The Ghosts of Lovely Women (12 page)

Derek interrupted my thoughts. “Listen to this. It looks like she was working on writing an article. Something she was going to submit to a scholarly journal. It’s about her psych project.”

He paused, looking for the line he wanted, then read out loud: “The students, in discussing the psyches of those around them, have the potential to experience what Aristotle termed “catharsis,” which he meant as both
purgation
and
purification
. There is much that an average teenager wishes to purge in the emotional sense; in addition, he or she longs to start over. In acknowledging the potentially problematic psyches of those around them, they are giving themselves a chance to purify — to start anew.”

“Whoa.”

“Listen: ‘In last year’s projects I saw one student begin to come to terms with a parents’ alcoholism and perpetual denial of the problem; another theorized that her father did not like women and wished that she had been a boy. Her father knew only how to relate to his male children, she contended, and rewarded only “male” behavior in her when she was young — her attempts at sports, her toughness in standing up for herself, her appreciation of violent movies like
The Terminator
. When forced to acknowledge her “feminine” side, such as the pain of menstruation or her occasional tears, he would tell her to “man up.” She fears that her father is masking some perceived defect in himself: homosexuality, perhaps, or an unresolved conflict with his own mother. Perhaps, she posits, he was abused by his mother as a child, and therefore sees the male gender as the only “safe” one.’”

“Wow. Is that Jessica, do you think?”

“Would anyone else be capable of that kind of analysis? Wild as it may be?”

“I don’t know. Boy, Lucia wasn’t kidding — Kathy was playing with fire here.”

“Yes. I think it’s irresponsible… and yet I agree with some of what Kathy writes.” He seemed to be considering something — weighing it. “But this… can you imagine if the students took these theories home? Threw them at their parents, their brothers, their sisters? We aren’t supposed to be arming their ignorance, we’re supposed to be edifying their lives.”

I sighed. “I can’t get a handle on all of this. And Derek — she has my name! What does she think I know? I don’t know anything!”

Derek clamped an arm about me; it hinted at protective custody. “We’re calling the police,” he said.

“You talk like a child… Nora, you’re sick; you’ve got a fever.
I almost think you’re out of your head.”

—Torvald,
A Doll’s House
, Act III

I didn’t attend Jessica’s funeral on Saturday; I was in a meeting with Derek, Detective McCall and a colleague at the police station. They were making us go over it again and again — what link might there be between Kathy, Jessica, me. McCall didn’t blink when we told her we’d broken into the briefcase. “Her brother has been very cooperative,” she said. “I’ll have him sign a release.” She was already reading over the material that had recently interested Derek and me.

“Did Jessica ever speak to you about this project?” she asked.

“No — uh, not that I can think of. I mean, if she mentioned it, I’m sure I didn’t think it was worth storing as a permanent memory.”

“Uh-huh.”

I turned in Jessica’s journal, as well. “I don’t know if this will be of any help, but it’s an old journal she did for me. She never claimed it, and it was sitting in a drawer. It suggests that she was setting up that website while she was still a senior in high school. Her own little project — her way of achieving revenge for women of the past and establishing boundaries for women of the present. Something like that.”

“Do you want it back?” asked McCall. “I can have someone copy it.”

“That would be nice,” I said. I kept thinking there must be something in the journal that I’d missed — something that would explain it all.

When we left the police station, Derek’s eyes studied my face in the sunshine. “You look like you slept all right. No fears about the new lock?”

“Yes and no,” I said. I’d had some trouble falling asleep, and I’d taken the unprecedented act of drinking fairly hard stuff before bed, just to soothe my nerves. In my case that was Kahlua and cream, but it had the desired effect. My mind, after all the talk of Kathy’s horrible death and our minute examination of any link we could see between her break-in and mine, had exhausted me, and I’d dropped into bed and into eventual slumber. “Murder is an exhausting business,” I said.

“Sounds like the title of a Bogart movie.”

“A bad one.”

“The one Warner Brothers doesn’t talk about.”

We moved toward my car. Derek had walked to my house and we’d driven in together, leaving a sad P.G. behind. Now we linked hands so naturally that it took me a moment to realize that we were walking that way — hand in hand. “You have plans for lunch?” he asked.

