An Act of Love Read online

  Emily shrugged. “I don’t want to go home for Christmas.”

  “Tell us why.”

  In a tiny voice, Emily said, “You say.”

  “It’s for you to say,” Dr. Travis insisted gently. “Trust me. You’ll feel better if you say it.”

  Emily’s hands found each other. The sharp pain of her nails in her skin helped shroud the deeper, more powerful pain burning inside her every moment, spurting acid through her body with each heartbeat. “It’s embarrassing.” When no one spoke, she took a deep breath and said in a hurried monotone, “I don’t want to go home for Christmas because my stepbrother raped me.” Her skin went hot all over and tears began to prickle her eyes. “I don’t ever want to go back to the farm again.” Looking up at the circle of faces around her, she rushed on, “If I weren’t so incompetent, I’d just run away somewhere. Get a job, start a new life. But I don’t know how I’d make any money. I’ve thought about it, and you need a high school diploma even to work in a fast food joint—”

  “Wait a minute!” Keith said. “Hang on. Did you say your stepbrother raped you?”

  Emily nodded.

  “That’s brutal,” Keith said. “What happened?”

  Emily covered her face with her hands. “I don’t like talking about it.”

  “How old’s your stepbrother?” Arnold asked.

  “Seventeen. Two years older than me.”

  “Is he cute?” Cynthia asked.

  “Oh, please!” Keith snapped. “Who cares. He raped her.”

  “Well, I just thought maybe …” Cynthia let her voice trail off.

  “Go on,” Dr. Travis prompted Cynthia.

  “Well … that if Emily liked him, maybe it wasn’t so bad.”

  The words were like slaps. When she could get her breath, Emily said, “It was bad. It was terrible. I didn’t want to have sex with him. He forced me. He was mean to me. He held me down. He said hideous things to me. He squeezed the breath out of my throat with his arm. He called me a stupid bitch. I hid in the woods all day and tried to hide in the barn at night and he hunted me as if I were some kind of nasty game he was playing, and he did it again. He called me a stupid sack of shit.” She was shaking again. “He told me it was his farm. And it is his farm. And I have nowhere to go.”

  “What about Hedden?” Keith asked.

  “Bruce’s at Hedden, too. And he’s probably telling everyone that I’m cheap. Easy. ‘I did her, you can do her, too.’ And the thing is,” Emily’s voice rose; she was almost laughing, “now I know I’ll never ever want to have sex again in my life. I just feel … ruined. Like this guy Jorge, he’s at Hedden, he’s really nice, and I liked him, and he liked me, but when he tried to kiss me, I went berserk, ’cause I got so scared, it was like all of a sudden I thought I was going to die, having a guy so big and strong with his hands on me … I can’t stand it! It’s too scary! So I’ll never be able to … have any children. Everything’s gone! Everything in my whole life is gone.”

  Cynthia said, “I bet your parents freaked.”

  “I didn’t tell them. It would have been horrible. My mom … I thought I could just pretend it didn’t happen. I mean, Bruce’s going away to college next year. If I could stay away from him … but then …”

  “But man, why try to off yourself?” Arnold asked. “I’d go after him.”

  Emily dug at her hands. “I loved him. He must hate me to do that to me. He must have hated me all these years when I thought … I mean, he’s my brother.” Sobbing overtook her.

  “All rapes rob the victim of their sense of having control over her life,” Dr. Travis said. “Many victims react to being raped with feelings of self-disgust, feelings of failure. Many times the victim turns her anger inward on herself rather than outward toward the rapist. This is what you did, Emily. What you’re still doing. This is why you’re here with us.” She looked at her watch. “All right, group. This is a good time to break for the day. We’ll meet again at four, right?”

  Keith came to stand by Emily. “Want to go to the O.T. room? We’re going to start making some really exquisite Christmas decorations out of old toilet paper rolls.”

  Emily sniffed. “I’m tired. I just want to go to bed and sleep.”

  “Want me to wake you for lunch?”

  “Sure.”

