The Hand That Feeds You: A Novel

by A. J. Rich

  “What is it you remember?”

  “My fiancé is dead. I found him in the bedroom. He’d been attacked by my dogs.”

  The psychiatrist waited for me to go on.

  “I knew he was dead before I called the ambulance. I hid in the bathtub until help came. A cop shot one of my dogs.” I couldn’t meet her eyes. “It’s my fault.”

  “You were in shock when you were brought in, but your memory was not impaired. Were you able to sleep last night? Are you eating?”

  I said no to both questions. I would say no to any question about normalcy. I would never experience “normal” again. How could I unsee what I’d seen? What else was there to see?

  “I understand that your pain is immeasurable, and I can give you something to sleep right now, but I cannot medicate against grief. Mourning is not an illness.”

  “Can you give me something for guilt?”

  “You might feel guilty because guilt is more endurable than grief.”

  “What do I do?”

  “You’re doing it. You’re talking to me. That’s the first thing you can do.”

  “Talking won’t change the facts.”

  “You’re right, but we’re not here to change the facts.”

  “He’s dead. I want to know what happened to my dogs.”

  “The dogs are evidence. They’re being held by the Department of Health.”

  “Are they going to be killed?”

  “What do you think should happen to them?”

  Cloud never hurt anyone. I had had her since she was eight weeks old. What could have set off the pit bulls? They had slept in my bed for two months. They even slept in the bed when Bennett visited. Though the first couple of times I had to remove Chester for resources guarding—I was the resource he was guarding. But maybe Bennett had physically threatened him? The attack on him was full-out. Bennett was unidentifiable.

  “I want to know what happened to Bennett’s body. Have his parents arranged a funeral?”

  “The police still haven’t been able to locate them.”

  “He said his parents live in a small village in Quebec.”

  “Was Bennett visiting from Quebec?”

  “He lived in Montreal.”

  “Your brother told me he had never met Bennett.”

  “You talked to Steven?”

  “Doesn’t Steven live near you?” Cilla asked.

  “We had so little time together, Bennett only wanted to see me.”

  “Did you ever visit him in Montreal?”

  “He wanted me to, he gave me a key, but it just ended up being easier for him to come here.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “I was doing research for my thesis in forensic psychology.”

  After six days of not speaking a word during our daily sessions, I still wasn’t ready to tell her that I had met him while testing a theory about female victims of sexual predators online. I’d come up with five profiles for women who were at particular risk: the Pleaser, the Rebound, the Damaged, the Sitting Duck, and the Accommodator. I posted them on various dating sites. I also created a control persona—a shy, earnest, workaholic do-gooder, who could laugh at herself and liked sex—in other words: me. Bennett’s first e-mail put him in the men’s control group of regular guys. Unlike the other “regular guys,” whose responses were more like résumés sent to a headhunter for a six-figure job, Bennett was curious about me—what books I read, what music I listened to, where I was most myself. I felt fraudulent until, our exchanges escalating, I had no choice. But when I told him what I was really doing online, instead of being angry or hurt, he was fascinated. He asked me countless questions about my work, and I was flattered by his interest, more than flattered.

  His interest in my work opened up another arena in which our minds met. His enthusiasm for my ideas surpassed that of my classmates, including the hot Dominican cop I dated for a while. If anything, Bennett’s interest turned a little obsessive. One afternoon I found him reading a response to my Hotmail account, the one I’d set up for my study. The author was someone I deemed a sexual deviant, though I wasn’t yet sure if he was a predator. When I asked Bennett what he was doing, he said, “You left it open, I was curious. I notice this guy always refers to himself in the third person. Is that characteristic?” I hadn’t even realized this respondent did that; not only did that realization scotch my discomfort with Bennett’s presumptuous behavior, it underscored the quality of his attention when it came to my research. Once again he had helped me. And this thought occurred to me: I could neither apologize nor thank him. Despair owned me again.

  “When am I going to get out?”

