The Ghosts of Lovely Women (23 page)

“No kidding,” I said.

The chapter, in order to exemplify the application of feminist theory examined some simple fairy tales—
Cinderella, Snow White
, and
Sleeping Beauty
—all Disney flicks I had really enjoyed as a girl. But Tyson had a point: “The plot thus implies that marriage to the right man is a guarantee of happiness and the proper reward for a right-minded young woman. In all three tales, the main female characters are stereotyped as either “good girls” (gentle, submissive, virginal, angelic) or “bad girls” (violent, aggressive, worldly, monstrous). These characterizations imply that if a woman does not accept her patriarchal gender role, then the only role left for her is that of a monster. In all three tales, the “bad girls”—the wicked queen in
Snow White
, the wicked fairy in
Sleeping Beauty
, and the wicked stepmother and stepsisters in
Cinderella
—are also vain, petty and jealous, infuriated that they are not as beautiful as the main character or, in the case of the wicked fairy, she wasn’t invited to a royal celebration. Such motivations imply that even when women are evil, their concerns are trivial.”

“Huh,” I said. Jessica would have had so much to say about this. I wondered what Will would say. I put a bookmark at the page, determined to show it to my brother so that we could have a discussion. Derek would like it, too, I thought. How lucky I was to know men who would resist the sort of categorization detailed here.

I finished my reading in about two hours — mostly because I didn’t fall asleep over it — and began to write my paper. Our instructor had asked us not only to summarize the theory but to find applications in real life and in our classrooms (most of us were teachers). “I find that the critical thinking of students today is intact, and I’ve had many students in the past — one in particular — who applied the precepts of this theory without ever studying it,” I wrote. And then, in an instant, I got angry.

Jessica had been a girl, just a girl!

I finished typing, packed my course things into my graduate school bag (I had bags for every category of my life), and put on a solemn black pantsuit for Kathy’s wake.

“Tis a villain, Sir, I do not love to look on.”

—Miranda,
The Tempest

It was almost more depressing than Jessica’s wake had been. Kathy had a big family, and they were all devastated, of course, by her death. I expressed my condolences, said a brief prayer at the coffin, and made my way back into the sultry dark. Without the intensity of the sun the heat was more bearable, but somehow my mood had grown worse, especially since a light rain was falling. Two funerals, two bursts of rain. I had expected to see Derek at the wake, but when I looked into the guest book I saw that he’d signed on a previous page — probably hours earlier. I walked to my car, feeling moody but alert. I looked around me in the dim lot, my fingers wrapped defensively around my keys. I approached my car, squatted to look under it, then carefully walked around it, peering through the windows looking for a crouching assailant — the one I’d heard about in endless nightmare stories on the news, and in urban legends spread by people who thrived on fear. I’d once had a professor— a man — who said that this very sort of action was a sign that the genders were not equal. “When’s the last time you heard of a man having to search his car? To hold his keys at the ready when he walks alone? To beg for an escort after a party? A man has confidence in the reality of his size, while a woman’s size becomes her liability.” A man could pick her up, whether jokingly or threateningly, and either way, my teacher asserted, he was seizing power for himself, and reminding her that she was light, lesser, something to manipulate.

* * *

Now I locked myself into my car, feeling vulnerable, feeling somehow betrayed by Derek, even though we hadn’t made plans to meet here. My phone rang and I jumped. I put my key into the ignition and said “Hello?”

“Teddy!” my sister was there with me, her voice miraculously reaching me from Vail, Colorado.

“Hey, Lucky! How are things going?”

“Oh, okay. I mean, they’re great. Matt and I just had a tiny fight, but up until then things were terrific. It was a great flight and a gorgeous hotel, and we’ve had lots of alone time—”

“Ah, yes. The sex you spoke of.”

“Yes.” She giggled suddenly. “Matt is holding up a white flag. He surrenders.” She giggled some more, treating me to the sound of what was probably their foreplay. Still, I felt comforted by her voice, and by the fact that whatever little conflict she had, she was going to work it out. “Stop it!” she yelled, then came back to me. “Sorry, Teddy. I really wanted to talk to you but Matt was distracting me. Is everything okay over there?”

