Before I Do(72)

After Hillary had left for the theater that evening, the doorbell to his flat rang. Audrey answered it to find Benedict, his hair and clothes disheveled, his face full of shadows.

“I molested you?” he asked in bewilderment.

“How did you know I was here?” she said, every muscle in her body going rigid.

“How many friends do you have?”

“I don’t think you should be here,” she said, trying to shut the door, but he jammed his foot between the door and the frame.

“When exactly did I molest you? I’d love to know.”

Her cheeks burned. She read in his face a man who felt genuinely wronged. “I didn’t use that word, I . . . you were inappropriate—”

“When?” He shook his head in complete disbelief. “Are you confused, insane, or just making this up to be spiteful? I had to look you in the eye, because I genuinely needed to know which it was.” Audrey tried to shut the door again, but he was too strong, and he pushed his way through into the hallway. “I didn’t think even you could stoop so low, to make up these lies, just to get your mother’s attention.”

He closed the door behind him and then turned back to look at her. Her heart pumped with blood and fear.

“Girls like you are a disgrace. You see perversion where there is none, you distort and tangle innocent things. What is the world coming to, when a man cannot even compliment a woman’s body without being perceived as some kind of monster?” He threw his hands in the air. “You need serious psychiatric help, you know that? I knew you were delusional, with your aspirations of mathematical grandeur, but I didn’t know you were certifiably deranged.”

“Mathematical grandeur?” Audrey echoed weakly, and he turned on her with a new ferocity in his eyes.

“How many more unfinished courses do you expect your mother to pay for?” He paused, a sneer on his thick pink lips. “I know your tutor is happy to take your mother’s money, but he’s already warned her that you haven’t a hope of getting the grade you need in this exam.” He lowered his face to hers and she felt the spittle on her cheek as he talked. “Vivien has indulged your every whim. It’s lucky your father’s not here to witness what a talentless, deceitful waste of space his daughter turned out to be.”

She knew he was trying to hurt her, that it wasn’t necessarily true, but the words cut into her like a hot knife. Her body physically reacted, folding into itself, and the air started ringing, as though her ears were trying to block out his words. As she cowered, she closed her eyes, and only when there was silence did she dare open them again. She saw Benedict leaning against the opposite wall, his fury spent. When he spoke again, his voice was more measured.

“I love her, you know, I really love her.” He sighed. “But you win, she’s called it off.”

He stood looking at her for a moment, and then his voice shifted from mournful back to angry. “I hope one day you love someone, maybe even plan to marry them, and someone comes along and takes it from you. Quod severis metes—‘As you sow, so shall you reap.’?”

“Just leave me alone,” she cried. “Please, just leave me alone.”

And finally, he did.



* * *





When Audrey returned to her mother’s house, she found all the light had left Vivien. She had shadows beneath both eyes, and her hair looked greasy and limp. One of her neighbors, Garth, was there, sitting with Vivien in the kitchen. Audrey wondered, cruelly, if her mother had ever navigated a crisis without calling on a man for help.

“I’m going to head off,” said Garth, standing up and giving Vivien a hug. “I’m here if you need me.”

Once Garth had gone, Vivien said, “We’ll both need to go and stay at the club. I am giving him a few days to move his work out of the studio.”

“Can we talk about what happened? What Benedict—” Audrey started weakly. Maybe it wasn’t too late to clarify the ambiguity she felt.

“I never want to hear that man’s name again,” Vivien said.

“Okay, but I just—”

“It’s done. We don’t need to talk about it any further.”

Audrey stayed silent. She saw the misery in her mother’s eyes, and it crushed her to know she was the person who had caused it. She had taken every man her mother had ever loved away from her.

Over the next few days, she watched Vivien retreat into herself, getting quieter, paler, thinner. She noticed her mother could hardly look her in the eye. That day in the gallery played out over and over in her mind, especially at night. The more she thought about it, the more she doubted herself. She found herself wishing Benedict had grabbed her, that he’d done something indisputable. The feeling that she might have been wrong, that she had overreacted, was almost unbearable.

When the morning of the math exam came, she hadn’t slept for two nights in a row. She was so wired, she nearly got herself run over getting to the exam venue. As she sat at the narrow wooden desk, looking around at the other students, her palms began to sweat. When the proctor told them to begin, she turned over the exam paper, and her eyes swam as she flicked through the pages. She couldn’t see one question that she could answer. Her hands began to shake as she reached for her bottle of water on the desk, hoping it might combat the growing wave of nausea threatening to envelop her. She closed her eyes and just tried to breathe.