Fragile (35 page)

She went up to her bedroom and closed the door. He stood at the bottom of the stairs and watched after her, feeling like he should apologize or comfort her—or something. But instead he just grabbed the cordless phone and ordered enough food with his mother’s credit card to
feed the neighborhood; then he turned on the television and zoned out for a while.

Worse than the violin were the contents of the book bag—textbooks Maggie remembered well, notebooks filled with scribbles and doodles, Sarah’s name and address written neatly on the inside covers. A red one for math, a blue one for English, a green one for science. A biology quiz on which she’d earned a B plus. There was a note obviously passed back and forth between her and Melody for days: “Don’t you think Jones Cooper is the cutest boy in school? No doubt! Let’s watch MTV after school today.”

She hated that she’d seen those things, hated that she’d touched them. She could barely stand to ask herself how they’d gotten in her mother’s attic. Who had put them there?

In the master bath, she ran the shower, stripped off her clothes, and got beneath the scalding hot stream. She let it soak her hair and beat on her shoulders. She took the shower gel on the ledge, squeezed it onto a loofah, and started scrubbing her body, hard, hard enough to hurt. She wanted to clean it all off her, to shed the skin she was in. She couldn’t name everything she felt—anger, fear, the siren song of denial luring her from instinctive dread. It
could
be some bizarre coincidence that had led those missing pieces of evidence to come to rest in her mother’s attic—Elizabeth and Jones both ignorant of their presence. Couldn’t it?

Does Jones ever talk about it?
Melody had asked. It was such a strange question, staying with her, tugging at her pant leg for attention. And then there were Elizabeth’s words to Ricky:
She was already dead when he found her
. God, what did that mean?

But worse than even those things was the image she had of Jones last night—his frantic search of their son’s room, the things he’d said.
Anyone is capable of anything, given the right circumstances, the right motivations
.

The water couldn’t be hot enough; she was light-headed in the steam, her skin was red and raw. But in the solitude, she could weep.
She’d barely held herself together in the car, but now she let it all out, knowing she couldn’t be heard.

She found herself remembering what it was like to be in love with Jones. Not the kind of love they shared now. But the kind of breathless, helpless, anxious, ravenous in love with him she’d been after her father’s funeral. Her passion was a burning city, a five-alarmer that raged out of control beside the cavern of her grief for her father. It was a distraction that kept her psyche busy, that kept her from wallowing in the sorrow of loss.

She knew by their second date—he came into the city and took her to dinner at Joe Allen and they saw
Cats
, even though she’d already seen it—that she was going to marry him. He seemed uncomfortable, the way out-of-towners always do in the city—looking around at people who seem more glamorous than they can ever hope to be, overwhelmed by the sound, the lights, the masses of people. She liked that about him, that he was humble, that he was willing to be out of his element to be with her. She was so used to the arrogance of the men she met here; they all seemed imbued with a sense of self-importance just because they were New Yorkers. She already loved the earthy smell, the salty taste of him, the thickness of his powerful body. It was more than lust; it was hunger.

“Why didn’t you leave The Hollows?” she said.

It was loud in the restaurant. A big party of tourists beside them was celebrating something—lots of raucous laughter and clinking glasses.

He shook his head, took a sip of the red wine he was drinking. Even then, he knew a lot about wines. He’d chosen a bottle of Chianti Riserva from Montepulciano. And she knew to be impressed, even as she wondered how much it cost.

“I couldn’t really,” he said. A chorus of laughter erupted beside them.

“Your mother. She was ill.”

“Yeah.” He looked down at his glass. “That was part of it.”

That’s when she saw it, the shadow. It flashed over his face and was gone in a heartbeat. But she saw it, how he went dark at the mention of his mother. She knew a little bit about Abigail from things Elizabeth
had told her, how she’d kick up a fuss every time Jones needed to be in an away game, how she’d keep him home when she was feeling low and then write him a sick note, how she’d harass his teachers if she thought he was being treated unfairly.
That woman is a piece of work
, Elizabeth would complain.

