by T. Greenwood
LOCAL RESIDENTS TO PROTEST POSSIBLE RETRIAL OF CONVICTED RAPIST
I set down the second cup of coffee and was both suddenly jittery from the caffeine and buzzed from the booze.
A man convicted in the brutal 1996 rape and attempted murder of a thirteen-year-old classmate, Wyn Davies, is hoping for a retrial after serving twenty years in state prison. Robert Rousseau’s case has been reopened due to the efforts of his defense team and the New Hampshire Innocence Project, who insist new DNA evidence is substantial enough to exonerate Rousseau of the crime. However, many community members in Haven are outraged a convicted felon, one who confessed to the crime, might be afforded this second chance. Demonstrators have set up a makeshift tent city in front of City Hall, demanding the motion be denied.
Why hadn’t anyone mentioned this to me? Neither my parents nor my brother had said a word.
Community activists have organized a protest for December 26, followed by a candlelight vigil in the lower playing fields at the school where both Rousseau and Davies attended the eighth grade. It is unknown whether or not Miss Davies, whose parents still live in Haven, will speak at the event.
I stood up, knees quaking, and yanked on my coat before heading back out into the cold. I walked briskly to the end of the street. There, as promised by the Haven Gazette, in front of the brick City Hall building, were a half dozen brightly colored tents, some strung with Christmas lights. I swooned with nausea. Several people, outfitted in parkas and other arctic gear, sat in lawn chairs outside the tents. I thought about going to them, telling them to go home to their families. That it was freaking Christmas, so for Christ’s sake, go home.
Instead I briskly walked toward them and their shiny red cheeks. Moving quickly past their odd commune, I held my breath, shoved my hands in my pockets, and lowered my head. Would they know me? Would they have any idea this was about me? Or maybe it wasn’t at all.
The community had rallied immediately after the attack as well. But I was a child then. A little girl. Now I was just another woman. Anonymous.
“Merry Christmas,” a man sitting in a camping chair said, raising his steaming metal thermos at me as if in cheers.
I stopped and looked at him. Propped up next to his chair was a sign. On it, enlarged to pixelation, was my seventh grade photo. This was the photo that was printed in the papers. The one I had fussed over when it first came back from the photographer. My hair too frizzy. My smile too crooked. My eyes wide. The cops had chosen this photograph rather than my eighth grade picture, in which I looked older, was wearing lip gloss and a sort of half smile on my face. Larry had warned them a photo should be chosen that showed me looking “innocent.” I was thirteen. I was a virgin. I still slept with stuffed animals in my bed. I was innocent. But my parents had complied. They didn’t want to take any chances I might be blamed for what happened to me.
A woman approached me, holding onto a clipboard.
“Would you like to sign this petition to deny a retrial for Robert Rousseau?”
She smiled as if she were a Greenpeace activist outside a grocery store, as if she were trying to save the planet.
“No,” I said, the word bursting her bubble, cracking her plastered smile.
“Aren’t you concerned a convicted rapist may be released into our community?” She was angry with me now. “Do you have children?” she demanded. As I walked away from her, she insisted, “He violated a child. What if she were your daughter?”
I know you got a little girl.
I pressed my mittened hands against my ears and my legs began to run. And when I closed my eyes, I was running across that field again, legs spinning. And I didn’t stop until I’d reached my old school.
I stood, breathless and buzzing, in front of the brick K-8 school, closed for the holidays. The windows were filled with construction paper Christmas trees, paper snowflakes. I remember sitting inside those stuffy rooms, cutting and pasting. Learning how to read and do long division. The hours I spent inside those walls almost unfathomable now. I was a little girl then. I thought of Avery, and my chest ached.
Still trying to catch my breath, I walked around the back of the school to the playground and sat down on one of the swings. I could feel the cold metal chains through my mittens. I pushed off and swung. From the highest point, I could see the tops of the trees in the forest that separated the playing fields from my parents’ neighborhood. From here the woods appeared to be exactly what they actually were: just a small patch of trees.
I jumped off the swing the way I used to as a kid, and the impact nearly brought me to my knees. And then I ran again, across the blacktop where we used to play dodgeball and foursquare and down the street and to the lower playing fields where I played soccer and the boys played flag football. I ran, the icy snow dampening my pant legs, burning my skin. I ran and ran, the cold air sharp like knives in my chest. I sank down to my knees when I reached the tree line. And I let out a wail I barely recognized. The last time I’d made this sound was almost twenty years ago.
Inquiry
“I know this is difficult, but we need to back up. We need to talk about what happened after you started to make your way across the field. Just so I understand, you knew you were being followed, yet you still went into the woods?”
“Yes. I mean yes, I went into the woods. No, I didn’t know I was being followed. I don’t remember.”
“Were you afraid?”
“Afraid?”
I felt the bass in my heart before the car pulled up next to me on the road. And when I realized who it was, I did feel fear. But I was also thirteen. Nothing bad had ever happened to me; I’d been assured again and again the bogeyman wasn’t real. That here, I was safe. And so the beating of my heart, the sweat on my neck, the loose tingle that crawled up my back like my mother’s tickling fingers did not register right away as warnings. I’d not yet learned to trust my instincts, my gut. And so instead of turning around, instead of confronting him, instead of yelling at him to stop following me, I shook my head and started down the grassy slope toward the playing fields, toward the woods that would lead me home.
