Coming for You

by Deborah Rogers

  “You make him sound like a lover, that I’m getting some sort of fix by seeing his face.”

  She nods. “The compulsion is similar. Part of you is getting something from remembering him and not letting go. You’re driven to set yourself up to be revictimized over and over again. It usually happens to children under the age of three who’ve been abused. The physiological arousal and stress responses they experience as infants can make them noradrenaline pain addicts later in life. But it can happen in serious trauma events in adults, and the worse cases of PTSD, too.”

  “So, basically, I’m bat shit crazy.”

  “I prefer the term ‘work in progress.’ The challenge for you is that this constant engagement with him—the thinking about him, looking at photographs, is keeping him alive in your mind. There is no difference between the real—”

  “And the intensely imagined. I get it.”

  She pauses. “The checking is getting worse too, isn’t it?” I must look surprised because she says, “It’s all linked. There’s a knock-on effect.” She closes her notebook. “I think that should be your priority for the week—refraining from looking at his image. Once we get that under control, once he is less real to you, the need for obsessive checking ought to dissipate. Also, try reminding yourself how long it’s been since the incident, and that you’ve been safe all this time. Use this downtime to work on yourself, Amelia. Maybe have a change of scene. Go see your mother. It’s all about interrupting patterns.”

  *

  What Lorna doesn’t know is that I can’t stop. It’s not like I haven’t tried, I have. But the compulsion to look is just too strong. I do it at least twelve times a day. There’s an image of him on my phone, within easy reach. And private. There are other photos of him on the web taken prior to the incident with me, before he went into hiding. Him attending various philanthropic endeavors. Him in a feature article that included a photo of him on his ranch posing with his prize black Angus bull. Him surrounded by his oil refinery employees. But the one on my phone is my preferred photo. It’s most like the friendly face I saw that first day in the gas station. A head and shoulders shot of him on a horse looking straight into the camera. An easygoing, smiling good ol’ boy. Skin slightly pinked from the sun. Happy to lend a hand. Or ask a naïve young woman for help.

  Instead of trying to resist, I just give in. And look. Over and over. Each and every day. I look closely. Count the crow’s feet, the inflection in his smile, the sharp line of the pressed collar of his plaid shirt, the steel behind his eyes. I look because it takes me back to the day in the gas station when he tricked me into helping him with the tire, then shoved me into the trunk of his car. How many times had he practiced that moonboot routine before he used it on me? I look until the initial shock of seeing his face passes and I feel nothing. I look because I don’t want to forget. I can’t afford to forget. One day it could be a matter of life and death.

  14

  After leaving Lorna’s office, it’s a toss-up between taking the ferry or the subway to get to New Jersey. Today the wind is cold and the Hudson is choppy, so I opt for the train. I have not been to Claire Watson’s apartment before. In fact, I haven’t been anywhere near New Jersey for years. Since returning to New York after the incident, I have confined myself to the city because venturing further afield makes me nervous.

  I slip into Starbucks and order a large flat white and take a corner seat down the back. Before I go, I need to ensure my journey is mapped out thoroughly. Unfamiliarity could lead to errors. I need all my focus to be on the people and faces around me and not the street signs.

  Using my phone, I search online for the best and safest routes, which trains to catch, what streets to walk down, the landmarks to look out for, the points where I will double back to cover my tracks. I study satellite images over and over until the New Jersey street patterns are clear in my head, taking a virtual journey from Point A to Point B to Point C then back to Point A again. It’s a lot to keep organized, which is why I take my time, and only finish when I’m sure I can recall my plan without the prompt of my phone.

  While a plan is a critical and very necessary thing, I recognize the reality that this virtual online roaming can never be foolproof. I will undoubtedly encounter unforeseen risks. Unidentified blind alleys, road work, building maintenance, blocked accessways. There will be times I will have to improvise. To help prepare for that possibility, I download maps, screenshots, and train schedules so I have them in easy reach. Only then do I feel satisfied that I have done enough to leave.

  *

  It takes me two and a half hours to travel from lower Manhattan to Newark, New Jersey. It would take a normal person, driving a normal car, just under an hour. But finally I’m here, standing in front of Claire Watson’s grim-looking brown-brick rental complex. A monolith square with small windows and no balconies, the complex looks more like some sort of institution than a place where people make homes.

  The elevator is broken, so I’m forced to take the stairs. Four flights in total. As I make my way upward, I try to ignore the putrid stench of urine and alcohol and possibly a dead rodent, and distract myself with the poorly executed graffiti covering the pockmarked plaster walls.

  I had no idea that Claire and Susie lived in these conditions, and it makes me appreciate just how devastating the turn of events has been for them. No wonder Claire had been so desperate to set Susie on another path in life.

  I locate Claire’s apartment and knock. A minute later there’s a rattle of locks and the door opens.

  Claire stares at me. “I wasn’t expecting anyone.”

  She looks rough, like she hasn’t slept in days. Her unbrushed hair hangs in two knotty tails, one on each shoulder. The gray T-shirt she’s wearing has a stain on the front. I begin to question the wisdom of coming.

