The Cave Dwellers

by Christina McDowell

  Bunny studies Anthony’s photograph again, zooming in on his face so his eyes are life-size and staring into her. She tries to imagine that he did do it—the facial expressions he might have made upon entering the home, upon slicing Audrey up—but she’s having trouble. His mug shot, he looks so somber, so human.

  * * *

  Power feels tilted along Idaho Avenue behind the new Giant Food, Bluemercury, and Barcelona wine bar. Bunny sits in her Volvo waiting to turn in at the old Metropolitan Police Station when a public bus pulls up next to her. She glances over and looks up. Rows of Black and brown and very few white faces gaze out the windows beyond the traffic, beyond their shitty-paying minimum-wage jobs and psychopathic bosses and headaches from the cleaning fluid and the screaming white children and the fancy dog-poop bags thrown on top of public trash cans—a cocoon of fantasy thinking and wishing and dreaming and resentment and injustice and judgment. The engine roars as it goes on to pass her; Bunny coughs from the fumes whipping through her vents. She cracks the window and swats the air with her hand, then turns into the parking lot.

  Inside, an American flag hangs on a white brick wall with three random head shots of notable police chiefs. Bunny’s only ever been to the police station once, when she was thrown into the “drunk tank” sophomore year—a holding cell for privileged teenagers with missing stilettos and calls made to family friends who are lawyers.

  An overweight female officer with bleached hair and thick glasses sits at the desk behind bulletproof glass. She types something into her computer, ignoring Bunny’s presence. Bunny waits with her hands clasped in front of her, polite, a backpack slung over her shoulder and a pink wool beanie on her head. Bunny looks around to while away the time; a gumball machine to her right is covered in dust and probably hasn’t been touched since 1997. Another minute passes, and Bunny feigns interest in the surrounding government posters and most-wanted photographs and laws to abide by. She exhales and stares down at the officer before she realizes neither damsel-in-distress nor entitlement will get her what she wants. She steps toward the glass window and knocks. “Excuse me.”

  The officer looks up. Affectless, she presses the intercom button. “May I help you?”

  “Yes. I’m looking for Officer Gomez.”

  “Do you have a badge number?”

  “Um, no.”

  “I need a badge number.”

  “Well, can’t you just look it up in your system, or whatever?”

  The officer gives Bunny a once-over. “Ma’am, what is this regarding?”

  “The Banks murders.… The family that was tortured and burned—”

  “Yeah, I remember, that case is with the feds now.”

  “The feds?” Bunny doesn’t understand the language.

  “The FBI.”

  Disappointed that it’s not going to be so easy to get information, Bunny scrunches her nose. “So how do I get the police report, then?”

  “You gotta go through the Freedom of Information Act.”

  “The Freedom of Information Act?”

  “The Freedom of Information Act.”

  “What’s the Freedom of Information Act?”

  “It’s where you can submit a request to obtain records—provided that it gets approved, then they’ll give it to you.”

  “Okay, but—”

  “It’s the Freedom of Information Act. You can go online and find it,” the officer says once more, then turns around to give a sheet of paper to an officer behind her.

  “Okay, wait, one more question.…” Bunny says, and the woman begrudgingly turns to her again.

  “Yes?”

  “How do I go visit someone in jail?”

  “Which jail, ma’am?” the officer asks with increasing impatience.

  “Um…” Bunny thinks, the officer’s tone making her feel like she should already know the answers and ashamed that she doesn’t, because why would she? Look at the coat she’s wearing. Bunny pulls up the link to the story on her phone. “The DC Jail… Central Detention Facility.”

  “You gotta go on the website and fill out a form with your ID,” says the officer.

  “Oh, like for a background check?”

  “Ma’am, check the website, like I said.”

  Bunny glares at the officer. “Got it.” She drops her phone in her pocket and heads for the metal detectors and out the front door.

  Suffragist Statue

  It wasn’t until 1921 that the depiction of a woman surfaced within the United States Capitol Rotunda, a room at the center of the Capitol connecting the House of Representatives and the Senate. The unveiling of the suffragist statue happened six months after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment giving women (white women) the right to vote. The marble statue depicts Elizabeth Cady Stanton, author of the women’s bill of rights; Susan B. Anthony, abolitionist and president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association; and Lucretia Mott, preacher and organizer of the Seneca Falls Convention in New York; in addition, an uncarved clump of marble towers behind them. There are different rumors about what that clump of marble symbolizes—for example, are we waiting for the first female president of the United States? Could it be for the next prominent leader of the women’s rights movement? The Me Too movement?I

  Sadly, after the statue’s unveiling, it was promptly removed and placed underground in what was supposed to be President Washington’s crypt, but instead was used to house cleaning supplies, brooms, and mops. Congress rejected multiple bills seeking to move the statue into the Rotunda. It was not until the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1995 that women’s groups, including female members of Congress, rallied in an effort to bring it out of the closet. Finally in 1997 the statue was brought back to public light, though only because private funds around the country were donated to move it. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich had rejected using any of the $23 million budget for maintenance and acquisitions around the Capitol.II

  I. Denise Goolsby, “No Room for Fourth Bust on Suffragette Statue?” Desert Sun, September 19, 2016, https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/nation/2016/09/19/suffrage-movement-susan-b-anthony-portrait-monument-us-capitol-hillary-clinton/88317362/.

