Denial (7 page)

Somehow I managed to request the FBI's help. “I was raped once, a long time ago,” I tell one of my FBI contacts. I'll call her Mary Jane. I chose a woman to divulge my secret to. A woman who carries a concealed gun on her person. She once mentioned the gun in passing, and for some reason the image of a gun stayed in my mind. Mary Jane is a tough, no-nonsense sort of person, the sort of person you would want on your team if you were involved in a dangerous mission, not the sort who would look you in the eye and offer empty platitudes, which only make the victim feel worse.

“The police have reopened the case,” I tell her. “It looks like the perpetrator might have been a serial rapist. I was hoping that the police could bounce some ideas off someone in your office.”

Mary Jane arranges for Lt. Macone to speak to an agent whose expertise is in violent crime. A serial rapist like this almost invariably kills someone eventually, the agent tells Lt. Macone. Lt. Macone shares this information with me by phone.

I decide I will feel about that later.

 

I am glad that Lt. Macone is working on solving this crime, but there are long periods when I need to be in the present, doing my “real” work. My life is busy. Almost immediately after we had a child, my marriage fell apart; or perhaps more accurately, the fissures that had been there from the very beginning became more obvious. With the birth of our child, I no longer felt
able to work all the time or to comply with the “rational” way my husband chose to live. I discovered that I wanted to be outrageously inefficient—to chat about silly things with the neighbors, to bake cakes (despite the proximity of excellent bakeries), to read poems (despite their irrelevance to my work). I wanted to play the piano, even though it's far too late for me to become a professional musician.

I have been a single mother now for nearly two years. As my son gets older, I take more and more pleasure from raising him. But I find it harder, not easier, to raise him alone; and much of my psychic energy goes toward my son. My ex-husband consoles himself with the thought that I have lost interest in men, that I am focused exclusively on raising our child. My days are consumed with teaching, writing letters of recommendation, correcting page proofs, baking muffins.

Then I get an e-mail from Lt. Macone with the heading “almost done.” I open it instantly, but don't find the time to answer. The subject, as usual, makes me sleepy and dull. Paul tells me he is 99 percent sure he has the crime figured out. “Please don't feel you have to pursue the details of the investigation unless you want to,” he says.

I wonder whether I ought to tell Paul that I want to pursue the details with him as soon as I find the time. But somehow, the message I intend to send him doesn't get sent.

And then I got an e-mail with the heading “Done.”

I am caught between two magnetic forces. Curiosity, on the one hand, and a sleepy feeling on the other. Paul has collected enough information that my curiosity wins out over my fear. The fear I don't feel. I don't tell Sara what I'm up to, or anyway, not in detail. Telling her would make it real.

I am not afraid. Nonetheless, I cannot drive out to the police station. I know that I will be too sleepy to focus, that I will get lost.

 

But there is a way I might be able to get out there. I have a new boyfriend. He is from Concord, too, and he knows Paul Macone well. I've known Chet for nearly thirty-five years, from around the time I was raped, but in an entirely different context. He was a family friend, ten years older than I, not someone I would ever even think about, you know, in that way. I thought of him, I would later confess to him, as a piece of furniture in the background of our family. An innocent observer, unlikely to be able to comprehend the complex dramas unfolding before him in our living room, and unlikely ever to have any interest in me. There was so much secret pain and fear in our family at that time, which we tried, all of us, to keep hidden from ourselves and especially the outside world. Every time I discover that people outside our family recognized some of what was going on, I am surprised. I thought the adults at least were able to “pass.”

I had seen him five years earlier, on the shuttle back from Washington, where we had both been traveling for work. He is on the board of Oxfam and had been attending a meeting. I had been teaching at CIA University.

Seeing this person I've known since childhood, I am aware of how surprising my life path has been. This always happens to me when I see people I knew in childhood: I feel like a fraud. How could I have become this person that people consider to be an expert? Chet was a liberal congressman from our very liberal town. He is now doing what a liberal should do—serving on the board of a humanitarian organization—while I have been lecturing to spies.

