Lucky

  Tess and Hayden were both in attendance. So were the department heads. Bly was a big-name poet and the room was packed. I sat in the middle of the small auditorium. My friend Chris had graduated the year before and so now I attended readings solo. Twenty minutes into the reading, I felt sharp, stabbing pains in my abdomen. I looked at my digital watch. It was 8:56 P.M.

  I considered toughing it out, but the pains were too intense. My stomach was cramping. At the end of a poem, I stood and noisily made my way between people's knees and the back of the row of seats in front of me.

  Out in the hall, I called Marc. He had a car. I told him to meet me at Bird Library. I was too sick to take the bus home. I had used the same phone two years before to call my parents, but I had scrupulously avoided it since then. That night I failed to honor superstition.

  Marc had to take a shower. "Twenty minutes at most," he said.

  "I'll be the one cleaving to my abdomen," I tried to joke. "Try to hurry."

  As I waited outside Bird, I began to tense up even more. Something was wrong but I had no idea what it was.

  Finally, after forty minutes, Marc pulled up. We drove off campus and up Euclid, where many students lived in run-down wooden houses.

  We turned the corner onto my street. Up at the end of the block, where Lila and I lived, were five black-and-whites with their lights going. The policemen were out running around, talking to people.

  I knew.

  "Oh my God, oh my God," I started saying. "Let me out, let me out."

  Marc was flustered. "Let me park, let me go with you."

  "No, let me out, now."

  He drove into a driveway and I got out. I didn't wait for him. All the lights were on in our building. Our front door was open. I walked right in.

  Two uniformed policemen stopped me in the small foyer.

  "This is a crime scene. You'll have to leave."

  "I live here," I said. "Is it Lila? What happened? Please."

  Involuntarily I started peeling off the layers of my clothing and letting them fall on the floor. My winter hat, my scarf, my gloves, jacket, and down vest. I was frantic.

  In our living room, there were more cops. One of the uniforms made a gesture to someone there and began, "She says she lives--"

  "Alice?" the plainclothes detective said.

  I recognized him instantly.

  "Sergeant Clapper?"

  When I said his name, the uniforms ceased restraining me.

  "It's Detective Clapper now," he said, smiling. "What are you doing here?"

  "I live here," I said. "Where's Lila?"

  His face fell. "I'm so sorry," he said.

  I noticed the policemen looking at me differently than before. Marc entered the apartment. I told the uniforms he was my boyfriend.

  "Alice Sebold?" one of them asked.

  I turned back to Clapper. "Was she raped?"

  "Yes," he said. On the bed in the back bedroom."

  "That's my room," I said. "Is she okay?"

  "The female detective's in with her now. We need to have her examined at the hospital. You can drive with us in the car. She didn't struggle."

  I asked to see her. Clapper said, "Of course," and went back to inform Lila I was there.

  I stood there, feeling the eyes of the uniformed policemen on me. They knew my case because it had been one of the few convictions in a rape case in recent years. In their world, my case was famous. It had brought Clapper up in the ranks. Whoever worked on the case had benefited from it.

  "I can't believe it. I can't. This can't be happening," I said over and over again to Marc. I don't remember what he said back to me. I was beginning to rally myself, to assume a control I didn't have.

  "She doesn't want to see you," Clapper said, upon his return. "She's afraid she'll break down if she does. She'll be out in a few minutes and you can ride with them to the hospital."

  I was hurt, but I understood.

  I waited. I told Marc that I would be in for the long haul--the hospital, the police--and that he should go home and make his place nice. The three of us would sleep there, Lila and I in the bed, he in his living room.

  The police made small talk. I started pacing. One of the uniforms gathered my clothes from the foyer and brought them over to the couch near me.

  Then Lila was coming out of the room. She was shaken. Her hair was disheveled but I saw no marks on her face. A short, dark-haired woman in uniform trailed her.

  She was wearing my robe, but it was belted with another tie. Her eyes were bottomless--lost. I couldn't have reached her then no matter how hard I tried.

  "I'm so sorry," I said. "You'll be okay. You'll make it. I did," I said.

  We stood there looking at each other, both of us crying.

  "Now we really are clones," I said.

  The female detective moved us along.

  "Lila says you have another roommate."

  "Oh my God, Pat," I said. I had forgotten him until that moment.

  "Do you know where he is?"

  "The library."

  "Can someone get to him?"

  "I want to go with Lila."

  "Then leave him some kind of note; we don't want him touching things. And he should stay somewhere else tonight until we can secure that back window."

  "At first, I thought it was Pat playing a prank on me," Lila said. "I came back from the bathroom and the door to my bedroom was farther out from the wall than usual, like someone was standing behind it. So I pushed it in and he pushed it out and back and forth until I got tired of it and said, 'Come on, Pat,' and walked into the room. He threw me on the bed."

