The Stranger Behind You

by Carol Goodman

  “I bet you were beautiful,” I say. “You still are.”

  She holds my gaze, suddenly serious. She doesn’t try to wave off the compliment. “Sometimes there was a price to pay,” she says, “for being beautiful.”

  The nape of my neck prickles the way it does when I sense a story—the reporter’s sixth sense, Simon calls it. I can imagine Lillian as a young, beautiful woman working at an office job in the ’40s. What chance did a woman have back then when even women today are still bullied and pressured into sex by men in power? Was that the “trouble” she “fell into”? A boss who made sexual advances? I open my mouth to ask what price she paid for being beautiful, but then I remember that Lillian isn’t one of my sources. She’s an old woman who’s just had a bad fall.

  I close my mouth and notice that her eyes are looking a bit cloudy and her ramrod-straight posture is drooping. The fall has taken more out of her than she was willing to admit.

  “You should get some rest,” I say. She looks a bit disappointed so I add, “Would you like to come back again for tea?”

  “I would like that,” she says, her back straightening and her eyes regaining some of their clarity. She rises to her feet quite easily but accepts my arm to guide her across the slippery parquet. I offer to take her to her apartment but she flutters her hands at the suggestion that she needs help. “I’ll find it now. I was just a little bit turned around before. I know where I am. Look, I have my keys.”

  She holds up the ring of keys that she’d dropped when she came in. Seeing them makes me remember something.

  “You were opening my door,” I say. “How did you have a key to my door?”

  She looks confused . . . then guilty. “Rose must have given it to me.”

  “Rose?”

  “Yes, Rose. She was here before . . .”

  “Oh,” I say, “you mean the previous tenant. Did you feed her cat . . . or something like that?”

  Lillian smiles. “Something like that.” Then she gives my arm a squeeze and shoos me back into my own apartment. I have no choice but to retreat and close the door, but I watch her on the camera walking to her door—or at least to as far as the camera reaches before she vanishes off-screen. I turn from the monitor and my eyes are drawn to the windows.

  They kept us up high where no one could see us and the only escape was the drop to the rocks below.

  I’d chosen this apartment because no one could see in and no one could climb up the sheer cliff, so I could feel safe behind my locked door with my surveillance camera and doorman downstairs, but I don’t feel safe; I feel as trapped here as those Magdalen girls. Removing one danger has only exposed me to another. I feel like an animal that has burrowed itself into a hole to escape a predator only to discover it hasn’t left itself an escape route.

  AFTER LILLIAN LEAVES, the apartment feels lonely and quiet. I pour myself a glass of wine and ask Bot to tell me the history of the Refuge. She tells me that the Refuge for Fallen Women was founded by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, who called themselves the Magdalen sisters after Mary Magdalene, who was saved by Jesus from the sin of prostitution. Their symbol—which Bot pulls up on my laptop—was a cross with a shepherd’s crook threaded down its center and two hearts linked behind it. They founded a Magdalen Society in New York City in the 1830s, first housed in downtown Manhattan, with the mission of rescuing women from lives of prostitution and vice and providing an asylum to erring females “who manifest a desire to return to the path of virtue.” They must have found a lot of erring females, because they soon outgrew their downtown quarters and moved, in 1907, to Inwood. The society built a massive French chateau on a ridge overlooking the Hudson River. It was described in the New York Times as a “five-story fireproof structure solidly built of stone, covered in white stucco, with large, light, airy rooms.”

  As Bot lists the features of the Refuge it sounds like a paradise—“Big sunny rooms where girls sew and laugh amongst themselves, a spotless infirmary with surgical appliances and a medical chest.” Even the basement, where “the home maintains a laundry and teaches its inmates to become fine laundresses,” had large, sun-filled windows.

  Every description, I notice, mentions the windows. “The workroom where the girls sew is like the deck of a steamer and so are the dormitories where they sleep,” a New York Tribune reporter wrote. “The bathrooms and sanitary arrangements are admirable. All kinds of cases are sent there. Some are women who come or are sent there.”