Our plane was delayed. It was hot on the tarmac. We took off our jackets. I took off my shoes. This seemed permissible; Chet is a family friend. He asked about my family. I was surprised to discover that he saw through our pretenses. He'd noticed more
than you would expect of an armchair, even one that had been in the family for many years.

We were sitting in the first row of coach. The wall separating coach from first class was covered with a new-looking rug. I wanted to sink my bare feet into the rug, but I hesitated. I was afraid to put my feet out there for us both to see, but I wanted to. I thought to myself that my feet must be sweaty. It would be wrong to put my sweaty feet on that rug. Wrong. Next I worried that the rug was dirty from other passengers' sweat, that the dirt would contaminate my feet. Dirty.

But I wanted very, very much to sink my feet into that rug. What you might call desire, in this case, wins out over what seems like shame and could be fear, but only in terms of my actions, the movement of my feet. I cannot resist checking in on shame and fear, the way your tongue compulsively flicks across your teeth when you've just been to the dentist. Are these really my teeth? Yes, they are. Am I still ashamed and worried? Yes, I am.

I can still call back the feeling of luxurious repose when I allowed myself to sink back in my seat, my feet at last where I want them to be, at rest.

Chet drove me home when the plane landed. But we were both married, and anyway, family friends. Neither of us expected our marriages to end. In my case, the more painful I found it to be married to my economist husband, the more determined I was to hold the marriage together. My husband was smart and funny and reliable, and our lives worked. It was true that he didn't seem to like me very much, and he certainly did not approve of me, but I had an idea that his disapproval would make me better and stronger. Perhaps surprisingly, when we finally had a child, I decided to leave that easy life in the belief that my child and I would be happier alone. Two years later, a mutual friend will
introduce me to Chet, not realizing that we already knew each other from long ago.

 

Chet and I have a lot of fun together. He persuades me to do things I haven't done in years. We take Evan on trips for the weekend, just for fun. We take long walks. We go cross-country skiing. We attend concerts together. We are utterly, deliciously, irrationally inefficient.

I put up all kinds of roadblocks. I tell him about all my demons. From the very beginning, I let my craziness show, thinking that maybe it will drive him away. It doesn't. He's heard about me from all sides in any case, having known my family for years, from the time he was in high school. Eventually, despite my uncertainties, we become intimate friends.

It was Chet's idea to ask the Concord police for the entire file related to my rape, and he is encouraging me with this project. He has an idea that I won't be able to be intimate with a man unless I confront these demons, all the demons related to my relationships with men.

Still, can I really tell him that I cannot drive out to the police station, even though he knows that I've driven out to Concord hundreds of times? Remarkably, he takes my driving problem in stride. He does not balk. He says he will drive me, even though he has to leave work in the middle of the day.

He comes to my small apartment, and we have lunch.

No, I am not afraid to learn about my rapist, I tell Chet. Of course not. It's just that I get lost. I tell Chet that I need a chauffeur, not a therapist.

I take some care in preparing lunch for the two of us. I serve a salad of frisée, baby beets, and hazelnuts, and smoked salmon dressed with chervil.

He breaks off a piece of fatty fish with his fingers. I watch as he puts the fish in his mouth. He breaks off another piece, seemingly unaware that I am observing him. His hand looks meaty and raw to me now, with penislike fingers.

He stands up and walks toward the sink. I watch him touch the faucet with the same meaty hand. He fills the kettle. Then he takes the same hand, unwashed, and turns the burner on for tea. I see, in my mind's eye, the smear of fish oil he has left behind on the faucet. I see, in my mind's eye, a slick track of penis prints, glistening on the stove. I imagine the smell. The smell of fish oil, so much like the smell of semen.

“Wash your filthy hands,” I tell my new boyfriend.

It is obvious to me now that we cannot continue this relationship. I tell him that, too.

I am not obsessively clean, as anyone who knows me would readily confirm. But this person is too crude, too disrespectful; too unaware of the tacky slick of semen he has left behind.

