Touch

by Francine Prose

  “And then?”

  “And then suddenly, Shakes pinned down my hands. He kind of leaned into me and held me so I couldn’t move. I struggled a little, but I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t defend myself or fight back. And the other two kind of pawed and mashed my breasts all the way to school. It hurt.”

  “Oh, you poor thing.” For once, Joan sounded genuinely sympathetic. “And what did you do, Maisie?”

  “I told you,” I said. “I said no.”

  “I mean, while it was happening.”

  “I zoned out.” Well, this part was true, at least.

  “Why didn’t you scream or cry for help?”

  “Because it was all so embarrassing. I didn’t want the embarrassment to get any worse. I thought if I just kept quiet and let it happen, it would be over, and that would be that.”

  Joan nodded. This seemed to be in keeping with what she’d heard and read, maybe even what she’d come across in her practice. Typical victim reaction. Part of the story had been easy to tell, because it was the truth. They did touch my boobs, and I did zone out. The hard part was the lie about Shakes holding down my hands.

  Joan said, “And then they made up that awful lie about you wanting to charge others money. Honestly, I think those boys should be expelled. I think we should receive an apology from them and from the school. I think we really might have a case here. I’ll have to talk to Cynthia and see.”

  “Cynthia?”

  “My friend. She’s a lawyer.”

  Suddenly, I was filled with dread. Pure dread. It felt like icy water trickling down my back.

  Joan said, “It would be a matter of principle. Something we would be doing—a fight we would be fighting—for you and all the girls like you who are the innocent victims of boys like that.”

  “I’m not a victim,” I said. “And they’re not boys like that.”

  “Then what are they like?” asked Joan.

  I didn’t have an answer. Or if I did, it was way more complicated than anything I could have explained to Joan. For a second, I felt sorry for Shakes and Chris and Kevin. Maybe they had been fooling around and it just went too far.

  “What if I don’t want to fight?”

  “We’ll support you,” Joan said. “But someone needs to draw the line. Girls can’t be treated this way.”

  Then I thought about the guys saying that I wanted them to find other boys to pay to touch me.

  “Fine,” I told Joan. “Whatever.”

  Just as we pulled into the driveway, Joan said, “I have to go and get Josh now.” She hesitated, then said, “Maisie, do me a favor. Let me decide how we’re going to present this situation to your little brother. I’d like to have a certain degree of control over how we handle the information. Not that you should feel you’ve done anything wrong or that there’s anything to be ashamed of.”

  “I don’t,” I said. “I understand. Tell Josh whatever you want to.”

  I knew that telling Dad would be harder than telling Joan. It was hard enough for him to accept the fact that I had breasts, let alone breasts that boys would want to touch. He’d known Chris and Kevin and Shakes since they were little kids.

  Joan made Dad come home early from work. I thought of all the people with raging toothaches left to suffer in agony because my dad needed to hear how some kids had groped me on the bus.

  In the end, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him. And that was pretty weird, too. It was as if my dad and I had also crossed over to opposite sides of the line that separated girls from boys, the divide that forced men and women into separate bathrooms, separate dressing rooms, separate conversations. I asked Joan to tell Dad. Who knows what she said. I no longer cared. The two of them called me into Dad’s study. It felt like being ordered to go to the principal’s office, all over again.

  Dad said, “Maisie, is this true? Did those boys do that to you?”

  I nodded. This time it seemed more likely that Shakes must have held down my hands. How else could it have happened? How could I have just spaced out and let the guys do that to me?

  “Oh, you poor poor sweetheart,” said Dad. “Come and give me a hug.”

  I went over and hugged Dad. And it made me sad all over again. It was the first time that I was aware of my breasts between us. And I couldn’t help feeling that my dad noticed it, too. He couldn’t wait for the hug to be over. He was relieved when we separated and he could just pat my back.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Cynthia, the lawyer—our lawyer, as Joan keeps saying—is Joan’s good friend. It’s easy to understand why. They both have that same brassy, in-your-face quality. They both have their I-am-woman-hear-me-roar thing totally down.