  “Bot,” I say, “reread that quote from the Tribune.”

  Bot obliges. I stop her when she gets to “All kinds of cases are sent there. Some are women who come or are sent there.”

  “So it’s not a voluntary cruise,” I point out to Bot, thinking that two such awkward, redundant sentences would never have survived Sylvia’s blue pencil.

  “Do you want me to look up cruises?” Bot asks.

  “No thank you, Bot,” I say, reminding myself that Bot doesn’t really have much of a sense of humor. “Go on and tell me how things worked out in this bright and sunny Magdalen asylum.”

  Bot proceeds, informing me that in 1913 there was a riot that involved seventy-five girls who scratched one another, shredded one another’s clothes, and threw furniture out the large and sunny windows.

  In 1914 a sixteen-year-old girl died going out one of those windows in a botched escape attempt. “Being unversed in even the elemental theories of physics,” the reporter mockingly wrote, “Sarah Green tied one end of a rope composed of ripped bed clothes to a chair on the fourth floor of the Magdalen Home and started to lower herself from a window to the rocks bordering the Hudson last night. As soon as she changed her weight from the window sill to the rope the chair followed her out the window and seventeen bones in her body were broken when she fell on the crags.”

  I open the window above my desk and look out. Just as Lillian said, it’s a straight drop to the rocks below, although there’s the Henry Hudson Parkway and train tracks between the rocks and the river. I’ve heard the train in the night, but I hadn’t realized the tracks were so close. Maybe the sound of the train lured the girls with the promise of escape. But how desperate would a girl be to try that sheer drop?

  In 1916 another girl plunged to her death from a third-floor window. The Magdalens claimed she fell while sleepwalking, but couldn’t explain why if she was sleepwalking she was fully dressed.

  It was then that a legend sprang up that the Refuge was haunted by the ghosts of all the girls had who died trying to escape. There were many failed escapes over the years—and some successful ones, including a girl who went down a laundry chute and over a forty-foot wall never to be seen or heard from again. In 1941 two women vanished mysteriously. Some believed their bodies had been dumped in the river; others that they had hopped on a northbound train and made their way to freedom. The Refuge was closed soon afterward.

  Instead of making me feel better, this history has made me feel more isolated and trapped than before. Why haven’t I invited any friends over? I wonder, pouring another glass of wine. I know the answer. After three years working on this story 24/7, most of my friends got tired of me turning down dinner and drinks dates and acting guarded and secretive when I did because I couldn’t talk about the story.

  My last boyfriend said I spent more time with my boss, working late, than with him. He even accused me of having a thing for Simon, which was ridiculous, Simon was twenty years older than me. I respected him, wanted his esteem, and yes, it was true that all the twentysomething man-children I dated paled in comparison. Which is maybe why it’s been almost a year since I went out on a date.

  I go to pour another glass of wine and see that the bottle’s empty. When I check the cabinet I find that it was my last bottle. I’d ordered a case when I moved in, thinking it would last me until I was ready to start going out again, but apparently I’m drinking more than I used to.

  I rinse the bottle out and put it in the recycling bin—along with three others. Okay,
I decide, I’m definitely going to cut back on drinking alone. If I want a drink I’ll go out. There were several bars in the neighborhood, just down the hill. I could ask Sam and some of the other reporters for drinks one night. Only, I wouldn’t know which bar to suggest since I’ve never been to any. Would they think that was weird that I’d lived here nearly three weeks and haven’t even been to my local pub?

  I look out my window. The sun is low over the Palisades, turning the sky that lovely shade of peachy-orange, but it isn’t dark yet. It’s a beautiful summer evening. I could walk down the hill to one of the pubs, have a glass of wine and a bite to eat. After all, I wasn’t one of those poor Magdalen girls who weren’t allowed to leave. I was free to go.

  Before I can change my mind I march into my bedroom, shedding the ratty T-shirt and shorts I’ve been living in, and swing open my closet door. There, staring at me resentfully, is a pretty summer sundress I’d bought last winter when I imagined myself basking in the success of my big story. It still has its tags on.

