Lisa Gardner - The Survivors Club

Now, Carol, if she'd gotten her hands on the mike… Of course I have fucking nightmares! Women, you want to protect yourselves, buy a gun. Shoot first, question later. Fuck 'em all, ladies. It's the only way.

So, yes, I have nightmares… When I sleep… Which hasn't been for months… And by the way, when I look at my husband I see a rapist's face and when my husband touches me I feel a rapist's hands. And I hate Eddie Como, and open windows and houses that grow too quiet at night. But most of all I hate the fact that when I do fall asleep, I dream of blood and slaughtered lambs, and when I wake up I am so angry I have to press my eyeballs into my sockets to keep them from bursting out of my head.

Other than that, esteemed members of the fourth estate, I am coping just fine.

Carol dropped two thousand bucks. Dan would go ballistic. Good for him. Yes, she was definitely in a mood.

Maybe she should've stayed with Jillian and Meg. Jillian was going to drive Meg home, providing backup in case Meg's father was there and saw his little girl under the influence of not one, but two bottles of champagne. Carol wasn't even sure how Meg had gotten her hands on the second bottle. She'd gone to the restroom, and next thing she knew, a fresh bottle was on the table and half consumed. At least she'd been able to catch Jillian out in the parking lot. Of course, that had been weird, too. Jillian talking to Sergeant Blue Eyes. The two of them standing so close together, so deep in conversation… Then the way Jillian had jerked back. Startled. Guilty.

Carol had a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach. Betrayal, though she didn't know why. Suspicion, though she had no proof.

As she and Jillian walked back into the restaurant, Carol had asked her what she had been talking to Sergeant Griffin about. Nothing, Jillian had said. And Carol had wondered what kind of nothing took fifteen minutes to cover in a restaurant parking lot.

Once Jillian was inside, she'd appraised the situation, as Carol had known she would. She'd come up with a plan of attack, as Carol had known she would. Carol could go on her way. Jillian would handle Meg, and by extension, her father, Tom Pesaturo. Go, Jillian.

Personally, Carol didn't like Tom. Based on things Meg said, he sounded overbearing, brutish and chauvinistic to the core. Making his daughter drop out of college. As if denying his child higher education was the secret to keeping her safe. For heaven's sake, was there anything of value in the Y chromosome? One ounce of intelligence to go with all that raging testosterone?

Of course, that made her think of Dan, and the scent of red roses and veal piccata. And that thought sliced through her heady steam of rage, her frenzy of self-righteousness. She was left suddenly empty and bereft, the legs taken right out from beneath her.

She had loved him so much once. Did he ever remember those days? When just the sight of him across the room sent her heart beating rapid-fire with lust? When the thought of seeing him for dinner made her smile all day? When the scent of his cologne was the first thing she wanted to smell in the morning and the last thing she wanted to smell at night? When they used to sleep intertwined like vines, legs and arms coiling, her head planted securely on his chest?

She still remembered those days. Some nights, when she was not busy hating Eddie Como, she stayed awake replaying those first wild, wonderful moments in her mind. She was never sure which set of thoughts hurt her more.

Now she plopped down in the Nordstrom Café, where she had a heaping chicken Oriental salad, and yes, another piece of chocolate cake. Then she ordered a glass of wine. Or two or three or four.

She was still hungry afterward, but that didn't surprise her anymore. She had been hungry for well over a year.

Being raped was an interesting thing. More interesting than Carol would've imagined. Yes, she now suffered from a variety of lovely mental conditions. Post-traumatic stress syndrome that left her with nightmares, cold sweats and irrational mood swings. Generalization that left her hating not just her rapist, but pretty much all men, including her husband, Detective Fitzpatrick and Ned D'Amato. Then there was her “trigger syndrome”-she literally could not turn off the TV because turning off the TV was one of the last things she'd done before being attacked, and thus her mind associated the act with causing the rape. And finally there was good old-fashioned guilt-guilt that she'd been attacked, guilt that she'd survived. Guilt that she'd inconvenienced her husband, guilt that she'd left her window open, guilt that she'd not been able to fend off a grown man. Jillian, whether she would admit it or not, still held the prize in the guilt category, but Carol thought she should get credit for having not just one of the various syndromes they'd read about in rape survivors' handbooks, but pretty much all of them rolled up in a nice, neat, therapy-desperately-needed ball. In her own way, she was an overachiever, too.

So on the one hand, being raped was as traumatic, painful, messy and soul wrenching as Carol had ever imagined. She did not recommend it. Women really should shoot first, and question later.

On the other hand…

On the other hand, for lack of a better word, being raped did have its advantages. Take the Survivors Club. Carol now spent the majority of her time with two women whom before this, she probably wouldn't have given the time of day. Meg, after all, was too young for Carol to have ever considered seriously as a friend. And, if Carol was being truly honest, too working class. Assuming their paths ever did cross, it probably would've been in some swanky restaurant where Carol was the patron and Meg the waitress. Neither would have thought of it again.

Jillian was a more interesting case. She was closer to Carol's age and economic status. The type of woman Carol might have met naturally at some society event or charity fund-raiser. They would've exchanged polite chitchat, the normal cocktail party pleasantries. Most likely, Carol would've found Jillian to be too much of a career woman. And most likely, Jillian would've found Carol to be too 1950s, the socialite wife who stayed at home while her husband did the real work.

But now here they all were. Pissy sometimes, mean sometimes, awkward sometimes. Telling each other all the things normal people couldn't understand. Rallying one moment, crying the next. Holding back more confidences still. Carol was sure of this. God knows she had her own things that even a year later she could not bring herself to put into words. And as for Jillian-well, Carol and Meg were certain they hadn't even begun to scratch the surface there. So they had their secrets. But they also had this bond, one that shouldn't exist, and it was sad that it did exist, but here they were. And in all honesty, their weekly meetings were about the only thing that kept Carol going.

Normal people could not understand these things. Normal people, if they were at all lucky, would never have to understand these things.

Carol finished her glass of wine. Then, duly fortified, she finally headed home.

No reporters in sight. That was a welcome relief. They'd probably been camped out most of the day, another reason for her not to hurry home. It was after 6:00 now, however, too late to make the 5:00 news crunch. Or maybe the police were holding a briefing across town. Jillian, Carol and Meg had learned to love police briefings, when the reporters would scurry from their front lawns to police headquarters, leaving the women at least fifteen minutes to breathe. Until the police briefing ended, of course, and the hordes once more came trooping down the street, rows and rows of white news vans carrying legions of question-wielding combatants. On her good days, Carol pictured having a machine gun battened to her roof, which she would use to mow them all down. On her bad days, she cowered in the upstairs bathroom, the only room in the house with no windows, and gobbled pints of Ben amp; Jerry's ice cream while curled up in the empty bathtub.