“Uh— sort of.” My long-lost brother had called that morning and asked if I’d like a free meal. He often did this, and I often wanted free food. “My brother Will invited me. Would you like to join us? It’s just a casual pub lunch.”

He shook his head. “You enjoy the time with your brother. You told me he travels a lot, right? I’ll call you tonight. Maybe we can do dinner.”

“Will you have Charlie?”

“Not on Saturdays, no. Monday and Thursday, yes. And last Tuesday, when you came. Cindy had a study meeting with her class group.”

“Monday and Thursday works out very well with my schedule. I have class on Thursday night.”

“Grad school?”

“Yeah. My current course meets once a week. I’m plugging away — I’ve got about 20 credits toward my M.A.”

“An accomplished woman.”

I took out my keys and unlocked the driver’s door. “An ambitious one, anyway.” I turned to him; he surprised me with a quick, warm kiss, and then walked in his leisurely way around the car to the passenger seat.

I could feel the silliness of the smile on my lips, but I didn’t manage to wipe it off entirely before he got in and saw me. His smile was silly, too.

* * *

Derek told me to park at my building and he would walk home. “That way I can help to check for unsavory characters,” he said. He wasn’t kidding, which depressed me. I was soon glad of his plan, though, because Richard, my stalker ex, was standing outside my building and pressing a buzzer that I presumed was mine.

“Oh, God,” I said.

“What?”

“Remember I mentioned a crazy ex-boyfriend? That’s him. He’s been e-mailing and leaving messages after a year of non-communication. Suddenly he’s resurrected some interest in me, despite the fact that I’ve answered not one of his requests. So I see we’ve stepped it up a level.”

Derek’s face looked hard. We were suddenly in that Bogart movie we’d joked about. “Park behind this car. I want to see what he does.”

We found a spot a good distance from the door, but Derek rolled down his window and I could hear Richard’s authoritative voice carrying toward us on the May breeze: “Hi — I’m a friend of Teddy Thurber’s and her buzzer isn’t working. Could you buzz me in?”

The most horrifying part of that whole scene was that it sounded so natural, so believable as a ploy, that even from our distance we could hear the Bzzzz sound that meant Richard was being admitted into my building. He was going to ascend to the third floor, to my apartment. Would he linger in the hallway and make P.G. bark? Would he break into my apartment? Had he broken in before and ransacked it? Nausea rose in me like a bad memory.

Derek touched my arm. “I would say you can come to my place, but I think it’s better if we go in there and confront this, Teddy. Figure out what the hell this guy wants. You say he’s been persistent, and now it’s escalating. He needs a firm response.”

“Yeah. Except I don’t want to go anywhere near him.”

“Have you considered a restraining order?”

“He hasn’t threatened me. He’s done nothing. He just… keeps pushing.”

“Still a pattern, and ultimately a kind of abuse. If you don’t want the communication, and he insists, that makes it a power struggle.”

“Always about power, isn’t it?

“I suppose.”

I wondered, to my surprise, what Jessica would think of this. Another man trying to assert himself in dominion over another woman. But I did not need to be helpless. I was not Nora Helmer. I lived in a society that supported my rights, my independence. I took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s go,” I said.

Derek offered me his hand again and I held it tightly, angrily. He seemed to understand, because he said, “We’ll make sure this ends here.”

We took the elevator, which allowed us the element of surprise. The stairway door was too near my apartment door, while the elevator was at the other end of the hall. When the doors slid open I peered out to see Richard, in his work attire of suit and tie, trying a key in my lock.

I don’t think I had ever seen a human being do something this audacious before, at least not to me. Dozens of emotions swarmed through me before I summoned up the word “Hey!” and moved toward him.

He looked up, covering his shock with a smooth smile. “Teddy! I was just going to surprise you, but you caught me in the act.”

“Surprise me? You were trying to break into my apartment.”

He went for bashful. “I just wondered if my old key would work. Talk about getting caught red-handed.”

“I have new locks. Good ones.” Then, as something dawned on me, “Did it work for you yesterday?”

