“But I didn’t encourage you, not even when you called. Do you remember that? Your little voice coming out of the answering machine. I stood there, didn’t let myself do anything.”
He starts to cry then, as though on cue, bloodshot eyes filling with tears.
“Wasn’t I careful?” he asks. “Always checking you were ok?”
“Yes,” I say, “you were careful.”
“I wrestled with it. You have no idea how much. But you were so sure of yourself. You knew what you wanted. Do you remember? You asked me to kiss you. I tried to make sure you really wanted it. You’d get annoyed with me, but still I made sure.”
Tears run down his cheeks, disappear into his beard, and I try to steady myself through the softening that comes from seeing him cry.
“You said yes,” he says.
I nod. “I know I did.”
“Then when did I rape you? Tell me when I did that. Because I’ve been—” He sucks in a shaky breath, rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I’ve been trying and I can’t understand . . .”
He follows me down onto the bed, hides his face against me, wet haggard breaths against my chest until that feeling subsides and another takes over, his mouth moving to my neck, his hands hiking up the skirt of my dress. I let him do what he wants—remove everything, lay me across the bed—even though everywhere he touches hurts. He spreads my legs, buries his face into me, and there are tears in my eyes, on my cheeks. It’s my birthday in two days. I’ll be twenty-two. Seven years of my life defined by this. When I look back, I won’t see anything else.
In the middle of it, I hear the building door open and two sets of footsteps clomp up the stairs. There’s Bridget’s laugh rising up the stairwell, the sound of a stumble. “Are you ok?” a boy asks as the apartment door opens. “Do I have to carry you?”
“I’m so drunk,” Bridget says. Her laughter fills the living room. “I’m drunk, I’m drunk, I’m drunk!”
There’s the clang of keys hitting the floor, the boy following her into her bedroom, a door slamming shut. I try to hold on to the sound of her laugh, but she turns on her music so loud that even if I screamed, they wouldn’t hear.
As Strane works at me, part of me leaves the bedroom and wanders into the kitchen, where the cup he drank from lies tipped over in the sink. The faucet drips; the refrigerator hums. The kitten pads in from the living room, wanting to be held. Standing by the window, the broken-off part of me takes the kitten in her arms, gazes down at the quiet street below. It’s started to storm, a streetlight’s orange glow illuminating the sheets of rain, and the broken-off part of me watches it fall, humming softly to herself to block out the sounds coming from the bedroom. Every so often, she holds her breath and listens to check if it’s still happening. When she hears the metal scrape of the bed frame, the slap of skin on skin, she holds the kitten closer, turns back to the rain.
In the morning Strane goes down to the bagel shop for coffees. I sit up in bed, holding my steaming cup and staring off into middle distance, while he recounts in detail everything that happened at the Browick event—parents, alumni, faculty, drinking wine and eating hors d’oeuvres in the auditorium. He noticed Henry glaring at him but thought nothing of it until he went to take a piss and found Henry waiting in the hallway afterward, like a drunk in a bar looking for a fight.
“He told me we have a student in common,” Strane says. “Then he said your name. He said he knew I was harassing you and shoved me against the wall. Said he knew what I did to you. Called me a rapist.” After saying the word, he presses his lips together, takes a deep breath.
I bring the coffee to my lips and try to imagine Henry so out of control.
“You really should set things straight with him,” he says.
“I will.”
“Because if he told his wife—”
“I know,” I say. “I’ll tell him the truth.”
He nods, takes a sip from his coffee. “I should also tell you that I know about that blog you’ve been keeping.”
I blink, at first not understanding. He says he saw it on my computer. I look around my room and don’t see it anywhere. It’s still out on the coffee table. Did he get up in the night? No, he explains. It was a couple years ago. He’s known about it for years.
“I know how driven you’ve always been toward confession,” he says. “And it seemed a harmless way for you to satisfy that need. I used to check it every once in a while, just to make sure you weren’t using my name, but truthfully, I’d forgotten about it until recently. I should have told you to take it down when that nonsense started back in December with the harassment complaint.”
I shake my head. “I can’t believe you knew and never said anything.”
He mistakes my disbelief for an apology. “It’s all right,” he says. “I’m not angry.” But he wants me to get rid of it. “I think that’s a reasonable request.”
When the coffees are gone, I follow him into the living room, feeling out of my body, out of my mind. Bridget’s door is still closed; it’s early enough that she won’t be up for hours. Strane points to the kitten curled up on the sofa. “Where’d that come from?”
“The dumpster in the alley.”
“Ah.” He zips his coat, shoves his hands in his pockets. “You know, to be fair, you probably touched a nerve you weren’t intending to with that professor. I imagine, on some level, his reaction was about his own marriage. Some unresolved issues there.”
“What do you mean?”
“Penelope was his student. College, not high school, but still. She’s only a few years older than you and he’s—what, pushing forty? I think she said they got together when she was nineteen. If I’d been more on my toes, I would have pointed out the hypocrisy. It probably would’ve shut him up.”
Maybe if he hadn’t just told me that he’d known about the blog for years, or if I didn’t feel so sickened and bruised from the night before, hearing this would shock me. But now, I’m so exhausted, I lean against the wall and laugh. I laugh so hard, it’s hard to breathe. Of course she was his student. Of course.
Strane watches me with his eyebrows cocked. “Is that funny?”
I shake my head. Through my laughs, I say, “No, it’s not funny at all.”
I follow him down the stairwell to the building door and, before he steps outside, ask if he’s still mad at me—for calling him a rapist, for running my mouth. I expect a gentle tongue click, a kiss on the forehead. Of course I’m not. Instead he thinks for a moment and then says, “More sad than angry.”
“Why sad?”
“Well,” he says, “because you’ve changed.”
I put my palm against the door. “I haven’t changed.”
“Sure you have. You’ve outgrown me.”
“That’s not true.”
“Vanessa.” He takes my face in his hands. “We’ve got to end this. At least for a while. Ok? This isn’t good for either of us.”
I’m so stunned, I just stand there, let him hold my face.