Chapter 32
I stand under the spray of the hot shower for thirty minutes or more, trying to wash it all off.
The whole day. The sensation of his iron grip on my wrist, my neck.
My tumble through the subway car doors. I will never ride the subway again.
Never go to the city again. Never go anywhere.
I’ll take my pictures here or nowhere; possibly nowhere.
I was right to give it up before. And I’ll give up the class, too—along with Paul’s praise and censure.
Why shouldn’t I, anyway? A fucking waste.
Once I’ve toweled off and wrapped myself in a robe, I feel calmer, steadier.
I try to tell myself a new story, a more logical one: The man on the train was just a pervert.
What happened was a fluke. The train car I saw was a different car, the one after mine.
I wipe fog from the bathroom mirror and study my wrist and neck, looking for bruises.
I turn my wrist back and forth, turn my head back and forth, pulling at the skin of my neck, but there’s nothing.
No dark smudges where he touched me. No evidence of what occurred.
This heightens my sense of distance from what happened—as though I’ve drifted over it like a bird.
It happened, but now I’m far away and safe at home.
It doesn’t matter now. Tom will be back from work in two hours, and we’ll have a quiet evening made of dinner and light conversation, dishes and bed.
I look at my camera bag bursting with film rolls on the hall table and feel distant from it, too.
I’m not eager to process the film the way I usually am.
Instead, I’m content to sit quietly in the living room, staring at my animal figurines.
Into this quiet the telephone explodes with its sudden, shrill ring.
Even though I shouldn’t, I glide into the kitchen to answer it. If it’s him, I can call Tom at work. Or just handle it myself. I’m safe; he didn’t get me. He got me, but I got away. I’m out of reach now. Calm spreads through me as I reach for the phone.
“You have such deep regrets about going today, don’t you, Judith? The way I handled you. Marked you, even if you can’t see it. I can see it from here. You’re covered in cuts and bruises, from here,” he says in a soft, confiding voice.
“Shut up,” I gasp, as the day comes hurtling back into focus: the cool, dry skin of the man’s hands, his breath on my hair, the pressure on my neck and wrist. I clench the phone instead of hanging it up. I drift down into a crouch to try to ease the pain in my side.
“I mean I see your bruises from here, Judith. I see them right now.” I stand abruptly and look through the kitchen window, scanning the backyard for any sign of him.
“Shut up,” I repeat, though I’m breathless with hurt.
I don’t see him anywhere, but his seeming absence doesn’t comfort me.
I focus on familiar things to steady myself and gain control: the twisted branch of the cherry tree, the shape of the dirt mound that covers Rosie’s bones, slightly flattened now from time and weather.
The man doesn’t speak again for a while, as if he’s obeyed my command to shut up.
The weight of his presence begins to lift and I step back from the window toward the phone’s cradle, determined to hang up, but then he speaks in a low, gentle voice.
“When I walked through your grandmother’s door that day and found you, you were willing. You wanted all of it—the burning, too. Because who would you be today if I hadn’t marked you? Not Judith Stanley, right? Who?”
I scream into the receiver then and slam it down—again and again and again. Then I drop it so it hangs, swinging back and forth, sending its dial tone and then its urgent beeping into the air.