Lucky (16 page)

There is no
but,
there is only this: That officer lived on my planet. I fit into his world in the way I never again would fit into Ken's. I can't remember whether Ken asked to be dropped at home or whether he came with me to the station. Whatever the case, I shut him off after the search on Marshall Street.

We reached the Public Safety Building. It was now after eight. I had not been back to the station since the night of the attack, but that night, the police station felt safe to me. I loved the way the elevators let out onto a waiting area at the end of which was a huge door that locked, automatically, behind us. Through the bulletproof glass you could see out into the lobby but no one could get at you.

The officer led me in and I heard the smooth, hydraulic hush and firm click of the door behind us. To our left was the dispatcher sitting at the command center. There were three or four uniformed men standing nearby. Some held coffee mugs. When we entered, they quieted down and stared at the ground. There were only two kinds of civilians: victims and criminals.

My officer explained to the man at the, front desk that I was the rape case out of the East Zone. I was there to look at mug shots.

He set me up in a small file room across from the dispatcher. He left the door open and began to pull large black binders off the surrounding shelves. There were at least five such binders and each was filled with small, wallet-size mug shots. These five books were of black males only, and only those near the age that I thought my rapist would be.

The room seemed more a storage area for these books than a place for victims to sit and pore over the photos. The only surface was an old metal typing table, and I had difficulty balancing the books in my lap and on the rickety table, whose flyleaf kept collapsing under the weight. But I was a good student, when I needed to be, and I studied those books page by page. I saw six photos that reminded me of my rapist, but I was beginning to believe the process of mug shots would turn out to be fruitless.

One of the officers brought me some weak but still-hot coffee. It was an island of comfort in an otherwise alien environment.

"How you doing? See anything?" he asked.

"No," I said, "they all just blur together. I don't think he's here."

"Keep trying. He's fresh in your mind."

I was coming to the end of Book 4 when the call came in.

"POP Clapper just called in," the dispatcher called over to my officer. "He knows your man."

The officer left me in the room and went out to the front desk. The uniforms who'd been waiting for assignment surrounded him. I listened to the Abbott and Costello-like routine that followed.

"Says it's Madison," the dispatcher said.

"Which Madison?" asked my officer. "Mark?"

"No," said another, "he's up on a charge already."

"Frank?"

"No, Hanfy tagged him last week. It must be Greg."

"I thought he was already in."

And so it went. I remember one of the men said something about pitying Old Man Madison—how it was hard raising sons alone.

Then my officer returned. "I've got some questions to ask you," he said. "Are you ready?"

"Yes."

"Describe again that policeman you saw."

I did.

"And where did you see his
car?"

I said he'd parked in the Huntington Hall lot.

"Bingo," he said. "It looks like we may have our man."

He left again and I closed the mug book lying open on the typing table. All of a sudden, I didn't know what to do with my hands. They were shaking. I placed them under my legs and sat on them. I started to cry.

A few minutes later I heard the dispatcher say, "Here he is!" and those inside the locked door cheered.

I stood up and frantically searched the room for a place to hide. I chose the corner that shared the wall with the door. My face was pressed up against the metal shelving that held the mug books for years past.

"Great work, Clapper!" someone said, and the air rushed out of me. Could it just be the officer, without my rapist in tow?

"We'll get a statement from the victim and then make out the warrant for an arrest,"

someone said.

Yes, I was safe. But I still didn't know what to do. I wasn't able to join them. I was a victim, not really a person. I sat back down in the typing chair.

The men outside were happy. Slapping backs and teasing Officer Clapper for his red hair.

He was a "beanpole," a "carrottop," and "young stuff."

He ducked his head in the room.

"Hi, Alice," he said. "Remember me?"

I smiled ear to ear. "Yes, I do."

The men outside roared.

"Remember you? How could she forget you? You're the next best thing to Santy Claus!"

Things settled down. A call came in. Two of the men left to respond. Officer Clapper had to go write up a report. My officer brought me back into the room where I had met Sergeant Lorenz three days short of exactly six months before. He took my affidavit, quoting heavily from the detailed description I had written down.

