Chapter 10 #3
“I’ve known him all my life,” Angela said quietly.
There were no more children’s voices in the distance.
She had closed the door to the room where she was sitting.
“Our parents were best friends, my mother and John still are. They thought that John is a hero and Helen was a saint. And she was. I have never known a more wonderful woman. She was like my aunt. But he isn’t what they think he is.
When I was eighteen, the summer Gabby and I graduated from high school, I was staying at their house in Southampton.
Helen and my mom went somewhere, shopping I think.
I was in the kitchen baking cookies with Gabby, and she ran to my house to get something.
Her father came into the kitchen and asked what I was doing, and I said I was making cookies, you could smell them.
He leaned over to taste the cookie dough, and he pressed me hard against the counter with his full weight, and he kissed me.
A hard, deep kiss. I was wearing a denim skirt and a T-shirt.
He squeezed my breast, and he reached under my skirt and into my underpants with his hand and touched me.
I was trying to push him off me when Gabby came back and she screamed at him when she saw him.
We were alone in the house with him, and he looked at me and said that if I ever told my parents he would tell them I tried to seduce him, and they’d believe him and not me.
And he was probably right. He asked if I understood.
I was crying and Gabby was screaming at him and calling him names, and he whispered to me that I was a little whore and he would get me one day.
I never told my parents, and I was never alone with him again.
Gabby was always with me, and I think she hated him from that day on.
I was traumatized by it. Until then, he had been like a father to me, someone I really trusted and loved.
He was like our family. I gave him a wide berth from then on.
I went to USC and Gabby went to Stanford.
We were together every weekend. And we graduated at the same time, two days apart.
“Our parents came out from New York together. My graduation was first, and we were all going up to San Francisco afterward for Gabby’s.
My parents were giving a lunch for me at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
The graduation ceremony was crazy, and some idiot sprayed champagne all over me when I took off my cap and gown, and I was soaked.
We were already late for lunch, so everyone went to the hotel with my parents and Gabby’s mom.
Her dad offered to drive me to my house off campus so I could change my dress and wouldn’t make them any later.
Gabby asked if I’d be okay with her dad driving me, but he’d never tried anything again and I was always careful around him, and I figured I was a grown woman, I wasn’t a dopey kid anymore, and I could take care of myself.
I didn’t even think about it. I’d had four years of college, lived far from home, had a house with roommates off campus.
In my mind, I was a grown-up, and I didn’t think he’d try anything.
We were in a hurry, I was late. I ran in and grabbed another dress out of my closet, took off my wet dress and underwear, and put dry underwear on, and all of a sudden I turned around and he was there right behind me.
“He was waiting in the car when I left him and he’d told me to hurry.
I was in my bra and underpants in my room when he grabbed me.
I was shocked when I saw him, too shocked to move for a minute.
He hit me hard across the face, grabbed me with both hands, and pushed me down on the bed.
He tore my underpants off and held me down with both hands and raped me, as simple as that.
I was screaming and crying but there was no one to hear me.
He just kept on raping me, and he hit me a few more times and told me to stop screaming.
I bled all over the bed and didn’t have my period, but he was incredibly rough, and he’s very strong.
He’s a big man. My nose was bleeding and my lip was swollen from where he hit me.
I couldn’t even stand up when he stopped and I couldn’t stop crying.
He pushed me into a cold shower to clean me up, and he said he’d kill me if I told anyone.
“I looked a mess when we got to the hotel for lunch. My hair was wet, my lip was swollen, I could hardly walk, and I threw up in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel. He was kind of holding me up when we got to lunch. He told my parents that he’d realized I was drunk when I fell down the stairs and bumped my lip, and he’d done his best to clean me up.
I had a bruise on my breast, but no one could see it.
My parents believed him, and they were furious with me.
“Helen was really sweet to me at lunch. And Gabby knew right away. She took me to the hospital that night, but there was nothing to do. He didn’t break anything.
They called the police at the hospital, but I refused to tell them who did it.
I think it pretty much ended Gabby’s relationship with her dad.
She hates him, because of that and a lot of other reasons.
“He wasn’t nice to Helen, but my parents don’t believe that either.
He used to scream at her and call her names and tell her she was stupid.
I didn’t have sex with anyone for a year after that.
I told Aaron, the man I’m married to. We got married, and I’m okay.
Except for him, you’re the first person I’ve ever told this to, and if you write about it, I don’t want my name on it.
Gabby always said he’d pay for it one day, and maybe now he will.
I don’t want to punish him or make a big fuss about it.
I never saw him again until Helen’s funeral.
I never spoke to him. I just don’t want to ever see him again.
He’s a terrible person, and who knows who else he’s done it to.
He’s a predator.” After what Angela had told her, Gabby’s responses seemed even more understandable.
Angela and Charlotte were both crying when her story ended.
“I don’t know what to say. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me.”
“Gabby texted me today that I should tell you about it. It affected me for a long time, but I’m fine now.”
“There are so many women this happens to,” Charlotte said to her, with the deepest compassion.
“Men like him should go to prison, but their victims pay a high price when they accuse them. Too high. Angela, I am truly deeply sorry. And I will use this in the most judicious way, so that no part of it is recognizable, but people should know what kind of man he is.”
“He covers it well. I’m on the board of a free therapy program for women who’ve been raped,” Angela said.
“Thank you for telling me,” Charlotte said in a respectful, subdued voice.
“Gabby was right. I’m glad I did. It’s time.”
Charlotte was feeling shaken when they ended the call.
She sent a text message to Gabby that said only, “Thank you. I spoke to Angela. My heart is with you both.” She didn’t order dinner.
She knew she couldn’t eat, thinking of the violence Angela had endured, and the damage done to her for a lifetime.
Charlotte flew back to New York in the morning, still weighed down by Angela’s story. She called Lillith the next day and reached her this time. Lillith sounded bright and cheerful, until she realized why Charlotte was calling and remembered what John had said.
“I’m sorry, I can’t talk to you,” she said, “but I can tell you that John Williams is a wonderful person, an incredible man, and he doesn’t deserve the abuse that’s being heaped on him.
” Charlotte tried to ask a few questions, but Lillith was too frightened to answer.
John had made himself clear, and she got off the phone as quickly as she could.
Her call to Isabelle was equally futile, as she knew it would be.
The moment Charlotte identified herself, Isabelle said firmly that she refused to be interviewed, she had no comment except that John Williams was an extraordinary man who was being publicly maligned unjustly by people who were jealous of him and wished him harm.
And with that, she hung up, and the line went dead.
Charlotte could tell that Isabelle firmly believed that.
Ever since Angela’s story, Charlotte had had an entirely different opinion of John Williams. She was dreading her meeting with him.
It was no surprise that he wanted no personal details in the article.
He was afraid of his own daughter and her best friend, and who knew how many others he had raped.
She felt rage rise up in her every time she thought about him.
By the day that her appointment with John was to take place, she was ready. She already had her notes for the article she was going to write. She couldn’t wait. He was everything people thought of him and worse. Ruthless was far too kind a word.