“Again, Ms. Davies, when did you realize you were not alone?”
As if time mattered. As if my knowing anything mattered.
“Can you to tell us what happened when you realized you were being followed?”
His ragged breath behind me, following me.
“Why did you go into the woods, if Robert Rousseau was behind you?”
“I don’t remember.”
They were in the car, and the car was idling at the edge of the road. But I started into the woods anyway. I was just trying to get home as quickly as possible. This was the shortcut, and I knew on the other side of this path was home. I was thirteen years old. I didn’t know then that people could sometimes be monsters. That someone I knew could be capable of hurting me.
And so, while I was afraid of Robby Rousseau, those fears were of him shoving me on the playground, of him saying weird things to me during silent reading that awful time the teacher had moved him next to me. My fears were of his words. His pushing hands. Of his brother in his idling Camaro who seemed to me like a bad guy in a movie. Robby, to me, was more of a nuisance. A jerk. Someone I might actually roll my eyes about to my friends.
The sound of the bass, thrumming like a heartbeat. Pounding in time with my feet, with my heart, as I ran across that green expanse. I was a fast runner, the fastest girl in my class. This is what I thought as I ran toward the woods. I can get away. If he follows me. If they follow me.
“When did you realize you were being followed?”
When the music stopped. When I slipped into the woods and his hands were on my back.
“I don’t remember.”
“Miss Davies, I’m sorry, but you really need to tell us.”
Protest
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I said breathlessly as I entered my parents’ kitchen.
My father was bent over the open oven, checking on his ho
memade mac-’n-’cheese. My mother stood at the counter, cutting shallots. The room smelled like Christmas, like the memory of Christmas. The shallots made my eyes burn.
“I was trying to, before you left . . .” my mother started.
“Who are those lunatics down at City Hall?”
My father closed the oven door and turned to me. His shoulders seemed narrower than they once had. “They’re not lunatics, sweetheart. They’re people who care deeply about you.”
“They don’t even know me,” I said, thinking of that seventh grade photo. About how mortified I’d been when it was delivered in its windowed envelope to me at school. How I hadn’t shared the wallet sized versions with any of my friends and instead put them in my father’s shredder and watched as the blades sliced the images of me into strips. I thought about how I had saved my babysitting money for almost six months to go to the salon and have my hair straightened. How I’d scoured thrift store clothes and the clearance racks at The Limited at the mall. I thought about how I’d practiced a new smile in the mirror, but had wound up feeling silly. Stupid. No breasts, no hips. Just a little girl playing dress-up.
“We were going to talk to you about it.”
“When?” I said, feeling my face flush with heat. “It’s tomorrow!”
“Larry actually thought it might be a good thing for you to attend. To maybe even say a few words?” my father said.
“She doesn’t have to speak,” my mother said, as if I were still that thirteen-year-old girl. I didn’t need their permission then for my silence, and I didn’t need it now.
“I’m going back to Maine,” I said. “This is insane. Those people are insane.”
“They’re saying if he’s released he’ll probably live here with his brother. Rick still lives here, you know, out on Route 9 . . .” my father said. “People are afraid, Wynnie.”
My stomach turned. Again, I pictured Robby walking home, his brother long gone, when the police pulled up next to him and saw the blood, my blood, all over him. I imagined him, head down, shoulders sloping forward. Son, they might have said. Son, are you okay?
I shook my head, tried to rid my imagination of what happened after they realized he wasn’t just some kid who’d fallen off his bike. When they took him away and came back with a warrant and discovered what had been going on inside that house. When they found the photos. When they talked to his sister, Roxanne.
“I can’t stay here,” I said, feeling vertiginous again. Venomous. Poison spiraling through me. I pressed my hands against the wooden kitchen table to ground myself.
“Please don’t go back to Maine yet,” my mother pleaded. “It’s Christmas. Let’s forget about all of this. Please.”
My laughter was like a bark. “Sure, let’s forget all about it.” And suddenly I was channeling my thirteen-year-old self. I felt peevish. Ready for a teenage tantrum. “You think I haven’t spent the last twenty years trying to do just that?”
My mother looked like I had slapped her, and I felt the horrible crush of guilt that inevitably followed one of these outbursts.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” I said, but it was too late. The damage was done. Even though she nodded, I could see the cracks, the fissures I’d made. I was starting to recognize them; I was destroying everything I loved.
Her eyes were glossy with tears. “Honey, we wanted to wait until after Christmas to tell you, but . . .”
“What?”
She sighed, looked at me with sorrowful eyes. “The DNA results came back.”
I felt my legs starting to give beneath me. I gripped the kitchen chair and sat down.
“What did they say?” I asked, feeling light-headed. Like I might pass out.
“I have no idea, sweetheart,” my father said. “Larry doesn’t even know. It’s just my understanding the defense has petitioned the motion for a retrial. That they’re going ahead with this.”