  “The involuntary admission was over three days ago,” Cilla said. “Your stay at this point is voluntary.”

  “Do I have to leave?”

  • • •

  Odd that I had an erotic dream while I was in a psych ward. Or maybe not.

  “Tell me what feels better,” Bennett had said in the dream. He kissed my lips, then he pulled my hair so hard it hurt.

  I surprised myself by saying, “My hair.”

  He stroked my inner thigh and then bit it. Again he asked me what felt better.

  “The bite.”

  Bennett said, “Good girl,” then licked my cheek like a dog.

  He told me to roll over, and in the dream I felt him enter me twice at the same time. How was this possible?

  “What feels better?”

  “I can’t choose,” I said, and he continued like two men at once.

  When I told Cilla about the dream during our next session, she said it was not unusual for grief to spark feelings of a sexual nature, that my body was bereft as well as my psyche. She said that sex, even in a dream, is life affirming.

  • • •

  The hands of other men were agile and teasing; Bennett’s touch was assured. He would begin his touch at a point on my body that made the caress feel infinite. And the pressure was never timid—it was the same pressure a sculptor used to mold wet clay.

  On our first date, we rented just one room at the Old Orchard Beach Inn in Old Orchard Beach, Maine.

  We agreed that our first in-person meeting would be in the privacy of the room. I was surprised to find that I felt shy, having looked forward to this for a month. We also agreed that Bennett would already be in the room waiting for me. At that moment I wished we had planned instead to meet in public, somewhere we might be able to do something—a boat ride, a tour, anything but face each other in a small room with a large bed. Before Bennett I had only been with boys. It didn’t matter what age they were, boys were randy, fun, fast, dangerous, selfish, and hot, but they were not confident. I had barely opened the door when Bennett firmly took my wrist and pulled me in. I saw a man who was not conventionally handsome. And I knew instantly that it didn’t matter. His features were not symmetrical—one side of his mouth turned down slightly. His complexion betrayed a case of teenaged acne. His long-lashed, blue eyes were especially clear, set in the roughened skin. What would have detracted from another man’s looks here contributed to the draw that the young Tommy Lee Jones exerted on women. The power was kinetic: his movements were languid.

  His kiss was slow. He sensed when to break away.

  And when to resume.

  He was holding my face as he kissed me. I held fast to the back of his neck. Women are raised to prize the tall man, but Bennett was no more than five-eight, and I liked the way we fit. I was glad he wore no fragrance; he smelled like clean lake water.

  We fell onto the bed and he pulled me closer, but not, this time, by my wrist. What annulled my shyness was his desire for me. When he told me I was more beautiful in person, I believed him. I no longer felt inhibited; it was as though his confidence had transferred to me. I helped him unbutton my blouse; there was no clasp to fumble with as I had worn a silk camisole. He lifted it over my head. He took his time. He took my hand and placed it on his erection. He lifted my hand and kissed the palm. He took each
of my fingers in his mouth for a moment. He got on his knees, still fully dressed in jeans and a white shirt, and removed the rest of my clothes. He brushed his chin across me and kissed my inner thighs. I wanted him, but I took my cue from his lead. He was in no rush and neither was I. He had me lie back on the bed and spread my legs, and he put his tongue inside me. None of the boys had done this, not like this. The speed with which I came embarrassed me until I saw the pleasure it had given him. He stood up and now I was the one to kneel. He was wearing an old pair of button-front Levi’s. I undid the buttons, feeling his erection. I leaned over and brushed my breasts against it.

  “Come here,” he said.

  He put a finger inside me and kissed my throat when he felt how ready for him I was. He made me wait a few seconds more. His movements had authority. He understood that there was power in stillness, and excitement in the pause.

  “Come here,” he said again.

