“Let’s go get something to eat, and then we can come back and see if she’s awake.”
Footsteps shuffled from the room, and all was blessedly quiet for a moment. Her parents and all of the aunts had been there nearly constantly since she’d awakened—was it only yesterday? She was losing track of days. She rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. Every pulse of blood through the arteries in her brain felt as if her head was going to split apart. She tried to sit up and immediately began to retch. She grabbed for the emesis basin on her bedside table and vomited into it. A nurse heard the sounds and came in.
“Still nauseous?”
Teresa moaned and lay back again. “When is this going to stop?”
“You had a nasty concussion. Hard enough to crack your skull.”
There was a knock on the door.
“Excuse us. Is Miss Benedetto awake?”
Two uniformed police officers stepped into the room.
“She is,” said the nurse.
“Is she up to answering some questions?”
The nurse looked questioningly at Teresa, who nodded.
“Sorry, I can’t sit up,” Teresa said.
“That’s okay, miss,” said one of the policemen. “I’m Officer Pulaski, and this is Officer Benson. We just have a few questions about your attack. Do you remember what happened?”
“Yes. I was looking for a friend, and these three guys surrounded me—”
The two officers exchanged puzzled glances. “Three guys?”
“Yes. They cornered me, and two pinned me against a wall while the third started to… He started to…” She closed her eyes.
“Miss, there was only one man when we arrived on the scene.”
“No,” Teresa said. “There were three. They all wore jeans and T-shirts. They’d been drinking. They were white, in their thirties, about my height, dark hair, a few days’ worth of beard.”
Officer Benson pulled a notebook and pencil from a pocket and jotted notes while Teresa spoke.
“You’re sure?” Pulaski hooked his thumbs in his belt. “You don’t think you could be confused, you know, with the blow to your head?”
“No,” Teresa said firmly. “One of the ones pinning me had his hand over my mouth. I bit him and he punched me. That’s when my head hit the wall. After that, I don’t remember much. I did hear a dog. That’s when I blacked out.”
Benson looked up from his notes and nodded. “That’s right. Your attacker had a dog with him. We found a winter coat in his backpack that belonged to your father. We think he was stalking you, waiting for a chance to get you off by yourself.”
“Wait, what?” Teresa pressed her fingers to her head, willing it to stop pounding so she could make sense of what they were saying. “No. That’s not right.”
“We have a photo of him.” Pulaski reached into his chest pocket and pulled out a mug shot.
Teresa sat up, forcing the nausea back down, and took the picture. She blinked and tried to make her eyes focus.
“Do you recognize him?”
“Yes, but—”
“This is the man who attacked you.”
“No. It isn’t.” Teresa looked up at the officer. “I know this man and his dog. They’re homeless. They slept in the alley behind our store in Bloomfield last winter, but I haven’t seen him since…” She tried to remember. “Like, last January.” She looked at the photo again. She’d know Dogman’s eyes anywhere. “This is not the man who attacked me.”
“But your parents identified a coat he had as belonging to your father.”
“No. You have it all wrong.” Teresa closed her eyes, her palm pressed to her forehead. “That coat was in a bag for the Salvation Army. I gave it to him. He didn’t steal anything.” She looked at them. “I don’t understand. Why would you think he attacked me?”
“When we got the call that there was an altercation in that alley, the first officers on the scene found this man kneeling over you. There was no one else in the alley, Miss Benedetto.”
The expression in their eyes told her they did not believe her.
“Look, I don’t know what happened after I blacked out, but I’m telling you, this is not the man who attacked me. There were three of them. I would know them if I saw them again, but it was not Dogman.”
“Dogman?”
Teresa shook her head, but that only made it pound more. “It’s what I called him. I never knew his name. Where is he now?”
The officers glanced at each other. “He won’t give a name and we haven’t gotten any word back on his fingerprints. A couple of army tattoos, but no other identification. He’s a John Doe to us. We’ve got him in the city jail.”