  They both like to think of themselves as alpha females, so it’s kind of funny that Cynthia’s office should be so totally alpha-male-lawyer: leather-upholstered chairs with metal studs, dark bookcases filled with dark books. I always think that if you took down any of those superimpressive leather-bound law books, they’d be hollowed out inside, and they’d contain some secret stash, like Cynthia’s face cream and diet pills. Or maybe her hormones and steroids. Cynthia wears tight little T-shirts so you can see she’s really buff, and sometimes, during our “meetings,” I catch Joan staring enviously at Cynthia’s biceps.

  A few days after the incident on the bus, Joan called Cynthia to set up our first meeting. But so many kids must be suing their school boards—or so many people must be suing somebody—that it was another few weeks before we could get an appointment. I’ve never been able to tell if the whole lawsuit thing was Joan’s idea, or Cynthia’s. Probably, they put their perfectly coiffed, perfectly salon-streaked heads together and cooked up the whole thing.

  I was already bored with the story by the first time I told it to Cynthia. And she seemed bored by it, too. Or maybe that was just how she always listened, because listening meant that she had to wait until it was her chance to talk.

  After I finished, she asked Joan, “How long after the incident did the school call you to report it?”

  “That night?” Joan says. Why did she say it as if she was asking a question? And why was Joan asking me?

  “That’s right,” I said. “The same night.”

  Cynthia looked disappointed. Positively crushed.

  “Glad to hear it,” she said. “For Maisie’s sake, I mean. On the other hand, it’s not the greatest thing for us. From a purely legal standpoint, these cases work out better if a certain amount of time elapses before the school admits wrongdoing or negligence and decides to take action. Actually, I’m not surprised. Don Nyswander’s wife works for Calder and Smitt. So he’s pretty legal-savvy. It was pretty smart of him to call you as soon as he realized there was a problem. The longer a school delays about that, the smoother these cases have gone.”

  “Which cases?” I said. I wanted to know if what had happened to me had happened to other kids. Was Cynthia saying that the country is full of girls whose best friends groped them on the back of the school bus and then lied and said she wanted to charge other guys to do the same thing?

  “There are precedents,” Cynthia said. Precedents, as it turns out, is Cynthia’s favorite word.

  “Like what?” asked Joan.

  “Well, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling saying you can sue a school when the harassment is so serious and sustained that it violates a child’s right to an education. The parents of a fifth-grade girl, in the South somewhere, brought a case against a fifth-grade boy who’d been…well, actually, he’d been touching her breasts.”

  Wow, I thought. How does she know that? Cynthia’s been doing her homework.

  She said, “The girl reported the incident, but the school didn’t do anything for a while—anything in this case meaning taking action to get the boy suspended or expelled.”

  “We don’t want to get these guys expelled,” I said.

  “It wouldn’t be the worst thing,” said Joan. “It would certainly send a message—”

  “I�
�ll deny the whole thing,” I said.

  “It’s just as well,” said Cynthia. “Those he said–she said cases are often extremely tricky. In any event, the key words here are critically indifferent. We have to prove the school has been critically indifferent. Which is going to be a little hard to prove seeing as how Don Nyswander called you that same night.”

  Joan said, “Well, other things have happened since then. And the school has done nothing about it. I think the legal term might be…a pattern of harassment. Or…a hostile atmosphere.”

  “Excellent,” said Cynthia. Then she turned to look at me, and her eyes went all gooey. “Maisie, dear, I can imagine, or maybe I can’t imagine, what it’s like to keep having to go to school with the boys who did this to you.”

  I said, “You can’t, actually.”

  “Maisie,” warned Joan. “Be polite and appreciative, won’t you, dear? Cynthia’s doing this as a favor to me. On a contingency basis.”

  “I just meant she couldn’t imagine,” I said.

  “I understood what Maisie meant,” Cynthia said.

  I said, “Are we going to get a ton of money if we win?”

  Cynthia sighed. “Kids these days. Where’s their innocence? When I was their age, no one sued. A child would simply not have known that.”

  “They watch TV,” said Joan, and she sighed, too. “They know everything negative about out society. They know how low things have sunk, and it doesn’t even seem low to them.”

