After the Eclipse

by Sarah Perry

  Shortly after the murder, a neighbor of ours named Eric Thibault spoke to the police. We didn’t know Eric well, but I had swum in his pool once or twice. Eric had a theory. “Maybe somebody’s truck broke down,” he told the cops. “And then they went to Crystal’s to use the phone. When they got inside, they would’ve seen how beautiful she was, and tried to rape her. And then I guess she put up a fight, and they killed her.” In this story, the truck breakdown isn’t even a ruse, some premeditated lie to gain entry. It just sort of made sense to Eric that a man could be driven to spontaneous brutality by a woman that good-looking.

  And while Mom truly was beautiful, I believe a similar investigation would reveal a similar web of desire around any reasonably attractive woman: a network of men, some benign and respectful, some objectifying and aggressive. Some of the men surrounding Mom were ones she’d dated or otherwise encouraged; others she’d turned down, and still others she’d gently ignored, to spare their feelings. One of them decided that he had the right to take what he wanted. And he became very angry when she said no.

  I still maintain that Bruce Ingalls wasn’t a bad guy, as far as I know. But he once demanded of Linda, “Tell me what Crystal’s got against me,” because she had so many times spurned his advances. As though she owed him something.

  * * *

  It is often simply easier to give men what they want. I once said yes to a man because I was positive that if I said no, he would rape me. He was aggressive and pushy in a way I’d never encountered, flattening me painfully against a cold window when I tried to pull away. In that moment, I saw that if I continued to resist, he might not listen to me, and then there’d be no going back. I didn’t want to take a chance. I didn’t want to be a victim, so I made the best of it. I decided to be agreeable, pliant. It is not always possible to make this decision, but in this case it was. I talked my body into it. I sort of wanted him, but mostly did not.

  And I let some men into my apartment recently. I could have said no, but didn’t. The whole time they were there, I was haunted by what could be happening.

  I was sitting home alone, middle of the afternoon, in Brooklyn. My building was quiet. Carlos, my friendly upstairs neighbor, the only male neighbor I know, wasn’t home—I knew because his footsteps are always heavy on my ceiling.

  Everyone was at work. I work at home.

  A knock came at my door, and I got up to see. As I walked across the kitchen, I pulled on a button-up shirt over my tank top, because I wasn’t wearing a bra. I was barefoot. I used the peephole. There were two men standing there, one tall and broad, with a smaller man behind him. My door is heavy and you can’t really talk through it; the door chain is broken. It’s not the safest neighborhood.

  I opened the door a little and the big man explained that they were there to check the water. He was wearing a plain white T-shirt, dirty and worn thin. His face was relaxed, but his friend looked shrewder. The friend also wore no uniform.

  I was confused. “There have been complaints,” he said, “about the water in the building. It’s not always hot?”

  This is true. The water occasionally goes lukewarm in the middle of a shower. But the building management is lax; unless it went ice-cold for days, I wouldn’t have expected them to come fix it. I hadn’t bothered to call and couldn’t imagine anyone else in the building calling about such a relatively small thing. We were still trying to get them to fix the front door, so people couldn’t walk in off the street. The latch had been broken for weeks.

  “We did some work downstairs,” the big man continued. “We need to check to see if your water’s hot.”

  They weren’t wearing uniforms, but the management hires all kinds of under-the-table men.

  “Okay,” I said. I opened the door all the way.

  My hallway is narrow, and suddenly I realized how big this man was. Huge, really. And there were two of them, and one of me.

  “You’re the only one home in the whole building,” the big man said.

  I flushed. I pressed myself to the wall so they could walk past me and I pointed, way across the apartment, to my sink. “There it is,” I said. “Over there.”

  They were in now. I stayed in the doorway. I put my back to the swung-open door. My right hand hung in the free air of the hallway. Let them steal if they wanted.

