The Mourning After (21 page)

My philosophy.

—Rabbi Harold Schulweis

In God’s Mirror: Reflections and Essays

Suddenly, in the midst of commotion and blame, everything is beginning to make sense. Tomorrow, I will begin again.

12:50 a.m.

The ambulance is shuffling though the nighttime air.  The boys are positioned beside one another.  The EMT, Louis, asks the one who is conscious if there’s anywhere in particular that hurts.  He looks over at his brother and asks, “Will he be okay?”  He is panicking inside; his lips are sore and caked with blood.  To speak is an arduous task.

The boy is alarmed because minutes before, in the wake of screeching brakes and flying debris, his brother was alert and talking. Did it matter who formed the words when together they had agreed on a plan?

Louis ignores his inquiry, which sends the boy into a spiraling frenzy.  He has to talk to him.  He has to figure out what they are supposed to do.

He calls out to his brother; the name—so familiar on his tongue—lingers, full of prayer and promise, though his brother doesn’t answer.  Instead of his brother’s soothing voice, he hears the shattering signal from one of the emergency medical devices.  The monitors emit loud beeps, haunting rhythms that echo the boy’s wild, erratic heartbeat.  He is sure he can’t feel his fingers and toes.  He is sure his arms and legs will fail him if he attempts to flail.  He is numb, everywhere, yet, his entire body is wired to explode, and he can’t stop it.

Sheila says something that she probably says every day. For the boy, though, they are the words that will set the stage for the unfolding of events that will forever alter his young life.

“We’re losing him,” she says.

“No,” the boy shouts out.  “He’s my brother!  You have to save him!”

The man and woman are working on the brother, pushing, pulling, breathing, coaxing him back to life.  Lights are blinking, machines are buzzing—a symphony that will climax with dreadful silence and a flatline signifying one’s worst fate.  The silence stretches, first seconds, then minutes.

The boy is crying, “Please don’t leave me.”

It’s too late.  His brother is dead.

What had they done?

Lucy can barely sleep.  The night exceeded her expectations in more ways than one.  Noting the date, it was the first time she was able to get into a bathing suit and jump in the Atlantic Ocean since moving to Florida.  Granted, it was a one piece and it was dark out, but she finally did it.

Although he doesn’t know it, Levon has guided her through her disrobing. His own unwillingness to get undressed had eased her inhibition.  It was a rite of passage they tackled together.  Although, his passage was painstakingly slow.

He had asked her how she could strip into a bathing suit in a public beach after such an act of violence.  One eavesdropping on their conversation might have thought he was insinuating, or suggesting, that she had asked for it.  Lucy knew that Levon saw too much good in her to intimate that.  It was an appropriate question, one her parents would have abhorred had they known what she had done.

Lucy can make out the shadows and light of their neighborhood coming through the skylights on the loft’s ceiling.  She is in her shabby chic bedroom, resting atop her white comforter and lilac sheets.  Rising from bed, she descends the spiral stairs, one at a time, to get a closer view.  A seat has been carved out beneath the window, and she hurls herself onto the soft cushion and rests her head against the pillows.  It’s her favorite spot in the room.  This vantage point provides a clear view into Levon’s world.  Lucy knows he is busily writing every detail of their night together in his journal.  He had all but admitted it to her on the car ride home when he kept mentioning how he was going to savor every detail of the night.  She wondered how much of her story he would disclose.

Pulling back the sheer white curtains and unlocking the window, Lucy raises the wooden frame until it’s fully ajar and inhales the Miami air.  The screen keeps the mosquitoes and other insects out; Lucy rests her nose up against the miniscule wires.  George, who has been resting peacefully on the cool floor, lets out a loud snore that startles him awake.  He stands on all fours and finds his master in the windowbox.  Climbing into the space beside her, he rests his head in her lap and falls back asleep.

The mesh screen, on close inspection, resembles a cage.  She is most positive that the Keller family is living in a private cell, each of them experiencing his or her lone punishment.  Levon escaped from his cell tonight.  She hopes he would find a way not to return to it.  His grief and loss will be forever, though his personal pain is self-imposed.