  For a moment, I think Claire’s not going to let me in, but then she turns, leaving the door open, and I follow her up the hallway into the small living room. She sits down on a ripped black leatherette armchair and lights a cigarette.

  “I didn’t know you smoked.”

  She shrugs.

  “How are you doing?” I ask, trying not to stare at the ashtray piled high with butts.

  “Dandy.”

  “Claire.”

  “Amelia.”

  I pause, try to lighten my tone. “And Susie? How’s she?”

  “Last week she started a new school. Let’s hope there are no leeches there. I wanted to keep her home, but I had a visit from Child Social Services. Can you believe that? Like I’m the one that needs monitoring. Fucking ridiculous,” she says, tapping the ashtray. “They said she needed to be in school. I told them she was safer at home. But what do I know, I’m just her mother.”

  I wonder if she’s on something, prescription medication or otherwise.

  Suddenly, she looks at me, hopeful. “Are they going to re-lay the charges against Kennedy?”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  “Well, you’ve got to convince them.”

  “I tried, but I’m not exactly flavor of the month.”

  “Try harder.”

  “I’ve been suspended.”

  She clucks her tongue and looks disgusted. “Figures.”

  I glance around the apartment. There’s a pile of unfolded laundry on the sofa and the floor looks like it hasn’t seen a vacuum in weeks.

  “How are you doing, Claire? Really?”

  She sucks hard on her cigarette. “My son-of-a-bitch boyfriend finally left me for good.”

  Her eyes land on a photo on the wall. A family portrait taken when Susie was an infant. “Get this. He said he couldn’t cope with what happened. As if he was the one who was fingered by some creep in a dark room. Prick.”

  I take a breath. “I know this has been difficult, but the best thing you can do for Susie is pick up the pieces and move on.”

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  My cell chimes with a text but I ignore
it.

  “Come on, Claire. Don’t give up, Susie needs you.”

  She shoots me a bitter look. “Look around you. This is her future. It’s never gonna get any better than this.”

  “Claire.”

  “I think you’d better go now.”

  I pause. “If that’s what you want.”

  I get to my feet and head for the door. Claire doesn’t move from her seat.

  “And Amelia?” I turn and look at her. “Don’t come back here again.”

  15

  When I was eight, I was bitten by a spider. It crawled into the sleeve of my nightgown and up my arm and bit me on my collarbone while I slept. I showed my mother the next day.

  “How do you know it was a spider?” she said.

  “I just do.”

  “Did you see it?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then,” she said, turning back to peeling the potatoes, “you don’t really know what it was.”

  I told my sister and brother and they didn’t believe me either.

  “It’s probably a mosquito or something,” said my sister. My brother just laughed.

  That night I tore my room apart looking for it, shook out my sheets and blankets, removed my pillowcases, pulled my bed away from the wall, got down on all fours and examined the carpet. I couldn’t find anything.

  I hauled out the vacuum cleaner and cleaned around my bed, then emptied an entire can of bug spray all over my room. Even so, I was too afraid to sleep. It was going to come in the night and bite me again. I was sure of it.

  The next day the bite, which began as a tiny pimple, had spread to the size of a nipple. A giant distinct circle just like an areola and a hard nub in the center. Within two days, it had formed puss and I got an infection. My mother took me to the doctor and he put me on a course of a high dose of antibiotics.

  I looked for that spider for days. I looked even though my sister rolled her eyes and my brother teased me and my mother said I had a wild imagination.

  A week later I was better and the bite went down and I began to forget about the spider. Then one day when I was getting ready for school, I went to put on my sneakers and there it was, in the toe of my shoe. Dead and big and brown, legs folded up on itself. A brown recluse spider. So it turned out I had been right all along.

  As I study my apartment building from my usual place in the park across the road, I think about the spider. The spider that no one believed had existed except for me. I know Lorna thinks I’m just another one of her crazy paranoid patients. But I know he’s out here, watching, waiting, biding his time. I’m not going to be his victim again. I’m not going to be another one of those sitting ducks that ends up being stabbed to death on her doorstep.

  I spend a few minutes longer in the park. A couple in the upstairs apartment are intertwined, sharing a cigarette, gazing out the window. The man reaches down and kisses the woman’s cheek then looks back out the window.

  I cross the road and go inside my building. My foot aches badly so it’s a relief when I get to the elevator and reach my floor.

  When the lift door opens, I see a dark figure at the top of the stairs and scream. Before I know it, I’m running in blind panic, careening toward my apartment, dropping my cane and keys in the rush. All I can think of is he’s here. He’s going to kill me. I’ve got to get inside. I trip. Go down hard. Put my arms out to break my fall, slicing open my palm as I land on my keyring.

  “Jesus, Ms. Kellaway are you okay?”

  It takes a moment to register the voice. Ethan North.

  I stay on the ground, shaking, unable to speak.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” he says, reaching out to touch me.

  I flinch and he backs off.

  “You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that,” I say, my voice shaking.

  “I wanted to make sure you were okay after the trial.” He sees the cut on my hand. “Oh, you’re bleeding.”

  The charm attached to the keyring, a little glass sphere containing a single fleecy dandelion seed, lies smashed on the floor. Blood is dripping down my arm.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Let’s get you inside.”

