Last Train to Babylon (24 page)

He pounded his fists against the horn, shook the wheel, and just screamed through gritted teeth. Rachel sat there, silent, for the first time since he'd known her, and rubbed his back.

The sounds got stuck in his throat, he told me, and it felt like bile was pushing its way through, like if he didn't remember to breathe, he'd just upchuck pure acid all over his dashboard.

“Relax, Adam,” Rachel had said. “Just breathe, Adam. You're too good for her.” Her voice got real soft, and she pressed her lips against his ear. “Shhh,” she said. “You're too good for her.”

And then it happened. In between his boyish sobs, his hysteria, she kissed him—again, that's just the way he told it. First it was his neck, then she took his face in her hands and turned him toward her.

He said he'd never noticed the color of her eyes before. They were just brown, nothing spectacular, not like mine. He said he'd been close enough to Rachel's face to see the freckles concealed by makeup that didn't quite match the color of her skin. He never realized that she had freckles either. Freckles like Max.

“I can't,” he said. “I need to talk to Aubrey. Maybe you're wrong. I fucked up.”

“Adam,” she'd said, her voice calm and motherly. Nothing like the Rachel he had known, nothing like the inconsiderate, self-obsessed Rachel that I always bitched about. “I'm not wrong. And there's something else.” He'd looked up at her, willing her to bring it on. “She hooked up with your brother, too. Right before he died. That's why we were at the wake.”

And then he kissed her. He pushed her up against the glass window.

She didn't fight it. She reached down, unbuttoned his jeans, and wrapped her dry hand around his dick. He leaned back into the seat and took long, deep breaths.

He said he'd tried to push any image of me out of his mind.

An eye for an eye.

Rachel climbed into the backseat, keeping eye contact all the while as she propped her legs up over each front headrest. And then he'd buried himself into her.

“I don't have a condom,” he'd started to say, but it was only a few seconds before he pulled out and came onto the gray upholstery.

Friday, October 24, 2014.

“S
O WHAT ARE
we talking about today?” Laura says, pulling her sweater off of her shoulders. I know that she does these things to make me feel at ease—takes off her sweater, puts her feet up, checks her phone for text messages. We are in her office now. Our sixth session. I walked over, even though it had started to rain.

“I don't know. I guess we can pick up from last time. Whatever you want,” I say. I decide not to tell her about Eric and the bar and how I pummeled his face. One step backward.

She sits there, not saying anything for a moment, and pushes her hair out of her face.

“Aubrey. I get that this is hard for you,” she says. “And it's important that you don't pressure yourself.”

I unscrew the cap of my water and screw it back on without drinking.

“Well, what about my progress?” I cut in. “I mean, how am I doing with all this? Am I getting any better? I sort of need to tell my boss when I'm coming back. This mental health hiatus can only go on for so long.”

She glances down at her clipboard and shakes her head, and I'm self-conscious that she thinks this is all one big competition to me, that I need her to tell me that my progress is the best she's ever seen, or I'm her number one patient.

“Your anxiety was definitely a lot higher. You're a lot more at ease. I can tell when you're nervous, or feeling awkward or uncomfortable. I'm not seeing that so much anymore,” she says.

“Okay,” I say. “I guess I can see that.”

“Do you see yourself as a victim, Aubrey?”

“No,” I say in a whiny voice that I wish I could take back. “No, I really don't. I already told you that.” I realize that I wanted to add her name at the end of that sentence. Like she had done to me.
No, I really don't, Laura.
But I cut it short, and my chest feels like magnets pulling, pulling. Like using her name, just saying her name makes this conversation more intimate. It felt strange when she said my name. And every time she added “Aubrey” at the end of the sentence, my chest went heavy again. It's personal.

“I think that's the problem,” I say.

“Why is that a problem? If you don't, you don't.”

“I don't know,” I say. “I guess it feels cheap. We weren't that innocent—Rachel and me—it makes sense why it happened.”

“So you're blaming yourself?”

“Yes, I am obviously blaming myself,” I say, taking a swig of water. “We were shooting tequila and making out with boys on mattresses at fourteen. What did I expect?”

“It's not uncommon to blame yourself,” she says. “But guess what, that makes you a victim.”

“I don't know. I still don't see it that way. It seems so cliché.” I squeeze the plastic bottle in my hand.

“I don't know if I'd call it cliché. I'd call it a rationalization. It's a defense mechanism, to justify,” she says. “You need to come up with some sort of rationalization so you can deal. You need to have control. You need to know why it happened.”