  • • •

  My Bellevue roommate was a Sarah Lawrence freshman who had tried to commit suicide by stuffing her mouth with toilet paper. “I’d drunk all my daddy’s liquor and taken all my grandmother’s pills, but nothing was working,” she told me. Our room was not unlike a standard college dorm room, except the windows were made of impact glass and the “mirror” in the bathroom was stainless steel. Closing our door didn’t give us privacy; in the porthole-shaped view of the hallway the lights never went out. My roommate, Jody, told me that Cilla, our shared psychiatrist, had once been a backup singer for Lou Reed. Jody’s life outside, whatever it had been, had aged her beyond her eighteen years, and the heavy kohl lining her eyes didn’t help. The admitting staff had made her remove her facial studs, and a row of tiny piercings punctuated her lower lip.

  By contrast, Cilla wore no makeup, but she still looked younger than I imagined she was. Her unlined face was as calming as her benevolent gaze. It must have taken a conscious effort to perfect that expression—neutral, nonjudgmental, as if she were looking at a patient, not a woman responsible for her fiancé’s death. I had tried for that expression when I met weekly with the Internet scammers and public exhibitionists at Rikers as part of my training.

  I sat on her sofa while she sat on a wing chair with an orthopedic cushion. I pictured her back in the day: black leather pants, platform shoes, singing behind the coolest rocker in New York.

  She took out her pack of Nicorette gum. “Do you mind?”

  The bare, institutional office was painted in soothing earth tones. An orange-and-sienna color-field painting hung behind her desk, the kind of abstract art once considered radical that now graced every therapist’s wall. The painting was the only note of bright color.

  “You look like you got some rest last night.”

  “If you call nightmares restful.”

  “I can increase your Ambien.”

  “There is no dosage that will bring me any peace.”

  “Maybe peace isn’t the goal just yet.”

  “Then what are we doing here?”

  “Tell me the last time you felt at peace.”

  I didn’t have to coax the memory: it was late June, Bennett’s and my first weekend together. We met again between Montreal and Brooklyn, at an old-fashioned B&B in Bar Harbor that Bennett had found. He drove down and I took the bus up. We were kayaking parallel to the shoreline when a moose came out of the woods. The antlers must have spanned twelve feet—half-animal, half-tree. I’d never seen a creature more majestic. Bennett and I shared a moment of awe, neither needing to say anything.

  “What’s making you cry?” Cilla asked.

  “I was with him.”

  She offered the requisite box of tissue, but I chose not to take one.

  “I destroyed what I loved. Can you find the right dosage for me to accept that?”

  She said nothing. What was there to say?

  “And here’s how twisted I am. I miss my dogs.”

  She looked at me with that neutral, still gaze, as though challenging me to find a way to crack it.

  “Sometimes I feel as guilty about Cloud as I do about Bennett. Why did I take in those fosters?”

  “You were trying to be kind.”

  “Was I? This wasn’t the first time.”

  “You took in fosters before?”

  “Hoarders use animals to self-medicate.”

  “Do you consider yourself a hoarder?”

  “The potential is there. I was the kid who brought home every stray cat and dog, every featherless baby bird who fell out of a nest. You know what? Those baby birds were diseased. That’s why their mothers threw them out in the first place. I brought one home and it ended up killing my beloved parakeet.”

  “Should people stop being kind because of unforeseeable consequences?”

  I reached for a Kleenex from the box on the low table between us, though I didn’t need it; I wasn’t crying, I just wanted to crush something with my hands.

  “Was Bennett’s death unforeseeable?” I asked. “What about the mother of a newborn who keeps a pet python? What about a woman who takes in her evicted boyfriend and then doesn’t believe what her daughter says he does to her?”

  “Is that the kind of predator you study?”

  “I study victims.”

