But he doesn’t touch me. There’s nothing close to a touch, not even a handshake. It’s just endless looking—in his office, during class. As soon as I open my mouth to speak, his face turns tender and he praises everything I say to the point where the other students exchange annoyed looks, like There she goes again. It all feels familiar, a trajectory I remember so well I have to clench my fists to stop from tearing into him when we’re alone. I tell myself it’s all in my head and that this is how normal teachers treat their best students, a little special attention, nothing to lose your mind over. It’s just that I’m depraved, my mind so warped by Strane that I misinterpret innocent favoritism as sexual interest. But then again—making me a CD? Calling me into his office every day? It doesn’t feel normal, not in my body, and my body knows even if my mind gets confused. Sometimes it feels like he’s waiting for me to move toward him, but I don’t have the courage I had at fifteen, I fear rejection, and besides, he’s not giving me enough, no pat on the knee or leaf held up to my hair. My most brazen behavior: going braless one day under a silk camisole, but then I’m disgusted when he stares—so what is it that I want? I don’t know, I don’t know.
Late at night, when I’m too drunk to stop myself, I open my laptop and type the Browick address into my browser, bring up the staff profiles. Penelope Martinez got her bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas in 2004, which makes her twenty-four. That’s how old Ms. Thompson was when she and Strane were doing whatever they did. Why did no one think that was wrong at the time, a twenty-four-year-old girl and a forty-two-year-old man? “Girl” because she was more like a girl than a woman back then, with her scrunchies and hooded sweatshirts. Penelope looks like a girl, too—glossy dark hair, button nose, and thin shoulders. She’s fresh-faced and youthful, Strane’s type. I imagine him walking beside her through campus, hands clasped behind his back, making her smile. I wonder what she would do if he tried to touch her. What she did the first time Henry touched her. I don’t know when they got together, but no matter what he would’ve been a decade older, big clumsy hands and hot breath through his beard.
One afternoon Henry and I are talking in his office when his phone rings. As soon as he answers, I know it’s her. He turns away from me, gives clipped replies to her questions, an edge in his voice that makes me feel like I’m intruding, but when I rise to leave he holds out a hand and mouths, Hold on.
“I have to go,” he says, exasperated, into the phone. “I’m with a student.” He hangs up without saying goodbye and it feels like a triumph.
He’s never come clean about her being his wife and not a “friend.” He never mentions her at all—why would he? Why would he not? There’s zero evidence of her, no wedding ring, no photo in his office. Maybe she’s mean to him, maybe she’s boring, maybe he’s unhappy. Maybe since meeting me, he’s had moments of thinking, I should have waited. I force myself to think about her because it seems like the moral thing to do, but she’s only a fuzzy figure on the periphery. Penelope. I wonder if Henry calls her that or if he uses a nickname. I look up her staff profile on the Browick website again, imagine the possibility that she might be talking to Strane at the exact moment I’m talking to Henry. Strane, who calls and calls, who says he needs me, that this radio silence is cruel and uncalled for. Maybe my neglect is making him so lonely he has to resort to flirting with the pretty young counselor. I bet she’s easy to talk to, easier than I ever was. I imagine her sitting through his rants with a patient, unwavering smile. The perfect listener. He’d love that. My brain keeps going to the point I almost forget it’s all in my head: Strane making Penelope laugh as I make Henry laugh; Henry at home, up late in the living room, writing me an email as Penelope sits in the bedroom writing to Strane.
Yet it always comes back to this hard reality: Henry must know I would let him touch me but he never tries. That, I know, is the most meaningful detail. It negates everything else.
February 13, 2007
It’s been six weeks since I spoke to S., when he told me that people are out to get him and that one of his enemies might try to contact me. I swore my loyalty, and I’ll stick to that loyalty forever (what’s the alternative? turning on him? unthinkable), but ever since that night at his house, I haven’t been able to stomach him. I have an inbox of voicemails. He wants to take me out to dinner, he wants to know how I’m doing, he wants to see me, he wants me. I listen to a few seconds of each and then throw my phone across the room. This is the first time it’s ever really felt like he’s chasing after me. No coincidence that it comes after a confession, on his part, of bad behavior.