  II. Lorraine Boissoneault, “The Suffragist Statue Trapped in a Broom Closet for 75 Years,” Smithsonian, May 12, 2017, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/suffragist-statue-trapped-broom-closet-75-years-180963274/.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Doug sits at his desk googling himself after everyone has left the office. “Senator Wallace,” “Doug Wallace,” “Senator Doug Wallace”—all of the different ways someone other than himself might be thinking about him. His increased self-obsession is due to an uptick in voter popularity, not just in North Carolina but across the United States. Cate’s words on Fox struck a chord across party lines in the handling of the White House’s domestic violence scandal. And given its timeliness, Doug thanks God again and again for the day he made amends with college classmate Lisa Greenberg. He squeezes his erection under his suit pants when he thinks about it.

  It was a few years after Doug’s graduation from the University of North Carolina that he had his epiphany about entering politics. This made it imperative he track down Lisa Greenberg. Doug had been calculating enough to sense that whenever they bumped into each other on campus, her behavior suggested she felt overwhelmed and awkward. He’d intuited that it was because the night they had sex, she’d kept changing her mind about whether or not he could enter her until he decided she meant yes instead of no, when really it was no instead of yes. He’d humped her until he came, then left and never called her again. Lisa was so difficult.

  It never quite dawned on Doug that he had raped her, only that she didn’t like him, and he felt he needed to smooth things over for his future political career. Doug had tracked Lisa down one day at her favorite bookstore in Raleigh, cornering her in the New Fiction section near the front window. Startled by his aggressive presence, Lisa had blushed from embarrassment
at having ignored all of his calls; she had an understandably incessant need to get away from him. Nevertheless, Doug had persisted: Hey, can I talk to you for a sec? he asked. I’m just waiting for someone, she replied. Listen, I’m going into politics and I’ve been reflecting on my past, and I am sorry if I ever made you feel—Doug paused in order to find the right word—uncomfortable… you know, the night we had sex. I felt like things got weird after that. Lisa froze with shame and left her body and said, It’s okay, because that was the polite thing to say in public, and Doug said, Okay, cool, so we’re good, and she said, Yes, and they never spoke again.

  Doug leans back in his swivel chair and squeezes his erection harder, eyes glazed over the computer screen thinking about Lisa Greenberg; he has the overwhelming urge to masturbate. He pleads with himself, Not at the office. In North Carolina, after he stopped screwing the producer at the local Fox affiliate, he began compulsively masturbating in the bathroom at work, and had made a promise when he moved to Washington that he would stop. But growing up in the Wallace home, promises held no merit. Doug heads for the bathroom door, unzips his pants, leans forward with his hand against the wall, and goes and goes as fast as he can.

  Women all over America seem to adore Doug’s message of conservative masculine redemption. As his paranoia and his adoration for himself increase, so do his sexual urges—and he no longer accepts Cate as the answer. In fact, as of late he has gone from being addicted to her to being repulsed by her ambition. It was her assertiveness that flipped the switch, the realization that she is after something greater than him and he is the road to attaining it.

  * * *

  Cate reaches the center of the Capitol Rotunda below the Apotheosis, the radiant portrait of George Washington sitting in the heavens surrounded by “goddesses,” not dissimilar to a portrait of Hugh Hefner surrounded by a semicircle of Playboy bunnies, when she realizes she “forgot” her laptop. She forgot her laptop knowing Doug will be working late on the new amendment to the domestic violence bill and she’s anxious as to why he hasn’t called or texted during out-of-office hours.

  Cate tiptoes into the office. “Hello?” she says softly, but only hears the sound of quiet screaming. There is a similar memory moving through her body as she approaches Doug’s office door; to reach it she must pass the office bathroom, the door slightly ajar, where she discovers the screaming is coming from Doug’s cell phone resting on the ledge above the toilet, his back to her, his head turned to the phone as he finishes, with no inkling that Cate is standing in the hallway behind him. Watching.

  If she breathes, Cate feels like she might get fired. She tiptoes backward, her mouth agape, still not breathing, heart pulsating, then closes her eyes hard and reopens them and stands at her desk staring at her open laptop. The toilet flushes, creating a ripple effect of thumping pipes through the walls, this fucking infrastructure. Cate grabs her computer and turns around to see Doug standing in the doorway.

  “What are you doing here?” he asks her, surprised. He wipes sweat with the back of his forearm.

  “Oh! You’re still here—I forgot my computer.” Cate shoves it in her bag, runs her hand through her blond locks.

  Doug approaches her like he might kiss her, stops just in front of her desk.

  “Do you wanna crack my back?” he asks.

  “Right now?” Cate looks around the room almost as if she never even saw him masturbating to porn in the bathroom just sixty seconds ago. Was he masturbating because he missed me? she wonders.

