Fruits of the Poisonous Tree

16

In some respects, I found myself spending the next week groping for an elusive past. I was in search of my former well-being, the easy communication I’d once enjoyed with Gail, and the comfort I’d always assumed would be there for me in my childhood home, but whose stability now seemed threatened.

The physical therapy set the rhythm. Leo eagerly supervised the hospital-dictated routine, but I felt driven to go beyond it, and did so in private, away from those I knew would caution me not to push too hard. There were no demands on me to rehabilitate rapidly. The calls I made to the office reassured me that all was well and progressing at its own legal snail’s pace. But despite the pleasant setting, a string of inordinately balmy days, and the colorful riot of the long-awaited fall foliage, I felt somehow under pressure, as if any regained strength might soon become a crucial advantage.

Apparently, I wasn’t much good at keeping my anxiety under wraps. Pulling up a seat beside my mother one afternoon, no longer using a wheelchair but wobbly-kneed from a private workout, I was about to embark on what had become a daily ritual for the two of us-the viewing of her favorite soap operas. This time, however, she killed the sound with her remote and gave me a mother’s careful scrutiny. “Why are you pushing yourself so hard?” she asked gently.

I wasn’t surprised she’d noticed, but I still hadn’t come up with a satisfactory answer. “I don’t know.”

“Is it Gail?” she persisted.

I looked at her in surprise. “What makes you think that?”

“She’s still in a lot of pain. Maybe you think you need to be, too.”

I was startled by the sophistication of the idea-and wondered if she might be right. Nevertheless, I made light of it, squeezing her hand. “My mother the shrink.”

She wasn’t amused. “Have you asked her what she’s feeling? It might be easier on both of you.”

I thought back over the week, at our initial night together, and at how, although tentatively, things seemed to be improving. “She’s doing well. She doesn’t brood on the attack as much-she seems more focused on getting on with things. She’s a strong person. I think she’s coming along.”

“Is she sleeping at night?” my mother asked pointedly.

“Sure-I guess so. She wasn’t at first.”

“Then why does she nap so much?”

A small, wiggling irritation began welling up inside me, as if I’d missed something obvious because I’d been distracted by my own concerns. “She’s been through a lot. Plus she takes care of me, helps Leo out at the store sometimes, and she’s still trying to run things in Brattleboro. It takes a toll.”

My mother patted my forearm. “She’s still not sleeping at night, Joey. She comes in here after you fall asleep. She plays the TV, sometimes she reads, other times I imagine she just sits on the sofa and wishes she were someone else.”

“How do you know that? Do you hear her?”

She laughed gently. “No. I’m sleeping fine. I notice things in the morning-a magazine’s been put back on another pile, a bookmark’s been moved up a hundred pages, the blanket on the back of the sofa’s folded differently than it was when we went to bed.”

I stared at her in astonishment. “The bookmark? You know what page she’s on?”

She shook her head, obviously delighted with her prowess. Her eyes, however, remained serious. She didn’t want me to miss her point. “This room is almost my entire world. The first things I noticed were obvious-the bookmark came after I started paying close attention.”

She reached out and touched my cheek, her fingertips warm and smooth. “She needs you just like you need her. Helping you to get better has let her focus on someone besides herself-it’s given her breathing room-but it’s also helped her to hide from her own demons.”

My eyes strayed to the screen. A beautiful man in beautiful clothes mouthed something to a beautiful woman and then stalked out the door. The woman stared at the camera with tear-stained eyes, her trembling mouth parted, before everything went blank for a station break.

“One last piece of motherly advice,” the soothing voice said next to me.

I looked into those old, familiar gray eyes. “Don’t stop now.”

“Just be supportive. Don’t confront her on her sleeping habits-or anything else. Time will help you out.”

I didn’t confront Gail on her nocturnal habits that night. I joined her instead, albeit without her knowledge. A half hour after we’d turned off the light-and about five minutes after she’d slipped out of bed for her nightly vigil in the living room-I propped myself up against the pillows in the darkness and began wrestling with my own doubts. Gail’s mental health was certainly part of them-and I now knew for myself that my mother’s concerns had been well founded. But there was something else, something that had first stirred inside me the day I’d talked with Tony Brandt in the hospital gym, and which the conversation I’d had with Gail tonight-before we’d both pretended to go to sleep-had put into sharp focus.

