"Pat was scared," Marc said.
"It might not have been him," I said. "Did you ever think of that?"
"But they say criminals sometimes stick around," Marc countered. "Besides the yelling and then the way he acted."
"You were following him," I said. "Marc, you can't do anything-that's the deal. Beating someone up doesn't help anyone."
"Well, he turned around and charged the car."
"What?"
"He just came at us, yelling and screaming. I almost shit my pants."
"Did you get a good look at him?"
"Yeah," he said. "I think so. It had to be him. He stood in the headlights yelling at us."
By the time Lila and I were driven to Marc's apartment on the other side of campus, I was too overwhelmed for further talk. I wanted to keep Lila safe from knowing about Marc and Pat's actions. I could understand it, but I didn't have much patience with it anymore. Violence only begat violence. Couldn't they see it left all the real work to the women? The comforting and the near impossible task of acceptance.
Inside Marc's bedroom Lila and I changed into our flannel gowns. I turned my back while she changed and I promised I would guard the door.
"Don't let Marc in."
"I won't," I said.
She got into bed.
"I'll be right back. I'll sleep on the outside edge, so you'll be safe."
"What about the windows?" she asked.
"Marc has bolts on them. He grew up in the city, remember?"
"Did you ever ask Craig to fix that back window?" Her back was to me when she asked this.
I felt the question, and its attendant accusation, like a knife at the base of my spine. Craig was our landlord. I had gone upstairs to his apartment two weeks before to ask him to fix the lock on my window.
"Yes," I said. "He never did."
I slipped out of the room and consulted with Marc. The only bathroom was through the bedroom. I wanted all details taken care of, down to this: If Marc had to urinate in the middle of the night, I told him to use the sink in his kitchen.
Back in the bedroom I slipped into bed.
"Can I rub your back?" I asked.
Lila was tucked into a ball with her back facing me. "I guess so."
I did.
"Stop," she said. "I just want to sleep. I want to wake up and have it be over."
"Can I hold you?" I asked.
"No," she said. "I know you want to take care of me, but you can't. I don't want to be touched. Not by you, not by anybody."
"I'll stay awake until you fall asleep."
"Do what you want, Alice," she said.
The next morning Marc knocked and then brought us tea. Mr. Rinehart had called with his flight number. I promised Lila I would get all of her stuff out of the apartment ASAE She had a list of things she wanted her father and me to pack for the flight home. I called Steve Sherman. I needed a place to store my stuff. Lila had a friend who would take hers. Moving and packing: Her stuff was something I could take control of. I could serve her that way.
I stood at the same gate where Detective John Murphy had waited and watched for me. I had already met Lila's father once, on a visit to her house that summer. He was a huge, hulking man. As he approached me, I could see him begin to cry. His eyes were already red and swollen. He came up, put down his bags, and I held him as he wept.
But I felt like an alien in his presence. I knew the landscape, or so everyone imagined. I had been raped and through a trial and been in the papers. Everyone else was just an amateur. Pat, the Rineharts-their lives had not prepared them for this.
Mr. Rinehart was not kind to me. Eventually he said things to my mother and me about how they would handle their own. He told my mother that his daughter was nothing like me, and that they didn't need my advice or her counsel. Lila, he said, needed to be left alone.
But at first, on that day, he cried and I held him. I knew, more than he ever could, what his daughter had gone through and how impossible it was for him to do anything to fix it. In that moment, before the blame and separation set in, he was broken. My mistake was in not seeing how lost I had become. I behaved as I thought I should: like a pro.
At Marc's, Lila stood when she saw her father. They hugged and I shut the door to the bedroom. I went to stand as far away as I could to give them their privacy. In the tunnel that was Marc's attic kitchen, I smoked one of Marc's cigarettes. I counted, packing all our possessions in my head and distributing them to the homes of various friends. I thought a million different thoughts in every moment. When a spoon slipped in the sink, I jumped.
That night Mr. Rinehart took us out for dinner at the Red Lobster. Marc, myself, Pat, and Lila. It was all-you-could-eat shrimp night and he kept urging us on. Pat did his best and so did Marc, who preferred Szechwan noodles and snow peas. Neither Pat nor Marc were macho in the traditional sense; conversation stalled repeatedly. Mr. Rinehart's eyes were swollen and bloodshot. I don't remember what I said. I was uncomfortable. I could feel how much Lila wanted to leave. I didn't want to give her over to her parents. I thought of Mary Alice French-braiding my hair the morning of my own rape. I had sensed it almost from the start at the airport-there were going to be reasons put forth by people, by her parents, perhaps, that would prevent me from helping. I was to be banished. I had the disease, it was catching. I knew this, but I kept clinging. Clinging so hard, wanting to be with Lila in this shared thing so desperately, that my presence was bound to suffocate her.
We drove them to the airport. I don't remember saying good-bye to her. I was already thinking of the move out, of saving what was left to me.
I moved all our possessions, Lila's and mine, out of our apartment within twenty-four hours. I did it alone. Marc had classes. I called Robert Daly, a student who had a truck, and arranged for him to pick the stuff up after I had boxed it. I gave him my furniture-whatever he wanted he could take, I said. Pat was dragging his heels.
No one seemed to understand my urgency. In the midst of packing that day, I was in the kitchen and I knocked the table with my hip. A small, handmade bunny mug that my mother had given me after the trial fell on the floor and broke. I looked at it and cried, but then stopped. There was no time for that. I would not allow myself to be attached to things. It was too dangerous.
I had cleared my bedroom out first, in the early morning, and now, as Robert was due to arrive before dark, I turned the doorknob for one last scan of my room. I had been thorough. But on the floor near the dresser I found a photo of myself and Steve Sherman that had been taken on the porch of the house over the summer. We were happy in the photo. I looked normal. Then, in the closet, I found a valentine he had given me earlier that year. The photo, the valentine were ruined now-remains of a crime scene.
I had tried to be like everyone else. During my junior year, I had given it a go. But that wasn't the way it was going to be. I could see that now. It seemed I had been born to be haunted by rape, and I began to live that way.
I took the photo and valentine and shut the door of my bedroom for the final time. I drifted into the kitchen, holding them. I heard a noise in the other room. It echoed now that I had emptied the room out.
I jumped.
"Hello?" came a voice.
"Pat?" I walked into the other room. He had brought a green trash bag to get some of his clothes.
"Why are you crying?" he said.
I hadn't realized I had been, but as soon as he asked I became aware of the dampness on my cheeks.
"Aren't I allowed to cry?" I asked.
"Well, yeah, it's just that… "