  I resolutely rip them off and pull the dress off the hanger and over my head. It hangs loosely, but I tighten the back sash and fish around in a still-unpacked box for a pair of sandals. Then I brush my hair, reflexively feeling for the bump at the back of my head. It’s nearly gone. I’ve healed, I tell myself. I’m ready to go out into the world.

  I find the Chanel bag I wore the night of my publication party. I haven’t used it since that night, and seeing it—remembering it splayed out on my floor with wallet and keys dumped out—makes me feel momentarily ill. But I toss wallet, phone, keys, and lipstick inside. I’m aware that I’m moving fast, as if I have a date, because I am afraid that if I slow down I’ll back out. I won’t be able to go. And then I’ll have to admit that I’m just as trapped here as those Magdalen girls.

  I check the camera before opening the door. There’s no one in the hall. In the lobby Enda is standing at his desk watching two women—both in heels and stylish summer clothes—getting on the elevator. One of them looks a bit like Marla, but the elevator door closes before I can tell for sure. It could be Marla showing an apartment to that fashionable-looking woman. I am in a trendy, desirable building in an up-and-coming neighborhood. Not trapped in a prison for prostitutes.

  I step out into the hall and feel instantly light-headed, which is ridiculous. I’ve gone to the end of the hall to the garbage chute many times. Even doddery old Lillian Day is able to get around by herself. I hit the button and notice that the elevator has been paused on 4. That must be where Marla is showing the apartment. I’ve got the better view, I think a bit cattily as I ride down to the lobby. And, I can’t help noticing when the doors open, Enda gives me a look that he definitely did not give Marla and her client. A look that makes my stomach do a little flip—and almost sends me back upstairs.

  When did an admiring look from a man start to make me feel . . . sick? Was it listening to all those women who were assaulted? Or was it being followed up my apartment stairs and clobbered over the head? Either way, I won’t let a leering doorman send me scurrying back to my room.

  I square my shoulders and walk across the lobby with my head up.

  “Going out?” Enda asks, getting up from his desk. “Do you need me to call you a cab?”

  “No, thank you. I’m just walking down to the shops. It looks like such a lovely evening.”

  “That it is,” he says. “I’m glad to see you getting out to enjoy it.”

  It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him it’s none of his business how often I go out. Instead I smile and say, “I met one of my neighbors today. That old lady across the hall? Lillian Day.”

  He wrinkles his forehead. “The lady across from you is named Breen, but perhaps Day was her maiden name. She’s a bit”—he taps his forehead—“forgetful.”

  “She seemed very sharp to me,” I say, feeling protective of Lillian. “Oh, and she seemed to have a copy of my key. Maybe the previous tenant gave it to her.”

  “Not possible,” Enda says briskly. “The locks were all changed when the previous tenant moved out. That’s building policy.”

  I bristle at his automatic dismissal of my claim. “She was turning her key in my lock,” I say, “and the bolt was sliding open when I got to the door.”

  He smiles—a supercilious smirk that makes my blood boil. “Maybe you just heard her rattling her key in your lock and thought you saw the bolt move. All that writing and reading you do—I bet it’s hard on your eyes.”

  He might as well say that intellectual work has made me unhinged, like doctors warned women college students in the nineteenth century. “I know what I saw,” I tell him. “And I want my locks changed.”

  “That’s up to you, ma’am,” he replies, suddenly formal. “But it will have to be at your own expense, as the building has already changed your locks once. I can text you the name of a local locksmith if you like. Will there be anything else? Are you still going out . . . to the shops?”

  He says the last words mockingly, as if he knows I’m heading to the local bar. As if that’s any of his business. “No, that will be all,” I say in my best imitation of Sylvia’s imperious tone. “Thank you and have a good evening.”

  He bows—ironically—and holds the door open for me to walk through. There’s no point in arguing.

  Other than to delay stepping out of the building.

