I reached out and took her hand. Her voice had dropped to a virtual monotone-a recitation of events in somebody else’s life. “I don’t care about that, Gail. I want to know how you’re doing.”
She pulled her hand away, the anger finally surfacing. “That’s the point, Joe. You should care. Focusing on me doesn’t address the issue. It just reduces the rape to the level of a mugging, or a car accident-something to be swept under the rug after all the right words have been said.”
I thought ruefully of my mother’s advice not to set up any confrontations. “You don’t need to convert me-I’m a believer. But I also think the messenger should be as well taken care of as the message.”
Gail didn’t comment for a while. “Maybe you’re right,” she finally murmured. “I’m not doing all that well. I can’t sleep at night, and sudden noises set me off like an alarm clock. I lock the door and jam a chair under the handle every time I take a shower. And I think I’m driving Susan and the others crazy with phone calls, trying to see if there’s anything I can do.”
She let out a shuddering sigh and stared at her hands. “I thought I could beat this, Joe. I know the routine; I’ve seen others go through it. But it’s just not working.”
“Are you seeing someone who can help?”
“I was, until you got hurt. I’ve called her a couple of times since I’ve been up here, when things got really bad, but I guess I thought I could cheat there, too.”
“How bad do things get?” I asked, feeling guilty for not knowing.
“They pile up, bit by bit. When I go out, I think every man in sight is looking at me, and when I’m here alone, I’m afraid someone will come crashing through the door. I’ve felt so sorry for myself at times, I’ve started resenting you-thinking you got stabbed on purpose to grab attention away from me.”
I shook my head, overwhelmed by what she’d been dealing with. “What did your therapist say?”
“She wanted me to come back to Brattleboro, or at least find somebody up here. She said I had to talk it out so I could deal with it up front-relive the rape in detail, admit my life has been permanently changed and then move on. I had to ‘commit to heal,’ in her words.”
She lightly punched her own leg, her face tight. “It pisses me off. I know my life’s been changed, but I can’t shake what that bastard did to me-. That’s another thing,” she added vehemently, as if I were arguing with her, “I have these fits of pure rage. I get so mad I start crying, and I can’t stop.” She caught her breath. “I just can’t believe I can’t beat this.”
“Would you like to use me to talk it out?” I asked softly, referring back to her therapist’s advice.
Her reaction was tentative. “It’s supposed to help-make it something that doesn’t eat me up from inside.”
“Let’s try it, then.”
“I don’t know, Joe… ”
“It helped to talk about it the day after, didn’t it?”
She thought about it for a few moments. “You’re not too tired?”
“Nope. And it would make me feel better, after all you’ve done for me.”
She finally agreed. Sitting back with her head against the pillows, my hand in hers, she went over in detail what Bob Vogel had done to her.
I listened carefully-asking a question now and then-slipping on my professional demeanor to keep my emotions in check. By the end, she seemed a bit more peaceful, her cheeks reddened by tears. She blew her nose, gave me a hug, and pretended to go to sleep, although she left again for the living room as soon as she thought I’d nodded off.
Sleep for me, however, was out of the question.
For now I understood what had been troubling me. It wasn’t my physical wound, or her emotional one. It stemmed instead from a phenomenon I should have recognized much sooner.
As she’d recounted her purgative tale, my mind had begun catching on stray details of the account, like fine fabric snagging on rough skin. Questions had started to form, discrepancies to loom, and I’d been forced to face the strong probability that something-I didn’t know what-had been missed earlier.
What I realized in my gut was that the case in Dunn’s hands was perhaps fatally flawed.
17
Tony Brandt's voice on the phone was both hesitant and slightly defiant. “I hope you’ve gotten used to the idea of getting a medal.”
It was midway through the second week of my convalescence, and all four of us had been playing cards in the living room following dinner. The group behind me laughed suddenly at something Leo said, and I stretched the telephone cord until I was just inside the front hallway. “Why?” was all I asked.
“’Cause the ceremony’s tomorrow morning, up where you are. Dunn’s invited the press and a few flunkies-yours truly included-we’ll do it in your front yard if the weather’s good.”
“Whether I like it or not.”
“Whether you like it or not. ’Course, you could make us look like jerks and skip town for a while.”
I waited for more and then asked, “Is that a recommendation?”
He chuckled briefly. “I guess not. Wishful thinking. For a second, I could picture Dunn trying to explain where you were… ”
“Is he going to graciously give me a call in an hour and ask my permission, or is that what you’re doing now?”
The answering silence had no mirth in it. “Yeah,” he finally admitted, “James is tied up till late tonight-asked me to do the honors. Apologies and all that.”
“Right. What time?”
“Ten in the morning.”
I digested the news, slowly accepting that there was little I could do about it without involving the department in publicity it didn’t deserve. Brandt saying he was going to be there confirmed that, regardless of whatever furor might have preceded this decision, he’d lost, and now it was time for a proper stiff upper lip. “Tell him I’ll be here.”
Tony was more resigned than pleased. “Okay.”
“Do me a favor, though, will you? Could you bring a synopsis of Vogel’s case up with you tomorrow?”
There was a long pause. He knew I hadn’t merely run out of reading material. “You working on something?”
“I just want to refresh my mind on a few points.”
“All right,” he said slowly. “Nothing up your sleeve?”
He didn’t want to know-not really. I wasn’t sure I did myself.
“Nope. See you tomorrow.”
Unfortunately, the next day was beautiful. The sky was a startling shade of electric blue, making a picture-perfect backdrop for the miles of gaudily dressed trees that swept down the valley from the farmhouse’s front door. Even the giant maple in the yard was at its best-a wild craze of red and orange impressionist daubings, looming high overhead in a dazzling canopy. I shook my head with disgust at the whole display and slammed the door on it, returning to the kitchen.
It was not the happy gathering one might have expected on such an occasion, despite Leo’s best efforts to make it cheerful. Reinforcing my gloom, Gail had barely said a word since I’d mentioned the ceremony the night before, and my mother kept looking nervously from one of us to the other, as if anxious to find out whose fuse was going to prove shorter.
I was troubled by Gail myself. There was no great love between her and Dunn, and the blatant opportunism of his little maneuver hadn’t been lost on any of us. But there was something beyond that, and I was fearful it stemmed from my having asked her to recount the rape. I wondered if reliving the trauma had been exactly the wrong thing for her to have done. But despite several gentle attempts to get her to talk, she kept to herself. Perhaps Dunn’s contrived ceremony was the last straw for her. She had, after all, come up not only to help me out, but also to get away from the turmoil and pressure that Brattleboro had come to represent.