  "We've got an exact time," the female detective said. "She looked up at her digital clock. It was eight fifty-six P.M."

  "When I felt sick," I said.

  "What?" The female detective looked mystified.

  I didn't know where to stand. I was not the victim. I was the victim's friend. The detective took Lila out to the car, and I hurriedly went into Pat's room.

  I did something nasty. I used the speculum to weigh down the note. I left it on his pillow because the rest of the room was a mess. I could be certain he'd see it there: "Pat, Lila was raped. She is physically okay. Call Marc. You need to find somewhere else to stay tonight. I'm sorry to have to tell you this way."

  I left the light on in his room and looked at it. I decided not to care about Pat--I couldn't. He would be okay, bounce back. It was Lila now.

  We drove to the hospital in silence. I sat in the back with Lila and we held hands.

  "It's horrible," she said at one point. "I feel filthy. All I want to do is shower."

  I squeezed her hand.

  "I know," I said.

  We had to wait what seemed an interminable time in the emergency room. It was crowded and because, I've always assumed, she had not struggled and had no open wounds, could sit upright and talk coherently, she was made to wait. Repeatedly, I went up to the woman in admissions and asked her why we had to wait. I sat with Lila and helped her fill out the insurance form. There had been none of this for me. I had been wheeled directly in, from ambulance gurney to examination room.

  Finally they called her. We walked down the hall and found the room. The examination was long and plodding, and several times we had to wait while the man examining her was called into various other rooms. I held her hand as Mary Alice had held mine. Tears rolled down my face. Toward the end Lila said, "I want you to leave." She asked for the female detective. I went and got her and sat in the waiting room, shaking.

  My nightmares had never let Lila be raped. She and Mary Alice were safe. Lila was my clone, my friend, my sister. She had heard every part of my story and still loved me. She was the rest of the world--the pure half--but now she was with me. While I waited, I became convinced that I could have prevented Lila's rape. By coming home faster, by knowing instinctively that something was wrong, by never having asked her to be my friend in the first place. It didn't take me long before I thought, and then said, "
It should have been me." I began to worry for Mary Alice.

  I shook, and I wrapped my arms around my shoulders and rocked back and forth in my seat. I felt nauseous. My whole world was turning over; whatever else I'd had or known became eclipsed. There was no chance to escape, I realized; from now on this would be it. My life and the lives of those around me. Rape.

  The female detective came out for me,

  "Alice," she said, "Lila is going with Detective Clapper down to the police station. She asked me to go home with you and get some clothes for her."

  I didn't know how to act. Even then I was beginning to realize that Lila didn't know what to do with me around. There was Alice her friend, and Alice the successful rape victim. She needed one without the other, but that was impossible.

  The detective drove me home and I unlocked the door. Pat still had yet to come home. The light I had left on had been turned off by someone else. I plunged in. I remembered how Tree and Diane had brought me bad clothes--patched jeans and no underwear. I wanted Lila to have comfort. I pulled down a large duffel from her closet and opened her drawers. I packed all her underwear, all her flannel gowns, slippers, socks, sweatpants, and loose shirts. I threw in a book and from her bed a stuffed animal and a pillow.

  I needed things too. I knew already that Lila and I would never sleep in that house again. I walked to the back, where my room was. The door was closed. I asked the detective if I could go in.

  I said a little prayer to no one and turned the knob. The room was cold because of the open window through which he'd climbed. I switched on the light near the door.

  My bed was stripped. I walked toward it. In the center was a small fresh bloodstain. Nearby were other, smaller ones, like tears.

  She had come out of the shower, wrapped in a towel, gone to her bedroom, and played the door game, thinking it was Pat. Then the rapist had shoved her onto the bed on her stomach. She saw the clock. In the darkness, she saw him only for a few seconds. He blindfolded her with the tie from my robe, and then, turning her around on the bed, made her hold her hands in front of her chest in the prayer position while he tied her wrists with bungee cords and a cat leash we kept in the front closet. This meant he had gone through the house while she was in the shower. He knew no one else was home. He made her get to her feet and walk back to my bedroom, where he made her lie down on my bed.

  That was where he'd raped her. He asked her where I was during the attack. Somehow knew my name. Somehow knew Pat would not be back until much later. At one point, he asked about the tip money I had on my dresser and took that. She did not struggle. She did as he said.

  He had her put on my robe and left her there, blindfolded.

  She started screaming, but the boys in the apartment above us were playing loud music. No one heard her or did anything if they had. She had to go through the front of the apartment, outside, and up the stairs, banging on their door until they answered. They held beers in their hands. They were smiling, expecting more friends. She asked them to untie her. They did. And to call the police.

