My Dark Vanessa(120)
“There’s a reason I haven’t allowed myself to remember all this,” he says. “I can’t let myself lose control again.”
I see him in the classroom, sitting behind his desk. His eyes move across the girls seated around the seminar table. One girl looks up, catches him staring, and smiles.
“We can stop,” I say.
“No,” he says, “that’s the problem. I don’t think I can stop.”
When he moves away from remembering me and begins to talk about the girls in his classes, I follow him. He describes the pale underbellies of their arms when they raise their hands, the tendrils that escape their ponytails, the flush that travels down their necks when he tells them they’re precious and rare. He says it’s unbearable, the way they drip with beauty. He tells me he calls them up to his desk, his hand on their knees. “I pretend they’re you,” he says, and my mouth waters as though a bell’s been rung, signaling a long-buried craving. I roll onto my stomach, shove a pillow between my legs. Keep going, don’t stop.
2017
The week before Thanksgiving, Janine’s article is published, but it isn’t about Strane. One contextual paragraph toward the beginning mentions Taylor and the online harassment she suffered. The rest is about a teacher at a boarding school in New Hampshire who abused girl students throughout his forty-year career. Eight victims are profiled in the article, their real names used. There are photos of them now and back when they were students, scans of their teenage diary entries, the teacher’s love letters. Through the years, he used the same lines on all the girls, the same pet names. You’re the only one who understands me, little one. The headline of the article cites the boarding school’s name—recognizable, prestigious, and guaranteed to generate clicks. It’s hard not to be cynical, to assume that’s what it all came down to.
Browick publishes the results of their internal investigation into the allegations against Strane, using the sort of impenetrable language that seems intended to mask truth: “We conclude that while misconduct of a sexual nature may have occurred, the investigation found no credible evidence of sexual abuse.” They put out an official statement reiterating the school’s commitment to fostering an academically strenuous yet safe and nurturing environment. They will be voluntarily updating the faculty sexual harassment training. Here’s a phone number for any concerned parents. Feel free to call with any questions.
As I read, I imagine Strane in sexual harassment training, irritated he had to sit through it at all—none of it would have touched him—along with the other teachers who saw me, the one who called me Strane’s classroom pet, Ms. Thompson and Mrs. Antonova, who recognized the clues but didn’t protest when those clues were used as evidence of an emotionally troubled girl. I imagine them sitting through the training, nodding in agreement, saying yes, this is so important; we need to be these children’s advocates. But what have they done when faced with situations in which they could actually make a difference? When they heard of the camping trips the history teacher took each year with his students, when faculty advisors brought students into their homes? All of this feels like performance, because I’ve seen how it plays out, how quickly people lift their hands and say, It happens sometimes, or Even if he did do something, it couldn’t have really been that bad, or What could I have done to stop it? The excuses we make for them are outrageous, but they’re nothing compared with the ones we make for ourselves.
I tell Ruby I feel like I’ve moved from grieving Strane to grieving myself. My own death.
“Part of you died along with him,” she says. “That seems normal.”
“No, not part,” I say. “All of me. Everything about me leads back to him. If I cut out the poison, nothing will be left.”
She says she can’t let me say that about myself when it’s so obviously untrue. “I’ll bet if I met you when you were five years old,” she says, “you would have been a complex person even then. Do you remember yourself at five?” I shake my head. “What about eight?” she asks. “Ten?”
“I don’t think I remember anything about myself that happened before him.” I let out a laugh, rub my face with both hands. “That’s so depressing.”
“It is,” Ruby agrees. “But those years aren’t lost. They’ve just been neglected for a while. You can recover yourself.”
“Like find my inner child? Oh god. Kill me.”
“Roll your eyes if you need to, but it’s worth doing. What’s the alternative?”
I shrug. “Continue to stumble through life feeling like an empty husk of a person, drink myself into oblivion, give up.”
“Sure,” she says. “You could do that, but I don’t think that’s where this is going to end for you.”
I go home for Thanksgiving and Mom’s hair is cut short, ending above her ears. “I know it’s ugly,” she says. “But who am I trying to impress?” She touches her fingers to the nape of her neck, where the hair was shorn with a buzzer.
“It’s not ugly,” I say. “You look great, truly.”
She scoffs, waves her hand at me. She’s not wearing makeup and the bare skin makes her wrinkles seem like part of her face rather than something she’s trying to hide. There’s a shadow of an unwaxed mustache on her upper lip and this suits her, too. She seems relaxed in a way I’ve never seen before. Everything she says preceded by a long pause. The only thing that worries me is her thinness. Hugging her, she feels outright frail.