“But it was more that I just couldn’t imagine myself living outside The Hollows.”

“You feel like you belong there.”

“More like I don’t belong anyplace else.”

After the play, they stood on the sidewalk as throngs of people pushed around them and started hunting for taxis. There was an awkward moment, when he looked up at the buildings and she stared at the folded
Playbill
in her hand.

“I parked in a lot a few blocks from here,” he said. He turned to point uptown. During the performance, they’d held hands. And then he’d started doing this lovely thing after intermission. He’d reached over with his other hand and stroked her arm, in soft, slow circles. Something about it built a heat inside her; there were moments when she could barely focus on anything else. “Do you want to get a drink?”

“Take me home, Jones.”

Did they take a cab, a subway? Did they go to his car? Now she couldn’t remember. All she remembered was taking him back to her tiny one-bedroom apartment. She remembered him kissing her neck as she unlocked the door. Once inside, her bag and their coats were shed to the floor. An ambulance wailed past her window, filling the apartment with light and sound.

“I haven’t felt this way about anyone,” he said. “Not like this … in so long. Maybe never, Maggie.”

She’d imagined him with a parade of women—the prom queens of the world, all throwing themselves at him, as they always did in high school. But those girls with so much apparent promise were just housewives and mothers now, married to other men who commuted to the city to work at banks and firms. She’d seen them all at her father’s funeral. There was nothing wrong with them; they all seemed lovely, normal, satisfied in their lives. But that luminosity that had been afforded
by their youthful prettiness, their palpable
coolness
, was gone. It surprised her to discover that Jones was lonely. It surprised her more to discover that she was lonely, too. She realized that her passion was always spent on her studies and her work.

“I haven’t, either,” she said.

She didn’t remember the details of their lovemaking, but what she did remember about that night was an overwhelming feeling of happiness and relief, a soul-deep sense of satisfaction, of homecoming.

It seemed like so long ago. It was. And the years, the lifetime, between then and now were a patchwork of good and bad days, failures and successes, joys and disappointments—like every life that isn’t derailed by catastrophe or tragedy, however gigantic or mundane. Somehow the things she’d found in the attic—even though she didn’t know how they’d come to be there or who had put them there—made her feel as if it all lay upon a rotting foundation. She felt as if she might be about to step through the floorboards of her life.

As she turned off the water, she thought about something Jones had said on their wedding night. It was something that came back to her often, filling her with a sense of deep warmth for her husband. She remembered it when she was angry at him, during times when she felt like they couldn’t be further apart, and it never failed to fill her with the same pleasure, the same thrill it had given her the first time he uttered it.

He said, “Maggie. You saved me.”

Only now, nearly two decades later, did she wonder what he’d meant.

26

H
e mostly talked. He talked about his mother, about his father, about how he’d always felt like a loser, an outcast.

Without the usual mask of black makeup, Charlene looked about twelve. She sat curled up on Maggie’s couch, wearing sweatpants and an old black T-shirt, clutching a pillow against her center. Her hair was freshly washed, pulled back with a barrette in a girlish way. Maggie had the urge to hold her.

“Once he asked me to sing while he masturbated.”

She looked up at Maggie with a flat stare, as if daring her to be shocked.

“And how did that make you feel?”

She blew a breath out of her nose. Charlene was going for jaded, unaffected, but Maggie could see her hands shaking.

“It made me sick.” She spat the last word. “But you know what’s weird? Part of me was, like, flattered. Does that make me a freak? I mean, I was tied up in a boat.
Tied up
, you know, singing, while this asshole spanks the monkey, and I was thinking,
Wow, he really likes my songs.”

Maggie nodded her head, holding back a smile. Charlene was tough; she had a strong inner spirit. And this was a good thing for someone who’d endured what she had.

She told the girl as much. “You’re not a freak, Charlene.”

