Lucky

by Alice Sebold

  “No,” I said.

  “I don’t think I understand.”

  “What’s there to understand, Bud?” my mother asked. Perhaps, after twenty years of marriage, she knew where he was leading. Privately, she may already have defended me to him.

  “How could you have been raped if he didn’t have the knife?”

  Our dinner table could be loud concerning any topic. A favorite point of contention was the preferred spelling or definition of a certain word. It was not uncommon for the Oxford English Dictionary to be dragged into the dining room, even on holidays or with guests present. The poodle-mix, Webster, had been named after the more portable mediator. But this time the argument consisted of a clear division between male and female—between two women, my mother and my sister, and my father.

  I became aware that I would lose my father if he was ostracized. Though in my defense, my sister and mother shouted at him to be quiet, I told the two of them I wanted to handle it. I asked my father to come upstairs with me, where we could talk. My mother and sister were so angry at him they were red in the face. My father was like a little boy who, thinking that he understood the rules of the game, is frightened when the others tell him he is wrong.

  We walked upstairs to my mother’s bedroom. I sat him down on the couch and took up a position across from him on my mother’s desk chair.

  “I’m not going to attack you, Dad,” I said. “I want you to tell me why you don’t understand, and I’ll try to explain it to you.”

  “I don’t know why you didn’t try to get away,” he said.

  “I did.”

  “But how could he have raped you unless you let him?”

  “That would be like saying I wanted it to happen.”

  “But he didn’t have the knife in the tunnel.”

  “Dad,” I said, “think about this. Wouldn’t it be physically impossible to rape and beat me while holding a knife the whole time?”

  He thought for a second and then seemed to agree.

  “So most women who are raped,” I said, “even if there was a weapon, when the rape is going on, the weapon is not there in her face. He overpowered me, Dad. He beat me up. I couldn’t want something like that, it’s impossible.”

  When I look back on myself in that room I don’t understand how I could have been so patient. All I can think is that his ignorance was inconceivable to me. I was shocked by it but I had a desperate need for him to understand. If he didn’t—he who was my father and who clearly wanted to understand—what man would?

  He did not comprehend what I had been through, or how it could have happened without some complicity on my part. His ignorance hurt. It still hurts, but I don’t blame him. My father may not have fully understood, but what was most important to me was that I left the room knowing how much it had meant to him that I took him upstairs and tried, as best I could, to answer his questions. I loved him and he loved me and our communication was imperfect. That didn’t seem so bad to me. After all, I had been prepared for the news of the rape to destroy everyone in my life. We were living, and, in those first weeks, that was enough.

  Although TV was something I could share with my family while we each remained in our individual islands of pain, it was also problematic.

  I’d always liked Kojak. He was bald and cynical and talked curtly out of the side of his mouth while sucking on a lollipop. But he had a big heart. He also policed a city and had a bumbling sibling he got to kick around. This made him attractive to me.

  So I watched Kojak as I lay in my Lanz nightgown and drank chocolate milk shakes. (At first, I had difficulty with solid food. Initially my mouth was sore from the sodomy and, after this, having food in my mouth reminded me too much of the rapist’s penis as it lay against my tongue.)

  Watching Kojak alone was endurable, because even though violent, it was so obviously fictional in this violence (Where was the smell? The blood? Why did all the victims have perfect faces and bodies?). But when my sister or father or mother came in to watch television with me, I grew tense.

  I have memories of my sister sitting in the rocker in front of where I was positioned on the couch. She would always ask me if a given program was all right before turning it on. She would be vigilant throughout the hour or two hours it was on. If she worried, I would see her head start to turn around to check on me.

  “I’m okay, Mary,” I began saying, able to predict when she might grow concerned.

  It made me angry with her and with my parents. I needed the pretense that inside the house I was still the same person I’d always been. It was ridiculous but essential, and I felt the stares of my family as betrayals, even though intellectually I knew otherwise.