I can’t bring myself to write out what he did, though being evasive makes his action seem horrific. It’s not as though he killed anyone. He didn’t even really hurt anyone, though “hurt” is such a subjective thing. Think of all the thoughtless pain we inflict. A mosquito on your arm; you don’t even hesitate to smack it dead.
After class, Henry says he needs to ask me something. “I thought about emailing you,” he says, “but figured it would be better to do it in person.”
When we get to his office, he shuts the door. I watch him rub his face, take a deep breath.
“This is uncomfortable for me,” he says.
“Should I be nervous?” I ask.
“No,” he says quickly. “Or, I don’t know. It’s just, I caught wind of a rumor about your old high school, something about an English teacher being inappropriate with a student. I heard the story secondhand, don’t know any real facts, but I thought . . . well. I don’t know what to think.”
I swallow hard. “Did your friend tell you about this? The one who works there?”
He nods. “She did, yes.”
I wait through a long beat of silence, plenty of time for him to offer the truth.
“I guess I feel a little responsible,” he says, “knowing what I know.”
“But it’s none of your business.” He gives me a startled look and I add, “I mean that in a good way. You don’t need to worry about it. It’s not your problem.”
I try to smile like my throat isn’t squeezing into a fist, cutting off my air. I imagine Taylor Birch crying on a sofa, confessing to Penelope the sympathetic counselor—Mr. Strane touched me, why did he do it, why won’t he do it again—but my brain goes too far, ends up back in Strane’s office. Hissing radiator, seafoam glass.
“Look,” I say, “it’s a boarding school. Rumors like that happen all the time. If your friend hasn’t been there very long, she might not know what to take seriously and what to ignore. She’ll learn.”
“What I heard sounded pretty serious,” Henry says.
“But you said you heard it secondhand,” I say. “I know what actually happened, ok? He told me. He said he touched her leg and that’s all.”
“Oh,” Henry says, surprised. “I didn’t think—I mean, I didn’t realize—you’re still in contact with him?”
My mouth goes dry as I realize my misstep. A good victim wouldn’t still talk to her rapist. Strane and I still being in contact throws into question everything I’ve let Henry believe. “It’s complicated,” I say.
“Sure,” he says. “Of course.”
“Because what he did to me wasn’t rape rape.”
“You don’t need to explain,” he says.
We sit in silence, my eyes lowered to the floor, him gazing at me.
“You really don’t need to worry,” I say. “What happened to that girl is nothing like what happened to me.”
He says ok, that he believes me, and we let it go.
The first week of March a manila envelope arrives in the mail, addressed to me in Strane’s blocky hand. Inside, I find a three-page letter and a stapled packet of documents: a photocopy of the statement he and I signed on the day we were found out, dated May 3, 2001; handwritten notes from the meeting he and Mrs. Giles had with my parents; a poem about a mermaid and an island of stranded sailors that I vaguely remember writing; a copy of the withdrawal form with my signature at th
e bottom; a letter about me, Strane, and our rumored ongoing affair, addressed to Mrs. Giles, written in a hand I don’t recognize until I see the name at the bottom—Patrick Murphy, Jenny’s dad, the letter that set the whole thing in motion.
I lay all the documents across my bed, one paper after another. In the letter addressed to me, Strane writes,
Vanessa,
I’m not doing well over here. I’m not sure how to take your silence, if you’re trying to communicate something by not communicating, if you’re angry, if you want to punish me. You should know I’m punishing myself plenty already.
The harassment mess is ongoing. I’m hopeful it’ll be sorted out soon, but it might get worse before it gets better. There remains a possibility someone might contact you with the aim of using you against me. I hope I can still count on you.
Maybe I’m a fool to put this in writing. The power you hold over my life is immense. I wonder how it must feel to go about your day, masquerading as an average college girl, all the while knowing you could destroy a man with one well-placed phone call. But I still trust you. I wouldn’t send an incriminating letter if I didn’t.