“What? No.” She looked from one to the other. “You can’t jail him. He didn’t do anything.”
“He won’t give us a name,” Benson repeated, his pencil poised over his notebook. “He hasn’t acted innocent.”
“Well, now that I’ve told you what happened, can’t you let him go?”
Pulaski shook his head. “We’ll have to let the city attorney know what you’ve told us, but he can’t post bond, and they won’t let him go just like that. When you get out of the hospital, they’ll probably need you to come downtown and make a formal statement. Until then, he’s staying put.”
“Thank you, Miss Benedetto.” The officers tipped their caps and left.
Teresa lay staring up at the ceiling. How did everything go so very wrong? Her head was splitting again, Dogman was in jail, and Ellie was gone forever.
Ellie sat on her bed, her drawing pad on her lap, sketches scattered around her on the comforter. KC lay curled up on Teresa’s pillow. The pillow that used to be Teresa’s. Her pencil flew, feathery lines appearing like magic on the white paper—lines gradually growing darker and thicker, more jumbled, more confusing—like her memory of that night in the alley. She’d heard the sirens. There was a large crowd gathered by the time she got there. Police lights strobed from four or five cruisers. An ambulance rolled up, lights flashing and siren blaring to part the crowd. She’d caught only a glimpse of what looked like Teresa being wheeled into the back of the ambulance and whisked away. The police were asking for witnesses, but Ellie hadn’t seen anything, and they wouldn’t tell her what had happened. She’d seen a scruffy-looking man being taken away in handcuffs and a dog yowling pitifully as it was hauled away on the end of a leash. That’s when Sullivan had found her.
By the time she’d gotten to Mercy Hospital, Teresa’s parents and aunts were already there. No one knew anything except that Teresa had been attacked and was unconscious. When Ellie and Sullivan had entered the emergency room waiting area, Sylvia Benedetto had flown at her, yelling that this was all her fault, that Teresa had never gone anywhere like that part of town before. Ellie couldn’t argue. It was true. Every bit of it. Sullivan and Teresa had both come, looking for her. Teresa, who had always been afraid, had gone anyway. If only I hadn’t done it… How many times had Ellie wished that these past days?
The other aunts steered Sylvia to another part of the waiting room, but Anita had come to sit with Ellie, patting her hand as they waited for what seemed like hours for news. The doctors had finally told them that Teresa had suffered a fractured skull and concussion, and that they were transferring her to the neuro intensive care unit. When Ellie got upstairs, Sylvia had forbidden the hospital staff to let her see Teresa. It had been the most helpless feeling. Right there, through those ICU doors, was the woman she loved, only Ellie couldn’t get to her. Rob and Karen and Bernie were there by then. Bernie said it didn’t matter. Teresa was still unconscious. If she’d thought that would comfort Ellie, she was wrong. Teresa was hurt, and it was all her fault.
Ellie sat back, looking at the jumbled lines on the paper. The sketch captured all the chaos of the scene at the alley—all sharp angles and heavy lines and angry shad
ows.
There was a soft knock at the living room door. “Ellie?” She knew Sullivan was listening, waiting for her. “Ellie, I know you’re in there.” When she didn’t respond, he went back to his apartment.
She set the pad aside and pulled other sketches to her. There, so beautiful, was Teresa the morning Ellie had drawn her as she slept. Ellie traced a fingertip over the curve of the breast and the swell of the hip. She turned to another sketch, one that was just lots of disjointed images —a sensuous mouth, soft eyes framed by long lashes, the sweep of a jaw and lustrous, dark hair….
When Teresa finally regained consciousness, Rob and Karen had arranged for everyone to be away from the room while Bernie sneaked Ellie in. Teresa had turned to see who had come in, and—if I live to be a hundred, I’ll never forget—the hardening of her expression, the anger, the accusation. It was as powerful to Ellie as if Teresa had shouted it. And then, Teresa had simply turned away, rolled onto her side, her back to Ellie, without saying a word.