  What took me a bit longer to put together was that those television shows were more upsetting to them than they could ever have been to me. They had no idea, because I had not told them, what had happened to me in that tunnel—what the particulars were. They were fitting together the horrors of imagination and nightmare and trying to fashion what had been their sister’s or child’s reality. I knew exactly what had happened. But can you speak those sentences to the people you love? Tell them you were urinated on or that you kissed back because you did not want to die?

  That question continues to haunt me. After telling the hard facts to anyone from lover to friend, I have changed in their eyes. Often it is awe or admiration, sometimes it is repulsion, once or twice it has been fury hurled directly at me for reasons I remain unsure of. Some men and lesbians see it as a turn-on or a mission, as if by sexualizing our relationship they can pull me back from the wreckage of that day. Of course, their best efforts are largely useless. No one can pull anyone back from anywhere. You save yourself or you remain unsaved.

  FIVE

  My mother was warden of the vestry at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. We had been members of this church ever since my family moved to Pennsylvania when I was five. I liked the pastor, Father Breuninger, and his son, Paul, who was my age. In college, I would recognize Father Breuninger in the work of Henry Fielding; he was an amiable if not overly insightful man, and he stood in the center of a small, devoted congregation. Paul sold Christmas wreaths to the parishioners each year, and his wife, Phyllis, was tall and high-strung. This last quality made her a target for sympathetic, but competitive, commentary from my mother.

  I liked to play in the graveyard after service; I liked my parents’ pre- and post-commentary in the car; I liked being doted on by parishioners; and I loved, absolutely was infatuated with, Myra Narbonne. She was my favorite old lady—my mother’s favorite too. Myra liked to say she “got old before it was popular.” Often her large stomach was a punch line, or her thinning angel hair. Among a congregation filled with distinguished Main Line types, where the same outfits, perfectly tailored but within an inch of appearing downright shabby, were worn each and every Sunday, Myra was a breath of fresh air. She had all the blue blood she needed, but she wore large seventies wraparounds that were, in her words, “as tacky as tablecloths.” Often her shirt didn’t come together all the way, as her chest sloped closer and closer to the earth. She tucked Kleenex in her bra, which my own East Tennessee grandmother did, and she slipped me extra cookies when I came in from playing in the graveyard. She was married to a man named Ed. Ed didn’t come often to service, but when he did he appeared to be thinking of how soon he could leave.

  I had been to their house. They had a pool and liked to have young people swim in it. They had a dog they’d named Freckles, because of his spots, and a few cats, including the fattest calico I had ever seen. During junior high and high school, Myra nurtured my desire to be a painter. She painted herself, and had turned their greenhouse into her studio. I think she also understood, without ever discussing it with me, that I wasn’t very happy at home.

  During my freshman year, while I was in Syracuse going out with Mary Alice to the college bars along Marshall Street, things happened back home that were alien to me.

  Myra left doors unlocke
d. She went in and out of the house to garden. Freckles needed putting out. They had never had any trouble, and although their house was positioned far back from the road and hidden by a veil of trees, they lived in a neighborhood of gentlemen farmers. So Myra couldn’t have imagined a day when three men in black stocking masks would cut her phone lines before forcing their way in.

  They separated Myra and Ed, and tied Myra up. They were unhappy with the lack of cash in the house. They beat Ed badly enough that he fell backward down the stairs to the basement level below. One man went down after him. One cased the house. One, whom the others called Joey, stayed with Myra, calling her “old woman,” and hitting her with open-handed blows.

  They took what they could. Joey told Myra to stay put, not to go anywhere, that her husband was dead. They left. Myra lay on the floor and struggled free of the rope. She could not get down the stairs to check on Ed because she felt something broken in her foot. They had also, though she didn’t know it then, broken her ribs.

  Defying Joey’s orders, Myra left the house. She was too afraid to go out onto the road. She crawled through the underbrush behind the backyard—half a mile or so—before reaching another, less frequented road. She stood up, barefoot and bleeding. Finally a car approached and she flagged it down.