  Cynthia and Joan fell silent, both so worried about “kids these days” that for a moment they seemed to forget that I, an actual kid, was actually in the room. It was as if the two of them had slipped into some kind of dream.

  “How much could we get?” I asked.

  Cynthia was the first to awake from the dream. “Let’s see what happens,” she said.

  “Are the boys who assaulted you present in the courtroom?”

  “Your Honor, I object to counsel’s use of the word assault.”

  “Objection sustained.”

  “Are the boys who molested you present in the courtroom?”

  “Objection, Your Honor. Molested is inflammatory.”

  “Sustained.”

  “Are the boys who touched you inappropriately here today in the courtroom?” In the dream, I know that the person asking me is supposed to be Cynthia, Joan’s lawyer. Our lawyer, as Joan keeps saying. But the lawyer in the dream doesn’t look like Cynthia, exactly. The lawyer in the dream reminds me of a certain late-night news anchor with the frozen, scary face who never smiles or blinks, and whose name I can never remember.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Can you identify the boys who touched you, Maisie?”

  I look over at the crowded table where Shakes and Chris and Kevin sit with their lawyers.

  None of them will look at me. I’m trying to send Shakes a message. But it’s not getting through.

  “Will the witness answer the question—”

  I open my mouth. I wake up. But this time, I wake up screaming, “No!”

  “Maisie? Maisie? Are you all right? Is something wrong?”

  It’s Joan, knocking on the door. I can’t believe I’m hearing her shrill birdcall voice, first thing in the morning. I lie in bed, wishing that I could figure out how to get back into the nightmare about the court hearing. As bad as it was, it was better than the nightmare of getting ready for school, and then going to school, and facing the nightmare—the waking nightmare—that’s waiting for me there, for months.

  Still, I’m glad to be awake, so I can tell myself that the stuff in the dream isn’t really happening. We’re suing the school board, but we’re not putting my three former best friends on trial for sexual harassment or assault or whatever Joan wanted to charge them with in the first place. Joan would still like to get the boys expelled, but that’s not going to happen, I don’t think. The school is taking a “wait and see” attitude until the case against them gets settled.

  “I’m fine,” I say. “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “See you at breakfast,” Joan chirps.

  So I’ve started the day with a lie. Something is wrong, starting with the prospect of breakfast with Joan. And I am absolutely not fine.

  I don’t look in the mirror as I get dressed. The last thing I want to see is my bare chest, the breasts that caused all this trouble. I put on my jeans and favorite blue sweatshirt, no words, just plain navy blue, size XXL.

  Before all this happened, I used to wait in my room until the very last minute, until I heard the school bus honking. Then I’d go racing out the door, leaving Joan ranting about the importance of the five food groups and eating a healthy nutritious breakfast.

  “Tomorrow,” I’d say. “I promise. But I’m late. Big Maureen’s waiting.”

  “Don’t call her Big Maureen,” Joan would say. “That’s unkind.”

  “Size-challenged Maureen,” I’d whisper under my breath.

  These days, I have all the time in the world to sit there and pick at every revolting morsel that Joan puts in front of me. Because I’ve stopped taking the school bus. Joan and Cynthia have decided that I’m too “traumatized” to ride the bus. So Joan drives me to school every morning.

  Joan looks at my sweatshirt and jeans and sighs dramatically, as if I’m causing her some deep personal pain.

  “You know, Maisie,” she says, “for me, one of the most tragic things about this unfortunate situation is that it’s making you hate your own body.”

  “I don’t hate my body.” I’m certainly not going to tell Joan how I’ve figured out how to get dressed without even glancing in the mirror.

  Joan sighs again, going for even more drama. “Look at how you’re dressed! You might as well be wearing a big trash bag over your head.”

  So Evil Stepmom has momentarily trumped Sitcom Mom and Doctor Joan Marbury, Therapist.

  I want to say, Why don’t you look at what you’re wearing? Joan is dressed the way she thinks I should be dressed, as if to give me the idea. Her jeans are too tight, her heels too high. Her makeup’s so thick, you can practically hear it cracking like ice on a pond, and she’s wearing a really expensive black jacket with a fake—or is it real?—fur collar.