How to tell her everything? Jessica’s death, Kathy’s death, Derek’s arrival in my life. The horrible night I thought I’d lost him — this man that Lucky had never met. “Everything’s fine. Well — I’ll catch you up when you get home.”

“That sounds mysterious. Any man stuff?” Lucky asked. My sister was a romantic.

“There is some man stuff. But I think
your
man would like to show you
his
stuff.”

She giggled again. “He would. Suddenly now he would, even though we’ve been glaring at each other for twenty minutes.”

“You go back to him. Call me back when he’s on the slopes and you’re sipping hot chocolate.”

“Are you okay? You sound sad.”

“I just left a funeral.”

“Oh, no. Who died?”

“Someone I work with. Long story. Anyway — we’re all bummed after funerals, right?”

“Right.” Lucky didn’t sound convinced. “Have you talked to Will? Is he in town?”

“Yeah. We had lunch. He loved Sweden.”

“Okay… listen, I think I’ll be paying you a visit the minute I get back. My antennae are up. Do you need me? Do you need me to come home?”

“No, Luck. All I need is a good night’s sleep, okay? Have fun. Tell Matt I said hi.”

“Okay. Bye.”

I clicked off the phone and stared at my windshield, now fogged with condensation— from what? My breath from a short phone call? The rain outside versus the hot air inside the car? I wondered about this, watching the shadow of some branches as they moved against the windshield. Slender and elegant against the fogged pane, they reminded me of a Japanese painting. They clicked and clacked in the breeze, and for a moment I was caught up in their simple beauty.

Then I became aware of motion to my right. I turned my head to see a different shadow at the passenger window, a hulking form, seemingly waiting to be let in. Except there was no sound; no knocking, no calling my name. Just a form there, and then, suddenly enough to make me cry out, a wrenching of the door handle. I had locked the door; I thought I heard a grunt of frustration.

I started my engine; horrifyingly, this did not make the figure go away. There was more wrenching at the handle. I could lean over and wipe away the condensation, I knew. I could face my intruder.

Except that I couldn’t. I was too frightened.

I threw the gear shift into reverse and began moving the car; I put on my wipers to remove the condensation, then remembered it was on the inside. I flicked on my defrost, wiped a tiny hole of vision on my windshield, and threw the car back into drive. No one was in front of me in the parking lot. I sped forward, shaking, my eyes on my rearview mirror. The rear window had not yet defogged, so everything I saw through it was vague, hazy, like an alternate world. Behind me, in the spot where I had been, it seemed there was nothing. I scanned for lurking figures, but saw nothing, no one, except some people leaving the funeral home, their arms around each other. Through my fogged lens they were unfamiliar creatures.

I trembled all the way back to my house. Nothing specific had happened, and yet I read a world of menace into that moment when an unknown presence had stood behind my fogged pane and refused to reveal itself to me. One moment I’d been contemplating the poetry of a slender branch clicking against my window, the next I’d been frightened for my life.

I parked my car in my usual spot, afraid, suddenly, to get out of the car. I looked all around the parking lot once, twice, three times. It was well-lit, and I could see one of my neighbors sitting in his first floor living room. If anything happened, I could call for Charles. Surely he would hear me screaming?

Stepping out took all of my courage; I made my trembling way back to the building. I went to the front entrance, because I’d forgotten to check for mail, and when I turned the corner I came face to face with Richard, who was smiling at me.

“Hello, Teddy!”

“What are you doing here?” I could barely focus on him; his strong cologne was like an assault, as was the odor of smoke on his coat. I felt as though I was still shaking; perhaps I was only trembling inwardly.

“I told you, I want to talk. Let’s go inside.” He put his hands on his hips and loomed over me.

“You need to go.”

“Teddy, for God’s sake. How long is this going to go on?”

“Not one moment longer.”

“Teddy—” he said, grabbing my arm, and I hit him. I hauled back my arm and punched him as hard as I could — not on the nose, which I instinctively feared would hurt my hand, but in the eye, which hurt my hand anyway. I felt as though his skull had been imprinted on my knuckles, and I felt something wet, as well.

