Because of the Rain Page 5

  Chapter 7

  The week ended, and still none of them had broached the subject of the rape. Kara tended her mother’s physical wounds, joking that she’d had plenty of practice on the dogs and cats at the clinic.

  Anna relished her eldest daughter’s devoted attention.

  Her relationship with their firstborn had seemed fragile almost from the moment the girl had been born. Kara was headstrong and opinionated, qualities that had served her well when it came to resisting peer pressure and standing up for her beliefs, but which made parenting her a challenge that often utterly exhausted Anna.

  A young woman of many talents and something of a perfectionist, Kara would not have dared to risk her future in the types of rebellion that most parents feared—experimenting with alcohol, drugs, sex. Quite the contrary, she was an excellent student, a model citizen. But she chafed at any parental limits set for her, and until the day she left home, she had challenged her mother’s authority at every turn. The friction between mother and daughter was heightened by the fact that Kara adored her father.

  When Kara left for college, she and Anna had struck a tenuous unspoken truce, and now Anna was grateful for the absence of the usual tension between them.

  Kassandra, on the other hand, had inherited her father’s compliant, carefree spirit, and it showed itself now as she helped her mother with the practical things. She kept the laundry done and cleaned the already immaculate house until it sparkled.

  When Paul got home from work each day that first week, he greeted Anna with a careful hug and asked the same question with his usual sweet sincere concern: “How are you doing, hon?”

  But his question was rife with ambiguity. The tenderness in his voice spoke volumes, and he held her in his arms in bed each night until she slept, something he hadn’t ordinarily done before the attack. But despite his gentleness, they couldn’t seem to get past the superficial.

  How was she doing? Her wounds were healing. Life was resuming its routine. But the real wounds weren’t so easily dressed and healed. Her heart hurt. The real issues remained buried in a pile of guilt and uncertainty and fear. Anna had been raped. Raped!

  And because Anna so completely belonged to Paul, he too had been violated.

  Paul didn’t quite know what to make of the feelings of jealousy––rage even––that he was entertaining. Intellectually, he knew that Anna had not betrayed him. Quite the opposite. If there was a betrayer at all, it was he—he who had not been able to protect her from the very thing that now caused these feelings. And yet, he struggled to push away the graphic pictures that imprinted themselves on his mind—unthinkable pictures of another man touching his wife in ways that made him physically shudder. And though he knew it was completely unwarranted, he felt twinges of anger at Anna, as though she should have done something herself to stop it from happening.

  Of course he did not voice these unreasoned thoughts to Anna. They remained quietly below the surface of his consciousness, nagging and worrisome.

  The girls went back to school on Sunday afternoon. They had stayed in Chicago for an entire week, and Anna felt guilty for causing them to miss so many days of work and school. But no amount of pleading had convinced them to leave before the weekend was over. And it had been nice to have their company and the distraction their presence provided.

  But when they’d gone, Anna felt vulnerable and awkward with Paul. That first week, her wounds and their daughters’ presence had provided excuses for avoiding romantic intimacy. But now her bruises were fading, she no longer had to wear the bandages on her neck, and she was using her arm almost normally. The question of intimacy loomed between them, a vast sea to be crossed. She and Paul had never been this reticent with each other. They always had been able to talk openly about such things.

  Anna waited for Paul to approach her, to prove that he didn’t see her as defiled, to prove that he didn’t blame her for what had happened, that he still found her desirable.

  And while she lay on her side of the bed, at once hoping and fearing that he would take her in his arms with passion rather than pity, he lay on his side, waiting for her to give him some sign that she was ready for him to touch her with love in the places where he—Anna’s rapist—had touched her in violation.

  They both were afraid that the precious gift of lovemaking they’d always shared had been stolen from them forever on that awful night in Orlando.

  Paul came home from work early on Friday night. Anna heard the car pull in the driveway and went to the window. She watched him park the car in the drive, open the door, and reach across the seat for a bulky package wrapped in green tissue paper. Flowers?

  She hurried to the door to meet him, curious about the bundle now tucked under his arm alongside his briefcase. Paul smiled at his wife and wordlessly held the bouquet out to her—freesia and dainty sprigs of sweet-smelling pink jasmine that were her favorite.

  “Mmm, they’re beautiful, Paul!” She buried her nose in the fragrant blossoms and took them from his arms with a questioning smile. “Our anniversary isn’t for another three months, honey.” It really wasn’t like Paul to buy her flowers for no reason.

  He leaned across the bouquet of flowers and kissed her, crushing the florist’s wrapping between them. “Does it have to be a special occasion for a man to buy flowers for his wife?” he teased.

  “Well, no, but for this man it usually is” She poked him in the chest, mimicking his playful tone.

  She turned to rummage in the cupboard for a vase, but Paul was right behind her, nuzzling her neck, brushing her hair away from the nape of her neck and tracing the thin scar with his kisses, whispering in her ear. The playfulness was gone now, and Anna heard the emotion in his voice. “Anna, I love you. I love you so much. All week I’ve been thinking of how close I came to losing you…” He choked on the words. Her name was a low moan in his throat. “Oh, Anna… Anna …”

  Her heart soared, suddenly knowing that his love for her had not changed. She dropped the bouquet on the counter and turned and hugged him to her with all her strength. Pain seared through her still-tender shoulder, but the pain didn’t matter now. She put her hands on the back of her husband’s neck and combed her fingers through his sandy hair.