I had taken my mother’s advice. Upon getting into bed earlier, I’d asked Gail if caring for me wasn’t merely a way for her to avoid her own problems.

She frowned at the question but didn’t get angry. “Maybe, but that’s probably not all bad. Before you were hurt, the rape was all I thought about-it took over my life.”

“And now that I’m on the mend?”

She hesitated and then sighed heavily, as if forcing herself to be polite. “I’ve been in touch with Susan. Women for Women have started a vigil to help keep Dunn honest, and they’ve held Katz’s feet to the fire so the paper doesn’t drop the issue now that Vogel is in jail. Next week WBRT is holding a half-day call-in show I’m going to be on with other women, so the whole subject of rape can be discussed in the open-”

I reached out and took her hand. Her voice had dropped to a virtual monotone-a recitation of events in somebody else’s life. “I don’t care about that, Gail. I want to know how you’re doing.”

She pulled her hand away, the anger finally surfacing. “That’s the point, Joe. You should care. Focusing on me doesn’t address the issue. It just reduces the rape to the level of a mugging, or a car accident-something to be swept under the rug after all the right words have been said.”

I thought ruefully of my mother’s advice not to set up any confrontations. “You don’t need to convert me-I’m a believer. But I also think the messenger should be as well taken care of as the message.”

Gail didn’t comment for a while. “Maybe you’re right,” she finally murmured. “I’m not doing all that well. I can’t sleep at night, and sudden noises set me off like an alarm clock. I lock the door and jam a chair under the handle every time I take a shower. And I think I’m driving Susan and the others crazy with phone calls, trying to see if there’s anything I can do.”

She let out a shuddering sigh and stared at her hands. “I thought I could beat this, Joe. I know the routine; I’ve seen others go through it. But it’s just not working.”

“Are you seeing someone who can help?”

“I was, until you got hurt. I’ve called her a couple of times since I’ve been up here, when things got really bad, but I guess I thought I could cheat there, too.”

“How bad do things get?” I asked, feeling guilty for not knowing.

“They pile up, bit by bit. When I go out, I think every man in sight is looking at me, and when I’m here alone, I’m afraid someone will come crashing through the door. I’ve felt so sorry for myself at times, I’ve started resenting you-thinking you got stabbed on purpose to grab attention away from me.”

I shook my head, overwhelmed by what she’d been dealing with. “What did your therapist say?”

“She wanted me to come back to Brattleboro, or at least find somebody up here. She said I had to talk it out so I could deal with it up front-relive the rape in detail, admit my life has been permanently changed and then move on. I had to ‘commit to heal,’ in her words.”

She lightly punched her own leg, her face tight. “It pisses me off. I know my life’s been changed, but I can’t shake what that bastard did to me-. That’s another thing,” she added vehemently, as if I were arguing with her, “I have these fits of pure rage. I get so mad I start crying, and I can’t stop.” She caught her breath. “I just can’t believe I can’t beat this.”

“Would you like to use me to talk it out?” I asked softly, referring back to her therapist’s advice.

Her reaction was tentative. “It’s supposed to help-make it something that doesn’t eat me up from inside.”

“Let’s try it, then.”

“I don’t know, Joe… ”

“It helped to talk about it the day after, didn’t it?”

She thought about it for a few moments. “You’re not too tired?”

“Nope. And it would make me feel better, after all you’ve done for me.”

She finally agreed. Sitting back with her head against the pillows, my hand in hers, she went over in detail what Bob Vogel had done to her.

I listened carefully-asking a question now and then-slipping on my professional demeanor to keep my emotions in check. By the end, she seemed a bit more peaceful, her cheeks reddened by tears. She blew her nose, gave me a hug, and pretended to go to sleep, although she left again for the living room as soon as she thought I’d nodded off.

Sleep for me, however, was out of the question.

For now I understood what had been troubling me. It wasn’t my physical wound, or her emotional one. It stemmed instead from a phenomenon I should have recognized much sooner.

As she’d recounted her purgative tale, my mind had begun catching on stray details of the account, like fine fabric snagging on rough skin. Questions had started to form, discrepancies to loom, and I’d been forced to face the strong probability that something-I didn’t know what-had been missed earlier.

What I realized in my gut was that the case in Dunn’s hands was perhaps fatally flawed.