"Are you ready for this?" the officer asked me at the end of the affidavit. "We'll arrest.

You have to be willing to testify."

"I am," I said.

I was driven back to Haven Hall in an unmarked car. I called my parents and told them I was fine. The officer filed his final report on case F-362 before it was transferred back to Sergeant Lorenz.

Rape 1st

Sodomy 1st

Robbery 1st

While I was still in the CID Office with the victim the Gen Mess. was broadcast and immediately upon the broadcast there was a response from Car #561 P.O.P. Clapper, who stated that he had spoken to a person who fit the rape suspect's description at approx 1827

hrs on Marshall St. He informed me that the person whom he had spoken to was one Gregory Madison. Madison has a record and has done time in prison. A photo line-up was to be conducted in CID Office by P.O.P. Clapper but there was no negative. It is almost certain that the suspect in question is Gregory Madison. An affidavit was taken from the victim and P.O.P. Clapper. Arrest is imminent.

Description broadcast to both 3rd and 1st shift coming on. If located observe and ask for assistance. Suspect considered armed and dangerous.

That night I had a dream. Al Tripodi was in it. In a prison cell, he and two other men held my rapist down. I began to perform acts of revenge on the rapist but to no avail. He wrested loose from Tripodi's grasp and came at me. I saw his eyes as I had seen them in the tunnel. Close up.

I woke screaming and held myself upright in my damp sheets. I looked at the phone. It was 3:00 A.M. I couldn't call my mother. I tried to sleep again. I had found him. Again, it would be just the two of us. I thought of the last lines in the poem I had turned in to Gallagher.

Come die and lie, beside me.

I had issued an invitation. In my mind, the rapist had murdered me on the day of the rape.

Now I was going to murder him back. Make my hate large and whole.

In the first month at school, I had kept largely to myself, focusing intently on my two writing workshops. I called Mary Alice the day after seeing the rapist on the street and told her about it. She was thrilled but frightened for me. She was also busy. She, Tree, and Diane were rushing sororities. She had her sights set on Alpha Chi Omega. It was a sorority for good girls who were both athletic and academic. It was all white. Mary Alice was a shoo-in.

Her pursuit of such things, despite the running cynical commentary she provided on the rituals and idiocies of the rush process, divided us. I did not spend day-to-day time with her.

Tentatively, I made one new friendship. Her name was Lila and she came from Massachusetts by way of Georgia. But unlike my mother, who approved of all things Southern, Lila had no accent. They had drummed it out of her, she said, when she enrolled in high school in Massachusetts. To my ear, she'd done a fine job. My mother swore any Southerner would know better, could pick up the slight lilt and drawl in her words.

She lived on my hall at Haven, six doors down. She was blond and we both wore glasses.

We were the same size, that is to say, slightly overweight. She considered herself a grind, a "social retard." I saw it as my duty to draw her out. I could sense she had a zany side.

Lila was also, as Mary Alice still was, a virgin.

Lila was a perfect audience of one. Unlike my pairing with Mary Alice, I was not the oddball sidekick of the popular girl. I was the slightly thinner one, the louder one, the braver one.

One night I told her she needed to find her inner animal and said, "Watch me!" I took a box of raisins and stabbed it with a knife, grimacing and mugging for the camera she held. I made her switch places and stab the raisins. In the pictures from that day, I mean it. I'm after those raisins. Lila couldn't quite get into the role I'd made for her. Her blade is poised delicately over the already perforated box. Her eyes are sweet and her face a schoolgirl trying her best to appear passionately dismayed.

We specialized in getting the giggles. I anticipated her scheduled study breaks and tried to cajole her into making them longer, making them arc over a whole evening in my room, where, in laughing with her, I wouldn't have to think about anything outside.

On October 14, I was on campus. Downtown, Investigator Lorenz called Assistant District Attorney Gail Uebelhoer, who had been assigned to review the case prior to presentation to the judge for warrants. ADA Uebelhoer wasn't in. Investigator Lorenz left a message.

"Gregory Madison was arrested at two P.M."