  Which is ridiculous. It is, indeed, a lovely evening. A cool breeze and greenery beckons. It’s been over two months since my story was published—an eon in a New York City news cycle. No one knows or cares who I am. Only a complete agoraphobe would hesitate to walk out that door. Is that what I’ve become? Is that what my attacker has made me?

  Only if I let him.

  One of the women I interviewed said that the reason she had agreed to talk to me was because she couldn’t let what Caspar Osgood did to her define her. “I’m the author of my own story,” she had said, clenching her fists.

  My small-town-girl-makes-it-big-in-the-big-city story might be hokey, but it is a hell of a lot better than damaged-victim-becomes-shut-in.

  And I’m certainly not going to let Enda have the satisfaction of seeing me retreat upstairs like a frightened child.

  I lift my face to the breeze and step out from under the awning. I’m momentarily dazzled by the rays of the setting sun, but I slip on my sunglasses and the sidewalk snaps into focus—a checkerboard of sun and shade gently curving down to the avenue below. It smells like river water and burning charcoal. Someone is having a barbecue in the park. I hear birdsong and children playing. This might be the most unthreatening neighborhood in Manhattan. There’s a church on the corner with a stone bell tower. I might be in a hilltop town in Tuscany instead of a neighborhood in northern Manhattan.

  And that’s why I moved here, I remember as I start down the hill, to feel safe. And because I could afford to now. Three years of hard work on the story got me the book deal that made this possible. All I had to do was write the damn book. And I would. I already felt better out in the fresh air, moving my body. I decide I will start taking daily walks—runs, even.

  On either side of me I see joggers on the paths in the park—young men and women in bright nylon shorts and sweaty Dri-FIT shirts. There are older people, too, strolling slowly or sitting on benches, and women pushing strollers and clutching coffee cups. There are also families picnicking and grilling and children playing under the sprinklers in the playground. As I get closer to the church I notice signs in both Spanish and English on the community bulletin board advertising church suppers and yoga classes.

  What a lovely neighborhood I’ve landed in, I think.

  And then, just as I reach the church, I hear footsteps behind me. Which means nothing, I tell myself. There are lots of people out. But when I stop, the footsteps stop and a cold hand touches the back of my neck.

  I spin around and the curving, sun-checkered sidewalk tilts upward. A dark, hooded figure slides off the edge of my vision, like oil dri
pping over a ledge, swamping my vision just as it was blacked out that night when my attacker pulled something over my head and pushed me to the floor—

  I fall to the ground now, pain shooting up from my scraped knees and palms. A sweet smell fills my mouth and throat just as it did that night, choking me. I can’t breathe. Then a man is speaking to me in Spanish. From my rudimentary high school Spanish, I make out the words for “help” and “hospital.”

  “I don’t need a hospital,” I say as the man helps me to my feet. He’s a short, middle-aged man in a white guayabera shirt. His hands smell like lighter fluid, probably because I have taken him away from his family barbecue. I can see his family watching us from their picnic table. There is no ominous hooded figure, just a family grilling chicken under a tree festooned with balloons and a star-shaped piñata. Of course, the hooded figure could have slipped into the park.

  “I think I just need to go home,” I tell my little group of onlookers. My rescuer offers to walk me back to my building, and a young woman, his daughter perhaps, comes with us, chattering about how she fell coming down the same hill last winter. “It’s steeper than you think,” she says. I thank her and the man, who hasn’t said a word all the way up the hill. Enda comes out of the building as we approach.

  “What happened?” he demands.

  “I just had a little fall,” I say, feeling like a child reprimanded by her mother. That’s what comes of gallivanting out at the bars, I can imagine my grandmother saying. “I’m fine. I just want to go upstairs.”

  He insists on going up with me. “I’ve got a package for you anyway,” he says, hoisting a heavy box under his arm. It’s from the liquor store on Broadway.”

  “I didn’t order . . .” I begin, but then I wonder if maybe I did and I just forgot. At any rate, I think as Enda uses my keys to unlock my door, I won’t be sending it back.