  “Emily,” Dr. Travis said, “let’s go to the nurses’ station and get some bandages and antibiotic ointment for your hands.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The night before Thanksgiving, the wind swooped down from the north like a marauder, setting the branches of all the trees into frenzied swaying, shredding the few remaining leaves and plastering them against the windows and the side of the house, battering the bushes until they bent double. The noise was terrible. Sometimes it seemed to come all in one block like a wrecking ball slamming into the side of the house. Sometimes it divided itself into shrieks and lamentations.

  After listening to the onslaught for an hour or so, Linda rose and slipped barefoot through the dark out of her room, down the hall, and into Owen’s room. He was snoring. He was asleep. He could sleep through this storm, and Linda smiled: he was her good, sane, rational husband, steadfast, reliable, undaunted by the storm. She slipped into his bed, comforted immediately by the warmth and bulk of his body.

  “Mmm?” He didn’t really wake.

  “Sleep,” she answered, snuggling her back to fit against his. At once she felt warm, safe. She slept.

  In the morning, she woke to find herself alone in the bed. The clear light of a sunny day fell through the windows. She dressed and went downstairs. Owen was at the kitchen counter, scooping dog food from a can into Maud’s bowl. Linda stood behind him, wrapped her arms around his warmth, leaned into his back, rubbing her cheek against the soft flannel shirt, inhaling Owen’s scent of soap and heat.

  “Nightmares?” he asked.

  “The storm. I can’t believe you didn’t hear it.”

  They sat with their coffee at the table, across from each other.

  Owen yawned and rubbed his whiskery jaw. “Do you feel like going today?”

  “Not really. But it would be more trouble not to go, don’t you think? We’d have to give them some kind of excuse. And at least it might be a diversion. My mind just keeps going in circles.”

  Owen nodded.

  She went on. “I keep thinking how lucky we’ve been. Until now. Do you think everyone gets an equal amount of good and bad in their lives?”

  “I don’t know about that. But I’m sure no one ever gets only good.” He rose and set a pan on the stove. “Oatmeal?”

  “No, thanks.” She wanted to continue her train of thought. “For one thing, I’ve always thought how fortunate we were not to have either Michelle or Simon causing problems. You know the way Carla’s husband does, trying to set their daughter against her, playing games with their schedules, showering the child with gifts.”

  “Was it Doug who said when his mother gave him a Dalmatian puppy for his birthday, his father went out and bought him a Dalmatian puppy that would live at his house?”

  “Right. That sort of thing. So our kids didn’t get pulled in two different directions. On the other hand, they each have one parent who has totally rejected them, and that’s got to hurt.”

  “Are we out of brown sugar? Oh, here it is. I don’t know, Linda, I don’t have much patience with that. It’s gotten to be a national fad, who’s had the worst life. Who has the weirdest kind of misery. You and I have provided Emily and Bruce with a damned good life if you ask me.”

  “I’m not arguing that. I just think that at some level, Emily and Bruce must feel … unwanted.”

  Owen spooned the oatmeal into a bowl and brought it to the table. “Look, they’re both smart, educated, thoughtful kids. They know about life. They know they’ve got a good home, two parents who love them, and that’s a lot more than a lot of other kids have.”

  Linda reached over to dip her finger into the oatmeal. “Mmm. Good.”r />
  “I made enough for two.”

  She rose and got a spoon, then ended up just staring at it. “Owen, I can’t stop thinking about Emily.”

  “I know.”

  “I keep wondering if Bruce—”

  “Look. There’s nothing we can do until Monday. We won’t know everything until then.”

  Linda bit her lip. It was always this way with them, in small crises as well as large. Linda fretted; Owen didn’t. When something was wrong with the children, her life was interrupted to the very fibers of her nerves; his was not. When they were waiting to receive letters of acceptance or rejection from the various private schools, Linda had said to Owen, “My blood pressure rises every time I open our post office box.”

  “How can you tell when your blood pressure is rising?” Owen had asked.

  Linda had snapped, “I could kill you for that.”

