through the fire doors, trying to sort out the possibility of Celeste dealing drugs at the party.  Celeste and Venus, Eva’s older sisters.  Both talented students from a well-to-do family.  Their mother a well-known, well-liked member of our hometown community, our very own beautiful, energetic, PTO champion.  The Parent-Teacher Organization was widely regarded as a group of the community’s most involved, respectable citizens.  An empowered local business owner, Marissa Verdano was always ready to jump in and lend a hand for a worthy cause.  Her bright, beautiful daughters seemingly had every advantage.

It didn’t seem possible that they were drug dealers.

Together with seeing Venus behave similarly at the Zeta party, Gretchen’s revelations concerning Celeste were troubling me.  As I collected my books and trudged off to class, I added the night Marc and I had seen Venus in Portsmouth in the expensive car to the picture. The same night of Celeste’s suicide attempt.

Altogether, it was more than strange.

Perhaps it was time to visit Celeste to see how she was doing.  I hadn’t visited since seeing her in the hospital and I thought it might be a good time to check in.  But as I walked up a grassy hill toward the building my Astronomy lecture was in, I realized that I didn’t have Celeste’s address.  It was true what I’d said to Gretchen.  I wasn’t even sure if she lived on or off campus.

In all of the confusion and misery of the past several weeks, it had never occurred to me that both Celeste and Venus had been to see me, and I didn’t have any idea where either of them lived.   As a freshman, I still didn’t know my way around Durham.  I heaved a sigh as I walked into the lecture hall.

I would just have to find them.