  The smaller man—not actually a small man—looked at me. He didn’t say a word the entire time. A slight smile appeared on his face. I could see him thinking, She’s afraid. I could see him laughing at me. In that sort of situation, only the man can laugh. Only the man knows whether something terrible is about to happen. And even then, he might take himself by surprise. My vigilance isn’t unique.

  The big man turned on my faucet, the hot tap only.

  “Come over here and see,” he said.

  “No, I’m good,” I said. “I trust you.”

  Steam rolled out of the faucet, coiled over my cabinets. The big man laughed. “Come over here and feel it.”

  The small man smiled some more.

  “No,” I said. “No, thank you.”

  I shook for hours after they left.

  30

  * * *

  after

  I’d noticed Anne Harris on the very first day of eighth grade, in gym class. As I stood next to my locker, pulling itchy green uniform shorts over the thighs I considered far too big, in walked this person in a black leather jacket trimmed with toothy silver zippers and accented with shining buckles. She was tall and long-limbed and moved with the loping gait of a boy. Anne’s hair was the color of sand, the top half pulled up into a ponytail held by a fluffy red hair tie, the lower half shaved close to her head. I had never seen hair like that, nor had I ever seen a girl shuck off torn, oversize jeans to reveal boxer shorts. She was very slim under all those clothes, but clearly strong, her hands long and wiry, her eyes smudged in black. I planned to stay out of her way.

  Later that week, though, Anne fell in step with me and a girl named Amber as we ran laps outside. Between halfhearted attempts to jog through the dusty heat, Amber bemoaned the death of Kurt Cobain. She had just started listening to Nirvana, and Kurt had died about a year and a half earlier—not long before Mom—but as Anne drew up to us, Amber was dabbing at tears and gazing wistfully into the distance. I remained silent as Anne asked what other music Amber listened to and she fumbled for a cool answer. Anne smirked a little, looked into my eyes, and moved the conversation on to something else.

  I still had my Maine accent then, and Anne asked where I was from, what had brought me to Texas. My mother had died, I said. Amber responded with silence, her glossy brown hair falling over her face while she stared at the ground. But Anne asked some more questions, real questions, and my answers slowly revealed a sketch of what had happened: Mom was murdered, I was there, the guy was still free. And then I told a lie. I said that before I’d left Maine, my family had put me in a mental hospital for a while. It was the sort of lie that you don’t realize you’re about to tell until you hear it coming out of your mouth. The sort of lie you yourself believe immediately. And like many lies, this one revealed a wish. How lovely it would have been, I thought, to have had some time just to sink into misery. To not have to deal with family or school. To be surrounded by people whose job it was to keep you safe from your suicidal hand. And to have the circumstances of your life truly reflect what had happened to it. A mental hospital seemed to make a lot more sense than neat rows of chairs and desks, than football bleachers, than that white-lined running track.

  I didn’t say much else that day, but by the end of class, Anne was insisting that I spend the upcoming weekend at her house. We quickly became closer, and I’m sure that within a few days or weeks, Anne realized that I’d lied about the mental hospital. But she never called me out, never even mentioned it. I have always been grateful for this generosity. I think she understood what I was trying to tell her. That I was tired. That I needed some help.

  * * *

  That Friday
was the first of many that I would spend with Anne, increasing the distance that had started to grow between me and Angela. She and I really only saw each other at band practice by then, and at the football games where we played halftime shows. I tried, but I couldn’t share her excitement about popularity rankings and homecoming rituals. I was in honors classes that year, and I could see that she thought my new friends were weird and nerdy. My life quickly became Anne, band, obsessive studying, and attempts to avoid Tootsie’s terrible moods.

