An Act of Love (37 page)

“I love Bruce, too,” Linda said.

“Yes. And in some part of his deepest soul he knows this. But right now he’s angry, angry and cornered. He’s hostile toward you, and toward Emily. That’s why I suggested that you wait a while to join us in the family meetings. I suggest that you and your husband meet with me once a month, to discuss Bruce’s progress. But for the rest, it’s Bruce who’s got to spend the time.” Dr. Ingersall looked at Owen and Linda steadily. “We need to be very clear about this. You can’t change the world for him. It’s up to Bruce now. It’s Bruce who’s got to do the work.”

The man facing
Emily stood no more than an arm’s length away. She could smell his sweat. He was taller than she was by a good four inches, and heavy. He was not smiling, and he was breathing heavily. He was in his twenties, perhaps. Older than she was for sure.

Her body told her to run away. To move away. Get back. Leave.

The man reached out his arm toward her. At once she grabbed his right wrist with her left hand, and suddenly he slid forward, grabbed her left arm with his left hand, twisted her left arm over his head, and Emily found herself on her back on the floor. His shin pressed against her armpit and he kept the pressure on her wrist.

For one long frantic moment she was paralyzed with fear. Then she remembered, and she tapped the mat twice with her free hand. The man stood up. Emily stood up, too, and they faced each other again.

“Now you try it,” the man said.

She reached out her left arm. The man grabbed her wrist with his right hand. With her right hand she grabbed his arm, slid forward on the mat, and as if executing an eccentric dance step, lifted his arm up over her head and turned her body, pulling downward so that the man fell to the floor. She put her shin on his armpit. He tapped the mat twice.

“You’re getting it,” he said as he rose. “You need to put more pressure on my wrist.”

They faced each other again. He reached out his hand.

They were working on katate tori shihonage, same-side four-corner throw, the first technique one learned in aikido. During Christmas vacation Emily had studied the brochure listing the Basingstoke Community School’s second semester offerings, and of all the defense arts taught, aikido was the one that most interested her, because it was based on the idea of nonaggressive self-defense. She liked the idea that she could learn to protect herself without harming someone else. She saw no need to add any more violence to the world.

Grandiose thinking, perhaps. Sometimes when she was just walking down the small-town streets of Basingstoke, the sudden appearance of a group of men just leaving a café or bar would make her seize up with fear, would make her nauseated, and she’d have to lean against a wall, dropping down to pretend to tie her shoe, until some distance was gained between them and her. Then she thought: I should carry a knife. I should carry a gun. She did have a can of mace in her shoulder bag. It was one of the things her new shrink had suggested, that and the whistle she wore around her neck. She knew she wouldn’t hesitate to hurt someone if he came toward her with malicious intent.

But aikido would teach her self-protection, and more. The instructor—sensei—had told the class that
ai
meant harmony;
do
meant the way;
ki
meant your energy, your life force. One of her goals for this year was to come to some kind of peace with her self, the self comprised of her body and her mind. She wanted to feel stronger, emotionally as well as physically. She wanted to feel more graceful, not to those looking at her, but inside her skin, in the relationship between her nerves and her bones, her instincts and her movements. She wanted to feel that her body was strong and capable. That her mind was clear and ready. That her soul was scarred, but healed.

It helped that aikido was such a formal martial art. All students had to wear the white, pajamalike
gi
, which sensei told them must be kept clean. Emily wore the white belt of a novice wrapped twice around her waist and tied in a knot. Of the ten other students, four were yellow belts, five were green belts, and one was a brown belt. Their instructor was a black belt, and at first Emily had found him an intimidating sight. Short and stocky, with his black hair tied back in a low ponytail, Lyman Rice wore a
hakama
, a long black skirt over his gi, and the effect was oddly powerful, making him seem otherworldly, even regal. Before stepping onto the mat, everyone had to give a formal bow of respect to the center of the mat, and when class began and ended, everyone had to give a formal bow to sensei. The students even had to bow to one another, formally,
before and after working out, and after she got over the embarrassment and self-consciousness of this, Emily discovered that it helped her see her partner as a comrade, not an adversary.

Which was good, for the world seemed full of adversaries. It was the end of February. She’d been out of the hospital for two full months. She saw her therapist twice a week. Yet sometimes after a day at school she was so exhausted by her own timidity that she hid in her bedroom and cried.

Not that her mother didn’t know. Their dumb little apartment was too small and the walls too thin for secrets. But her mother came now and then to the counseling sessions at the Basingstoke Mental Health Clinic, and Dr. Srivastava had warned them both that Emily’s recovery would take time and would be spotted with occasions of depression and feelings of failure. So Emily understood, as she walked the long modern halls of Basingstoke High, why it was that she flinched when a strange guy came too close, why her chest held her breath in a vise when Tom Hudson or Mark Stephens stopped to talk to her, both of them so tall, seeming to hover over her like giants. She knew they liked her; she liked them. She didn’t want to be afraid of them and absolutely she did not want to display any fear. She hadn’t told anyone at the high school, not even Bridgett, her new best friend, about the rape. She did not want to be stared at and gossiped about.

Sometimes images fluttered through her mind like a pack of cards thrown by the Red Queen. Rooms and faces. So many rooms, so many faces, in the past few months. Her bedroom on the farm, at Hedden, in the hospital, now in this new apartment. Her mother, Cordelia, Cynthia, Bridgett. Sometimes it was like being on a train, looking out the window at the countryside, and then the train rushes forward at jet speed, blurring the images into disorder.

Hedden. When school first started in the new year, Cordelia and Zodiac and Ming Chu had been good about calling her and meeting her in town for lunch, but as the days went by they called less, and when they did get together, they had less to talk about. Her Hedden friends couldn’t get interested in the public high school gossip, and Emily found herself wanting to place some distance between herself and the private school. She had to move on with her life.

