“Please,” she said. “Don’t run off so quick. I’m in something of a little pinch.” I could tell from looking at her that she was scared. I thought of breaking free, driving home to tell my father, calling the cops. But with Rebecca looking at me like that, as though I could save her, saying, “Please, I really need you, Eileen. Be a friend,” I began to cave. She pulled a cigarette out for me, lit it with trembling hands. “You’re the only one I trust,” she said. That was all it took to reel me back in. She respected me after all, I chose to believe. She wanted me on her side. Tears filled her eyes and slid down her cheeks. She mopped them up with the cuff of her robe, exhaled, shuddered, looked up at me imploringly.
“OK,” I said. Nobody had ever cried to me before. “I’ll help you.”
“Thank you, Eileen,” she said, smiling through her tears. She blew her nose on her sleeve. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m a mess.” It pleased me to see her scared and vulnerable like that. She took another slice of bread from the counter, picked at it mindlessly for a moment. “I don’t know how I got into this. But now that we’re in it, we have to finish what we started.”
I sat down, straightened my back against the chair, crossed my legs like a lady, folded my hands in my lap. “We could call the police and just explain what happened,” I said softly. “It was an accident, we could say.” I knew full well this suggestion was ludicrous. I just wanted to reap all the desperation I could out of her. I deserved at least that much in return for my loyalty, I thought.
“And say what?” Rebecca replied. “That I accidentally tied her up? They’d take me to jail,” she cried.
“My father was a cop,” I told her. Rebecca looked down at me, wide-eyed. “Of course I won’t tell him, but I’m saying, if we said Mrs. Polk threatened you…”
“The last thing we need is for the police to get involved. Mr. Polk was a cop, you know. If the police actually cared about justice, I wouldn’t have had to come here in the first place. I can’t go to jail, Eileen. People won’t understand the good I’m trying to do.” She flapped the piece of bread around and threw it into the sink, lit herself a cigarette. She peered into the broken wine bottle. It was empty. “I could use a drink,” she said.
“No drinks,” I said, satisfied that she was desperate enough not to judge me. “We need to keep our wits about us. We have a confession to extract.” I tried to sound industrious. I stubbed my cigarette out and clasped my hands. “We have a job to do.” Rebecca smiled weakly. “Tell me what happened,” I said. “Tell me everything.” It tickled me to see her squirm. Her hands flew to her hair, pulling and twirling as she paced the kitchen floor.
“It started yesterday afternoon. I invited myself into Mrs. Polk’s home,” she said. She steadied her voice so as to seem unruffled, collected, believable, as though rehearsing what she’d tell a judge or jury. “I confronted her about her and her husband’s actions, repeating what Lee told me about the enemas, the sexual abuse, all that.” She jangled her hand as though to gesture upstairs, where the routine rape occurred. I had just barely comprehended the abuse as she’d described it — what body part had gone where, what the enemas were for. What it all meant was as yet unclear. I was naive and I was perverted and I knew what homosexuality was in theory, but I was inexperienced and couldn’t picture sexual intercourse well enough to understand it in this twisted form — the rape of a young boy.
“What exactly did his dad do to him?” I asked. Rebecca stopped pacing and looked at me as though I were an idiot. “Just to be clear,” I added.
“Sodomy,” she said. “Anal penetration. Is that clear enough?”
I nodded, though this seemed implausible. “Go on.” I cleared my throat. “I’m listening.”
“Mrs. Polk denied everything, of course,” Rebecca continued. “She called her husband a saint, said she’d never even heard the word ‘enema’ before I’d said it. ‘Wouldn’t know the first thing it was for.’ But I kept asking, ‘Why didn’t you take Leonard and run away? Why would you allow this to continue? How could you be complicit in such torture?’ And she just wouldn’t answer. I told her to think it over. I left my number. But I knew she wouldn’t call. I couldn’t sleep at all last night. It was just eating me alive how that woman had lied to my face. So I came back this morning. She had nothing new to say, of course. Clammed up even more. Called me crazy. I threatened to report what she’d done. And I fought with her because what I had to say made her angry. I tried telling her I was there on Lee’s behalf, and that I wanted to help her, too. But she wouldn’t listen. She was mad. She attacked me. See?” Rebecca opened her robe and lifted her blouse to show me faint scratch marks across her chest, nothing grave, nothing that would leave a mark. Her torso was so narrow and pure, white skin seeming to glow from the inside, ribs like the ivory keys of a piano, abdomen stiff in its fine musculature. Her brassiere was black satin with delicate lace across her small bust. “I had to detain her,” Rebecca said, shaking her head. “There was no other option. She was threatening to call the police. What would I tell them?”
“You did the right thing,” I said. I steeled my eyes and let my face go slack, hoping to convey to Rebecca that I was fearless, calm and tempered with disdain for the terrible crime against the child, and would work vigilantly to see this thing through to the end, although I had no idea what that would mean. Rebecca’s exasperation eased up a bit. She pulled her hair back.
“I didn’t really hurt her,” she said. “She’s not in any pain. She was yelling for a long time, so I turned the music up. But now she’s quiet. I figured eventually she’d tell the truth, accept her part of the blame, and then we could set things right. But she’s not confessing to anything. She refuses to talk at all. I can’t keep her tied up much longer and have her stay down there in the cold. I’m not a criminal. She deserves far worse, but I’m no villain. Do you know what I mean?”
I cannot say for sure why Rebecca had to drag me into her scheme. Did she really think I could help her? Or was I just there to witness her brilliant project, absolve her of her guilt? I’ve debated with myself time and again the earnestness of her compassion. Just what was her motivation for getting involved in the Polk family drama? Did she honestly think she had the power to atone for someone else’s sins, that she could exact justice with her wit, her superior thinking? People born of privilege are sometimes thus confused. But now she was frightened. Mrs. Polk was perhaps more evil than Rebecca had counted on.
“Leave her down there for a few more hours,” I suggested. “That will punish her. She’ll talk.”
“But she hasn’t said a word,” Rebecca cried. She threw herself against the counter again, crossed her arms. “The damn woman won’t confess. She’s simply incorrigible. She’s as mute as her son was.”
“Get her drunk,” I proposed. “People always say things they don’t mean to when they’re drunk.”
“That’s beside the point.” Rebecca exhaled. “Anyhow the liquor stores are closed by now. What we need is a signed confession. Something she can’t deny later. But she isn’t scared enough to admit to anything. It’s not as though I’m going to beat her up.” She looked at me pointedly. “Have you ever beaten anybody up?” she asked, struggling haltingly to pronounce the words.
“No,” I replied, “though I’ve imagined it.”
“Of course not, of course.” She paced again, kneading a new slice of bread between her fingers into small balls. My stomach churned. “We need to think. Think hard.” A few moments passed. Then the solution came to me, so simple and easy I almost laughed. I turned to my purse where it hung behind me off the back of my chair and carefully pulled the gun out and set it on the table.