“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.
I don’t move; he exhales a sigh.
“Vanessa, I worry about you,” he says.
On the Friday before spring break, Bridget comes home with a kitten wrapped in a towel. Calico and green-eyed, a flea-dusted belly and crooked tail. “I found her in the alley by the bagel shop dumpster,” Bridget says.
I hold my fingers to the kitten’s nose, let her bite my thumb. “She smells like fish.”
“She had her head in a tub of lox.”
We give the kitten a bath, name her Minou. As the sun sets, we drive to the Wal-Mart in Ellsworth for a litter box and cat food, tucking the kitten into a tote bag Bridget carries over her shoulder because we don’t dare leave her alone. On the drive home, while Minou mews in my lap, my phone starts to ring over and over—Strane.
Bridget laughs when I hit “ignore” for the fourth time in a row. “You’re so mean,” she says. “I almost feel sorry for him.”
The phone buzzes a new voicemail and she gasps in sarcastic shock. We’re so giddy about the kitten, it makes everything seem up for grabs, like we could tease each other about anything and just laugh and laugh.
“You’re not even going to listen?” she says. “It could be an emergency.”
“I promise, it’s not.”
“You don’t know that! You should listen.”
To prove my point, I play it on speaker, expecting a thick-throated plea for me to call him back, upset that he hasn’t heard from me—did I ever get the package he sent? Instead, it’s a wall of garbled sound, wind and static overlaid with his voice, angry: “Vanessa, I’m on my way to your apartment. Answer your fucking phone.” Then a click, voicemail over.
Carefully, Bridget says, “That sounds like an emergency.”
I dial his number and he picks up after half a ring. “Are you home? I’m a half hour away.”
“Yes,” I say. “Or, no. I’m not home right this second. We found a kitten. We had to buy a litter box.”
“You what?”
I shake my head. “Nothing, never mind. Why are you coming here?”
He barks out a laugh. “I think you know why.”
Bridget keeps looking over, eyes darting between me and the road. Illuminated by the dashboard, I see her mouth: Everything ok?
“I don’t know why,” I say. “I have no idea what’s going on. But you can’t just decide to come—”
“Did he already tell you what happened?”
My eyes search the windshield, the tunnel the headlights make along the dark highway. I feel a prick on the back of my neck at how Strane spits out he. “Who?”
Strane laughs again. I can see him, eyes hard, jaw clenched, a bitter anger I’ve seen him direct only at other people. The thought of that anger turned on me feels like soft earth giving way beneath my feet.
“Don’t play dumb,” he says. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
I try to point out that he just said he’s a half hour away, but he’s already hung up, the screen flashing CALL ENDED. Beside me, Bridget asks, “Are you ok?”
“He’s coming to the apartment.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did something happen?”
“I don’t know, Bridget,” I snap. “I’m sure you could hear the whole fucking conversation. He wasn’t exactly generous with details.”
We drive in silence, our easygoing camaraderie now sucked out of the car. From my lap, Minou mews, pitiful little sounds that would enrage only a monster—but that must be what I am, because all I want to do is clamp my hands over the kitten’s tiny face and scream at it, at Bridget, at everyone, to just shut up for a second and let me think.
Bridget says she’ll go out for the night so Strane and I can have the apartment to ourselves. Really, it’s clear she just wants to get away from me and my weird old boyfriend and the fraught cloud that constantly hangs over me. It’s like I heard her say to a guy she brought home a couple weeks ago: Oh, Vanessa is always in crisis mode, the kind of girl who attracts drama.
After she leaves, I sit on the couch, Minou on my knees and my laptop open on the coffee table. Every few minutes I lean forward to refresh, as though an email might appear explaining this all away. When I hear the building door open and heavy steps clomp up the stairs, I push Minou off, grab my phone. He pounds on the apartment door, the kitten disappears behind the couch, and my thumb strokes the keypad, the idea of calling 911 as much of a fantasy as the idea that an email from Henry might arrive in my inbox. Calling wouldn’t solve anything. Asking for help would mean answering the dispatcher’s unanswerable questions, demanding I explain the inexplicable. Who is this man banging on your apartment door? How do you know him? What, exactly, is your relationship to him? I need the whole story, ma’am. My choices: wade through seven years of this swamp and throw myself at the mercy of a skeptical third party who might not even believe me, or open the door and hope it won’t be too bad.
When I let him in, he’s out of breath and hunches over just inside the door, hands braced on his thighs, every inhale a wheeze. I take a step toward him, worried he’s about to drop. He holds up a hand.
“Don’t come near me,” he says.
Righting himself, he throws his coat on the papasan chair, looks around at the dirty towels spilling out from the bathroom doorway, the bowl crusted with mac and cheese on the coffee table. He moves into the kitchen, opening cupboards.
“You don’t have any clean glasses?” he asks. “Not one?”
I point to the stack of plastic cups on the counter and he shoots me a glare—lazy, wasteful girl—and fills one with tap water. I watch him drink, counting the seconds until his anger refuels, but when he empties the cup, he just leans against the counter, deflated.
“You really don’t know why I’m here?” he asks.
I shake my head as his eyes bore into me. I haven’t seen him since Christmas, when he told me about Taylor Birch. Over the months there’s been a change in him, his face somehow altered. I search until I find it: his glasses. They’re frameless now, nearly invisible. A pang hits my heart at the thought of him changing something so integral without telling me.