The air feels funny in her nostrils, and she backs away from the panel.  The light is on in Levon’s room, and she thinks about proposing a Morse code or an old-fashioned wire telephone to communicate from her window to his.  She is reminded of her childhood in Atlanta; she doesn’t understand why so many things are stirring up memories of Atlanta.  Perhaps because she let Levon in; she shared her story and moved it south.  Before, it lived and died in Georgia.

George is happily snoring, and Lucy is restless.  She feels a burst of energy that usually results in her getting in downward dog position or breaking out into dance, but there is a steadiness to George’s loud grunts that keep her rooted in her seat.

The listlessness agitates Lucy as she eyes the golf bag resting in the corner of her room.  Levon had asked her how she had recovered so quickly.  He said, “How can you be so forgiving, so normal?”

“Normal,” she laughed.  “Nobody’s normal.  We’re all messed up.  Some of us more than others.”

Everyone had been suspicious of her ability to bounce back from such a heinous violation. In an era when therapists are the norm, Lucy chose to speak of the assault only with the female officer who questioned her the hours following. Barbara was also a victim.  Their shared experiences bound them in horrid, yet hopeful ways.  Barbara still called from time to time.  Ricky and her father had never asked for details, which would be much too disturbing for the men in her family to bear.  Her mother begged and pleaded with her to talk to a professional, but Lucy would have nothing to do with any stranger who claimed they could “fix” her. 

Now she is compelled to wake George from his slobbery stupor.  She carefully lifts his head and hopes he will return to his Scooby Doo dreams.  She glides across the room and finds the envelope in the top drawer of her desk.  Holding it, she heads back toward the window and scoots herself adjacent to George’s damp nose.  She kisses him on the soft patch between his ears, and for a short while, this quiets him.

Levon’s light turns off, and their street falls into a similar slumber. 

The envelope is worn and crumpled, and she thinks about reading its contents again.  She hasn’t touched it since moving.  Perhaps she needs to read the words tonight.  Her head begins to feel light and drowsy.  Her earlier energy has faded and has been replaced with a quiescent calm.  Holding the envelope has that effect on her.  Its nearness comforts in ways no mental health practitioner ever could.  She finds the throw that’s tucked in the corner of the seat and looks out at Levon’s window one last time. It leaves her feeling close to him.  Her lids are heavy, and she snuggles around George, the envelope near to her heart.

Hours later, Lucy awakens covered in sweat, the blanket on the floor and George licking the wet from her cheeks. The dampness drips down her back, like the boy’s fingers once did, and she sits up and swats the imaginary touch.  Light coming through the open window causes her to blink, and she catches her flustered reflection in the mirror across the room.  She should have known it would make an appearance last night.

How was it that she could go to sleep at peace, and wake up in disarray, haunted and broken?  It has been weeks since the dream snuck into her room, beneath her sheets and swathed her in its ugliness. 

It always played out the same:

The May afternoon was warm and humid.

The golf course was recently tended to.

The smell of fresh cut grass permeated the air.

Her group was there: Jill, Ava, Natalie—the girls—and Nate, Brett, and Eli—the boys.  Ricky and Lucy brought the number to eight.  Indeed, Ricky’s absence had been noted.  Without him, the group felt lopsided.  They were lounging across the rocks that bordered the tiny brook adjacent to the ninth hole.  They had chosen the shaded area a year earlier for its location and privacy.  The guys were kicking around balls; the girls engaged in end-of-the-year high school chatter.  Someone, Lucy would never remember who, had brought a case of beer, and they were sipping from the cans, relaxing, minding their own business, and discussing the school year drawing to a close. 

Lucy never liked the taste of beer, though she drank it sometimes.  While the others finished off several cans, she would slowly nurse the one.  Her friends were good people, good students from good families.  Undeniably, they drank and experimented with drugs like most kids do in high schools across America.  But, they never touched the heavy stuff.  Weed was as far as they went.  Until that afternoon.  That it was the first time was irrelevant once police and parents got involved.

Nate was one of the most beautiful boys in their class.  He had a combination of chiseled features, welcoming eyes, and delicate cheeks that blushed easily.  Lucy and Nate were good friends.  Both of their last names began with B, so they were relegated to the same homeroom year after year.  And besides being someone nice to look at, he could always make her laugh.