  Before I can stop him, he picks up my keys and unlocks the door. If he notices anything unusual about the number of locks, he doesn’t say anything.

  “Where’s the bathroom?”

  I gesture with my chin and he leads me through the apartment to my bathroom. Heading for the basin, he turns on the tap, angles my hand under the running water. The wound is nasty and gushing blood.

  “We should get you to the emergency room. You might need stiches.”

  “It’s just a cut.”

  He looks at the wound, frowning. “I think I see glass. Have you got some tweezers?”

  I nod at the top drawer and he opens it. My medication and ointments for my foot are in there, a few stray tampons, and I suddenly feel very exposed. He finds the tweezers.

  “Keep still,” he says.

  It hurts. I gasp.

  “Sorry.”

  He digs a little more, then holds up a slither of glass. “Eureka.”

  “Eureka? Who says that anymore?”

  He smiles. “My pop. I guess I get it from him.”

  He bandages the wound and looks at me when he’s done. “How you doing? Better?”

  I nod. “Yeah, thanks.”

  I suddenly become aware of how close he is. I stand up.

  “I suppose a coffee’s in order,” I say.

  *

  We sit at the kitchen table, cradling our mugs.

  “How did you know where I live anyway?”

  He looks away and studies the baseboards. “I’m a cop.”

  “You didn’t need to check up on me.”

  “That was a shitty thing what happened,” he says. “You know, at court.”

  “It was my fault. I should have known better.”

  He’s polite enough not to agree and looks over his shoulder to take in the apartment. “I came by the other night.”

  I feign surprise. “Oh, what night was that?”

  He looks into his mug, takes a mouthful. “Tuesday.”

  I scramble for something convincing to say. “I think I was out.”

  He nods. His eyes land on the bottom shelf of the bookcase, the entire row that is dedicated to PTSD books. The Body Keeps Score. Trauma and Recovery. The Complex PTSD Workbook. I Can’t Get Over It: A Guide for Survivors of Trauma. I wonder if he has questions. He must know what happened to me. Everybody does. But I don’t feel like exposing my soul tonight.

  His phone bleeps. He glances at it. “Just my pop.”

  “He lives with you?”

  Ethan shakes his head. “He’s in a home. He has Alzheimers.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “He likes to text me the results of the game.”

  I get to my feet, tip out what’s left of my coffee in the sink.

  “You’re tired,” he says, standing.

  “A bit.”

  He places his empty mug on the counter. “I’ll let you get some rest.” He pauses at the door, frowns a little. “You sure you’ll be all right on your own?”

  I nod. “I’m fine.”

  “All right then, enjoy your night.”

  He leaves before I remember to thank him.

  16

  My throbbing hand wakes me. At first, I’m confused. Then I remember. Ethan North. The graceless, face-first plunge to the floor. My neurosis on display for all to see. He had been kind. Warm. Tender, even. I think about the scar on his top lip, the dark full eyebrows framing his hazel eyes, the stubble just beginning to show. The maleness I should turn away from and be afraid of. But here, in the quiet of my bedroom, it doesn’t seem so reckless.

  There had been other men since the incident. Two to be precise. One of them was a fellow patient at the center, who had lost his arm in a wheat thrasher. The other was a Tinder date, a butcher from Queens. Not much more than fumbles in the dark, wher
e I could be invisible and pretend to be someone else. I endured the encounters like some sort of punishment, coldly daring myself to feel the touch of a man and not have it matter. Part of me was worried that I might have a meltdown and think of the rape. As it turned out, I didn’t because I only felt numb.

  My hand throbs some more, demanding I get up and feed it ibuprofen. I reach for my phone to check the time and see two texts. The first is a reminder from Beth about the get-together at her place tonight. A celebration to mark her recent marriage to Gwen, a woman I had never met but suspected was the person in the party-driving seat given Beth, a textbook introvert, would rather be alone in the gym doing push-ups. I click on the second text and read it. I sit up, gripped by a sudden rush of hope.

  *

  I don’t usually go to Chris’s apartment in person but her text had been insistent. I have only been there once before, the first time we made the agreement; since then communication has been by email and text only.

  “Safer for everyone that way,” Chris had said.

  At the time, I wasn’t exactly sure what she’d meant, but I had accepted her terms. I was just glad to have finally found someone to help.

  Chris and I first met at the gym. Chris was an old girlfriend of Beth’s. A former Marine, complete with buzz cut and frank green eyes. When I asked her exactly what she had done in the Marines, she was evasive. “Intelligence,” she had said cryptically and left it at that. It was only later that I found out from Beth that Chris had been a security analyst with links to the National Security Agency. She had tracked and investigated suspected terrorists and had access to databases and surveillance tools I could only dream of. After Chris left the Marines, she’d set herself up as a “consultant” doing “off the book” jobs. That was when I realized that maybe Chris could help me.

  By the time I reach her apartment, it’s just after 10 a.m. Located in a converted shoe factory down a dead-end street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the place is perfectly suited to Chris, nondescript and quiet and not easily found. Chris buzzes me in right away and I’m hit with the earthy smell of female perspiration.