Brass Ring (41 page)

“Please let me, Claire.”

She glanced out the window. Susan had her hand on the car door. “All right,” she said.

Randy walked past her and out the door, and from the window she watched him approach the car. She was surprised that Susan didn’t gun the engine and drive off. Randy squatted down on the curb, and for several minutes he and Susan spoke through the open window while Claire watched, still trembling from her daughter’s tirade.

When he came into the apartment again, he wrapped his arms around her wordlessly and held her close.

“What did you say to her?” she asked.

Randy spoke softly against her hair. “I told her she was right,” he said.

Claire leaned back to look at him. “You what?”

“I told her she was brave to lay all that on you. That it was important for you to hear it.”

For a moment Claire said nothing, trying to absorb his words. “And what did she say?” she asked finally.

He laughed. “She told me to go to hell.”

SEATTLE

“WE’RE UP SHIT’S CREEK
, Vanessa.” Terri Roos didn’t even say hello, and Vanessa wished she hadn’t bothered to pick up the phone. She lowered herself into the chair behind her desk.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Do you remember what I told you about the Senate Victims’ Assistance Committee? That they’re having a hearing on Zed’s Aid to Adult Survivors Bill next month?” Terri’s tone was condescending, as if the matter were of such small import to Vanessa that she would have forgotten.

“Yes,” Vanessa said. “I remember.”

“Well, we’ve been trying to find witnesses willing to testify to the impact that childhood abuse had on them as teenagers.”

“Right. And?”

“And the committee has this attorney screening the witnesses. We finally dug up five women willing to testify, but only one of them passed the screening. And one is not enough. Zed said we can forget about getting our funding this year unless we find more witnesses. He was very apologetic but said he hasn’t been able to give the whole adolescent issue the focus it deserves. Even though he’s going to be cleared on this molestation charge, it’s sapped his time and energy.” There was anger in Terri’s voice. “He said we should—”

“What makes you so sure he’s going to be cleared?” Vanessa interrupted her.

“Do you have any doubt?”

“The case isn’t closed yet.” She hadn’t given up hope that the jury would see through the girl’s anxiety to the facts. There had been inconsistencies in her story, true, and she had cried uncontrollably once she finally took the stand. She’d retracted some statements while embellishing others, but she hadn’t retracted the main thrust of her accusations. Somehow, the jury would discern the truth.

“Well, anyhow,” Terri continued, “Zed said that we should try again next year. That way we can—”

“My AMC program will be dead by then. Yours too.”

“I know, but right now we have exactly one witness to testify to the need, and she’s going to be lost in the shuffle.”

“Why were the other witnesses screened out?”

“Not credible enough. Not professional enough in their presentation. Their problems during adolescence weren’t compelling enough—the attorney’s word, not mine,” Terri added quickly. “A couple of them said they had repressed the memories of their abuse until adulthood, and that went over like a lead balloon. The lawyer said we’d be opening up a whole debate on repressed memories, that we’re not going to be able to get a bunch of male politicians to buy into that right now.”

A jagged flash of light appeared in the corner of Vanessa’s vision. She reached in her drawer for the migraine pills, but the bottle was empty. She’d have to call in a prescription for herself. She was popping medication left and right these days. Head. Stomach. What if she got pregnant while she was taking all this stuff? She leaned her elbows on the desk and rubbed her temples.

“And now,” Terri said, “the one witness we do have is starting to chicken out. She doesn’t want to be up there alone. So Zed says if we spend this year trying to find decent witnesses and put together a good case for funding, we might stand a chance next year.”

“We can’t just give up, though.”

Terri was silent. “Excuse me, Vanessa,” she said after a moment, “but I really have to take issue with your use of the word ‘we’ here. I know you’ve got your reasons, whatever they may be, but you’ve really let the rest of the network do the lion’s share on this. I’m only calling you in case, by some miracle, you happen to have a few sterling witnesses tucked away in your back pocket. And also, I thought you might appreciate an update on what’s going on. You’ve been completely out of the loop on this.”

“I know.” Vanessa pressed the palm of her hand hard against her forehead. “I know, Terri, and I’m sorry.”

