She said, “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
God, I wished I could have laid before her a different tale: something nice and binary, maybe involving a dark alley or a country road. A snarling white man missing half his brain. Something to earn my place in this chair before this woman.
I don’t remember how I replied.
“It may be that you’re not ready to talk about it yet,” offered the counselor.
Nonsense. I had talked about it plenty, I thought: I’d told my parents, the pediatrician, and now I would tell this kind woman. I impressed upon her my awareness that something troubling had happened and that it was important to be mindful of its impact on my thoughts and feelings. I nodded to her assertions about self-care. I should keep a journal, yes. Absolutely I ought to consider long-term counseling support.
What she didn’t understand, I was convinced, was that I was a rising sixth former at an elite boarding school where you could either get counseling or be perfect, but not both, and that if you were not perfect, you were not safe. People would know you needed help. A psychiatrist visited campus one day a week and I’d never asked for a meeting with him, but I knew most of the kids who did. Success at St. Paul’s was not predicated on resilience or transcendence but on destiny, which meant you did not show defeat, not ever. In any case, the boys had graduated. Also, I explained, polite and patronizing, I was very close to my parents and had good friends and a great boyfriend, so I was very well supported. To show how serious I was about recovery, I drove directly from this little cottage to a huge Barnes & Noble to purchase a copy of a workbook she had recommended, The Courage to Heal. A workbook. I can still feel my sneer. I tossed the book beneath the window seat in my room, which Mom had made Dad build out for me just that year, though I never sat there. I preferred to wedge myself against the window screen, feet high on the frame, and wonder what it would take to fall out.
This was an idle consideration. The screen was sturdy.
“Was it helpful?” Mom asked. When I said that it was, she dropped the subject out of respect for the therapeutic experience.
Mom filled those first days repairing obvious defects. I got a haircut, saw the dermatologist about my adolescent acne, and had my eyes checked. A surgeon evaluated the tendon in my right hand for potential surgery. This involved laying a protractor on my open hand, aligning zero with my fingers, and then bending my thumb as far in the direction of the injury as it would go. I had to recline during the procedure because patients often passed out from it. My temples filled with snow, but I didn’t lose consciousness.
The surgeon was jovial, full-bellied, and chatty. My thumb was definitely loose, he said, but there was some resistance there. I should heal just fine in time.
By now the St. Paul’s School year had officially ended, and everyone had gone home. The egret would be fishing by himself beneath the falls. The soccer fields would be unmowed, the meadow quiet.
One afternoon, an old friend from my elementary school called the house. My mom came bounding up the stairs to my room to tell me. She made the wide eyes that were meant to suggest extra importance: a friend was calling! An old friend! I should not miss the beneficence of this.
Natalie was herself just home from Deerfield, a noble boarding school that had gone coed with her class. She had been praised for the independence and confidence she demonstrated in being willing to break new ground. Deerfield was in central Massachusetts, too far from St. Paul’s to be part of our regular sports competitions—we drove to Andover and Exeter, Groton and St. Mark’s, but we played against Deerfield or Choate only when a team or a player rose to a regional level of competition we called New Englands.
“Hey!” said Natalie. I warmed to her. She seemed exceptionally kind.
We exchanged awkward pleasantries about being home. Her brothers were driving her nuts already. I said my own was obsessed with baseball cards. I asked after her dogs, Bucket and Rose, and she asked after mine. Hearing her voice was as if in a dream. Boarding school had divided us. She did not know me, nor I her. It seemed more likely that somewhere the two of us were playing together, still aged nine, trading stickers and practicing bubble letters with paint pen on our Trapper Keepers.
“So,” said Natalie, after a pause. “What’s this I hear about St. Paul’s?”
My heart pounded. “What about St. Paul’s?”
“Just that something happened.”
“Nothing happened.”
“No, I hear that you had to come home.”
“It’s summertime. We’re home.”
“But I heard it was about something sexual? A sexually transmitted disease?”
“There’s nothing,” I said. “I’m fine. I have to go.”
“No,” she said. “There are all these people saying that—”
I hung up the phone and went downstairs.
“How’s Natalie?” asked Mom.
“She’s fine.”
“Are you two going to get together?”
“She’s traveling.”
“Oh. Well, it was nice of her to call. You girls used to be so close.”
So it was there, then, in Lake Forest too. I didn’t know how this nightmare had traveled, and