  Paul held her at arm’s length and looked down at her, his green eyes intense. She saw such love, such gentleness in those eyes.

  “Anna, I don’t want to rush you… I don’t… I don’t know for sure how to be with you. But I miss you. I miss you so much.”

  The meaning in his words, in his caress was unmistakable, and Anna felt desire rise in her. For one sharp moment the veil of the terror in Orlando threatened to choke out that desire.

  But then Paul’s gentle hands were on her again, his voice low and full of love. The rough grip of the rapist, the evil touch of that monster had not resembled this in any way. Her attacker’s hands had not caressed her, had not loved her this way, had not touched her gently in intimate places as her husband did now.

  Oh, how grateful she was in this moment for the sweet lovemaking of her husband, for it in no way resembled the violence of the attack and the pain he had inflicted on her.

  Paul took her hand in his own and led her—willing, longing—to their bedroom.

  Anna awoke the next morning full of hope. They’d cleared a difficult hurdle so easily. And regained one precious part of their life “before.” In her mind, Anna put the phrase in quotes: “Life before the attack.” Strange how a traumatic event separated your life into distinct eras—before and after.

  What a comfort it was now to have the gift of their tender physical union after such a brutal physical violation. She breathed a prayer of thanks and, perhaps naively, believed she’d won the battle—that it might all be over now.

  Later that morning as she hung fresh laundry in their closet, she discovered the shopping bag that held her purchases from Orlando. The EMTs who’d answered the ambulance call had recovered Anna’s purse and packages, untouched, from the alley
behind the mall. Paul must have put the shopping bag in the back of their closet when he unpacked their suitcases.

  Now Anna dragged the bag from the closet. The outside of the glossy rope-handled bag was scuffed and streaked with dirt. Someplace in her mind the reason for the marks registered. Handling the bag gingerly, and trembling unreasonably, she pulled out the items she’d purchased that day one by one.

  The new sunglasses, long forgotten, were on the top inside a smaller bag, enfolded in layers of tissue paper. Without unwrapping them, she dropped them back into the larger bag. She pulled out three summer tops, gaily colored pastels in spring colors. She held each one in front of her and with unfocused eyes, she stared into the face of that awful day, remembering how her carefree shopping trip had ended.

  With a ferocity the empowered her, she stuffed the shirts into the bag, crumpled the whole package into a wad, and hurried out to the garage with it. She jammed it into the large steel garbage can, hiding the wad beneath a pile of old newspapers. As she pushed it still deeper under the newspapers, she felt the lenses in the sunglasses crack beneath her clenched fist, but she gave no thought to the money she'd spent on them or on the clothes. She didn’t even consider offering the tops to her sister or to one of her daughters. She wanted no part of anything that would remind her of Orlando. The very name of the city had become obscene to her.

  She came into the kitchen and washed her hands under hot running water, scrubbing her skin until it was red.

  That night she dreamed again of the shrouded monster who chased her down a dark alley. And she awoke wondering if this nightmare would ever truly be over.

  Anna sat in the doctor’s waiting room leafing through magazines, not really seeing anything on the pages, lost in thought. More than three weeks had passed since her ordeal, and now her own physician in Chicago, Dr. Blakeman, had called to tell her that the tests had come back from the Orlando hospital. He’d encouraged her to schedule an appointment so he could be sure she was healing properly. He was quick to assure her on the phone that all the results looked normal, and that he didn’t expect to find any problems.

  She knew she looked good. The wound on her neck was a faint line now, slightly pink, but promising to fade almost completely. She still favored her left arm a bit, but she could tell it was getting stronger daily. The bruises had faded into nothing, and her face was tanned from several afternoons spent outdoors readying the ground for her flower garden.

  The nightmares still came occasionally, usually with no provocation she could discern, but except for that, she was beginning to feel life was almost back to normal.

  The warmth and intimacy with Paul had truly been reclaimed in that one sweet evening. Now she felt they had settled comfortably into their familiar roles with each other.

  If Paul treated her differently at all, it was with a new measure of protectiveness. He had always been somewhat protective of her, and the girls, too, in a healthy sort of way. Now, he didn’t want her driving alone at night, didn’t want her walking alone any time of the day. He called home often during the workday, ostensibly to ask about the mail, or to have her look up some trivial piece of information—a phone number or bank balance. But she wasn’t fooled by his ruses. She knew that he was checking on her. And in some ways, his caution kept her from being able to put her own fears aside. And it gave her a vague sense of guilt, as though he didn’t quite trust her.

  She'd both dreaded and welcomed this appointment with Dr. Blakeman. She remembered the word closure from a psychology lecture. That was what she needed. A sense that this was the final step in her healing—a clean bill of health—and then she could put it all behind her forever.