I made the papers for the second time. VICTIM POINTS FINGER was the headline for the small, five-paragraph item in the
Syracuse Post-Standard
of October 15. Tricia, from the Rape Crisis Center, mailed this to me, as she would all subsequent articles.

A preliminary hearing was scheduled for October 19 at Syracuse City Court. The defendant was Gregory Madison, the plaintiff the People of the State of New York. It was a hearing held to determine if there was enough evidence in the case to support a grand jury. I was told that witnesses being called might range from the medical doctors who had completed the serology report the night of my rape, to Officer Clapper, who had seen Madison on the street. I would testify. So might Madison.

I needed someone to go with me to the hearing, but Mary Alice was busy, and Ken Childs was obviously not the right choice. Lila was my new friend; I didn't want to ruin that. I approached Tess Gallagher and asked her if she'd come. "I'm honored," Gallagher said. "We'll have lunch in a good restaurant. My treat."

I don't remember what I wore, only that Gallagher, who was known on campus for flamboyant dress and just the right hat, wore a tailored suit and sensible shoes. Seeing her hemmed in this way, literally, made me know she had prepped for battle. She knew how the outside world judged poets. I know I wore something appropriate. In the halls of the courthouse we looked like what we were: a coed and her youthful mother figure.

My greatest fear was the possibility of seeing Gregory Madison. Tess and I walked through the halls of the Onondaga County Courthouse with a detective from the Public Safety Building. He was meant to guide us to the correct courtroom, where I would meet the attorney chosen to represent the State. But I had to use the ladies' room and he had only a vague idea where it was. Tess and I went off in search of it.

The old part of the courthouse was marble. Tess's low heels clicked against this in a staccato beat. We finally found the bathroom, where, fully clothed, I sat in a stall and stared at the wooden door in front of me. I was alone, however briefly, and I tried to calm down. The walk from the Public Safety Building and into the courthouse had left my heart in my throat. I had heard the phrase before but now I literally felt as if something thick and vital were jammed in my throat and thumping. Blood rushed to my brain and I put my head down, trying not to heave.

When I emerged 1 was pale. I did not want to look at myself in the mirror. I looked at Tess instead. I watched her readjust two decorative combs on either side of her head.

"There," she said, happy with the way they set. "Ready?"

I looked at her and she winked back at me.

Tricia was standing with the detective when we returned. Tricia and Tess were a study in opposites. Tricia, who represented the Rape Crisis Center and signed her notes to me "In sisterhood," was the one I didn't quite trust. Tess was my first experience of a woman who had inhabited her weirdness, moved into the areas of herself that made her distinct from those around her, and learned how to display them proudly. Tricia was too interested in drawing me out. She wanted me
to feel.
I didn't see how feeling was going to do me any good. Onondaga County Courthouse was not a place to open up. It was a place to hold fast to what I knew to be the truth. I had to work at keeping every fact alive and available. What Tess had was mettle. I needed this more than an anonymous sisterhood; I told Tricia she could go.

Tess and I sat on a wooden bench outside the courtroom. It reminded me of the benches in the closed-in pews at St. Peter's. We waited for what seemed like hours. Tess told me stories about growing up in Washington State, about the logging industry, about fishing, and about her partner, Raymond Carver. My hands were sweating. I had a short bout of uncontrollable shaking. I heard less than half of the words Tess said. I think she knew this. She wasn't actually speaking to me, she was singing a kind of lullaby of talk. But, eventually, the lullaby stopped.

She was irritated. Looked at her watch. She knew she couldn't do anything. A diva on campus and in the poetry world, she was just a small woman with no power now. She had to wait it out with me. Our lunch treat seemed very far away.

Since that day, if I am made to wait long enough for something I dread, my nervousness dissipates into a steely boredom. It is a mind-set and it goes like this: If hell is inevitable, I enter what I call trauma Zen.

So by the time ADA Ryan, assigned to the case that day because ADA Uebelhoer was in court with another matter, walked up to introduce himself, Tess was silent and I was staring at the elevator six feet away.