“I got in touch with him because I didn’t know who else to ask. I cared about Rick too much to ask him to help me.” She cast Maggie a sheepish look. “I know I hurt him. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not about that right now, Charlene,” Maggie said. She gave the girl a smile. “Right now, it’s about helping you sort out what happened to you, so you can deal with it and move on in a healthy way. Your relationship with Rick is your business. Okay?”

Charlene sighed, as if releasing some tension she’d been holding. “Okay. Thanks.”

She sat for a second, looked down at her nails. Then she went on.

“I fell asleep in the car. I was so tired. I’d already been sick to my stomach by the side of the road. When I woke up, it was so dark. And we weren’t on the highway anymore. I didn’t know where we were.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath and looked out the window. “Is Rick here?”

“No. He’s at the hospital with his grandmother.”

Charlene leaned forward and picked up a crystal lotus flower that sat on the end table. She held it to the light and watched the rainbow flecks that hit the far wall. She turned it back and forth so that they danced over the shelves of books, the wall of family pictures and Ricky’s crayon drawings, the wood door that led to the waiting area.

“He said he wanted to show me something,” she said, still turning the piece in her hand. “I was really afraid all of a sudden. No one knew where I was, and I realized that I didn’t really know that much about Marshall. But I decided to pretend like I was curious, to play it off. I figured I’d wait and watch for an opportunity to run if things got weird.”

Maggie noticed that the delicate features of her face looked strained and pale, her eyes shining. She gave the girl the respect of silence.

“It’s fuzzy.” Charlene put the lotus flower down, rubbed the back of her head. “He hit me from behind, I think. The doctor said I have a concussion, that my memory might be murky for a while, maybe always about this. But I think he hit me from behind with something. The next thing I remember was being on the filthy, smelly boat. I woke up in the dark, tied and gagged.”

Maggie went to get a box of tissues from her desk and handed it to Charlene, who had abandoned her tough façade and started to cry.

“Sometimes he would just sit there, staring at me.”

More silence. Maggie heard her computer ping, announcing the arrival of an e-mail.

“He never touched me,” Charlene said. She paused to wipe her eyes and nose. “I mean, after he hit me and tied me up. He just wanted to talk about the stuff I told you, and whether he was a good person or a bad person, and how did we know those kinds of things. But he didn’t want me to answer him. He only took the tape off once to give me some water, and that time he wanted me to sing.

“Then he’d leave me down there for long stretches. He never brought me food.”

She put her head in her hands, and her shoulders started to shake.

Maggie abandoned her professionalism and joined Charlene on the couch, took her thin form into her arms and held her while she sobbed.

“I felt so scared.” The words came out in a kind of wail into Maggie’s shoulder. Charlene was healthier than Maggie would have imagined. She had a good handle on her emotions, was not afraid to let them out. “I never knew if he’d come back or I’d just die down there.”

“I know, kiddo. You’re going to be okay,” Maggie said. She found herself rocking a little. When Charlene pulled away after a bit and her sobbing subsided, Maggie patted her on the leg and returned to her chair.

“Then his father found us,” she said. She let go of a grim little laugh. “I thought I was saved.”

“What happened?”

“He raped me,” she said. She said it flatly, matter-of-fact. “Twice. And you know what was weird? He hardly said anything. He came one night, right after Marshall left me. He must have followed Marshall out to the lake and been waiting, listening.”

“I’m so sorry,” Maggie said. She knew she was dangerously close to crossing the line between personal and professional. She realized that she should have referred Charlene to a colleague, that she cared too much to be her doctor.

“The only thing he said was, ‘I fucked your mother, too. But you’re a sweeter piece of ass.’” Charlene began to sob in earnest.

Maggie felt a wave of anger and sadness so intense she might have
channeled it directly from Charlene. But she tried to keep her composure and gave a careful nod. “Do you want to talk about how you felt while this was happening?”

Charlene looked at her; there was something injured and confused on her face.

“I don’t know. Grossed out, I guess. He was so frightening, so cold. I was freaked out that he had this connection to my mother I didn’t know about. I don’t know. It was like it was happening somewhere else, to someone else. I felt so disconnected from it. It hurt. But it hurt
someone else.”