  “Yeah.” Doug sprawls out on his stomach on the floor in front of her.

  Cate can’t help but crack a smile, seduced but still skeptical. She kicks off her heels and steps onto his wobbly skin. A balancing act, like a young ballerina.

  Doug groans: “Unhhh… God, that feels good. That’s it, to the left, unhhh, yeaahh.”

  Cate drops the balancing act and digs her heel into the side of his spine. “Does that hurt?”

  Doug ignores her. “Okay, okay, I gotta turn over,” he says. And flips over on his back so they’re making eye contact. Cate thinks it’s game over; she doesn’t realize Doug’s in a different game.

  He pulls his legs to his chest. “Okay, now lean on me as hard as you can,” he says. Cate exhales, gets on her knees in front of him, and leans into his shins so his knees get closer to his chest. They’re eye to eye, like two acrobats, but he doesn’t pull her in for a kiss. Cate waits, until it doesn’t happen.

  “Unhhhh. Okay, okay, I gotta get up now,” Doug says. He shifts her back, then scrambles up, his arms above his head as he yawns. “Gotta get home to the girls, see you tomorrow?” He points to her and heads for his office door.

  Cate stands, a wave of humiliation hitting her. “See you tomorrow,” she says, standing barefoot, stranded in the middle of the office.

  * * *

  As Cate stomps down Constitution Avenue, she becomes acutely aware of the fact that on Capitol Hill, human resources doesn’t really exist. Every senator’s office operates as its own kingdom, so if Cate filed a complaint it would have to be with Walter. She knows that if she files, she’ll be fired.

  When someone hurts Cate, whether intentionally or not, she holds on to it and uses it to thrust her forward, placating and listening and studying whomever it is she needs to overthrow. Cate’s always had an intense awareness and understanding of people and their feelings, their shame, their vulnerability; she’ll get to know them—what they were like in high school, how old they were when they got their heart broken. She listens for the gems and drops them in her pocket like rocks and saves them until she’s ready to scoop and throw. She isn’t in touch with why—why being that her father abandoned her for prison when she was fourteen, that he hurt her mother, and that she was ostracized for it. She still thinks about the time in ninth grade when Danny Farrell accused her of stealing an Adidas gym bag from the lost-and-found and told her, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” No one ever acknowledged the fact that he was gone, only in moments of bullying or gossip behind her back. She received no sympathy from teachers or parents or friends, not even from Chuck or Meredith, who used only their money and connections to support her, to get her into college, to get her the job in Doug’s office. No one ever asked if she was okay.

  As the escalator descends into the Metro station, Cate tries to shake off the initial shock and humiliation that she knows is not hers to carry. A deep knowing that Doug is turning away from her—her ambition—that this isn’t love. He used her for sex. A moment of dysphoria before she steps through the sliding doors of the train and is overcome by rage, the kind of rage only a woman without any father, money, or status available to protect her can feel.

  * * *

  The next day Cate and Walter are hovering over Doug, who sits at his mahogany desk. They’re watching the end of an ad on YouTube in an attempt to decide whether or not it’s appropriate for Doug’s SAVE THE BROS baseball hat to be in the background on his bookshelf in his social media video introducing the amendment to the domestic violence crime bill making psychological control a Class E felony.

  On the computer screen: The camera pans to a man wearing a gold chain and wife-beater, who looks directly into the camera: “That’s what she said,” wink. The bros dance and shimmy and high-five and fist-bump and the camera pans out. “Tweet your bro anonymously.” SAVE THE BROS! appears on the screen.

  Doug spins around in his chair, chuckling at the ad, then sighs.

  “I think this is inappropriate and we should replace the hat with your Michael Jordan bobblehead,” Cate says.

  “It’s an advertisement for organic protein drinks, for God’s sake,” says Walter, pit stains noticeable through his white dress shirt. “We need to appeal to our youth, we need hip things in the background.”

  A young cameraman enters, begins to set up the tripod. Doug pretends he is invisible.

  “But this is for our female base, young and old,” Cate argues. Doug shoots her a disappointed look, w
hich startles her; she thinks maybe she’s gotten a little loose with her decorum around the office, especially in Walter’s presence. And after her realization last night, that Doug may no longer have any use for her, she can’t afford to make any mistakes. She makes a mental adjustment, runs over to the photographer to help set up, leaving Walter and Doug to review their notes on the announcement of the bill.

  Doug straightens in his seat, adjusts his red striped tie, which makes him look more like a male candy striper than a senator. Cate stands behind the tripod watching him mouth his lines into the camera as practice, doubting his abilities.

  Walter notices the way Cate is looking at Doug, her longing and disappointment, and walks over with a clipboard holding the script. He extends his arm across her chest, grazing the back of it against her nipple, then lifts his arm gently up and down before Cate grabs the clipboard out of his hand. Cate is in a state of shock, as if a cement of shame has been poured over her, propelling her to pretend it never happened. Walter, satisfied in his crumpled khakis, takes two steps behind her, his foul breath on the back of her neck; he crosses his arms and waits for the cameraman to say, “It’s a go.”