C. Lawrence: Silent victim

"You have a lot of poetry here," she commented, still smiling.

"I like poetry." He tried to keep his voice neutral, to avoid showing his irritation.

"I guess so," she said, slipping the book back into its place on the shelf. Lee recognized the jacket-it was his Anthology of English Verse, from his days at Princeton. He knew its contents well: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Maxwell, William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience. The young woman before him could have been cast as Oothoon herself, with her wispy, waspish body-except that she was only pretending to be innocent. Experience had hardened her into something else entirely.

He poured them both generous mugs of steaming coffee and brought them out on a tray, along with the lead crystal cream pitcher and sugar bowl-more of his mother's estate sale coups.

"Nice crystal," Ana commented, helping herself to a heaping spoon of sugar and following it up with a lavish amount of cream.

"Thanks," Lee answered. To another guest, he might have mentioned the amusing anecdote of his mother's triumphal purchase, but with Ana he instinctively played his cards close. He sat on the couch opposite her and sipped his coffee.

Sticking her long nose deep into the mug, Ana slurped up the coffee greedily, and to his surprise, it did seem to calm her. Her bony shoulders relaxed, and her thin body seemed to soften. He realized only then how stiffly she had been holding herself. She shook herself, like a dog flinging excess water from its coat. Clutching the mug between her long fingers, she looked at him through lank blond bangs.

"You're probably dying to know why I'm here."

Lee noted the familiar, overly dramatic phrasing of the chronically narcissistic, but all he said was, "Yes, I am curious."

She looked around, gulped down some more coffee, and leaned in toward him.

"I've recently recovered memories of-being sexually abused."

A dozen questions darted through his mind, but all he said was, "Really?"

"At first I wasn't sure. It was just this one dream that kept repeating itself, you know, so I found a specialist in buried memories, and I've been working with him for about a year-and then one day I woke up sure of it."

Lee wasn't sure how to respond. He didn't entirely trust so-called recovered memories. Though repressed memory was a real, documented response to trauma, there was a subset of "specialists" in this field who, through a combination of subtle suggestion and hypnosis, could convince patients that they were the victims of anything from ritual satanic abuse to alien abduction.

In Ana's case, of course, it would explain a lot: her belligerent girlishness, her passive-aggressive attitude toward men, her childlike affect. But there were other things that would explain these traits as well-and the subject of abuse had never come up in their sessions together. "When was this?" Lee said.

"I don't have all the details yet. I think it happened when I was a child, and that it was someone I knew." "But you're not sure?"

She shook her head. "I haven't been able to make out his face. But Dr. Perkins-he's my therapist-says it's only a matter of time."

"Why did you come to me? It sounds like Dr. Perkins knows what he's doing." What exactly he was doing was another matter, but Lee wasn't going to dive headlong into that particular tar baby. Professional etiquette aside, he had no wish to challenge a colleague's competence or motives based upon so little information.

Ana tightened her fingers around the handle of her mug.

"I-I'm afraid."

"Of what?"

"Of everything. I just have this feeling that something's going to happen."

"Is there any particular reason you should feel this way? Could it be a response to"-he hesitated-"the memory of your abuse?"

She frowned at her mug, as though it contained vinegar instead of coffee.

"That's what Dr. Perkins thinks." "And what do you think?"

She got up and began pacing the room, restlessness running through her like an electrical current.

"I don't know what to think. I'm jumpy, I can't sleep. I see potential attackers around every corner. And not only that, but I think-well, I think someone is stalking me."

"You're sure you're not just-"

"No, see, that's the thing-I really think I'm being watched."

"What makes you say that?"

She sat down again on the armchair and wrapped her long arms around her thin torso, swaying back and forth, her lips clenched. Lee really did feel sorry for her. She looked like a lost girl right now, and he felt the urge to make everything all right. But immediately the warning sounded in his head: Steady on, Campbell. She's a first-class manipulator, and you know better.

He leaned back and forced himself to take another sip of coffee.

She looked up at him, her pale eyes tragic. "There have been some things happening, you know? Scary things."

"Like what?"

"Like the phone ringing, but when I answer they hang up. And one time I know I left my car locked, but when I got out of the store it was unlocked."

"Was anything taken?"

"No, but I had the feeling someone had been in there."

"What about the phone calls-do you have caller ID?"

"Yes, but it always reads 'Unavailable.' "

"Do you still live in Jersey?"

"When my dad died last year I moved into his house."

"Oh, I'm so sorry for your loss." The words sounded like what they were-a stock phrase-but he hoped there was comfort in them anyway.

"Thanks." She looked down at her hand, the corners of her mouth twitching.

"He lived in Flemington, right?"

Flemington was in Hunterdon County, about ten miles away from Stockton, the town Lee grew up in and where his mother still lived. When Ana was his patient, they were both New Jersey residents, but that felt like another lifetime now.

"Yeah," she answered. "When he-uh, got sick, I tried to be there for him, you know… " She trailed off forlornly.

"So he left you the house?"

"Yeah. It's kind of big for me, but I don't think he wanted me to sell it."

"Is that what he said?"

She shook her head. "No, it's just that he loved that old house, and I feel like if I sold it he'd be sad."

Hunterdon County was full of charming old stone houses, some of them dating back to the eighteenth century. Lee imagined her father's house, tucked away among the green rolling hills of the southwestern Jersey landscape, with its fertile farmland, the rich black soil perfect for growing the famous Jersey tomatoes, and the sweet, sweet Silver Queen corn he loved so much as a child.

He looked back at Ana, who was chewing absently on the cuticle of her index finger.

"Is there anything else?"

"Yeah," she said, fishing around in the pocket of her green corduroy skirt. She had an unusual way of dressing that was all her own, Lee remembered-on her, even green corduroy looked stylish. Under the skirt she wore knee-high leather boots with sharp, pointy high heels.

"Here it is," she said, producing a crumpled piece of paper.

He took it and opened it up. It was a clumsy version of the kind of ransom note you might see on a cheaply produced television crime drama. The letters had all been cut from different parts of various magazines and pasted onto a plain sheet of white paper. RetrIbuTion is coMinG, it read. Prepare TO meEt Your FAte." His first thought was that she might have created it herself, a ploy for the attention she had been seeking all her life to fill the cavernous hole in her soul. But a look at the terror in her eyes banished that thought from his head. She was genuinely frightened.

"Have you gone to the police?" he asked.

She waved off his suggestion as though it were an annoying insect.

"Jersey cops," she said, rolling her eyes. "Let us know when someone tries to kill you, and then maybe we'll be interested. Better yet-give us a call if you are actually murdered."