The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
I left early the next morning, before my parents woke up. Before the protesters could gather at the courthouse. No matter how benevolent their intentions, it still felt like a violation. Like a betrayal. I imagined them gathering with their candles and their goodwill and it made me want to vomit.
I stopped for gas and, inside the brightly lit mini-mart, grabbed a coffee and a newspaper. On the front page was that old photo of Robby Rousseau, his pocked face and sad eyes. Next to the photo was the image of a bearded man. At first I thought it was a current photo of Robby, but it didn’t look anything like him. And the man was not wearing a prison jumpsuit but rather a collared shirt, a sweater. And he was smiling.
* * *
DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER INSPIRED BY LOCAL CRIME
For Christ’s sake.
Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Michael Ash was also a thirteen-year-old when eighth-grader Robby Rousseau was convicted of the rape and attempted murder of his classmate. But it wasn’t until recently Ash became aware of the crime or the controversy surrounding the conviction. When the case was reopened last fall, Ash was inspired to pursue the story of the family behind one of New England’s notorious juvenile criminals. “Here he was, a kid my age, who has spent two decades in prison for a crime he might not have committed. On one level, I identified with him. And I just felt like it was my responsibility to tell his side of the story through my art.”
I rolled my eyes. What the hell?
I threw my money on the counter and tucked the paper under my arm as though I were just another customer coming in for coffee and the paper. As though Robby’s eyes hadn’t been staring right into mine.
It was still dark, the sun simply a suggestion, as I drove out on Route 9. I took a sip of coffee, realizing I’d forgotten sugar, and it flooded my mouth with bitterness. As I drove by the Rousseau house, I almost missed it. There was no porch light on. No evidence of life, the dog thankfully nowhere in sight. Then the Honda clunked loudly as I drove past the driveway, and I felt my heart drop. Please, do not break down here, I prayed. It clunked again, and the engine shuddered. God, no.
I pressed my foot hard on the accelerator, and the car lurched forward and, thankfully, kept on moving. I didn’t realize for almost a mile I had been holding my breath. I didn’t look back even once.
The drive back to the island was lonely. Even though Avery always fell asleep after a few moments under the spell of the lulling engine, it still felt comforting to have her with me, sleeping peacefully in her car seat, her cherub cheeks reflected in my rearview mirror. More than a dozen times I glanced up, looking for her face, only to see a reflection of the empty seat behind me. The empty road.
In four years, I had not been without her for this long. Even when I moved to the other side of the duplex, only a wall separated us. She would knock against it at night, and I would knock back. Gus didn’t know about this routine; it was our secret. We’d never been separated by nearly this much time or space. And the implications of this did not hit me until I was driving up onto the ferry. Until there was a body of water between us. It felt scary and sad, while oddly electrifying, a strange freedom.
I wondered if this was what he would feel if he got out. He was thirteen years old when he was arrested, handcuffed at the side of that road. He went peacefully, it was said, though this may simply be a part of the legend. The fable that grew out of what happened to me. The day the rules of the universe were broken, when I went from being a scrawny little girl with an overbite and a blurting sort of enthusiasm about the world to a cautionary tale. I wondered how many hundreds of parents had sent their children off to school, saying, “Remember that little girl, Wyn Davies? Remember? Never walk home alone.”
He was a man now. Gus’s age. Yet, he had spent the bulk of his life in a state penitentiary. Twenty years. Twenty years of concrete walls and cafeteria food and God knows what else. Because of the nature of the crime, he was tried as an adult, although he was not an adult until afternoon. He was just a kid. Like me. Just like Michael Ash, Oscar-nominated document
ary filmmaker. Goddamn it.
My mother had known not to bring the retrial or the protest up again before I left. Instead, we pretended, as we had so much practice doing, that her words hadn’t sliced into me as if I were an overripe peach. And that I hadn’t bitten back, an angry dog.
She didn’t know, would never know, the reason for my stubborn refusal. The only comfort I took, even as I sensed the anguish I was causing her, was that the truth would cause her more. The lesser of two evils, I thought. Between the devil and the deep blue sea.
This was what I thought as I stared out at the water later on my way back to the island house, the lights of Portland disappearing: between the devil and the deep blue sea.
* * *
That night I fell asleep alone in the quiet, cold house. And I dreamed of Avery. She slipped in and out of my dreams like a ghost. After a particularly troubling dream about her having a raging tantrum (something she almost never did—she was a placid, easy kid) and my own fury, I got out of bed and went downstairs to the dining room.
I thought I might paint, but then I remembered the box of negatives and contact sheets I’d brought in.
The wood floors were freezing, and as I dug through Avery’s closet for her toy magnifying glass (amazed by how quickly this house had begun to fill with our stuff, with the accoutrements of our lives), I swore I could see my breath.
The magnifying glass was, of course, buried in the depths of a makeshift dress-up box, hiding under a knight costume Pilar had bought for her, thrilled Avery had eschewed the princess in favor of the armor and shield and sword.
I set everything up at the kitchen table. I got a piece of paper to create a log so I could keep track of which images seemed to merit enlargement. Thankfully, Wes had put all of the contact sheets in date order with their corresponding negatives in an envelope stapled to each sheet.