Her eyes filled with tears now as she stared at the eyes on the page. She’ll never look at me like that again. She set the drawings aside and curled up on her side, sobbing.
The pronouncement by the doctors that Teresa was ready to be discharged from the hospital prompted a loud discussion as to where she would go.
“Of course she’s coming home,” said Sylvia, her hands on her hips. “Why on earth would she not come home?”
“And what’s she going to do all day while y’uns are at the store?” asked Ana Maria. “She should come home with us. We can take care of her.”
Teresa let them argue for a while, until she stunned them all into silence by saying quietly, “I’m not going with any of you.”
The new reality of her situation hadn’t hit for a few days, but, when it had, she’d had hours lying in a hospital bed to think about it. She didn’t have a home. She didn’t have a relationship. All of her clothes were at Ellie’s. Other than retrieving them, she was free to go anywhere she wished. The irony of the situation didn’t escape her, either. Because of Ellie’s relentless search for a homeless man who doesn’t want to be found, I’m now homeless. She lay there, trying to remember what it felt like to love Ellie, but it was as if those feelings had evaporated or belonged to some other person’s life. Whenever she thought of Ellie, what she saw instead were the leering faces of the men who had attacked her; she felt again the paralyzing terror that they were going to rape her, that horrible feeling of helplessness as they had her pinned against the wall. She couldn’t sleep for more than an hour or two before waking, soaked in sweat, her heart pounding, as she looked around to make sure there were no shadows lurking in the room. Somehow, all of these things had destroyed any feelings for Ellie other than anger, and Teresa found herself wondering how real her love had been, if it could be killed by something like this. Am I even capable of real love?
“Aren’t you even going to talk to her?” Bernie had asked when they had a few minutes alone the day Teresa was discharged.
“There’s nothing to say.” Teresa avoided Bernie’s gaze. “Rob and Karen have plenty of room. They said I’m welcome to stay with them as long as I want.”
“You sure you don’t want to come stay with us? You know my mother would love to have you. You’re the daughter she really wanted.”
Teresa laughed a little, but her head still hurt so she stopped. “No, thanks. I do have another favor to ask, though.”
“You sure about this?” Bernie asked a couple of days later as she drove downtown. She’d been driving Teresa all over town since she got out of the hospital—the police station, the city attorney’s office, and now, the city animal control office.
“I’m sure.” Teresa walked up to the reception desk where a large black man was listening to a Pirates game on a radio.
“Excuse me?” Teresa smiled at him. “I was told by the police that my stolen dog had been found and brought here.”
“What’s the name?” the man asked, pulling a clipboard off a hook.
“The dog’s name? Or mine?”
The man tilted his head and looked at her. “The dog’s.”
“Lucy.”
“I don’t see no Lucy.”
“Well, she was stolen,” Teresa said. “They didn’t know her name. That’s why I’m here. May we go back and look at the dogs?”
He glanced at the radio where the announcer was shouting about a double play. With an irritated shake of his head, he pushed heavily to his feet. “This way.”
“What are you doing?” Bernie asked in an undertone.
Teresa shushed her and followed the attendant through a metal door, where their sudden entrance prompted nearly all of the dogs there to start barking. Teresa scanned the cages as they walked down the central aisle until she saw a brown dog cowering in the back of her cage.
“This one.”
He stopped. “You sure?”
“I know my own dog,” Teresa said. She could see Bernie’s mouth drop at the lies she was telling and hoped the man wouldn’t notice how obvious she was being.
He unlocked the door of the cage and Teresa squatted down, holding out some dog treats she’d thought to put in her pocket. “Lucy. Lucy, it’s me. Come on, girl.”
She held her breath for several seconds as Lucy simply stared at her, and then she crab-walked toward Teresa, wagging her whole back end, crouching and whining as she licked Teresa’s face.
“Guess it’s your dog, all right,” the attendant said. “I got to have you sign for her.”
