by Rona Jaffe
Zzzzzz, Robbie wrote, and passed her notebook back. They tried to keep from laughing. There was something about being with Robbie that made Kate feel very silly and relaxed and young. It wasn’t because he was a Freshman and she was a Sophomore, because they were the same age—and she wouldn’t have cared if she were older. Those things didn’t matter to her. It was more that Robbie was terribly sweet and totally unthreatening. They had fun together. He was also very handsome. She loved his gentle face and perfectly proportioned swimmer’s body. She found herself looking at him more lately than she had intended to. She knew she was starting to care about him in a way that was more than just a good pal, and she didn’t like that at all.
She’d been in love. Everyone at Grant said that if a love affair lasted more than five months you were living on borrowed time. They all knew they were growing, changing, finding different goals, and you couldn’t expect to be the same person you were several months ago—so how could you stay in love, or the other person stay in love with you? Love was dangerous because unless you were very lucky one of you was bound to get hurt. At least, you got hurt the first time. After that you learned. “They break your pretty balloon just once,” her last year’s roommate had said.
Dawn, the beautiful American Indian girl who Kate had thought would be such a confidante. “I’d never tell you my problems,” Dawn had told her. “It would hurt me too much to see you get upset.”
How could you answer that? No, I won’t get upset, I won’t care about you? Please upset me, that’s what I’m here for? Kate wondered if Dawn was just saying that so she wouldn’t have to listen to her complain. If so, Kate couldn’t blame her for that; who wanted to listen to a lot of troubles? You fell in love alone because you were supposed to be grown-up, and if it didn’t work out then you got over it alone.
So last year Kate had been in love, and it had lasted six months, and everyone knew it would eventually end, except her. She had really believed in that romance. Steve … funny, charming, a good writer, a shit. He just got bored with her. He was on to other things. She was expected to understand. He didn’t want to get married, neither did she; he didn’t want to live with anybody, neither did she; he wanted to go to Nepal. Then he would do something else, he’d see. She could come to Nepal if she wanted, but she’d just be dead weight. It was over. Besides, she didn’t have the slightest desire to go to Nepal.
So she nursed her broken heart and kept silent, and tried to think about the bad parts of the relationship so she could get over it faster. Remember how there was never enough room in the narrow dorm bed for the two of them to fall asleep properly. How he hogged it all anyway. How he threw his underwear on the floor, the slob. How he never made plans, so they always got to the last show at the movies after the opening credits. How he kissed her so sweetly and left little love notes in her clothes and made her feel beautiful and special.…
People were gathering their books and papers and standing up; the class was over. She had dreamed her way through it. That was another thing love did; it ruined your concentration. She hoped Robbie had taken enough notes for both of them.
“Do you want to buy some food and go have a picnic?” Robbie said. “There won’t be many more terrific days like this one.”
“No … I don’t know.”
He looked hurt. “Are you all right?”
“Sure. I have to study this afternoon.”
“Okay. I’ll see you at dinner then.”
She went off toward the library and then when she knew he was gone she walked back and sat on the ground under a tree. Students were sitting in pairs and groups on the strips of lawn between the large, red-brick class buildings, enjoying the last good weather of fall. She had been mean to Robbie, but she couldn’t help it. She didn’t want to have a picnic with him on a beautiful fall day, storing up memories, feeling open and mellow and vulnerable—not yet, anyway.
And she didn’t know how she would feel about having sex ever again, after the long-buried but never forgotten Incident in the Laundry Room. No one had been allowed to touch her since then, and if anyone did she didn’t know if she would be able to stand it.
It had been the night she knew it was all over with Steve. For a while she had pretended, but finally she knew he didn’t even want her for a friend. She didn’t want to brood, she wanted to keep busy. There was laundry piling up that needed to be done. It was Saturday night, when almost nobody used the laundry room. She wouldn’t have to wait for a machine. Everybody else was having a good time with the person they were in love with. She went down to the laundry room and found herself alone.
She separated the whites from the colors, dumped the clothes, sheets, and towels into two machines, poured in the detergent, and was fishing in her handbag for quarters when the lights went out. Suddenly the room was plunged into pitch darkness. It was weird because there was not one machine on, not even a dryer. It was absolutely still. She wondered if a fuse had blown. She turned around, but it was so dark after the previous fluorescent brightness that she couldn’t even see where the door was. Then she heard the tiny click of a cigarette lighter.
She saw the flame, and saw it glint off the sharp, shiny point of a switchblade knife. That was all—just the blade, held high—and then she heard the sound of the breathing.
Soft, soft, quick excited breathing. She couldn’t even hear footsteps, so silent was his tread, but the knife blade, shining gold and silver, came nearer, and so did the breathing. She knew without any doubt that it was a man, and that he was going to rape her.
