The Maid's Diary(67)

He goes into the bathroom and stills as he sees a line of white powder next to a razor blade and a straw.

Shit.

Cocaine? Did he do drugs? He’s got to get out of here. Fast.

Quickly, he rinses his face, and he tries to squint at his reflection in the mirror. He looks like death. He remembers something. Mia straddling him. He tries to recall who else was in the room, when they might have arrived, but he can’t. He just can’t. He thinks of his sticky penis, his burning anal area. He doesn’t even want to begin to imagine what happened down there. Jon’s eyes fill with hot tears again. With a burning shame. Humiliation. Horror. Raw fear.

He braces his hands flat on the bathroom counter and stares at his face in the mirror.

I don’t know what you did to me, Mia Reiter, but I swear, if I find you, I will kill you. I will fucking kill you.





THE PHOTOGRAPHER


It’s 1:44 a.m. when the photographer sees Jon Rittenberg stumbling out of the Yaletown condo tower. The photographer powers down his driver’s-side window, focuses his lens, shoots several frames as his subject staggers into the road.

The photographer tenses. For a moment he’s confronted with the possibility Jon Rittenberg is going to step in front of a vehicle and get himself killed. This changes everything. He reaches for the door handle, but just as he begins to swing open his door, a yellow cab pulls up, and Jon weaves toward it.

The photographer’s pulse steadies. He watches for a moment, then raises his camera and shoots as Jon Rittenberg climbs into the back of the cab. Rittenberg must have phoned for a ride. The photographer starts his engine and follows the cab as it heads down the city street. There’s not much traffic at this hour, so the photographer is careful to stay back. He imagines the cab will be directed to the parking garage beneath the TerraWest building, where Jon Rittenberg has parked his Audi. However, the man is in no state to drive. This again causes concern. The photographer does not want to be responsible for Rittenberg driving impaired, nor does he want to be forced to engage with his subject.

Once more the photographer relaxes as the cab goes in a different direction. But it’s not the route to Rose Cottage. Jon Rittenberg is not going home.

Where in the hell is he going?

A few blocks farther on, it dawns on the photographer.

Oh, you sneaky boy . . .

The cab turns into the Vancouver General Hospital complex and pulls up in front of the ER admissions area.

Jon exits the cab and stumbles toward the emergency entrance. He enters the glass doors.

The photographer pulls into a nearby parking space. He kills the engine, checks the time, then watches. From his vantage point he can see through the big windows into the well-lit ER waiting area. He sees Jon Rittenberg make his way to a plastic chair. Rittenberg takes a seat. He hunches forward, dropping his head into his hands. But no one comes to admit him. The photographer begins to wonder if Rittenberg has checked in at all.

Within twenty minutes a small white BMW wheels into the ER turnabout. The BMW stops abruptly in front of the ER entrance. A woman gets out of the driver’s seat. She is heavily pregnant. She rushes in through the sliding doors.

Daisy Rittenberg.

Jon has called his wife to fetch him.

Tricky bastard.

The photographer watches through the windows as Daisy Rittenberg catches sight of her husband, momentarily stalls, then rushes toward him. Rittenberg comes to his feet and hugs his wife. She holds on to him for a long while, stroking his back, then his face. She seems to be sobbing. Her husband places his hand on her tummy. He asks her something. She nods and wipes her eyes. Then she hooks her arm through her husband’s and helps him toward her waiting BMW.





THE MAID’S DIARY

You won’t remember exactly what happened because of the spiked alcohol. You won’t be able to completely forget, either. You’ll spend the next day, the day after, the following weeks, months, years, decades trying to do both. Remember and forget. You both want to know and don’t. And every bit of memory you do manage to pull out of the horror of that night, you’ll also doubt. Because everyone else who was there tells a different story. They say it’s your fault. You’re a liar. You’re a drunk and a whore and you’re being opportunistic and vindictive. You’re unwell in the head. Because it’s just not possible that what you say happened did happen—how could good boys do something like this?

Sometimes, years later, while going about your ordinary business, thinking you’re okay and that you’ve left it all behind, a random scent, a snatch of music, a certain color, will slash a broken shard of memory through your brain. You’ll stop dead in your tracks, feel confused as all your neural circuits waken fight-or-flight hormones into your body—the same neurochemicals that were associated with that night, because as neuroscience will tell you, what fires together, wires together. So while your mind won’t hold the whole picture, you realize your body does. Your body knows. But your body is not communicating properly with your brain in a way that will give you a narrative around that trauma, something you can understand. And you need that narrative in order to become whole again. In desperation you reach for a bottle of wine, or pills, or you doggedly escape into some other addictive behavior, whether it’s long-distance running, or kickboxing, or dieting, or excelling at work, or dangerous snooping, or hiding behind masks and makeup and theatrical roles, becoming an Anonymous Girl. All of it helps you hide from the Monster inside. And when that takes its toll, you try something else. But always, you are running from that faceless Monster. That dark place. And you know what? You can’t run. Because it’s inside of you. The Monster is you.