  Lila would tell me all of this in the coming weeks. Now I tried hard not to look at the blood, at my bed, at the possessions he had gone through. My clothes in the closet spilled onto the floor. Photos on my desk. My poems. I grabbed a flannel gown to match Lila's, and some clothes off the floor. I wanted to take my old Royal typewriter, but this would seem silly and selfish to everyone but me. I looked at it and looked at the bed.

  As I was turning to leave, a gust of wind from the window slammed the door shut. All the hope I had had of living a normal life had gone out of me.

  The detective and I drove to the Public Safety Building. We took the elevator up to the third floor and exited into the familiar hallway outside the bulletproof glass that looked onto the police dispatcher's station. The dispatcher pressed the button for the security door and we entered.

  "Through there," a policeman said to the detective.

  We walked toward the back.

  The photographer was holding up his camera. Lila stood against a wall holding a number in front of her chest. Hers, like mine, was written in bold Magic Marker on the back of an SPD envelope.

  "Alice," the photographer said upon seeing me.

  I placed the duffel with our clothes in it on an empty desk.

  "Remember me?" he asked. "I took evidence in your case in eighty-one."

  "Hello," I said.

  Lila remained against the wall. Two other policemen came forward.

  "Wow," one said. "It's great to meet you. We don't get the opportunity to see many victims after a conviction. Do you feel good about your case?"

  I wanted to give these men a response. They deserved it. They usually saw only the side of a rape case that Lila, forgotten against the wall, represented: fresh or weary victims.

  "Yes," I said, aware that what was happening was all wrong, stunned by my sudden celebrity. "You guys were great. I couldn't have asked for better. But I'm here for Lila."

  They realized the strangeness of it too. But what wasn't strange?

  They posed her and while they did, they talked to me.

  "She doesn't really have any marks. I remember you were real messed up. Madison worked you over good."

  "What about the wrists?" I said. "He tied her up. I wasn't tied up."

  "But he had a knife, right?" a policeman asked, anxious to review the details of my case.

  The photographer went up to Lila. "Yeah," he said. "Hold up your wrist in front. There, like that."

  Lila did as instructed. Turned to the side. Held her wrists up. Meanwhile the uniforms surrounded me and asked me questions, shook my hand, smiled.

  Then it was time to make phone calls. They set Lila and me up at a desk in the opposite corner. I sat on the top of it, and Lila sat in front of me in a chair. She told me the number of her parents and I dialed.

  It was late now, but her father was still up.

  "Mr. Rinehart," I said, "this is Alice, Lila's roommate. I'm going to put Lila on now."

  I handed her the phone.

  "Daddy," she began. She was crying. She got it out and then handed the phone back to me.

  "I can't believe this is happening," he said.

  "She'll be okay, Mr. Rinehart," I said, trying to reassure him. "It happened to me and I'm okay."

  Mr. Rinehart knew about my case. Lila had shared it with her family.

  "But you're not my daughter," he said. "I'll kill the son of a bitch."

  I should have been prepared for this kind of anger at her attacker, but instead I felt it to be directed at me. I gave him Marc's phone number. Told him we would be sleeping there that night, and that he should call with his flight arrival time. Marc had a car, I said; we'd meet him at the airport.

  Lila went with the police to fill out an affidavit. It was late now, and I sat on the metal desktop and thought about my parents. My mother was just now back working again after having a two-year increase in panic attacks. Now I would ruin that. Logic was beginning to leave, draining away from me. With blame so heavy and nowhere to place it but the fleeing back of a rapist Lila could barely describe, I took it on.

  I dialed.

  My mother answered the phone. Late-night calls meant only one thing to her. She waited at home for the news of my death.

  "Mom," I said, "this is Alice."

  My father picked up.

  "Hi, Dad," I said. "First, I need you to know that I'm okay."

  "Oh, God," my mother said, anticipating me.

  "There's no way to say it but flat out. Lila was raped."

  Oh, Jesus."

  They asked a lot of questions. In answer I said, "I'm fine." "On my bed." "We don't know yet." "Inside the interrogation room." "No weapon." "Shut up, I don't want to hear that."

  This last one was a response to what they would say over and over again. "Thank God it wasn't you."

  I called Marc.

  "We saw him," he said.

  "What?"

  "Pat called a
nd I went over and we drove around looking for him."

  "That's crazy!"

  "We didn't know what else to do," Marc said. "We both want to kill the bastard. Pat can't see straight he's so mad."

  "How is he?"

  "Messed up. I dropped him off at a friend's house afterward. He wanted to stay with us."

  I listened to Marc's story. They both had a few shots, then drove up and down the nearby streets in the dark. Marc kept a crowbar in the car. Pat would scan the lawns and houses as Marc slowed down and then sped up. Finally, they heard yelling, and then saw a man running out from between two houses. He ran onto the sidewalk and then, seeing Marc's car, turned quickly and headed back down the block, slowing his pace to a walk. Marc and Pat followed him. I can only imagine what they said and what they were planning.

  "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.