The hospital. Just once in the months since she’d left the hospital had she gone back to visit her friends there. Cynthia had been right. Everything changed once you were
out.

Her mother had dropped her off at the front doors of the hospital, promising to pick her up in exactly one hour. As she went through the heavy swinging doors into the psych ward, a rush of anticipation mingled with anxiety passed through her, and then there she was, back in the familiar corridor.

“May I help you?” A strange nurse coming down the hall with a clipboard in her hand had greeted Emily.

“Um, I’m a visitor. I mean, I used to be a patient, and I just wanted to see some friends … Is Cynthia still here?”

“She’s in the dining room.” The nurse took Emily’s purse to hold at the desk.

Emily had planned on their being in the dining room. When she’d discussed the visit with her mother, Linda had suggested this time, because if things were awkward, they could all go watch
Star Trek
at seven.

She’d made her way along the halls, surprised at how small and overheated and crowded the psych ward seemed, even compared to the dinky apartment she shared with her mother. When she stepped into the dining room, she’d realized with a jolt that she knew only two of the people there. Fat Bill. And Cynthia.

Fat Bill had seen her come in, but his eyes had registered no emotion. He’d been at his usual place at the end of a table, an empty bowl in front of him. Cynthia had sat at the table next to him, and three new patients had sat at the other end, not speaking.

“Hi, Bill,” Emily had said.

He hadn’t replied.

“It’s me, Emily. Remember? I brought you some candy.”

At the word candy his eyes had blinked. He’d looked at her hands. She’d put the Whitman’s Sampler box on the table in front of him.

“How are you doing?” Emily had asked.

Bill hadn’t answered but had frantically torn at the plastic wrapping, then wrenched the lid off the box. He’d put three chocolates in his mouth at once. A brown dribble of chocolate had leaked down the corner of his mouth.

Emily had pulled a chair up next to Cynthia. The other girl had sat listlessly, thin arms crossed in her lap, her hair lank and unkempt, her eyes dull.

“Hey, Cynthia, it’s me, Emily. How are you?”

Cynthia hadn’t responded in any way.

Beldon had come into the room then.

“Emily! Hey, girl, you’re lookin’ good!”

She’d been both glad to see the man again, and oddly defensive. He had seen her at her worst, her most pathetic, and she hadn’t wanted to think about that. She hadn’t wanted him saying, “Remember the time you clawed your face?” But she’d risen and given him a hug, and Beldon had hugged her back, then asked, “How do you like your new school?”

“It’s okay. I’m meeting some people.” She’d looked at Cynthia sitting inert in front of her. “Cynthia seems a little down.”

“That’s putting it mildly. It’s the same old story. Third, maybe fourth time she’s done it. Left the hospital, felt great, stopped taking her meds, had a great manic time during the holidays, then crashed. Back to the hospital for a while.”

“Poor baby,” Emily had said. She’d bent over Cynthia, wrapping her arms around the other girl’s shoulders, stroking Cynthia’s greasy hair.

“Nice,” Cynthia had said. “That’s nice.”

Emily had continued stroking her hair.

“Heard from Keith?” Beldon had asked.

“Yes. We talk on the phone about once a week.”

“How is he?”

“Back in school. He likes that. His parents are giving him some breathing space, and his mother has agreed to see a counselor with him.”

“His father?”

“Refuses to. But the mother is a start.” Emily had told Keith about aikido, and Keith had told her about the extracurricular course he was taking. “He’s taking ballroom dancing.”

“Ballroom dancing. I can just see him.”

Beldon and Emily had laughed together. Emily was glad she’d met Keith. She could imagine he would be a good friend for the rest of her life.

“Star Trek,”
Bill had said.

Bill had risen, Cynthia had risen, and to Emily’s surprise, the other three patients who had been sitting so unanimatedly at the other end of the table had risen, too.

“I’ll come see you again,” Emily had called to Cynthia. But Cynthia hadn’t replied, and as Emily went back through the ward and out the swinging doors, she had
known the words were a lie. She wouldn’t come back.

Emily didn’t think about the hospital much these days. She was lucky, she knew, not to have the serious psychiatric problems others had, and some days she was simply grateful for that, and that was enough.

The farm. She really didn’t miss it that much. She missed Barn Cat. She missed seeing baby Sean and Rosie. Someday, her mother said, they would drive out to Ebradour and visit the Ryans. Someday, perhaps in the spring.

Linda had really loved the farm and what Emily hated most of all was that her mother and Owen were living apart. That her mother no longer lived on the farm. Emily burned with guilt about that, even though Dr. Srivastava told her she should not feel guilty. How could she not feel guilty? She was guilty. If she had just not told about the rape, if she could have just gotten over it without making such a fuss …

Sometimes the guilt was so mixed with anger she could not tell them apart. When she thought of what Bruce had done to her, to them all, when she thought of all the consequences, the way she and especially her mother had had their lives totally, completely altered forever … she could not bear it. She could not bear it, and her anger was like acid inside her soul. Her new shrink told her that it would harm only herself, no one else, and so she tried her best not to dwell on it, but when she did, she found herself in the same state she’d been before she went into the hospital: nearly wild with rage. And with nowhere to put that rage. Certainly she couldn’t keep harping on about it to her mother, who put on a good front for Emily’s sake, Emily knew, but who also, Emily knew, because of the thin walls, cried herself to sleep at night.

So twice a week, in the evenings, she tried to channel that rage into this discipline. She arrived in her gi, bowed, did the thirty minutes of warming-up exercises with the others, then faced her partner and practiced the techniques of aikido.