“What if I had just gone along with it? What if I just went with it, and then it would have been just another night. A bad hookup.”

“What about Adam?” she asks.

“What if I just wanted to get back at him?” The room starts to get hot. I unwrap my scarf from around my neck.

“Did you?”

“No.”

There is a long pause, and I chug my water bottle.

“Tell me about Adam,” she says.

“What about him?” I ask. “I thought we covered him.” My breath feels heavy and tangled in a nervous laugh.

“I think we both know you're not telling me everything.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I guess.”

“What happened with Adam?” I shrug, swallow, and choke on my own breath. “Don't rush yourself if you're not ready.”

The wind rattles the plastic windowpane behind Laura's head, and the muscles in my shoulders start to spasm.

“Adam wasn't so innocent either,” I say, sucking in air through my nose until I feel it spread beneath my breastbone. “He,” I start. “Um.” The words split my tongue. “He cheated on me,” I say for the first time ever.

“Adam,” Laura says, in that all-knowing way of hers.

“Right,” I say. “With Rachel.”

“Oh.” I can tell she's shocked, and something about this makes me smile.

“I never told anyone this before. I mean except Karen, but I'm not really sure if that counts.”

“Do you want to talk about it now?” she asks.

“Do I have a choice?”

“You always have a choice.”

I let out an obnoxious laugh and take a sip of my water bottle. I should have known she'd say that.

“It was actually shocking. I didn't see it coming at all. It was right after the—you know.”

“The Rape.” The word hits me again like a sucker punch to the gut, and I have to close my eyes, take a breath, and gather my thoughts before I continue. I hate how effortlessly she can unravel me with that word.

“Right, whatever,” I say. “It was Easter right after that. I went over to Adam's because I was going to tell him what happened. I thought maybe I could trust him, and he'd tell me it was all right, and then we'd take it slow. And when I felt comfortable, we could do it the right way. And I wouldn't have to pretend I was a virgin anymore.”

“Rape does not equate to your virginity. You do know that, right?”

“Of course I know that,” I lie. “But I didn't know that then. So, as I was saying.”

“Okay,” she says, and picks the clipboard back up.

“I went to go talk to him. I had this whole speech planned, but I saw his car parked on the side of the road. It was running, so I was about to knock on the driver's side, but saw him.”

“What did you see?”

“He was hovering over the center console, with his pants around his knees. And Rachel was fumbling around the backseat. I guess trying to get her clothes back on.”

Laura looks at me with her famous empathy face, and I realize I'm smiling.

“Sorry,” I say. “Just feels good to finally say.”

“That's actually extremely traumatic,” she says.

“Yup,” I say. “That one I can agree on.”

I
E-MAIL
J
ONATHAN
from my phone on my walk home. I don't have a set return date yet. I've been on “medical leave” for the past two weeks. I'm still waiting on Laura's approval, but I decide to plant the seed with Jonathan. It's the least I can do.

Monday, October 27, 2014.

I
DIDN
'
T SLEEP
well last night. It wasn't a nightmare or anything. I don't have nightmares. I don't have nightmares and I don't have flashbacks. Laura continues to ask every session, but I honestly can't imagine ever losing that much control over my mind. But I'd been lying in bed, and it sort of felt like the air around me was stale and pressing down onto my chest. It wasn't a panic attack either.

I tell Laura about it. It's nothing new. But I'm trying to be more open with her.

“What happens when you get anxious?” she asks.

“I don't know,” I say. “Either I have a cigarette, pop a Xanax, have a glass of wine. Sometimes, I'll take out my laptop, like I told you, and Google Eric Robbins or Google what happens after, you know—”

“Rape,” she says.

“Right.”

“So you can type it. You just can't say it.”

I shrug. “Anyway. But if I don't do any of that, then I just have to sit back and take it.” I can feel my hands start to shake, so I stick them under my thighs.

Laura puts her clipboard down at her side and her hands on her knees.

“How is that different from everything that's happened to you? You had to take it.” Her voice gets soft, like she's waiting for me to cry or something. She should know by now that will never happen.

“But I didn't,” I say, and I can feel my voice straining. “I could have gotten up. I could have walked away. I did not just have to sit back and take it. I could have fought Eric harder. I could have stood up to Rachel. I could have confronted Adam. I didn't
have
to take any of it.”