  Now she rose. “I’d better get busy. I’ve promised to bring two pies.”

  “Pumpkin?”

  “And deep-dish blackberry.” Taking an apron from a hook on the pantry door she tied it around her, then dug into the cupboard for the rolling pin.

  “Great.” Owen rose and put the bowl in the sink. “Look, Linda, I’ve been thinking. I’d rather we didn’t tell anyone about all this. Not just yet.”

  She carried the canister of flour to the table and set it down. “Fine. Except, what will we say when they ask where the kids are?”

  Owen shrugged. “They’re both spending Thanksgiving vacation with friends.”

  Linda nodded. “All right.”

  “And I don’t think you should tell Janet, either.”

  Surprised, Linda studied her husband. Since before she’d even met Owen, the Friday after Thanksgiving was the day that Linda met her best friend, Janet, for a day of serious Christmas shopping.

  “I’m not certain I’ll even go shopping,” Linda said. “All that seems so trivial now …”

  “You should go. It would help you pass the time. And we’ve got to have Christmas, somehow, this year.”

  “I know. Still. But Owen, about Janet … I really would like to talk this over with her. She’s known Emily since she was two years old. She knows how much I love you, how much I love Bruce. She might be a good sounding board for me.”

  “She would find it impossible to be impartial,” Owen said.

  “Impartial,” Linda repeated, letting the implications of the word loose inside her mind. She lifted down her beloved English mixing bowl and held it against her stomach as she thought. “All right. Then I’ll tell her about Emily’s suicide attempt, and the fact that someone raped her, but that we don’t know who.”

  Now Owen’s voice was tense. “Look, Linda. If you tell Janet that Emily says she was raped, one way or the other you’ll let it out that Emily has accused Bruce. And Janet will tell her husband, and one of her children will overhear, and it will get back to Hedden and Bruce will be found guilty before he’s even had a chance to speak.”

  “Owen, Janet loves Bruce. She—”

  “Please. Even Dr. Travis admitted she’s not one hundred percent certain. Let’s keep this in the family for now.”

  Her heart cramped at the sight of anguish in Owen’s eyes. “Yes. All right.” She had been thinking of Emily, of herself. But she would do anything to shelter Owen from pain, and if it would make him feel better for her to keep quiet about Emily and Bruce, at least for the next few days, that was little enough to do. She would postpone the shopping expedition. “We’ll keep it in the family.”

  And we are still a family, she thought.

  And so they went through their day as if it were any other normal day. Linda baked and Owen worked outdoors, picking up fallen branches and twigs and stacking them in a pile for kindling, raking leaves, turning the horses into the outer pasture. In the late afternoon just as Owen came into the house, Linda said, “I’m going to call Emily. Want to get on the extension?”

  Owen collapsed into a chair and began to unlace his workboots. “I’d better get in the shower or we’ll be late. Tell her hello for me.”

  Linda always talked longer to Emily on the phone than Owen did; she talked longer to Bruce as well. It was simply the way they were, the way it always had been, and it implied nothing, Linda told herself, that Owen didn’t want to speak to Emily now. It didn’t mean he was angry with her, was avoiding her …

  “Hi, darling,” she said when her daughter’s voice came on the line. “How are you?”

  “Okay.”

  “Did the hospital serve a Thanksgiving feast today?”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it a feast.”

  “Well, did you have turkey? Stuffing? Pumpkin pie?”

  “Sure.”

  And did you enjoy it? Linda wanted to ask. Are you eating, are you sleeping, are you taking care of yourself?

  “Well, we’re getting ready to go to the Burtons’. It’s at their house this year. We’re going to tell them you’re with friends today, by the way. Just … because it’s too complicated otherwise.”

  “Fine.”