Teresa stood and patted her leg. “Come on, Lucy.”
“You can’t take her out of here like that,” he said. “She got no collar, and you got no dog license or leash.”
Teresa thought quickly. “I guess the guy who stole her got rid of her collar with her tags. I’ll pay for her license again if you have a bit of rope I could use.” She gave him another smile, and he sighed.
“Follow me.” He led the way back to the reception desk where he slapped a form on the counter. “Fill that out.”
Fifteen minutes later, Lucy was in the back seat of the car, and Bernie was staring at Teresa. “Did that concussion do something to you? Where the hell did you learn to lie like that?”
Teresa gave her a sardonic look. “I grew up with you. And I’m finally learning it doesn’t always pay to be honest. I knew they’d never let me have her to take care of her for Dogman, and I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving her in that place.”
“Shit.” Bernie started the ignition. “I am impressed. So, where to now?”
“The city jail.”
“I think this is everything.”
Ellie had Teresa’s clothes packed up in boxes and shopping bags. Bernie stood there, looking hesitant to grab them and go.
“Do you want to sit down?” Ellie asked, pointing toward the kitchen table.
“Yeah, I do.” Bernie pulled out a chair and dropped into it.
“Coke?”
“Thanks.”
Ellie got out two cans of Coke and joined her.
Bernie popped the top of her can. “I miss the tabs. Remember pulling them off and wearing them like rings?”
Ellie smiled a little. “Where is she?”
“At Rob’s. Her mother’s pissed, but she didn’t want to go home.”
Ellie glanced up at Bernie. “How is she?”
Bernie didn’t answer right away. She reached for her cigarettes, then seemed to remember where she was and put them back in her purse. “Different. She changed when she met you, but this is different. She doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t really talk much. I think whatever those bastards did to her in that alley really messed her up.”
Ellie nodded, but her eyes were dry. She seemed to have cried herself out. “And she blames me.”
Bernie sighed. “I’m afraid she does.” She
leaned her elbows on the table. “I wish you’d go talk to her. It’s stupid for y’uns to let this end without even talking. If it still ends after you talk, then okay. You’ll deal with it. But this is bullshit.”
Ellie shook her head, her fingertip drawing patterns in the frost on her can. “I can’t. You saw what she was like in the hospital.”
“Do you love her?”
“What?” Ellie looked up.
Bernie set her can down hard. “I said, do you fucking love her?”
“Yes. Of course I do.”
“Then fight for her, goddammit.” Bernie glared at her. “I have waited my entire life for what you two have. I would kill for someone to want me that bad. Yes, she’s scared and angry and traumatized by what happened. Fight for her! Help her through this. Isn’t she worth it?”
Ellie stared into Bernie’s eyes. Her mouth opened and closed. “I’ll… I’ll think about it.”
CHAPTER 29
Teresa and Lucy walked the sidewalks of Rob and Karen’s neighborhood, appreciating the thick shade of the sheltering trees warding off the hot June sun. Even in the shade, Teresa wore dark sunglasses, as her eyes were still sensitive to bright light. Lucy was on a leash, but there was no need. She never strayed far from Teresa’s side. She was friendly with Rob and Karen, but it was clearly Teresa she had bonded to in Dogman’s absence.
“I’m so sorry this happened,” she’d said to him when they let her see him in jail. She frowned at her clasped hands on the counter that separated them. “I don’t know how to thank you for what you did, getting them off me. I’ve talked to everyone I can and explained that it wasn’t you. I think they believe me, but it’s going to take a while before they let you go.”
She didn’t repeat what the assistant city attorney had said about having one John Doe in jail, even if it was the wrong man, being better than having three unknown suspects at large. She couldn’t tell if he was really that arrogant, or if he still didn’t believe her that Dogman wasn’t her attacker.
Dogman had looked at her through the glass panel. “Do you know if Lucy is okay?”
Cast Me Gently Page 28