He shook his head, his expression blank. “I wasn’t here yesterday. I e-mailed you from Nebraska. I was there for three days on business; it’s a pretty state. Not as boring as people say.” He was assessing Derek over my shoulder, and his eyes narrowed slightly. He looked almost the same, except he was slightly fuller — maybe five pounds heavier, and starting to age around the eyes. He was only thirty-two, but I knew from experience that Richard enjoyed his vices, specifically whiskey and cigarettes.

“Why are you here, Richard?”

“I want to talk to you. Can we go inside?”

“No.” I folded my arms.

“Teddy, don’t be so unfriendly. Haven’t you ever heard the expression ‘For old times’ sake?’”

“Richard, I haven’t seen you in two years. The fact that you have popped up out of nowhere, starting this weird e-mail campaign over the last month—”

“A man can’t express concern for his old girlfriend?” He stepped closer, leaning down to force eye contact. “I was worried about you, Teddy.”

“Don’t be.”

He straightened up then, all business. “Listen, I need to talk to you whether you want to or not. If you can ask your friend here to leave us alone—”

Teachers know a trick about dealing with persistent students. There’s always one who wants to argue:
But why did I get that grade? What can I do to change it? How come you don’t
like me? Why aren’t you fair?
Whatever they can do to seize the conversational advantage and therefore establish power, they do it. The goal is not to engage them, but to provide answers that are short, simple, and, when need be, repetitive. One lecturer at an Assertive Discipline inservice had termed this “The broken record technique.”

I used this now. “I
need
you to leave this building and not return. If you have something of a legal nature to discuss with me, send a letter via your lawyer. We have nothing personal to discuss, Richard.”

“Teddy, I’m not going to stand for this dismissive attitude.”

“I am asking you to leave.”

“What have you got against a few minutes of conversation?”

“I am
telling
you to leave.”

“You must be crazy—”

“Leave.”

With a stamp of his foot and a rude utterance, Richard left, but not before demanding the last word. “I’ll be back when you don’t have your watchdog here,” he said. Then, to Derek, “You’d better keep the hell out of my way, Buddy.”

Derek, his face tight with dislike, said, “I was just about to say the same thing to you.”

They stared each other down for a moment, like wary dogs, and then Richard snorted and stomped down the hall.

We watched him board the elevator. When the doors shut, the hall seemed unusually still. I unlocked my door with a trembling hand and turned the knob. Derek and I entered in silence. I walked into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, closed it. I felt ashamed. I said, “I swear he wasn’t that horrible when I was dating him. People wear masks, don’t they?”

“He’s no reflection on you, Teddy. But he’s trouble, and I want him away from you. I’m going to help you apply for a restraining order.”

“The man is a lawyer. Doesn’t he understand how inappropriate his behavior is?”

“He’s not being objective; he’s focused on what he wants.”

“I feel like crying, but it’s because I’m so angry! I’m not afraid of him, I’m not intimidated by him — but I hate him now. I really hate him.”

Derek pulled me into a hug. “Cry, then. At least you know a healthy way to release your anger. He seems to be suppressing his.”

“Anger at me?”

“More like at himself. If he’s got any sense, he probably realized he should never have let himself lose you. I assume he ruined it?”

“In any number of ways: immaturity, temper, and finally: infidelity.”

“So after a year he suddenly came to his senses, perhaps. He began to e-mail you and got no satisfaction. And now suddenly having Teddy back is top on his list.”

“He acts like a giant child,” I said, slipping out of Derek’s arms and slumping into one of my dining room chairs. Then, still fighting back tears, I said, “If I were doing Kathy’s psychology project, I’d have a lot to say about him!”

Derek sat across from me. “He said he was in Nebraska.”

“Oh, God, that’s right!” I jumped up and moved to my phone. I dialed Richard’s office, a number I still knew by heart. A receptionist I didn’t recognize answered.

“Harlow, Pietrowski, Williams and Statten,” she said, slurring most of the names.

“Uh— hi. I was trying to reach Mr. Statten all day yesterday and he never got back to me,” I said.