  She went to the car window.

  “Please get help,” she said to the lone driver. “Three men broke into our house. I think they killed my husband.”

  “I can’t help you, lady.”

  She realized who was in the car. It was Joey, and he was alone. It was his voice. She got a good look at him; there was no stocking mask.

  “Get off me,” he said, as she grabbed, in recognition, at his arm.

  He sped away and she fell down in the road. But she kept going and reached a house, where she phoned for help. Ed was rushed to the hospital. If she had not left the house when she did, the doctors later told her, he would have bled to death.

  Then, that winter, St. Peter’s was rocked by Paul Breuninger’s arrest.

  Paul had stopped selling Christmas wreaths in junior high school. He grew his curly red hair long, and didn’t come to church much anymore. My mother told me that Paul had a separate entrance to the house. That Father Breuninger felt he had lost control over him. In February, high on acid, Paul walked into a florist shop on Route 30 and asked a woman named Mrs. Mole for a single yellow rose. He and his partner, waiting in the car, had cased the joint for a week. Paul had asked for a single rose each time, watching the register as Mrs. Mole rang it up.

  But they picked the wrong day to rob her. Her husband had left moments before with the week’s cash. Mrs. Mole had less than four dollars in her cash drawer. Paul flew into a rage. He stabbed Mrs. Mole fifteen times in the face and neck, yelling, “Die, bitch, die,” over and over again. Mrs. Mole did not obey. She made her way out of the shop, collapsing in a bank of snow outside. A woman saw the blood, which had slowly trickled down the rise of the bank. She followed the trail and found Mrs. Mole unconscious in the snow.

  That May, after my rape, I arrived back to a congregation that was traumatized, no one more so than Father Breuninger himself. As the warden to the vestry, my mother had been privy to his pain that spring. Paul had been arrested, and though still a minor at seventeen, would be tried as an adult. Father Breuninger had no idea that his son had been drinking a fifth of whiskey a day since the age of fifteen. He knew nothing about the drugs found in Paul’s room and little about his truancy at school. Paul’s insolence Father Breuninger had chalked up to being part of an adolescent stage.

  Because she was warden, and because she trusted him, my mother told Father Breuninger that I’d been raped. He announced it to the church. He did not use the word raped but he said “assaulted brutally in a park near her campus. It was a robbery.” Those words meant only one thing to any old-timer worth her salt. As the story made the rounds, they realized I had no broken bones, how brutal could it be? Oh … that …

  Father Breuninger showed up at the house. I remember the pity in his eyes. Even then, I sensed he thought of his son in the same way he did me: as a child who, on the precipice of adulthood, had lost it all. I knew through my mother that Father Breuninger had trouble holding Paul accountable for the stabbing of Mrs. Mole. He blamed drugs, he blamed the twenty-two-year-old accomplice, he blamed himself. He could not blame Paul.

  My family gathered in our living room, the least-used room of the house. We sat stiffly on the edges of the antique furniture. My mother got Fred—as the adults called Father Breuninger—something to drink, tea. There was small talk. I sat on the blue silk couch, my father’s prized possession, from which all children and dogs were banned. (For Christmas one year I had coaxed a bassett onto the light blue silk by using a biscuit. I then snapped photos of her chowing down and had them framed, presenting them to my father as a gift.)

  Father Breuninger had us stand and hold hands in a circle. He was wearing his black robes and white collar. The silk tassel, from the rope around his waist, swayed for a moment in the air, then stilled. “Let us pray,” he said.

  I was shocked. My family was a family of commentary and intellect and skepticism. This felt like hypocrisy to me. As he prayed, I looked up and around at Mary, my parents, and Father Breuninger. Their heads were bent; their eyes were closed. I refused to close my eyes. We were praying for my soul. I stared at Father Breuninger’s crotch. Thought about what he was under all that black. He was a man. He had a dick like every man did. What right had he, I wondered, to pray for my soul?