  Anne and I spent most nights in our friend Nick’s run-down classic Mustang as he sped up and down the freeway, outracing his headlights into the desert dark, whipping around the other cars, killing time. I sat in the backseat on the passenger side, pushing my fingers against the melted rings of cigarette burns on the vinyl upholstery, thinking often of Dale’s Firebirds. Anne sat next to me, and I breathed in ribbons of her cigarette smoke as they uncurled from her hand. In front of me was our tall friend John, four years older than me, a country boy with long hair and a quick wit. I mostly let everyone else do the talking while the cool, dark air rushed into my face, leaving me clean and free, floating above the highway until it was time to head home.

  When we weren’t riding with Nick, John and Anne and I would hang out at a pool hall called Corner Pocket. It was a gathering place for the happily unpopular: grunge kids in flannels, kickers in Wranglers, and artsy outcasts in black long sleeves. When I think of those nights, the jukebox is on a five-song repeat, and today those songs bring me John’s long fingers in an elegant bridge, his crooked smile; Anne’s warm, thin arm around my shoulders; the weight of her leather jacket when she let me wear it, the snaps and big lapels pressing against my heart.

  I was special to them—the youngest among our group of friends—and they were protective of me. When some older men came in and started hitting on me, John and Anne made it clear that I belonged to them. When a mutual friend offered me weed, they seemed glad that I declined. If I lined up a shot that didn’t look quite right, one of them would bend around me and correct the angle of my cue, the pitch of my hand. Or drift to the other side of the table and point at the exact spot I should aim for on the moss-colored bank, fixing squinted eyes on me and giving me the focus I needed to land the ball in the pocket with a satisfying thunk.

  At the end of the night, the three of us would emerge into the dark air of the desert, and I’d feel the space stretching out all around us. We’d climb into John’s gray pickup truck, nicknamed Lucky, and make our way into the denser lights of what passed for a downtown. When we reached Anne’s house, she would slide out first and I’d leave the middle seat reluctantly, still a bit awkward even after the closeness of the evening, then John would depart in a loud rattle of loose metal and muffler.

  In Anne’s room, we sat cross-legged on her king-size bed, draping the soft old sheets over our laps. Anne was only fifteen, but she had already fit in a few years of partying, chasing chaos that she was now trying to put behind her. Befriending me was, I think, part of moving on, because I had never partied, never sought out additional trouble. She told me stories from that time, usually to demonstrate how foolish it all was, to tell me not to waste my time, and once she even took me to the church parking lot where an older man had assaulted her, perhaps to remind herself she’d gotten through it. We were similar: too old too early. Here, I thought, is someone who gets it, someone who’s been through some shit. She understood my need to sit back for a while and listen, to let others confide in me while I took them in, provided what advice I could. I needed to be of use; I needed a break from myself. And whenever I did feel like talking, I didn’t have to shield her from anything. We said we were putting her “on the couch,” but really the therapy was for me.

  We’d stay up late into the early morning, three or four or five o’clock coming on unnoticed. We listened to Anne’s extensive collection of 1980s cassette tapes. We sang, Heaven isn’t too far away. We sang, Sweet child o’ mine. I nervously shared my mother’s Rod Stewart tapes with her, worried she would think they were dorky, and then laughed when she knew all the words. We sang badly, out of tune, but in unison. When we watched TV, Anne put her head in my lap and I combed my fingers through her hair, over and over. We wound down the hours, and when we slept, she took my hand in hers. I could feel her thin fingers and her calluses and the tension she never put down.

  These rituals were enacted over months of weekends, each wrested from Tootsie with a meek request for her permission. I loved Anne more than I had any friend before. I wanted us to trade all of our stories, every possible song; I learned a lot from her, and felt she always understood what I told her. But also, I needed to be physically near her, and I was terrified that Tootsie would sense these feelings and confront me about them. I was afraid of what she would do, how she would react, worried that she might throw me out. I also didn’t want her to make me think too deeply about this friendship. I didn’t want to have anything in common with Anne’s neighbor, a girl our age whom Anne had scornfully referred to as a “dyke.” So I pretended to everyone, and to myself, that Anne was merely my best friend.