“You are not in control of yourself. You grab things, and you emit too much,” I say. Why did I ever imagine I could be in relationship with this man? With any man? With any person?

I am vaguely aware I might be saying things that would seem odd to an outsider, things that I might later regret. But in this moment, it doesn't matter. This is an emergency. All that matters now is getting this penis-fingered person out of my apartment and out of my life.

He mumbles something about my arrogance, about the possibility that I am using him.

Now I am truly incensed. “I will not be using you,” I tell him primly, haughtily. I am vaguely aware of a familiar, moralistic lilt to my voice. In my mind's eye, I strap on those high-heeled shoes, the kind with the square heels and pointy toes, the kind worn by the Wicked Witch of the West. I urge him to leave at once.

In this moment I feel myself to be dignified, self-contained.
But a part of me fears the worst, that I look and sound like a dominatrix librarian.

He doesn't leave. Instead, he walks toward me and wraps his arms around me. Loosely. He just stands there for some time, his body next to mine. There is a solidness to him. He tells me that he loves me. Right, I scoff to myself. I am not going to fall for that. I don't believe him for a second, but for once I hold my tongue. What could he possibly know about love, this undisciplined person whom life has barely tested? Never raped. Beloved mother still alive. But the energy in his body calms me down. After a few minutes, the electrical storm has passed. I am back to myself.

Chet tells me it is time to go. I hear the sound of water splashing as he washes his hands in the bathroom sink. I note the scent of lavender soap. After that I feel able to sit near him in the car. I cannot talk, exhausted by my outburst. I grow sleepier as we get closer to our destination.

When we arrive at the police station, I manage, finally, to pull a patina of sanity over my features. I am wearing a brown wool skirt, black tights, a white shirt. I think to myself, I look normal. But when we get inside, I am dizzy. Have I been here before?

Paul pulls out files, telling us what he found. A serial rapist. Many victims. Paul has found forty-four of them so far. There may be more. The victim next in line after my sister and me, he tells us, killed herself.

He gives me a large file. He warns me that it contains a picture of the perp. A picture that had been in the police files all along, in connection with the earlier rape. I simply cannot force my brain to recollect my rapist's face. My sister managed to describe it for the police immediately afterward, but I could not, even then.

The rapist, he tells us, is dead.

Dead.

I take this in.

This could adversely affect my research. Yes, I know, I ought to be relieved. But actually, I'm disappointed. This feeling of disappointment seems so crazy, so not normal, so embarrassing, that I press it out of my mind. I will feel about this later.

But now, typing up this chapter, I am ready to admit the embarrassing truth: I had wanted to kill my rapist. Not with a gun, but with the electricity in my eyes.

I will keep investigating him, of course. I need to put him in a coffin, and to do that, I need to understand him.

 

Several months later Paul writes again. He has an enormous box of documents from the rapist's prison file. Once again, Chet agrees to serve as my chauffeur.

In the box are several letters my rapist wrote, some written by hand, others on a typewriter. Some days the rapist was articulate. Other days he seemed to have difficulty writing. Paul wonders out loud, Could this man have had multiple personality disorder? Some observers described him as well-behaved, quiet, orderly; others as shouting, aggressive, a “pig.” This trip to Concord is a different experience, however, now that we know that the rapist is dead.

Although I had trouble getting myself to come here, now that we are here and there is work to be done, I go into a familiar altered state, but different from the one where I become a moralistic dominatrix librarian. I am not afraid. I am not angry. I am interested, a spy.

It is as if this weren't my own life, as if this weren't information about my perpetrator. Even now, writing this down, I don't recognize my voice. I feel as if I were in another room from the true “I.” I feel sad, locked out, bereft. Perhaps it is because I haven't yet cried about what I'm discovering.

I touch the papers my rapist touched, a bizarre act of intimacy. He is dead. I thought he planned to kill me. I see, in my mind's eye, a map with two exits. One way leads to the person I would have been had I not been raped. The other way leads to the person I became after that hour, the person I am now, a person capable of reading her own rapist's file without feeling emotion.