“In other words, you're blaming yourself for not doing enough to stop him?” She's trying to hold eye contact, but I'm having a hard time. I hate how she repeats the same revelations over and over, like it's something new. I get it. I blame myself. We've covered this.

“I don't know,” I say. “I guess I almost wish he would have just punched me in the face from the start. That way I'd have a right to be angry. Like really angry. I wouldn't have had to feel out the situation, worry about whether or not I was being polite.” I've never said any of this out loud before. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel bad either. It just
feels.

“No one's here to judge you. But what we need to work on is you forgiving yourself. You just really need to sit with it. To feel it. You've been running away from this for so long. Aren't you tired?”

“I'm exhausted,” I say. Laura stays quiet. I shift in my seat. The silence is a two-ton elephant, but I know she wants me to
sit with it,
as she says,
to feel it.
I let the words replay in my head.
I'm Exhausted.
And I am. I'm so exhausted, and saying it out loud feels significant for some reason, and all I want to do is go home and nap.

I look at the clock. We only have thirty minutes left, and there's so much I need to say, so much that's swirling around in my brain, that I can't even single out one thought to start with. “I don't know,” I say to fill the silence. “This all still feels kind of silly.”

“Silly?”

“Well, I feel like I don't even have the right to be sitting on a shrink's couch talking about it. I feel like it shouldn't be a big deal. I know that sounds fucked up. But to me, I just can't acknowledge that he did anything wrong. I mean, I know it was wrong. I know what it was. I just can't bring myself to say it. I just keep seeing it from Adam's point of view and Rachel's point of view and how I didn't stop it, and I hurt so many people.” I realize that I haven't taken a breath. “Does that make any sense?”

“What you're saying to me is that you don't feel justified in what you went through. But you were a victim, and I know you know that.”

We both sit there for a moment. Silent. Processing.

It's a process.

“You're mourning something,” she begins—and I want to stop her, we've already talked about this, but I let her go on. “You're going through the stages. And there's denial in there. And that's your lack of acceptance right now. But you'll eventually get there. And you'll go through periods where you're really angry. A little bit of depression. It's just going to snowball a little bit. And just remember, this is a healing process. Just try not to run from it and don't put the Band-Aid on it with alcohol and cigarettes and Xanax.”

It's a process.

I nod. It's all I can do. I'm spent. Every fiber of my body aches. It takes everything in me to not curl up in the fetal position and go to sleep.

“Do you remember what you were thinking about that night? While it was happening?”

“It was five years ago,” I say.

“So?” she says. I exhale, too loud, close my eyes, and rub the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger. I know how dramatic I must look, but I need to start choosing my words more carefully.

“I was thinking about how to talk my way out of it. I was thinking about what I would tell Adam. And, I remember thinking about summer camp.”

“Summer camp?”

“Yeah. It's so random because I don't even remember anything about camp. I couldn't tell you one person I met there. I think I was like five or six at the time. I just remember that we did one of those arts-and-craft projects. You know, with Popsicle sticks. And I remember making this huge mess, with glitter and glue.”

“Do you think it has any significance?” she asks.

“I honestly don't know,” I say. Laura smiles and bites down on the top of her pen.

I
STIR UP
the blackness in my coffee and signal for Melanie. She hobbles over with a stack of menus under her armpit.

“What do you need, Aubrey?” Her voice is shaky and cold, like she's trying to assert herself but is seriously falling short. I decide I feel bad for the girl. Rachel must have done a real number on her with that “Melons” bit if she's this bad at being a bitch.

“Do you have cinnamon?”

“Sure,” she says hastily, and sidesteps behind the counter. I pretend to read yesterday's
Sunday Times
in front of me, but eye her over the paper. When she comes back, she slides the cinnamon across the table to me. She waits for me to pick it up.

“It's the only one we have, so I'm gonna need it back,” she says. So I lift it and shake it over my lukewarm coffee. Too much comes out. I swear I hear her snort. I hand her back the plastic shaker and stir my coffee again.

“Look,” I say, before she slinks away. She turns and faces me, her cheeks pink and slick. “I'm sorry for the whole Rachel thing. I shouldn't have said that to you,” I say. I wait for her to respond. She looks all twisted, and stutters, and finally gets the words out.

“It's fine,” she says. “Don't sweat it.”

“How was the rest of the party?” I ask. She shrugs and mumbles that it was okay, and simpers away back behind the counter. I see her whisper to another waitress, and they both shift their eyes toward my table, but I just grin and stare down at the
Sunday Book Review.