  Her mother kept only half an eye on us, reasoning that teenagers needed some space to find their own way and could have that space, as long as they were smart. Of course, she hadn’t told Tootsie this, and sometimes I’d tell her stories about my aunt’s strictness and we’d all laugh and laugh. Anne’s mother referred to her as “Tootsie Dearest.”

  With Anne, I worked on finding my strength again, not feeling so beset by my circumstances. One day, we watched Léon: The Professional, and in Natalie Portman I found my perfect hero: a twelve-year-old girl seeking revenge for the murder of her family, conveniently perpetrated by an enemy cop.

  For Anne’s sixteenth birthday, I snuck into her house while she was out and cleaned her disastrous bedroom. I scraped away years of black mildew from the sink and shower in her attached bathroom, inches of dust and ash from her immobile ceiling fan. I excavated through layers of term papers and fanzines and tape cases and costume wigs and bootlaces and fishnet stockings and family Christmas cards until I finally found the soft carpet of her floor. Once I had, I dragged out her mother’s ancient vacuum cleaner and went over it twice, the tracks of lifted tufts like a freshly mown lawn. I went through shoeboxes filled with junk and found about a dozen broken black eyeliner pencils, stickers from her childhood, postcards from other Texas cities. I held my breath as I dumped out four or five large lead crystal ashtrays, and blackened my nails scrubbing them in the kitchen sink. I cleared her packed shelves and dusted them, I washed her sheets and remade her palatial bed. I found her journals, but had no need to read them; I was sure I knew everything she’d written.

  Anne came home just as I was finishing. I was covered in sweat and dust, and glowing with satisfaction. My right foot bore a razor-thin cut from where a submerged coat hanger had caught it, a tiny wound that would turn into the bright scar I still carry. She smiled at me, looked around, and said, “It won’t stay this way for long, you know.” I knew. What mattered was that I had given her some breathing room for a while, a small break from the chaos she was so adept at creating for herself. What mattered was that she let me take care of her, if only for a while.

  * * *

  While I spent nearly all of my free time with Anne, Tootsie’s house remained much the same, full of tension and recriminations and occasional, disorienting displays of kindness. I had been there about a year when she and Jimmy began the process of legally adopting me, something that I hadn’t given much thought to. Although I hadn’t grown any more comfortable in their house, once the discussion began, I became attracted to the idea of security. If I was adopted, no one would have to worry that the state—any state—could come and take me, or that Tom would suddenly decide to challenge Carol’s power of attorney. I’d be spoken for, and I could stay there in that sunshine I loved, my weekdays filled with satisfyingly challenging classes and time spent in the friendly crew of marching band
, and my weekends with Anne.

  About a month after Tootsie first mentioned the adoption, though, she came to me in my room, shut the door behind her, and said that Jimmy was having second thoughts. She didn’t tell me why he was reconsidering, but she said that if he didn’t agree, I would have to go back to Maine right away. I couldn’t discuss any of this with him; it was tacitly forbidden. Over the next few weeks, I tried to identify what he might not like about me, what I could tone down or compensate for. I tried to be extra nice without being obvious about it.

  Jimmy had always been a mystery to me. He’d been a cook in the Army, and it made sense to me that his job hadn’t involved direct combat, so adept was he at avoiding it at home. In the years I lived in that house, I had just one real conversation with him. He told me he could make almost anything out of cake, and for special Army celebrations he had re-created famous battlefields and monuments. I could not imagine him doing anything so whimsical or imaginative. He seemed so serious; he smiled so rarely. Usually, my only sense of how he felt about anything came from Tootsie.

  Eventually, Jimmy apparently agreed to the adoption, and the three of us went to the courthouse in downtown San Angelo for a short proceeding before a judge. I would never discover what his resistance had been about, or if it had maybe all been fabricated by Tootsie, a manifestation of her own uncertainty, or an attempt to make me feel indebted to her for winning him over.