SHE HADN’T SEEN JANE
Dietz in a year, not since her last annual examination. Sitting in Jane’s waiting room, it was hard to believe it had been that long. Jane felt more like an old family friend than her gynecologist. Vanessa had seen her for the first time at Sara Gray’s insistence when she was twenty years old. “You need to take better care of your health,” Sara had said. Even then Jane had seemed old, with her gray hair and out-of-date horn-rimmed glasses. Now she was in her mid-sixties. Sometime over the years Vanessa had stopped calling her “Dr. Dietz” and started calling her “Jane.” Whether that switch had occurred spontaneously or through invitation, she couldn’t recall. It didn’t matter. She felt a bond with Jane she had never experienced with another physician outside of her colleagues. She supposed that was why she had made the appointment today. Yes, it was time for her annual checkup, but it was more than that: She needed a dose of Jane Dietz.

Jane spotted her in the waiting room and nodded to her with a smile. From that brief exchange, Jane must have intuited that Vanessa needed to talk, because she had her receptionist usher her into her office rather than one of the examining rooms.

“It’s good to see you, Jane.” Vanessa sat down in one of the three leather chairs and looked across the desk at the doctor. What an anachronism this little woman was, with her steel gray hair pulled back into a bun and her harsh navy blue suit beneath the white coat. This year she was wearing wide tortoiseshell eyeglass frames.

“Good to see you, too,” Jane said. “And I heard through the grapevine that you and Brian finally got married.”

Vanessa smiled. “We did.”

“I am enormously pleased, dear. Enormously.”

“And,” Vanessa felt her smile widen, “I’m hoping to get pregnant.”

Jane’s look of surprise was quickly replaced by a grin, out of place and endearing on her pale and wrinkled face. “That’s good news, Vanessa. I have to say I never thought I’d see you pregnant, although I know you always wanted a baby.”

“I do. And I want a healthy baby. I’m a little concerned about my age being a factor, and—”

Jane shook her head. “It shouldn’t be. Not if you’re healthy and we take the proper precautions to minimize the risks.”

“Well, I’ve also been under a lot of stress lately, and the migraines are back.” Her words sounded almost apologetic. Confessional. “And my GI tract’s been…overactive. I’ve been medicating myself, but I need to figure out what I can take safely, since I may get pregnant while I’m taking it.”

Jane drew in a long breath and sat back in her chair, lips pursed. “And the nightmares?” she asked. “Are they back, too?”

Jane had never known the source of Vanessa’s nightmares, only that she had them. She
did
know, of course, about Anna. Or at least that Anna had once existed. It had been Jane who’d persuaded Vanessa to go into therapy, who had given her Marianne’s name.

“The nightmares are back,” Vanessa admitted, “but certainly not like before.”

“Are you seeing Marianne Sellers again?”

“No. I don’t think it’s necessary. Really, Jane, it’s nothing like before. This is just some…I don’t know, residue from the old stuff. It’ll pass.”

Jane pursed her lips again. “All right,” she said. “Let’s do some blood work, and we’ll talk about medication for your head and your gut. We’ll get you ready to be a mom. But I urge you, Vanessa”—she leaned forward on her desk, her small dark eyes riveting behind the thick glasses—“you’ve come to see me because you want a healthy start on this new part of your life. A clean, fresh start. I’ve known you a long time. I know you don’t get migraines unless something is seriously disturbing you. And I know it’s not just work. You’ve dealt with insane amounts of stress on your job without so much as a tension headache, let alone a migraine. It’s the old stuff, as you call it. You don’t want to be carrying this load of stress around while you’re trying to start a family, do you?”

Vanessa shook her head. Something about Jane made her feel like a child in desperate need of mothering. A child who welcomed a stern but caring hand.

“Please, Vanessa. Do what you need to do to clean that slate before you have a baby. For the baby’s sake, if not for yours and Brian’s.”

“All right,” she said, although she didn’t know if she had the reserve it would take to clean that slate. More hours of talking about the past. Her eyes filled. She couldn’t go through that again. The thought brought fresh, stabbing pain to her head.