Look at the documents I’ve enclosed here, the wreckage of six years ago. You were so brave then, more a warrior than a girl. You were my own Joan of Arc, refusing to give in even as the flames licked your feet. Does that bravery exist in you still? Look at these papers, evidence of how much you loved me. Do you recognize yourself?
I transcribe the letter and post it on my blog without any context or explanation other than, at the bottom of the post, in all caps: CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW IT WOULD FEEL TO HAVE THIS ARRIVE IN YOUR MAILBOX? A question posed to nobody, anybody. I rarely ever get replies to my posts, have no regular readership, but the next morning, I wake to an anonymous comment, left at 2:21 a.m.: Cut him out of your life, Vanessa. You don’t deserve this.
I delete the post, but more comments start to appear, always in the middle of the night, waiting for me when I wake up. A line-by-line critique when I post a draft of a poem; Gorgeous left in response to a series of selfies. I reply, Who are you? but never receive a response. After that, the comments stop.
* * *
From my bedroom doorway, Bridget asks, “Are you coming?”
It’s the start of Spring Fling, a week of day drinking and blowing off classes. There’s a party that afternoon on the pier.
I look up from my laptop. “Hey, look at this.” Turning the screen, I show her Taylor Birch’s latest photo: a close-up selfie, her lips turned downward, eyes rimmed with black liner. When Bridget doesn’t react, I say, “That’s the girl who’s accusing him.”
“What about it?”
“It’s just so ridiculous.” I laugh. “The face she’s making! I want to comment and tell her to cheer up.”
Bridget gives me a long look, her lips pursed. Finally, she says, “Vanessa, she’s a kid.”
I turn the laptop away from her, feel my cheeks burn as I x out of the page.
“You really shouldn’t check her profile so much,” she says. “It’s only going to upset you.”
I snap the laptop shut.
“And making fun of her seems kind of mean.”
“Yeah, I get it,” I say. “Thanks for the input.”
She watches me get out of bed and stomp around my room, root through the piles of clothes on the floor. “So, are you coming?” she asks.
It’s only sixty-five degrees, but for April in Maine that’s as good as summer. There are cases of PBR stacked on the pier, hot dogs cooking on hibachi grills. Girls sunbathe in bikini tops, and three guys in board shorts climb over pink granite to wade up to their knees in the frigid water. Bridget finds a tray of Jell-O shots and we down three each, sucking them between our teeth. Someone asks about my postgraduation plans and I love having an answer: “I’m going to be Henry Plough’s assistant while I work on grad school applications.” At the sound of Henry’s name, a girl turns, touches my shoulder—Amy Doucette, from the capstone seminar.
“Are you talking about Henry Plough?” she asks. She’s tanked; her eyes won’t stop sliding around. “God, he’s so hot. Not physically, obviously, but intellectually. I want to crack his head open and take a big bite out of his brain. You know?” She laughs, slaps my arm. “Vanessa knows.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I ask, but she’s already turned away, her attention stolen by an enormous watermelon being broken open the same way she said she wanted to break open Henry’s skull. “It’s had two bottles of vodka soaked into it,” someone says. No one has a knife or plates, so people just grab handfuls, boozy juice dripping onto the pier.
I guzzle a can of warm beer and watch the waves through the gaps in the floorboards. Bridget comes over, a hot dog in each hand, offers me one. When I shake my head and say that I’m going to go, her shoulders drop.
“Why can’t you just have fun for once in your life?” she asks, but she sees the hurt on my face, understands she’s gone too far. As I leave, I hear her call, “I was kidding! Vanessa, don’t be mad!”
At first I head back home, but the thought of spending another drunken afternoon in bed makes me take a sharp turn toward Henry’s building, knowing he’s on campus Monday afternoons. I have his entire schedule memorized: when he’s on campus, when he’s teaching, and when he’s in his office, most likely alone.