  “I dressed this way before. I’ve always dressed this way,” I tell Joan. “It’s comfortable. Nothing’s different. What’s your problem?”

  Joan decides to ignore my tone. “Why don’t we go to the mall this weekend and buy you something pretty?”

  Nothing could sound worse than going to the mall with Joan and letting her nag me into buying something that looks crappy on me and that I’ll never wear. And besides, someone might see me. The kids in my grade hang out there. God, what if I ran into Kevin and Chris and Shakes, and Daria and her friends, one big happy gang? And there I would be, totally miserable, all alone with Joan the Wicked Stepmom.

  Joan says, “I’m not the Wicked Stepmother, Maisie. I need you to believe that.”

  It creeps me out when she says that, as if she knows what I’ve been thinking. The last thing I need is to broadcast every thought so loud that even Joan can pick it up on the airwaves. Could I have called Joan that when I was talking to Doctor Atwood? I can’t be that paranoid. I have to trust Doctor Atwood. Sort of.

  “I don’t think that.”

  “Don’t think what?” Joan’s going to make me lie again.

  “I don’t think you’re the Wicked Stepmother.”

  “Good,” says Joan. “Believe me, I’m not. I’m trying, I’m really trying, Maisie. I wish you’d make an effort, too.”

  “Where’s Dad?” I say.

  “Your dad had an early patient. What a saint your father is!”

  She’s right. My dad’s a good guy with bad taste or bad luck with his wives. But it’s true that he’s scheduling patients earlier and staying at the office later, probably so he’ll miss the latest episode of the Joan versus Maisie throwdown. Tons of people suddenly seem to need root canals at eight in the morning. Who can bla
me him for wanting to avoid the daily fight that starts with Joan firing off some passive-aggressive insult and my refusing to answer. The strange thing is, I know she sees the whole thing differently. She’s told me that she’s reaching out—the phrase makes me want to throw up—and I’m being passive-aggressive.

  It takes the whole breakfast to get down a mouthful of Joan’s supercrunchy granola. Especially while she’s watching.

  She says, “Have you and Doctor Atwood discussed your diet? You’ve hardly eaten any of your cereal. I’d hate to think you want to punish your own body for what those boys did to you.”

  “I eat plenty,” I say, the truth for once. “I’d eat a lot more of this cereal if it wasn’t so much work. Chewing it burns more calories than I get from eating it. I need somebody to prechew this crap for me.”

  “That’s disgusting, dear,” says Joan. “Josh loves granola. Don’t you, darling?”

  On cue, Josh Darling enters the room, fresh and scrubbed from the shower. What normal nine-year-old boy showers without being forced to? He pours himself an overflowing bowl of sandy granola and chows the whole thing down, like one of those Guinness World Records freaks who do stunts like eating cars.

  “Time to go!” Joan announces. Another benefit of this new life is that Josh Darling gets a ride to school. Might as well—Joan’s driving. Josh hates it, too, but he won’t say so.

  As his reward for keeping his mouth shut, and because he’s Joan’s actual darling son, Josh Darling gets to sit up front, and I ride in the back. Before she and Dad got married, Joan leased a red Toyota Camry. The pathetic sporty divorcée car with the child-friendly safety rating. Right after the gross wedding at Ye Olde White Bread Inn, my dad bought Joan the Volvo SUV so Joan can play soccer mom and make the other soccer moms jealous.

  Your stepmother’s a trophy soccer mom. That was something Shakes used to say. Remembering it makes me feel better, then instantly worse.

  As always, Joan spends the whole ride to school trying different ways to start a conversation. She tries this, and if it doesn’t work, she tries that. It’s beyond annoying. Every time a pop star gets into trouble or punches out some paparazzi or goes into rehab, Joan tells us all about it. She acts as if it’s fascinating girl-gossip, but I know it’s a warning: Don’t drink or smoke or take drugs, eat right, and don’t get violent. Half the time, the people she talks about are celebrities I don’t even like, or I used to like but don’t anymore.