“Vanessa?”

She looked at Jane through the blur of tears. “Yes?”

“I know you’re hearing your biological clock ticking away, dear, but it will wait,” Jane said. “It will simply have to wait.”

That night, Vanessa called Marianne’s office, only to learn that her former therapist was on a monthlong trip to England. Vanessa had to smile. Marianne had talked about taking that trip, always in the abstract, always with a wistful look in her eyes.
Good for her
, she thought. But lousy timing.

Marianne’s answering service gave her the name and number of the therapist covering for her. Vanessa wrote the information down on a notepad, sloppily, almost illegibly. She knew she would never use it.

MCLEAN

WHEN SHE AWAKENED, CLAIRE
felt hot and groggy and undeniably aroused. She vaguely remembered stretching out with Randy on his carefully made bed, talking over the events of the day. They had done that a dozen times before—lay on his bed to talk after a day of work—and so it hadn’t occurred to her that it might be a mistake to do it again. It had been barely five o’clock then, and they were still in their work clothes. But they must have fallen asleep, and now the room was dark and the air felt thick with desire.

Randy’s face was close to hers, his lips light against her cheek. His hand slowly kneaded the flannel of her shirt, just below her breasts. Through the fog of half-sleep, Claire moved closer to him, running her hand across his chest. He kissed her, and she felt the stirring in her body, a stirring borne of deprivation and a longing to please him. As he slowly worked the buttons on her shirt, she made a decision, not only to allow what was about to occur, but to embrace it.

She lay quite still as he undressed her, letting her need build with the eager pressure of his fingers against her skin. When she lay naked and bathed in moonglow on his bed, he straddled her, still clothed himself, and ran his hands in long, light waves over the hills and valleys of her body.

“Am I taking advantage of you?” he asked.

She rolled her head from side to side, not bothering to open her eyes. Then she pulled him toward her, and he balanced himself above her as she unbuttoned his shirt, unzipped his pants. He stood up to finish undressing, and she watched him, mesmerized by the way his erection stretched taut the fabric of his shorts. He was hard as steel already, and she hadn’t even touched him.

He disappeared into the bathroom for a few minutes while she lifted the comforter and slipped under the sheets. When he returned, he was unwrapping a condom, and she couldn’t help but recall the only time she and Jon had ever made love using one. They’d been teenagers then, young and green, and that scrap of latex had nearly driven Jon to tears of frustration as he tried to make it function with his temperamental erection. Randy, though, was having no such problem. The moon caught him fully in its light as he stood next to the bed, rolling the sheath over his penis. His thighs were thick and dark and muscular, and by the time he was in the bed again, kissing her, touching her, rubbing against her, Claire could think of nothing other than having him inside her.

He thrust into her slowly at first, but quickly picked up his pace, and she struggled vainly to capture the familiar sensations, the rising and falling and fullness she usually experienced with lovemaking. She was barely aware of her hand slipping between their bodies, her fingertips finding their place. The building up, the electric tension, was instantaneous as he thrust against the back of her fingers. She heard the ragged edge to her breathing. The light on the ceiling began to blur before she squeezed her eyes shut to focus on the fire as it spread through her body.

Randy came shortly after she did, although she was not at first certain that he had. He was so quiet, so contained. He lay still above her, breathing hard. After a moment, he rolled onto his side and slipped an arm around her shoulders. Claire felt sudden tears in the back of her throat, regret she didn’t want to feel.

“How are you?” Randy asked.

“Okay.” She was not sure how she was.

“Just okay?” he asked.

“Give me time,” she said. “I don’t know how I feel about what just happened.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “I feel great about it, though.” He kissed her lightly, then caught her hand and lifted it to his lips. When he spoke again, his voice was tentative. “Do you need to have your hand between us when we’re making love?” he asked.

“Oh.” Should she feel embarrassed? “I did that all the time with Jon. It was the only way I could have an orgasm during intercourse.”

“But…I’m not disabled.” He was speaking with great caution.

“It’s a habit,” she said. “Did it bother you?”

He shook his head. “It feels sort of…unnatural, but if that’s what works for you, it’s all right with me.”