The most terrifying thing in the world was a knife. A gun had a certain unreality to it; it could even be a toy. But you could not pretend a knife was a toy. And this one was long and sharp. The hand that held it was not trembling at all. Only the breathing was ragged: soft, excited, almost like sighs of ecstasy. She realized then that he probably would kill her, either before or after he raped her, and that her blood and pain would be part of his pleasure. She could feel her heart pounding so violently it seemed to fill the dark room. She crouched and ran, silently, away from that glittering blade, toward the tall dryers. He followed her, still in that wordless grim silence which was even more frightening than any words could have been.
Hide … hide. She was small and slim, she could slip into narrow spaces. But the bank of dryers stood there locked together, flush against the wall. Kate ran her hands across them, feeling for a space, wondering if she could crawl into an open dryer, knowing she would be more trapped inside than she was now.
There was a small air space behind the bank of dryers, between them and the wall, for the heat to escape. She slid into it, hearing his breath coming closer. Her eyes were becoming accustomed to the dark and she could make out shapes. Then she realized that at the end of this little passage there was a wall, and if he were small enough to follow her she would be trapped and he would slash her to death.
Carefully, silently, she turned around and crept out again, then ran, too close … feeling her heart turn over as he took a swipe at her. She felt wetness trickling down her arm. She began to sob, in silence, choking back the tears and her tiny, terrified animal sounds so he could not hear her and find her. She hit one of the ironing boards and fell, too frightened to feel any pain, and then jumped up again and ran, trying to get to the exit door before he did. Then he snapped off his cigarette lighter so there was no light at all. Now he and his knife could be anywhere.
Running swiftly down the line of ironing boards, Kate knocked them all over, leaving them on their sides or backs with their metal legs held high. Let him trip over one, make him fall, please God.… Where could she run now? If she ran into him he would grab her, slit her throat.…
She knew she was going to die and that there was no point to it, no purpose, only the unfairness and cruelty of it. She felt everything inside her seem to empty out: the hope, the love, the feeling. She was a shell, an object. She was nothing.
Then the door to the laundry room burst open and ther
e were voices, perplexed, annoyed, and the silhouettes of three other women illuminated by the light in the hall.
“What the hell? Why are the lights out?”
One of the women switched on the overhead fluorescent light. It was blinding. Kate blinked. And when she opened her eyes again, in that instant before he fled, she saw the face of her would-be rapist-murderer clearly. He was in his early thirties, lean and feral: a drifter or someone who worked in the town. He was no one she knew.
Afterward she never really could figure out why he hadn’t killed all four of them, herself and the three other women who had come to do their wash. She’d read about incidents like that in the newspapers, one maniac holding a whole dormitory of women in his power. But he had chosen to run away instead, and she was alive.
She and the three other women put a notice on the dorm bulletin board. BE CAREFUL—THERE IS A RAPIST WITH A KNIFE AROUND THE CAMPUS. HE WAS LAST SEEN IN THE LAUNDRY ROOM OF HOLLIS EAST. DO NOT GO ANYWHERE ALONE WHERE YOU COULD GET TRAPPED.
The cut took six stitches. She told the doctor she had been mugged. There was nothing else she wanted to tell. She was sure she wouldn’t be able to identify him if she saw him again; she’d been too frightened. She told Dawn to watch out, but never expressed any of the conflicting emotions that were tearing her apart. She did not tell her mother, because she didn’t want to upset her. She signed up for a karate course, which she continued all summer when she went home to San Francisco. Her instructor, who was a woman teaching all-women classes how to defend themselves from men, told Kate she had the fastest reflexes she’d ever seen in a student.
During the weeks and months after The Incident in the Laundry Room, as Kate began to think of it, it began to seem as if part of the nightmare had been her fault. She shouldn’t have been so stupid and careless to go down there alone when she knew it would be deserted. It was also Steve’s fault. If he hadn’t left her they would have been together that night and she wouldn’t have been alone and available to be murdered. Her father had left her too, abandoned her … every man she’d ever cared about had turned out to be untrustworthy and selfish. You hoped happiness would last, you loved and believed in them, and then they said good-bye. You couldn’t trust anyone but yourself. Maybe that was the lesson life was meant to teach you.
It was then she began to realize everything she had ever written was childish and superficial. The Mazes and Monsters game, which she had played innocently and pleasantly with her friends, began to become more important. It became her release and her social life. She had no dates—treating the men in her dorm and classes casually, keeping them as friends and discouraging anything more. Friends didn’t desert you. She trusted Jay Jay and Daniel; they were like brothers to her, even though Daniel was so sexy and attractive to other women.
After a while the pain of the remembered night became dulled, lying at the back of her mind, pushed aside for other things. She tried to live her life day to day. Nobody ever suspected she was upset at all.
Kate got up from where she had been sitting under the tree, and began to walk slowly to the dorm. Still time to grab some lunch and then get part of this week’s required reading out of the way. She thought of Robbie’s sweetness, his growing dependence on her, and wondered what she wanted to do. Maybe he would be the one, at last, who would love her and not go away. Then she could let out all the feelings she’d been saving up; her love and warmth and giving sexuality. But first she would have to test him, and she didn’t know how to do that. Maybe it would be better just to withdraw for a while so she wouldn’t have to deal with any of it.