To my immense satisfaction, he staggered under the blow, cursing me and grabbing his face.

“What the hell, Teddy? Are you insane?”

“Don’t ever contact me again. Don’t ever come here, don’t ever call me. You have no right, Richard.”

Charles came out of the building — he had heard me after all — and I ran to the door, glad that I didn’t have to struggle with my key. “Thanks,” I said. I went in and didn’t look back.

I called Derek; when he arrived about fifteen minutes later, he found me pacing and raving, furious about the man in the parking lot, Richard, Kathy, Jessica.

“Are you all right?” he asked me when I’d talked myself out.

“I’m okay.”

“I’m worried about this person at the car door.”

“You and me both.”

“I should have been there with you.”

I looked at him. “Why weren’t you?”

“I got a call from Templeton House. That’s where my mom is. I visit her about once a week.”

“Ah.”

“They said she’d fallen again. It’s a symptom of the Alzheimer’s. She gets agitated; she paces. And sometimes she trips and falls. Last time she knocked out a tooth, but they were able to put it back in.”

I stared at him, horrified. “Is she okay?”

He nodded. “Not so bad this time. I gave her a talking to.” He looked sad.

“She — she doesn’t know you?”

“No. Not for a long, long time. The last person she held onto was my dad. But he went, too. Her memory of him. Her memory of everything.”

“I’m so sorry.”

He shook his head. “I only told you that so you’d know. Otherwise I would have gone to the wake when you did. I would have been there to confront this guy.”

“Ugh. And then Richard. He was just the last straw.”

He held me against him until his much slower heartbeat began to slow mine. “You punched him, huh?” he asked, careful to make his voice toneless.

“You think that’s inappropriate?”

“I think it’s fucking great.” He examined my hand. “This is going to be bruised tomorrow. Can you bend all of your fingers? Do you need to get it X-rayed?”

I smiled at him. “I think it’s okay. He’ll probably press charges. He’s that big a prick.”

“No — no. We’ll head him off at the pass.” Derek released me and went to my phone, dialing quickly. “Dave? It’s Derek. I want to call in that favor you promised over the beers.”

* * *

Derek made me call the police before his friend came over. As I had expected, there was no one around, and I had to leave a message. I didn’t expect Kelsey McCall to come rushing to my side because I thought I saw a man’s shadow in a parking lot. In my warm house, with Derek nearby, the whole thing began to seem almost like a dream, or at least an overreaction.

Derek’s friend Dave was a Chicago lawyer with, Derek assured me, an impressive reputation. He appeared at my apartment half an hour later, looking rumpled and pushing smudged glasses up on his nose. The eyes behind the lenses were incredibly sharp, however. We told him our story and he nodded. “I’ve heard of Richard Statten. Met him, I think. He’s the tall guy with the ego, always smells like scotch?”

“Yes.”

“Having met him, I have a suggestion for you. We send a letter to his firm — to every member of his firm. On my legal letterhead. No suggestion of legal action YET. But a warning that Mr. Richard Statten had better cease and desist his harassment or we drag the entire firm through the mud. I sense that his career is important enough to him that he’ll cut out the shenanigans.”

“Huh,” I said, looking at Derek.

“I like it,” Derek said.

I grinned. “I like it, too.

Dave nodded. “Consider it done.”

“Let me get you a drink. Or dinner?”

“Just a quick cup of coffee, if you have it. I’m having a late dinner.”

“I heard you and Derek met up because of trouble with your women. I know Derek solved his woman problems,” I said. “Did you solve yours?”

“That’s what the late dinners are addressing,” he said. “Late dinner is better than no dinner. This is what my wife has made me understand.”

“Can I invite both of you sometime?”

“I’d like that.”

Derek and Dave made a big manly show of saying goodbye at my door. I understood that Derek had cashed in some friendship points for me. They slapped each other on the back and called each other “Man” several times before Dave disappeared into the night.

Derek seemed satisfied that we had taken care of at least one problem, and I felt better, too; at the same time I knew that Richard wouldn’t necessarily change because of a letter. His behavior up until now had been inexplicable, and his behavior in the future would most likely be so, as well.