My Dark Vanessa(86)

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m panicking. I’m not myself.”

“That’s ok,” she says. “It’s an understandable reaction. This is one of your worst fears coming true.”

“I saw her, you know. Outside the hotel.”

“The journalist?”

“No, the other her. Taylor, the one who accused Strane. She’s harassing me, too. I should show up at her work, see how she likes it.”

I describe what I saw last night as dusk began to fall, the woman standing across the street, how she stared up at the hotel, right into the lobby window I was looking out of, staring at me, her blond hair whipping across her face. As I talk, Ruby watches me with a pained expression, like she wants to believe me but can’t.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe I imagined it. That happens sometimes.”

“You imagine things?”

I lift my shoulders. “It’s like my brain superimposes onto strangers the faces I want to see.”

She says that sounds difficult and I shrug again. She asks how often this happens and I say it depends. Months will pass without it happening at all, and then months where it happens every day. It’s the same with the nightmares—they come in waves, brought on by something not always easy to predict. I know to stay away from any books or movies set in a boarding school, but then I’ll be blindsided by something as benign as a reference to maple trees, or the feeling of flannel against my skin.

“I sound like I’m crazy,” I say.

“No, not crazy,” Ruby says. “Traumatized.”

I think about the other things I could tell her, the drinking and smoking to get me through the day, the nights when my apartment feels like a maze so impossible to navigate I end up sleeping on the bathroom floor. I know how easily I could make my most shameful behaviors add up to a diagnosis. I’ve lost entire nights to reading about post-traumatic stress, mentally checking off each symptom, but there’s a strange letdown at the thought of everything inside me being summed up so easily. And what’s next—treatment, medication, moving past it all? That might seem like a happy ending for some, but for me there’s only the edge of this canyon, the churning water below.

“Do you think I should let that journalist write about me?” I ask.

“That’s a choice only you can make.”

“Obviously. And I’ve already made up my mind. There’s no way I’m agreeing to it. I just want to know if you think I should.”

“I think it would cause you severe stress,” Ruby says. “I’d worry the symptoms you described would become even more intense to the point where it would be difficult for you to function.”

“But I’m talking on a moral level. Because isn’t it supposed to be worth all the stress? That’s what people keep saying, that you need to speak out no matter the cost.”

“No,” she says firmly. “That’s wrong. It’s a dangerous amount of pressure to put on someone dealing with trauma.”

“Then why do they keep saying it? Because it’s not just this journalist. It’s every woman who comes forward. But if someone doesn’t want to come forward and tell the world every bad thing that’s happened to her, then she’s what? Weak? Selfish?” I throw up my hand, wave it away. “The whole thing is bullshit. I fucking hate it.”

“You’re angry,” Ruby says. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you truly angry before.”

I blink, breathe through my nose. I say I feel a little defensive, and she asks defensive how.

“I feel backed into a corner,” I say. “Like all of a sudden, not wanting to expose myself means I’m enabling rapists. And I shouldn’t even be part of this conversation at all! I wasn’t abused, not like other women are claiming to have been.”

“Do you understand that someone could have been in a relationship similar to yours and consider it to have been abusive?”

“Sure,” I say. “I’m not brainwashed. I know the reasons why teenagers aren’t supposed to be with middle-aged men.”

“What are the reasons?” she asks.

I roll my eyes and list off: “The power imbalance, teenage brains not being fully developed, whatever. All that crap.”

“Why didn’t those reasons apply to you?”

I give Ruby a sidelong look, letting her know I see where she’s trying to lead me. “Look,” I say, “this is the truth, ok? Strane was good to me. He was careful and kind and good. But obviously not all men are like that. Some are predatory, especially with girls. And when I was young, being with him was still really hard, despite how good he was.”

“Why was it hard?”

“Because the whole world was working against us! We had to lie and hide, and there were things he couldn’t protect me from.”

“Like what?”

“Like when I got kicked out.”

When I say that, Ruby squints, her brow furrows. “Kicked out of what?”

I forgot I hadn’t told her. I know the phrase “kicked out” hits hard and gives the wrong impression. It makes it sound as though I had no agency in the situation, like I was caught doing something bad and then told to pack my bags. But I had a choice. I chose to lie.