CHAPTER 7
Robbie couldn’t figure out why Kate had suddenly become so distant. He felt hurt and confused. He’d thought she really liked him as much as he liked her; they’d had fun together and were always able to make each other laugh. From the first minute he saw her, at Jay Jay’s party, his feelings for her had grown. He’d been trying to get up the courage to move their relationship to the next level—love and sex and maybe even sharing a room together—but now she had cut it all off without a word of explanation.
When he tried to talk to her about it she was always busy. It seemed as if lately he was always chasing after her and she was rushing away somewhere. He didn’t want to make a fool of himself, but he didn’t know what to do, and he couldn’t stand the thought of losing her without ever understanding why.
They continued to play the game, but there they were in another world, not Kate and Robbie, so it was different; and whenever they had finished playing for the night she would run to her room. One night Robbie waited until he was alone with Daniel and then asked him.
“Daniel, is Kate mad at me?”
“Not that I know of.”
“She’s acting different. I feel like that guy in the commercial: you tell me to change my toothpaste and then she’ll like me again.”
“Was something going on that I missed?” Daniel asked.
“I don’t know,” Robbie said, feeling miserable. “Maybe I imagined it.”
“Kate had a hard time last year,” Daniel said. “She broke up with the guy she was going with and it left her kind of defensive.”
“Is she still in love with him?”
“Oh, no.” Daniel gave him an appraising look. “You’re really interested in her, aren’t you.”
Robbie shrugged.
“You are,” Daniel said. He smiled. “Well, if it works out, the two of you can share a room and then we’ll have the extra room to play the game the way we planned last year.”
“Very funny. If you wanted some girl it would work out that way. Not with me and Kate.”
“Maybe it’s just as well,” Daniel said calmly. “If the two of you did get involved and it didn’t work out, it would fuck up our game.”
“Don’t you ever stop being so logical?”
“Nope.”
It was hopeless. Robbie thought of putting a note under Kate’s door, but that seemed childish. He tried to think of something funny to do, the sort of nutty thing Jay Jay would think of, but he didn’t have that sort of imagination. He thought how ordinary he was, and he decided Kate was right not to care about him. He had probably bored her.
Then one day she came into his room, looking contrite and timid. “I’m sorry,” she said.
His heart leaped. Kate … “Why have you been keeping me out?” he asked. “What did I do?”
“It wasn’t you. Can we start again?”
“Yes! You want to go to the movies tonight?”
“I’d love to.” She smiled. “There’s a lot of stuff I haven’t seen. Let’s drive into town and get the paper.”
They went to see a double feature of Halloween and When a Stranger Calls, because they both liked scary movies, and afterward they went to Fat City, the only halfway decent cheap restaurant in town, where most of the college students hung out. The walls were dark wood, with old movie posters hanging on them, and the lights were dim. There were booths as well as tables, so you could sit and talk in privacy. Because it was late and a weeknight the place was quite empty. The jukebox was playing for free.
Robbie and Kate sat across from each other at a booth in the corner. All evening she had been the same old Kate again, laughing and comfortable to be with. He ordered a hamburger and beer, she ordered white wine and her usual health food salad.
“I’ve got to get you off that stuff,” she said, gesturing at his hamburger. She picked a French fry off his plate and popped it into her mouth. “Don’t you know that when they slaughter an animal it gets scared and its system gets filled up with fight-or-flight hormones, and they get into your system?”
“Nobody killed whatever went into this hamburger,” Robbie said. “It died of natural causes.”
“In this place I can believe it.”
Robbie reached across the table and took her hand. “Kate … I’m not the kind of person who hurts other people. I might do something stupid by accident, but I would never lie to you.”
>
“I don’t think you would.”
“You don’t act like that’s a very big plus.”
She was playing with his fingers. “People seem to think telling the truth is such a big deal,” she said. “Like you should get a medal for it. There are a lot of things people would never want to hear, never, but other people don’t think about that because it’s so worthy to be honest.”
“I know.”
“I was going with someone last year,” she said. “He told me he wanted to move on. He was being honest. I didn’t like hearing it.”
“I guess that hurt.” He wanted to give her something, tell her something bad that had happened to him too, as a way of sharing and making her feel less alone. “I’ll tell you the worst thing that ever happened to me,” he said. “I have this older brother, Hall junior, my only brother actually. He’s three years older than I am, and he’s terrific. But he used to fight a lot with my parents. They never got along at all. He ran away when he was fifteen, and my dad sent the cops after him. The police brought him back. He was going to be sixteen then, it was his sixteenth birthday, April Fools’ Day. My parents had a big party for him, a combination welcome home and birthday party. And in the middle of it, when nobody was paying attention, he ran away again and never came back.”
She was looking at him with such softness and understanding in her eyes that he almost told her the rest of it … but he couldn’t, not even to her. “Never?” she said.
“Never. We never even got a letter or a postcard or a phone call. It was like he disappeared off the earth. It’s been such a long time, and I keep wondering what happened to him.”
“That must be so terrible,” Kate said.
“Not knowing is the worst part,” Robbie said.
“I’m so sorry …”