The door is ajar, his office empty. On his desk sits a stack of papers and his wide-open laptop. I imagine plopping down in his chair and opening the desk drawers, sifting through everything inside.
He finds me standing over his desk. “Vanessa.”
I turn. His arms are weighed down with spiral notebooks, student journals from English composition, the things he hates most to grade. I know so much about him. It’s not normal to know this much.
As he sets the journals on his desk, I sink into the extra chair, hold my head in my hands.
“Did something happen to you?” he asks.
“No, I’m just drunk.” I tip my head back and see the grin on his face.
“You get drunk and your instincts tell you to come here? I’m flattered.”
I groan, press my palms against my eyes. “You shouldn’t be nice to me. I’m being inappropriate.”
Hurt flashes across his face. That was the wrong thing to say. I know better than anyone that calling too much attention to what we’re doing can ruin the whole thing.
Reaching into my pocket, I pull out my phone, hold it out for him as I scroll through the missed calls. “Do you see that? That’s how many times he’s been calling me. He won’t leave me alone. I’m going crazy.”
I don’t explain who “he” is because I don’t need to. Strane is probably at the forefront of Henry’s mind every time he looks at me. I wonder if they’ve met. I’ve imagined them shaking hands, the traces of me left on Strane’s body transmitted onto Henry—the closest I’ve come to touching him.
Henry stares hard at my phone. “He’s harassing you,” he says. “Can you block his number?”
I shake my head, though I have no idea. I probably could, but I want the calls to keep coming. They’re the breath on the back of my neck. I also know that Henry’s sympathy hinges on me doing and wanting the right things, taking all possible steps to protect myself.
“How’s this for harassment?” I say. “A few weeks ago, he mailed me a bunch of papers from when I was kicked out of Browick—”
“What?” Henry gapes at me. “I didn’t realize you were kicked out.”
Is that another lie? Technically, I withdrew—there was even a copy of the withdrawal form in the envelope Strane sent—but it feels more true to say I was kicked out, because it wasn’t my choice, even if it was my fault.
I listen to myself go on and tell the story, how I took the blame because I didn’t want to send Strane to jail, about the meetings and standing in front of the room and calling myself a liar, answering questions like it was a press conference. As he listens, Henry’s mouth falls open, sympathy ema
nates out of him, and the more affected he looks, the more I want to talk. A momentum gains within me, an increased righteousness, a sense that I lived through something horrible, a disaster so stark it split my life in two. And now, in the aftershock of survival comes the desire to tell. Shouldn’t I be able to tell this story if I want to? Even if I manipulate the truth and obscure the details, don’t I deserve to see the evidence of what Strane did to me on another person’s sympathetic face?
“Why would he do this?” Henry asks. “Is anything happening now to make him send you these things?”
“I’ve been ignoring him,” I say, “because of what’s been going on.”
“The complaint against him?”
I nod. “He’s worried I’m going to tell on him.”
“Would you consider doing that?” Henry asks.
I don’t answer, which is as good as saying no. Rolling my phone between my hands, I say, “You must think I’m terrible.”
“I don’t.”
“It’s just really complicated.”
“You don’t have to explain.”
“I don’t want you to think I’m selfish.”
“I don’t think that. In my eyes you’re strong, ok? You are incredibly, incredibly strong.”
He calls Strane psychologically deluded, says he’s trying to control me, make me feel like I’m fifteen again, that what he did to me and continues to do is beyond the pale. When Henry says this, I see a stark white sky and an endless expanse of scorched earth, a silhouette barely visible behind a wall of smoke, Strane tracing blue veins on pale skin, dust motes swirling in the weak winter sun.
“I’m never going to tell on him,” I say, “no matter how bad he is.”
Henry’s features go soft—soft and so, so sad. I feel in that moment that if I moved toward him, he’d let me do whatever I want. He wouldn’t say no. He’s close enough to reach, his knee pointed toward me, waiting. I imagine his arms opening, drawing me in. My mouth inches from his neck, his body shuddering as I pressed my lips against him. He would let me. He’d let me do anything.
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