  A nurse poked her head through the door, caught Anna’s eye, and softly mouthed her name. Dr. Blakeman had been the Marquette family’s doctor since the girls were small, and his nurses knew each of them by name. Now their familiarity was comforting, and somehow, uncharacteristically, she felt no embarrassment in having them know what she'd been through.

  Tossing the magazine back on the table, she gathered her purse and jacket and followed the nurse down the sterile hallway to a tiny examination room. She had been waiting only a short time when Dr. Blakeman knocked softly and walked in without waiting for a reply.

  “Hi, Anna. How are you getting along?”

  “I’m doing fine. I really am.”

  “That’s good.” He was a man of few words, but his voice held compassion and genuine caring. He looked over Anna’s charts and then closed them and looked into her eyes as he spoke. It was not disconcerting to be regarded so, but rather it comforted her and made her feel that what she was about to hear would be the truth.

  “Well, Anna, as I told you on the phone, everything looks fine with all the tests that came in from Orlando. There’s no sign of any disease or infection, and I think you can pretty much breathe easy that there won’t be. We will want you to come in for follow-ups on a couple of the tests, but it’s certainly nothing to concern yourself with.” He paused and ruffled the edges of the folder that contained her medical charts. “I hate to even bring this up because I don’t want to alarm you…it’s just a precaution, really, but usually in cases like this we do like to run a follow-up pregnancy test.”

  “But…didn’t they do that test in Orlando? Didn’t it come back negative?” Anna asked, concern rising in her voice.

  “Well, yes, it did, but actually the pregnancy test which is part of a rape kit is for the purpose of detecting an existing pregnancy. Should a woman become pregnant as a result of rape, it would probably not show up in test results for at least seventy-two hours. But if you took the morning-after pill, that would eliminate the possibility.”

  “But I didn’t. I…refused it.”

  “I see.” Dr. Blakeman looked surprised. “Well, I want to assure you that the incidence of such an occurrence is extremely rare, but I would prefer to run another pregnancy test. Just to put your mind at ease.”

  Anna knew her face must have reflected her growing concern because he held up his hands palms out and told her, “This is strictly a precaution. At any rate, with your permission, we can go ahead and do that today. If it should show that implantation has occurred, we can still take care of it with medication at this point. And then we can close the files on this, so to speak.”

  Anna was stunned. Since declining the morning-after pill that night in the hospital, she hadn’t given the possibility another thought. The doctor had told her it was rare for rape to result in pregnancy. And yet, she knew it sometimes happened. Just…not to her.

  In all the nights she'd lain awake thinking and imagining and worrying, she’d feared diseases and infections, and loathed the precautions she and Paul had had to take to protect him until they knew for sure that she was “safe.”

  But the crime that had been committed against her was so far removed from the lovemaking she associated with pregnancy that it hadn’t even seemed a possibility. And now they were talking again about some kind of morning-after pill. Essentially abortion.

  What else haven’t I thought of? Will this nightmare ever end?

  She shook herself back to the present and managed a calm reply, hardly hearing Dr. Blakeman’s words as he briefly examined her and ordered yet another blood test from the lab. He assured her again that it was only a precaution. “You can call for the results this afternoon.”

  Anna treated herself to lunch at a new deli that had opened up near the doctor’s office. After picking up a few groceries, she drove home, put the food away, sorted through the mail, and then, determined to treat the call with indifference, she dialed the clinic.

  “Lakeland Clinic. Which doctor, please?”

  “I’m calling for lab results. I’m Dr. Blakeman’s patient.”

  “One moment, please. I’ll connect you with his nurse.”

  A short burst of symphony music was followed by a series of clicks.

  “Dr. Blakeman’s office. This is Claire.”

  “Hi. T
his is Anna Marquette. I’m just calling for results from the lab work I had done this morning.”

  Anna could hear the hesitation on the other end. Silence. Not Claire’s usual cheery “Oh, hi, Anna. Just a minute, I’ll see if I can find them,” but rather a blaring silence.

  “Urn…Anna, can you hold for just a minute?” Claire finally said.

  “Yes, I’ll hold.” She willed herself to stay calm, to not jump to any hasty conclusions, but her hands were shaking. Moments later, Dr. Blakeman’s soothing voice came on the line.

  “Anna? Hi. Listen, I hate to have to do this, but it appears there’s been some kind of problem with the lab work. I’d like you to come in so we can repeat a test we ran this morning. I do apologize for putting you through this. I know you were hoping to be done with this today. If you could possibly come back in within the next hour or so, we might be able to have the results yet this evening. Otherwise, come at your convenience tomorrow. Either way, you can just go straight to the lab. Since it’s a repeat I won’t need to see you again.”

  Anna felt reassured by his calmness, his apologies. It was just a mix-up. It happened all the time in medical labs. Didn’t it? There was nothing to worry about. But she did want to be done with it today. She didn’t want to spend a sleepless night worrying.

  “I’ll come right away, if that’s okay. I don’t have any other plans, so it’s no problem.”

  “That would be fine. We’ll do our best to let you know yet today. Again, I do apologize for the inconvenience.”

  She drove to the clinic, completed the test again, and was back home preparing supper when Paul pulled into the driveway at six. He knew that she’d had an appointment with Dr. Blakeman that morning and casually asked her how it had gone.