Nate liked to get high.  It was he who brought the packet of cocaine to the course.  That, she remembered.  Already gifted in comedy, Nate was at his best and funniest when he was doped up.

Lucy was not drunk, nor did she ask for the assault.  What began as fun and games turned wickedly fast into senseless and mad.

All she had to do was walk through the trees to the spot the girls had called the
pissing point
.  Lucy remembers her hair that afternoon.  It was long and lustrous, falling down her shoulders.  It smelled like apple and felt like silk across her back as she made the fifty or so steps to the secluded spot behind the bushes.  She would remember later how the silk turned into sticks and the scratches left on her back appeared more animal than earth.

“Lucy,” a voice called from behind her.  She could hear the others laughing about something in the distance.

“Nate?”

He was there beside her, tall and fit; his brown hair left long in the front and brushed over to the side.  “What are you doing?”

What happened next plays in Lucy’s mind like an old movie that someone has edited. The movie jumps from the two of them talking, Lucy thinking how cute Nate is, standing there in the trees—she’s giggling at something he says—to her on the ground, and he’s on top of her.  His lips are on her cheeks, her mouth, her neck. Kissing Nate feels good at first.  He’s all hands and tongue.  He grabs fistfuls of hair and tugs on it as though he can’t get enough of her.  And he couldn’t.  The strong smell of beer on his breath creeps up into her nose.  Soon, the power of his kisses become less of a thrill and more of a fright.  His fingers reach under her shirt and claw at her breasts.  There is nothing sweet about the way his hands clamp down on her and wrestle her when she says to stop. 

“No, Nate,” she begs, “get off me.”  It is a half-cry, half-wail.

The eyes that are staring back at her are no longer those of the boy she grew up with.  The beautiful blue is flecked with red; they are glassy and unfamiliar.  His hand covers her mouth when she begins to scream.  The other pulls at her shorts and rips at her underwear.  Nate is a strong boy; his weight bearing down on her makes it impossible for her to move.  She squirms, she scratches, she pleads with her eyes, but Nate is crazed, unable to reach.  When he tears inside of her, she screams beneath his sweaty palm, though no sound comes out.  It’s muffled in his grasp, stifled in the violation of her body and spirit.

This is the part when the film slows down and the sharp colors fade to a dusty gray.  Lucy has left her body and like a patron in a theater, she is watching herself from above, unable to stop the animal from his attack.  She is no longer fighting him.  She is focused on the sky above and not the quake below.  The trees are blocking the sun as it tries to peek through.  She doesn’t dare close her eyes.  She counts the leaves on the trees.  She silently prays.  It is through someone else’s eyes that she sees him whisper in her ear, a dull, grainy menagerie of words, “You feel so good, Lucy…,” followed by a quickening, a shudder.  Only then does he release her mouth, let out a gasp, and drop his head against her chest.  He rolls over and pulls her along so that she is resting against his shoulder.  His fingers tickle her back beneath the stained shirt. 

Earlier, Lucy was dressed in a bright yellow tank top with denim shorts, but when she is forced to drag her body through the damp mulch, bordering the course where her best and closest friends sit, she is naked from the waist down.  She has been taught that yellow and red make orange, though where her blood stains the cotton fabric, there is no mistaking the deep, pure crimson.

And that’s when Lucy wakes up.

She tells herself it is the dream again, but she cannot dispute the accuracy of it.  She had been excited by his touch.  This realization shrouds her in shame.  She is angry that she didn’t fight harder.  She is sad that the police and lawyers did.  When the facts were sorted out and Lucy learned she was not pregnant, and that Nate was a virgin himself, other accusations came into play.  Natalie blamed her for
flirting
with Nate.  “How could you?” she asked.  And while Lucy tried to wrap her mind around the sting of that biting remark, forensic experts concluded that Nate had no recollection of the incident and was suffering as badly as Lucy.  Discerning who was the victim had become part of the tangled mess.  In the middle of it, the anti-drug advocates made their message clear: Drugs were dangerous and play with your mind and your inhibitions.  Use once and your life can change forever.