Browick publishes the results of their internal investigation into the allegations against Strane, using the sort of impenetrable language that seems intended to mask truth: “We conclude that while misconduct of a sexual nature may have occurred, the investigation found no credible evidence of sexual abuse.” They put out an official statement reiterating the school’s commitment to fostering an academically strenuous yet safe and nurturing environment. They will be voluntarily updating the faculty sexual harassment training. Here’s a phone number for any concerned parents. Feel free to call with any questions.
As I read, I imagine Strane in sexual harassment training, irritated he had to sit through it at all—none of it would have touched him—along with the other teachers who saw me, the one who called me Strane’s classroom pet, Ms. Thompson and Mrs. Antonova, who recognized the clues but didn’t protest when those clues were used as evidence of an emotionally troubled girl. I imagine them sitting through the training, nodding in agreement, saying yes, this is so important; we need to be these children’s advocates. But what have they done when faced with situations in which they could actually make a difference? When they heard of the camping trips the history teacher took each year with his students, when faculty advisors brought students into their homes? All of this feels like performance, because I’ve seen how it plays out, how quickly people lift their hands and say, It happens sometimes, or Even if he did do something, it couldn’t have really been that bad, or What could I have done to stop it? The excuses we make for them are outrageous, but they’re nothing compared with the ones we make for ourselves.
I tell Ruby I feel like I’ve moved from grieving Strane to grieving myself. My own death.
“Part of you died along with him,” she says. “That seems normal.”
“No, not part,” I say. “All of me. Everything about me leads back to him. If I cut out the poison, nothing will be left.”
She says she can’t let me say that about myself when it’s so obviously untrue. “I’ll bet if I met you when you were five years old,” she says, “you would have been a complex person even then. Do you remember yourself at five?” I shake my head. “What about eight?” she asks. “Ten?”
“I don’t think I remember anything about myself that happened before him.” I let out a laugh, rub my face with both hands. “That’s so depressing.”
“It is,” Ruby agrees. “But those years aren’t lost. They’ve just been neglected for a while. You can recover yourself.”
“Like find my inner child? Oh god. Kill me.”
“Roll your eyes if you need to, but it’s worth doing. What’s the alternative?”
I shrug. “Continue to stumble through life feeling like an empty husk of a person, drink myself into oblivion, give up.”
“Sure,” she says. “You could do that, but I don’t think that’s where this is going to end for you.”
I go home for Thanksgiving and Mom’s hair is cut short, ending above her ears. “I know it’s ugly,” she says. “But who am I trying to impress?” She touches her fingers to the nape of her neck, where the hair was shorn with a buzzer.
“It’s not ugly,” I say. “You look great, truly.”
She scoffs, waves her hand at me. She’s not wearing makeup and the bare skin makes her wrinkles seem like part of her face rather than something she’s trying to hide. There’s a shadow of an unwaxed mustache on her upper lip and this suits her, too. She seems relaxed in a way I’ve never seen before. Everything she says preceded by a long pause. The only thing that worries me is her thinness. Hugging her, she feels outright frail.
“Are you eating enough?” I ask.
She seems not to hear me, staring over my shoulder, her hand still resting on the back of her neck. After a moment, she opens the freezer, takes out the blue box of fried chicken.
We eat the chicken and thick slices of grocery store pie, and drink coffee brandy mixed with milk in front of the TV. No holiday movies, nothing heartwarming. We stick to nature documentaries and that British cooking show that she texted me about. While we lie on the couch, I let her wedge her feet under me, and I don’t kick her awake when she starts to snore.
Inside and outside, the house has gone to hell. Mom knows but has stopped apologizing for it. Dust bunnies line the baseboards and laundry spills out from the bathroom, blocking the door. The lawn is dead and brown now, but I know she’s stopped mowing in the summer. She calls it “gone to pasture.” She says it’s good for the bees.
The morning I’m set to drive back down to Portland, we stand in the kitchen, drinking coffee and eating bites of blueberry pie straight out of the tin. She peers out the window, through the snow that’s started to fall. An inch has already piled up on the cars.
“You can stay another night,” she says. “Call out of work, tell them the roads are too bad.”
“I have snow tires. I’ll be ok.”
“When was the last time you took your car in for an oil change?”
“The car’s fine.”
“You need to stay on top of that.”
“Mom.”
She holds up her hands. Ok, ok. I break a piece of crust off the pie and break that into crumbs.
“I think I’m going to get a dog.”
“You don’t have a yard.”
“I’ll take walks.”
“Your apartment’s so small.”
“A dog doesn’t need its own bedroom.”
She takes a bite, pulls the fork between her lips. “You’re like your dad,” she says. “Never happy unless he was covered in dog hair.”
We stare out at the snow.
“I’ve been thinking a lot,” she says.
I don’t move my eyes from the window. “About what?”
“Oh, you know.” She heaves a sigh. “Regrets.”
I let the word hang there. I set my fork in the sink, wipe my mouth. “I should pack my stuff.”
“I’ve been paying attention to the stories,” she says. “About that man.”
My body starts to shake, but for once my brain stays in place. I hear Ruby telling me to count and breathe—long inhales, longer exhales.
“I know you don’t like to talk about it,” she says.
“You’ve never been that eager, either,” I say.
She sinks her fork into the uneven wedge of pie left in the pan. “I know,” she says quietly. “I know I could’ve been better. I should’ve made you feel like you could talk to me.”
“We don’t have to do this,” I say. “Really, it’s ok.”
“Just let me say this.” She closes her eyes, collects her thoughts. She takes a breath. “I hope he suffered.”
“Mom.”
“I hope he’s rotting in hell for what he did to you.”
“He hurt other girls, too.”
Her eyes flash open. “Well, I don’t care about other girls,” she says. “I only care about you. What he did to you.”
I hang my head, suck in my cheeks. What does that mean to her, what he did to me? There’s so much she can’t know: how long it went on, the extent of my lies, the ways I enabled him. But the small part she does understand—that she sat in the Browick headmaster’s office and listened to him call me damaged and troubled and then watched photographic evidence of him and me fall to the floor—is enough for a lifetime of guilt. Our roles reversed, for the first time in my life, I want to tell her to let it go.