I order a muffin when she comes to refill my coffee, and scribble some stuff about Adam down in my notebook. It's nothing significant, just some random details about our first kiss that I'd forgotten about until now. I'm getting to a good part, when the front door jingles and a group of women file in. Their voices carry over to where I'm sitting, and I'm midsip when I realize it's Ally.

We make eye contact, and her mouth gapes into a sick smile, and she makes sure the rest of her posse knows that there's been an Aubrey Glass sighting right here in the Seaport Diner. I act unfazed, as much as I can, and pick up the pace with my pen.

I hear Melanie's high-pitched laugh while she takes their order, and they all sort of glance my way. It should bother me that I actually bothered to apologize to the girl, and then, the first chance she gets, she's standing over Ally's table, giggling like a hyena, undoubtedly about my recent public meltdown. But it doesn't. It all just seems so petty and childish when I really think about it. And besides, I get to go back to my life. They're all stuck here.

I shut my notebook and stuff it into my tote, but leave the
Times
on the table. I have no use for it. I'm feeling jittery, but I think it's only the caffeine, so I walk right by Ally's table—cool, casual, calm Aubrey. I wonder if they've heard about Eric, if he told everyone that the crazy girl from the after-party beat the crap out of him in the O'Reilly's bathroom. I seriously doubt it, though.

My plan is to slip out the front door, without a scene, to be the bigger person for once, but I hear Ally call out before I can make my escape.

“Well, well,” she says. “Looks like they let you out of the asylum.” They all laugh—Sasha, Ellie, and the Girl I Can't Remember. I stop, my breath catches, and I spin around to face them. It's almost like they don't expect me to react, and Ally looks nervous now that she sees me. I'm calm, stoic even, but I feel all these words burning up inside of me, and my face gets hot.

“Yeah,” I say. “They did.” I can feel Melanie and another waitress frozen behind me, staring, waiting. “And you know what? I made some serious breakthroughs.” Ally glances around the table, and I take a step closer. I'm hovering now, and they all flinch and scoot into their seats, like I'm going to deck one of them, but I just press my hands into the table and get real close to Ally's face.

“I know what you think about me: ‘Oh, Aubrey! She's so crazy and selfish and slutty, and oh, what a horrible friend she turned out to be!'” I take a sip of Sasha's water and slam it down on the table. “But you know what? I don't give a fuck. You all suck. You're dull and generic and there's literally nothing going on in that empty space up there.” I reach up and poke my finger right into Ally's forehead. “And maybe Rachel was a bitch, and yeah, we had our issues, but at least she was real. She didn't hide behind a posse of vapid airheads. Rachel may have done some shitty things to me, but at least she was honest, and she didn't pretend to be something she wasn't. I have zero use for any of you.” I take another gulp of Sasha's water.

They all look unaffected by my words, and they scoff, like it's supposed to break me into believing that I'm this irrational beast of a human. I turn to each one and offer one last zinger: “Ally, you're just pathetic. You're a carbon copy of Rachel, but less interesting. And, Sasha, obviously misery loves company. All of a sudden you're skinny and not afraid to be a bitch? Ellie, I don't even have anything bad to say about you, because you literally have no personality. And you,” I say, turning to the Girl I Can't Remember. “I don't even know who you are.” I take a breath and squint at the girl. “Seriously, who are you? What
is
your name?”

They're too busy staring at each other, eyes wide, mouths hung open, trying to absolve themselves of everything I just said. But I don't have time to wait around for a reaction, so I swing my bag over my shoulder and head for the door. I'm halfway down the street when I reach for my phone. I stare down at the voice mail, and for the first time since I've been home, I actually wish I could call Rachel. She's the only person who'd have appreciated that scene.
You should have seen their faces,
I'd say.
It was perfect. I've never seen Ally keep her mouth shut for so long!
I catch myself laughing and instead call Danny.

“I'm really sorry,” I say, when he picks up on the first ring. He doesn't say anything, but I can hear him on the line. “I was really shitty to you. You don't deserve that.” It feels staged saying it, but I guess most apologies do. It's the best he's going to get out of me.

“This must be killing you,” he says. “I've never heard you apologize for anything in your life.”

“It's pretty rough,” I say. “But I mean it.”

“I know,” he says. We're both quiet, and then he sighs. “Is everything okay with you?”

“I'm better now,” I say.

“Are you coming home?”

“Soon,” I say.

“You're not going to hit me again, are you?” I smile and shake my head, even though I know he can't see me.