  “I made a pumpkin pie. And a deep-dish blackberry.” When Emily didn’t reply, Linda went on, her voice cajoling, encouraging. “We had a letter from Grandmother. She has a new suitor. His name is Oswald.” Linda waited to hear Emily’s laugh. Usually Emily loved hearing about her grandmother’s life in a retirement home in Florida, besieged by suitors with antiquated names and old-fashioned dating customs. But what was Linda thinking? Probably any talk of men and women wasn’t appealing to Emily right now. “Owen says hello. We had a terrible storm last night. Amazing wind. Did you have it there?”

  “I guess.”

  “Well, what are you doing today? Anything special?”

  “Watching videos. One’s on right now.”

  “Oh, what is it?”

  “Some chainsaw murder thing.”

  “That doesn’t sound very … appropriate. Do the staff know you’re watching it?”

  “They’re watching it with us.”

  “Oh. That’s okay then. Well, I guess I should let you get back to the movie.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Emily … darling. I love you, babe.”

  “Yeah. I love you, too, Mom.”

  Linda sat staring at the phone for a moment after they disconnected. On the one hand, Emily’s voice was so spiritless, drained of her usual ebullience. On the other hand, she seemed rational, composed. She was watching a video.

  She was safe. For now, for today, Emily was safe. That was enough to be grateful for.

  Linda thought of her daughter. She could envision her clearly, a glowing ember of life encircled by the hospital staff, enclosed by the hospital walls, encompassed by highways and roads that Linda could travel on to reach her, surrounded by webs of telephone lines so they could communicate at a moment’s notice. So many layers of protection. With that image fixed clearly in her mind, like a garnet set within elaborate holdings of gold, like an amulet Linda could look at whenever she needed to, Linda knew she could continue with her day.

  Still, she felt frivolous as she dressed in a velvet skirt, high-cuffed suede boots, and a long loose sweater. She felt irresponsible. How could she care what she wore, what she looked like, when her daughter was in the psychiatric ward of a hospital? Then Owen appeared in the doorway, handsome in his tweed jacket and corduroys but still strained-looking through the eyes, and her heart went out to him.

  “You look beautiful,” he told her, and she understood that he saw the anxiety in her face, too, and was trying to cheer her.

  “Hungry?” she asked.

  “Not really,” he admitted.

  She took a bracing breath. “You will be once we’re at the Burtons’ and you smell the turkey.”

  And so they gathered up the pies and drove off to share the Thanksgiving meal with their friends.

  The village of Ebradour nestled at a curve in the mountains just about fifteen miles west and a little bit north of Northampton. It
served a population of around seven thousand scattered residents, three-fourths of them Massachusetts natives whose families had made their living in the area for generations in farming, logging, trucking, and millwork. The newcomers were an educated, solitude-hungry elite who had bought up deserted farm houses and renovated old hunting cabins in order to live in a tranquillity and natural beauty that was disappearing from larger towns.

  The town had a post office, a redbrick church the McFarlands occasionally attended, two cafes, a grocery store, an insurance agency–real estate office, and an old-fashioned five-and-dime store with a pharmacy. The Ryans’ convenience store and gas station was just on the McFarlands’ side of Ebradour.

  For years, the McFarlands had shared the holiday with the same group of friends, rotating houses each year, everyone bringing something. This Thanksgiving the meal was held at the Burtons’, a retired couple in their early seventies. Both were professors emeriti, Irene of English literature, Bud of anthropology. Their home was full of books and journals and reviews and correspondence; their conversation about worldly rather than personal matters.

  The Ryans were there, bringing vegetables from Rosie’s garden. Riley Ryan and Owen had known each other from childhood, although they hadn’t been buddies because Owen was ten years older. But after Riley grew up and married, the difference in their age leveled out. Linda and Rosie had become good friends and Emily loved baby-sitting for one-year-old Sean. Linda knew that Rosie would be enormously concerned about Emily, and she yearned to talk to her. But she wouldn’t, not yet.

  Celeste was at the Thanksgiving dinner, too. Celeste was always there. Her family’s farm bordered Owen’s, had for decades. As children Owen and Celeste had been intimate, best friends, comrades, remaining loyal through adolescence, nursing each other through the turbulence of early love and then through marriage and divorce.