  I thought of something else: his son, Paul. As I stood there, I thought of Paul being arrested and Paul having to serve time. I thought of Paul being brought down low, and how good that must feel for Mrs. Mole. Paul was in the wrong. Father Breuninger, who had spent his life praising God, had lost his son, really lost him, more than I ever could be lost. I was in the right. I felt powerful, suddenly, and felt what my family was doing, this act of faith or belief or charity, was dumb. I was angry at them for seeing this charade through. For standing on the rug in the living room—room of special occasions, of holidays and celebrations—and praying for me to a God I wasn’t sure they believed in.

  Eventually Father Breuninger left. I had to hug him. He smelled of aftershave and the mothball smell of the closet at the church where he hung his vestments. He was a clean, well-meaning man. He was in his own crisis but there was no way then, via God, or otherwise, that I could be with him.

  Then the old ladies came. The marvelous, loving, knowing old ladies.

  As each old lady came, she was shuttled into the living room and seated in my parents’ prized winged chair. This chair provided an unparalleled vantage point. From it, the seated person could see the rest of the living room (off to their right would be the blue couch) and into the dining room, where the silver tea set was placed on display. When these ladies visited, they were served tea in my parents’ wedding china, and attended to by my mother as honored and unusual guests.

  Betty Jeitles came first. Betty Jeitles had money. She lived in a beautiful house near Valley Forge, which my mother coveted and by which she drove very quickly, so as not to appear to be coveting it. Betty had a face full of deep Main Line wrinkles. She looked like an exotic breed of dog, sort of a cultivated shar-pei, and she spoke with an aristocratic accent that my mother explained with the words “old money.”

  I wore a nightgown and robe for Mrs. Jeitles. Again, I sat on the blue couch. She gave me a book: Akienfield: Portrait of a Chinese Village. She had remembered that when I was little, I had told the ladies at coffee hour I wanted to be an archaeologist. We passed the brief time of her visit making small talk. My mother helped. She talked about the church and about Fred. Betty listened. Every few sentences she gave a nod or contributed a word or two. I remember her looking over at me on the couch while my mother was talking; how much she wanted to say something and how the word just wasn’t one anyone could say.

  Peggy O’Neil, whom my parents called
an old maid, came next. Peggy was not Main Line money. Hers came from having taught school all her life and being scrupulous with her savings. She lived far off the road in a sweet house that my mother never lingered over. She dyed her hair the darkest black. She specialized, along with Myra, in having seasonal handbags. Bags made out of wicker with watermelons painted on them for spring, or bags made out of beads threaded with rawhide thongs for fall. Her clothes were workaday shifts—madras and seersucker. The materials seemed meant to distract the viewer from analyzing the shape of her body. Now that I’ve been a teacher, I recognize them as a teacher’s clothes.

  If Peggy brought me a gift, I don’t remember it. But Peggy, who was less reserved than Mrs. Jeitles, didn’t need a gift. I even had to remember to call her Miss O’Neil instead of Peggy. She cracked jokes and made me laugh. She talked about being afraid in her house. She told me it was dangerous to be a woman alone. She told me I was special and that I was strong and that I would get over this. She also told me, laughing, but in all seriousness, that it wasn’t such a bad thing to grow up to be an old maid.

  Myra came last.

  I wish I remembered her visit. Or, I should say, I wish I could remember it in the detail of what she wore or how we sat or what she said. But what I remember is suddenly being in the presence of someone who “got it.” Not just knew the facts, but—as near as she could—understood what I felt.

  She sat in the winged chair. Her presence was comfort and succor to me. Ed had not fully recovered from the beating. He never would. He had taken too many blows to the head. He was addled now, confused a lot. Myra was like me: People expected her to be strong. Her outward traits and reputation led them to believe that if it had to happen to any of the old ladies at church, it had happened to the most resilient one. She told me about the three men. She laughed as she repeated how they hadn’t known how feisty a woman her age could be. She was going to testify. They had arrested Joey based on her description. Still, her eyes clouded over when she talked about Ed.