Sarai Walker - Dietland

Near the third anniversary of Shonda’s death, her parents received an unexpected break in their investigation. After he was discharged, Sergeant Lance Pederson committed suicide by asphyxiation in his brother’s garage. Before his death, he wrote a letter to the Browns, telling them that their daughter had been raped by two of their fellow soldiers stationed at Camp Mojave—Michael Simmons and Davis Green. He didn’t know if they had murdered her, but they had raped her. Everyone knew it.

Shonda’s parents turned the letter over to army investigators. Simmons and Green, by this time both private citizens in Los Angeles, were interviewed, but there was no evidence that Shonda had ever been raped, and no rape kit was ever done. Officially: gunshot wound, self-inflicted.

In an act of desperation, Shonda’s parents put the names and photos of Simmons and Green on the website they’d set up for Shonda. What if they rape someone else? Shonda’s mother had asked. What if they commit another murder? Simmons and Green threatened to sue and even hired a lawyer, but now it would never come to that.

Dr. Brown sat in his living room, watching the reports that showed aerial footage of the Harbor Freeway interchange, the brown canvas bags, and the videos of Jayson Fox vomiting. Dr. Brown knew who was in those bags, he just knew. The night before, he had received an email with a file attached. On the file were video confessions, one by Simmons, one by Green, admitting what they had done to Shonda in the kind of detail that left no doubt they were telling the truth. The footage was reminiscent of the videos made by suicide bombers. The men sat in front of an American flag and spoke directly into the camera, knowing that death was upon them.

MORE THAN A WEEK HAD PASSED since my encounter with Julia in the Beauty Closet. She wanted the email addresses of every girl who’d written to Kitty since I’d started my job. There were at least 50,000 of them. When I asked Julia why she wanted them, she said she had her reasons. “It’s for a good and noble cause,” she said, “but it’s better that you don’t know the particulars. Then you’ll never have to lie.”

I knew I could get in trouble if I gave her the addresses, which I couldn’t afford, since losing my job and my health insurance before the surgery would derail my plans. I had tried to stop thinking about Julia’s request. There was nothing in it for me and it was reckless to even consider it, yet I’d been turning it over, unable to forget our meeting. Julia, Leeta, and Verena’s book had disrupted the rhythm of my days.

To distract myself, I heated up a slice of my turkey lasagna (230), then turned on the television, placing my plate on the coffee table in front of me. The Cheryl Crane-Murphy Report was on. She was discussing the murders of Simmons and Green, as every news channel had been doing for days. The Harbor Freeway interchange was a familiar sight.

“Do I think they deserved to be murdered? Well, as a committed Christian I believe murder is wrong, but at the end of the day I’m not shedding any tears over these thugs. Sue me.” Cheryl Crane-Murphy was like a middle-aged male politician with a comb-over, except that she was a woman and the comb-over was more of a metaphorical one. Her actual hair was short and dark blond, teased and sprayed into place, stiff like whipped meringue. She spoke with faux folksy charm, the camera lens in front of her a peephole to America that she peered through from her desk in New York as if to say, I can see you, I’m one of you.

I scrolled through the channels, looking for something else, and landed on one of the Austen stations, catching sight of Kitty being interviewed.

There was no escaping Kitty.

“Earlier, I showed you how to pose for photographs so that your hips will appear slimmer,” she said. “Now we’re going to camouflage . . .” I clicked back to Cheryl Crane-Murphy, who said, “We should pass a law stating that any serviceman who rapes a servicewoman should be castrated— without anesthesia. I swear, I should run for Congress.” I ate my lasagna and watched Cheryl pounding her desk, her eyes wild.

A yellow BREAKING NEWS banner appeared at the bottom of the screen. Cheryl adjusted her earpiece and announced that preliminary autopsy results on Simmons and Green had revealed that each man had a wadded-up piece of paper stuck down his throat with the name Jennifer written on it.

“Who is Jennifer?” Cheryl Crane-Murphy wanted to know.

The thought of the paper in the dead men’s throats made me queasy, and I pushed my plate aside. I switched off the TV and reached for the phone to call my mother. We spoke every couple of days. If I didn’t call, she worried.

“Who is Jennifer?” she asked upon answering the phone, knowing it was me. My mother never missed Cheryl Crane-Murphy’s show. “Did I ever tell you that your father wanted to name you Jennifer? Practically every girl was named Jennifer back then.” She went on discussing the crime and how she’d been delayed in traffic on the day the bodies had been found.

I let her talk. Since Delia had moved to a retirement home, she was lonely in the house on Harper Lane. I had encouraged her and Delia to sell the house, to rid our family of that horrible place, but they were both too attached to it. No matter how much I emphasized its value as the former home of Myrna Jade, neither of them was persuaded. To them it was home. I had visited Harper Lane so many times in my mind while reading Verena’s book that I felt as if I had just been there, but I hadn’t set foot in that house for four years.

“I have my own mystery,” I said, cutting off her chatter about the murders. I offered her an edited version of recent events in my life. I needed to say it out loud to another person to make sure I wasn’t going crazy. I kept the beginning of the story to myself—the story of Leeta was too odd—but I told my mother about the Beauty Closet, Julia Cole, and her request.

There was silence on her end, and then she said, “Are you making this up?”

“Which part?”

“All of it. Is this Beauty Closet for real?”

“Imagine Madison Square Garden filled with cosmetics. That’s how big it was.”

“I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself mixed up in.”

“I didn’t mix myself up in it. They just . . . found me. ”

“What’s the worst that could happen if you give this Julia person the email addresses?”

“I could get fired.”

“I said the worst thing. Getting fired wouldn’t be bad at all.” My mother had been against the Dear Kitty job. She wanted me to pursue my writing. “That silly old Kitty” is what she always called her. Having accidentally opened the door to a discussion of my career, or lack of one, I moved to close it. I told her I would decide what to do and let her know.

“Are you feeling okay?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Every word with her was filled with hidden meaning. Feeling okay. She meant the pink pills. Was I depressed? She always worried. It’s why she wanted to talk on the phone so frequently.

“You’re leaving the apartment regularly, right?”

“Ma, I go to the café every day.”

“Besides that. You go out, don’t you?”

“Sure.”

We both knew I was lying.

When I hung up the phone, it took a few minutes to fully inhabit my New York life again. I went to my desk and turned on the computer. The responsible choice would be to forget Julia’s request, but I had a vague sense that she might lead me someplace interesting, away from this apartment and this life.

I downloaded the addresses into a spreadsheet, all 52,407 of them. I was stunned at the number, thinking of the thousands of pages I’d written over the years and how that writing could have been put to better use. As the spreadsheet filled, I waited, drumming my fingers on the trackpad, a nervous tap tap. I clicked send and off it went to Julia’s personal account. Once it was gone there was no taking it back.