  I finally told her how I met Bennett. He was the control subject I’d been looking for. Yes or no. He would rather be right than happy. He often feels challenged. He enjoys feeling protective of women. He enjoys feeling powerful with women. Women lie to him. On all criteria, Bennett fit the type B personality, the nonaggressive male, the type of guy your mother wants you to marry. I never went for men my mother approved of. That’s why his charming response to my online persona caught me off guard. The e-mail wasn’t flirty. He didn’t use the computer screen as a mirror to primp in. He didn’t use I once in his first response. I count I’s. The average male responder uses it nineteen times in the introductory e-mail. You normally appears less than three times. Bennett’s e-mail was in the form of a questionnaire. What book would you not take to a desert island? What’s your favorite-sounding word in the English language? Do you like animals more than people? What song makes you cry but you’re ashamed to admit it? Where would you not take a vacation? Do you think numbers radiate color?

  “Do you think Bennett was your victim?” she asked.

  Why did he have to be? I could not get past the why of it. The pitties had not threatened him, except for Chester’s initial behavior protecting me. Bennett had not been afraid of them, he said, but he did make a point of telling me about the time Chester had snarled at him when he tried to remove the frozen marrow bones I had left for the dogs. Bennett wasn’t an animal lover, but there was provisional acceptance. How had he treated them when I wasn’t there?

  “Why did you choose to study victimology?” Cilla asked.

  “I think it chose me.”

  Victims become survivors only after the fact. How is a victim chosen?

  Say five schoolgirls are leaving a playground. The predator is sitting in his car across the street. His method of selection in no way resembles a wolf pack choosing a lame elk, or does it?

  He studies the gaits of each of the girls, how her dominant personality trait—shy, brazen, alert, dreamy—determines her carriage and stride. He will hold back from choosing his victim until one that meets his needs comes along. The first girl to leave skips as she walks: me as a schoolgirl. She would be an easy choice, but this particular predator doesn’t want a “skipper.” Skippers, it turns out, make troublesome prey. They fight back. The second girl who catches his eye is flanked by laughing friends, and although she is his type, he doesn’t want to work that hard to separate her and risk failing. The third girl is yelling into her smartphone, and the fourth possibility is dressed too mannishly for his taste. The fifth girl is slightly overweight and twists a hank of her bangs as she walks. Most of her face is hidden behind her hair, a reliable sign of low self-esteem and emotional withdrawal. The “twister” never fights back. She alread
y knows she’s a victim; if not now, some other time. He won’t have to bother to charm her. Does the wolf have to charm the lame elk?

  The method of approach is a term that refers to the offender’s way of getting close to his victim. It provides clues about the offender, such as his social skills, physical build, and ability to manipulate. The three general methods of approach are the con, the surprise, and the blitz. The con describes someone who deceives a victim into believing he needs help—think Ted Bundy with the cast on his arm, asking young women to help him get something from his windowless van. The surprise is someone who lies in wait, then quickly subdues that person—think slasher under the car waiting for women to finish shopping and unlock their minivan, his target the Achilles tendon so his intended victim cannot run away. The blitz requires rapid and excessive use of force to quickly overcome the victim’s defenses—think home invasion in which anyone unlucky enough to be there is swiftly killed or raped and killed.

  Risk assessment refers to the likelihood of a particular person’s becoming a victim. Victim risk is broken into three basic levels: low risk, medium risk, high risk. These ratings are based on their personal, professional, and social lives. The prostitute is the obvious example of a person at high risk: exposed to a large number of strangers, often in contact with drug users, often alone at night, and unlikely to be missed. A low-risk victim has a steady job, lots of friends, and an unpredictable schedule.

  But what if there was a different kind of risk factor, the risk of being too trusting, not because of gullibility, but because of compassion. What about the little girl who is lured into the predator’s car because he asks her to help him find a lost kitten?

  This is how it works for humans.

  I studied under a psychiatrist who allowed his patients to bring their dogs to sessions. He told me about one patient who arrived with her well-behaved shepherd mix who remained in a down-stay at her feet even while she waved her arms to make her agitated points with considerable drama. But another patient, on antipsychotic meds, sat uncommonly still beside his Gordon setter, speaking in a calm monotone, and his dog got up and paced nervously in the office, even growling low and showing flattened ears. The point? That dogs can differentiate between neurotic behavior and behavior that is truly a threat.