Alice Sebold - Lucky

But I felt like an alien in his presence. I knew the landscape, or so everyone imagined. I had been raped and through a trial and been in the papers. Everyone else was just an amateur. Pat, the Rineharts-their lives had not prepared them for this.

Mr. Rinehart was not kind to me. Eventually he said things to my mother and me about how they would handle their own. He told my mother that his daughter was nothing like me, and that they didn't need my advice or her counsel. Lila, he said, needed to be left alone.

But at first, on that day, he cried and I held him. I knew, more than he ever could, what his daughter had gone through and how impossible it was for him to do anything to fix it. In that moment, before the blame and separation set in, he was broken. My mistake was in not seeing how lost I had become. I behaved as I thought I should: like a pro.

At Marc's, Lila stood when she saw her father. They hugged and I shut the door to the bedroom. I went to stand as far away as I could to give them their privacy. In the tunnel that was Marc's attic kitchen, I smoked one of Marc's cigarettes. I counted, packing all our possessions in my head and distributing them to the homes of various friends. I thought a million different thoughts in every moment. When a spoon slipped in the sink, I jumped.

That night Mr. Rinehart took us out for dinner at the Red Lobster. Marc, myself, Pat, and Lila. It was all-you-could-eat shrimp night and he kept urging us on. Pat did his best and so did Marc, who preferred Szechwan noodles and snow peas. Neither Pat nor Marc were macho in the traditional sense; conversation stalled repeatedly. Mr. Rinehart's eyes were swollen and bloodshot. I don't remember what I said. I was uncomfortable. I could feel how much Lila wanted to leave. I didn't want to give her over to her parents. I thought of Mary Alice French-braiding my hair the morning of my own rape. I had sensed it almost from the start at the airport-there were going to be reasons put forth by people, by her parents, perhaps, that would prevent me from helping. I was to be banished. I had the disease, it was catching. I knew this, but I kept clinging. Clinging so hard, wanting to be with Lila in this shared thing so desperately, that my presence was bound to suffocate her.

We drove them to the airport. I don't remember saying good-bye to her. I was already thinking of the move out, of saving what was left to me.

I moved all our possessions, Lila's and mine, out of our apartment within twenty-four hours. I did it alone. Marc had classes. I called Robert Daly, a student who had a truck, and arranged for him to pick the stuff up after I had boxed it. I gave him my furniture-whatever he wanted he could take, I said. Pat was dragging his heels.

No one seemed to understand my urgency. In the midst of packing that day, I was in the kitchen and I knocked the table with my hip. A small, handmade bunny mug that my mother had given me after the trial fell on the floor and broke. I looked at it and cried, but then stopped. There was no time for that. I would not allow myself to be attached to things. It was too dangerous.

I had cleared my bedroom out first, in the early morning, and now, as Robert was due to arrive before dark, I turned the doorknob for one last scan of my room. I had been thorough. But on the floor near the dresser I found a photo of myself and Steve Sherman that had been taken on the porch of the house over the summer. We were happy in the photo. I looked normal. Then, in the closet, I found a valentine he had given me earlier that year. The photo, the valentine were ruined now-remains of a crime scene.

I had tried to be like everyone else. During my junior year, I had given it a go. But that wasn't the way it was going to be. I could see that now. It seemed I had been born to be haunted by rape, and I began to live that way.

I took the photo and valentine and shut the door of my bedroom for the final time. I drifted into the kitchen, holding them. I heard a noise in the other room. It echoed now that I had emptied the room out.

I jumped.

"Hello?" came a voice.

"Pat?" I walked into the other room. He had brought a green trash bag to get some of his clothes.

"Why are you crying?" he said.

I hadn't realized I had been, but as soon as he asked I became aware of the dampness on my cheeks.

"Aren't I allowed to cry?" I asked.

"Well, yeah, it's just that… "

"It's just that what?"

"I guess I expected you to be okay with it."

I yelled horrible things at him. We had never been best friends and now we would cease even to be acquaintances.

Robert Daly showed up. He was a rock. That is how I remember him. We shared a taste for honest criticism in our fiction workshop and a respect for Tobias Wolff and Raymond Carver. Robert and I weren't close either, but he helped me. I cried in front of him and he didn't like it when I apologized. He took my rocker and daybed and some other items. For a few years, until it became obvious I wouldn't come back for them, he dropped me cards to say my furniture was doing fine and wishing I were there.

I changed, but I didn't know it.

I went home for Thanksgiving. Steve Sherman came over from New Jersey to spend time with me. He had been Lila's friend first, before becoming my boyfriend, and the idea that both of us had been raped overwhelmed him. He told me that when he found out about Lila, he had been in the shower. His roommate had come in to tell him. He'd looked down at his penis and suddenly felt a self-hatred he couldn't describe, knowing that so much violence had come to his friends that way. He wanted to help. He stored the rest of my things and I slept in his spare bedroom. When Lila came back two weeks after her rape for the GRE's, she stayed in his house. He kept me company and volunteered as my security guard, walking me home from work or class.

The division that came was inevitable, I guess. People felt compelled to take sides. It began the night of the rape when the police had come up to me so openly. Lila's friends started avoiding me, looking away or to the side. During her overnight for the GRE's, the police came to Steve's house to do a photo lineup. I was in the bedroom with Lila and two policemen. They spread the small, wallet-size photos out on the desk. I looked over Lila's shoulder.

"I bet you recognize one of these," a uniformed policeman said to me.

They had put a photo of Madison and his lineup buddy, Leon Baxter, in the pack. I was so mad I couldn't speak.

"Is the one who raped her in here?" Lila asked. She was sitting at a desk in front of me. I couldn't see her face.

I left the room. I was sick. Steve reached his arms out and grabbed hold of me.

"What is it?"

"They put a photo of Madison in there," I said.

"But he's still in jail, isn't he?"

"Yes, I think so, yes." I hadn't even thought to ask.

"Attica," a uniform said in answer.

"To have to pick out her rapist and see him there, the focus is all wrong," I said to Steve. "It's not fair."

The door opened. Lila came out into the living room behind the officer who held the mug shots in an envelope.

"We're done here," a policeman said.

"Did you see him?" I asked Lila.

"She saw something," the policeman said. He wasn't happy.

"I'm stopping it now. I'm not going to pursue it," Lila said.

"What?"

"It was a pleasure getting to meet you, Alice," the officer said. He shook my hand. His partner did too.

They left and I looked at Lila. My question must have been obvious.

"It's too much," Lila said. "I want my life back. I watched what it did to you."

"But I won," I said, incredulous.

"I want it to be over," she said. "This way it is."

"You can't just will it away," I said.

But I felt her trying. She took her GRE's and returned home until after Christmas. Our plan was to live together in graduate student housing. Her family was going to loan her a car because it was the only way to get back and forth from campus. That, or the bus, which I would take.