Someone Is Watching Page 13

  “411.”

  “Good girl. You almost ready?”

  “Almost.”

  “Do you want me to arrange a cab for you?”

  “No, that’s all right. I was thinking I might drive.” This statement catches both of us by surprise. When was I thinking any such thing?

  “I thought whoever attacked you stole your car keys.”

  “The valets keep a second set.”

  “What about your license?”

  “I have a photocopy,” I lie.

  “I’m not sure it’s such a good idea.”

  “I am,” I say, growing increasingly adamant.

  “Well, okay then. I guess.”

  “Okay, then,” I repeat.

  “Call me when you get home.”

  I promise I will, then hang up the phone. I walk gingerly into the closet, careful not to put much weight on my sore ankle and wondering if, in fact, it’s a good idea for me to drive. But I’ve always loved driving. And sitting behind the wheel of the car that once belonged to my mother has always soothed me.

  I select a pair of loose-fitting black pants and a white shirt to wear on this, my first outing in three weeks. I’m almost giddy. Driving will do more for me than any therapist.

  At eleven fifteen, I call down to the concierge and ask Finn to have someone bring up my car.

  “Sure thing, Miss Carpenter.”

  “And could you send someone up to escort me down in the elevator?” I ask, feeling a lump in my throat, a constriction in my chest. “Normally, I wouldn’t ask. But after yesterday …”

  “I’ll be right up and escort you down myself,” Finn says without hesitation.

  Two minutes later, he’s at my door.

  “I’m probably being silly,” I tell him, growing dizzy and fighting to stay upright as he walks beside me down the hall.

  “Never hurts to be cautious.”

  The elevator arrives and we step inside. I close my eyes as Finn presses the button for the lobby, and we ride all the way down without interruption. “Here comes your car now.” Finn points toward the silver Porsche pulling around the corner into view.

  Wes jumps out of the still-running sports car as Finn holds open the lobby door.

  I walk slowly toward the car I inherited from my mother, its exterior shiny and clean, its silver metal reflecting the blinding midday Florida sun. The last time I saw my car it was night on a quiet residential street in North Miami. The last time I touched the door handle was the night I was raped. “I can do this,” I mutter as I crawl in behind the wheel.

  Wes closes the door after me and leans in through the open window. “Drive carefully,” he says, the strong, medicinal scent of his mouthwash bringing tears to my eyes.

  — TWELVE —

  My father bought my mother the silver sports car as a present on her fiftieth birthday. It was love at first sight, and she swore she’d drive it forever. Forever turned out to be less than three years. After she got too sick to drive, it sat in the garage. “My baby feels neglected,” she’d say periodically from her bed, her head swiveling on her pillow in the direction of the four-car garage. “When are you going to get your father to teach you to drive shift?”

  “It’s your baby,” I’d reply with a stubborn shake of my head. “It wants its Mommy.” I want my Mommy, I’d add silently. Please, Mommy. Don’t die. Don’t die.

  So much for silent prayers.

  The car is now eight years old and in the years since my father patiently taught me how to drive a stick shift, I’ve more than tripled the mileage. Still, it feels brand new. Every time I climb behind the wheel, I feel my mother’s comforting arms surround me. I inhale the quiet citrus of her perfume.

  Until today.

  Today the car feels foreign and unfamiliar. The buttery smooth black leather feels harsh and prickly against my skin. The seat sits too low to the ground and no longer cups my back like the palm of a hand. My legs have to stretch to reach the pedals; my hands slide from the steering wheel as if it’s been greased. My mother is nowhere to be found.

  Wes has made a mistake, I decide. He’s new to the building and has mixed things up and brought me the wrong car. “This isn’t my car,” I shout out the window, but Wes is back at the front entrance talking to Finn and doesn’t hear me. I’m not sure what to do, so I do nothing, just sit there. Of course this is my car, I assure myself. It just doesn’t feel like mine because Wes has adjusted the seat to fit his own frame. It’s a simple matter to return everything to its rightful position.

  I press a button to adjust the seat, which lifts the seat up instead of forward, and when I press the button again, it moves the seat back further than it was before, making everything worse. I press a button on the side of the door, causing the window beside my head to rise, cutting off my supply of outside air. The car’s air conditioner is off, and I’ve forgotten which switch will turn it on. The car is hot and growing hotter and more humid by the second. I can’t breathe. “Okay, stay calm,” I whisper, taking a bunch of deep breaths, trying not to give in to my growing panic as I start pushing one button after another.

  The seat suddenly vaults forward, then back again, then forward, before locking into place with a jolt so intense it jostles my right hand, throwing the car into first gear. My left foot automatically lifts off the clutch as my right presses down on the accelerator. “The car practically drives itself,” I hear my mother proclaim proudly as the silver Porsche literally bounces out of the driveway.

  In my rearview mirror, I see Wes turn around, his mouth opening in alarm as he watches my car lurching toward the street. I’ve forgotten where I’m going. I fish in my handbag for the address I scribbled on a piece of paper, but I can’t find it. What’s more, the sun is blinding, and I realize I’ve forgotten my sunglasses.

  Reflexively, I lift one hand from the wheel to shield my eyes from the sun’s glare and feel the car veer sharply to the left. Such a powerful engine. “Too powerful for a girl,” Travis once scoffed, although I think he was just peeved because I wouldn’t let him drive. But maybe he was right after all.

  Can a girl ever have too much power? I wonder, trying to keep another more worrisome thought at bay. The thought asserts itself anyway: when did I stop being a woman and regress into a girl? I shake my head, already knowing the answer. Another wave of disgust washes over me. I am drowning in disgust. I press down harder on the accelerator and shift the car into second gear. A mistake. It’s too early to shift gears. I’m not going fast enough. I’m barely out of the driveway, for God’s sake.

  A half-finished building suddenly looms large in front of me. I tighten my grip on the wheel, spin it to the left to avoid a collision with a car approaching from the right, not seeing until it is too late that several construction workers are crossing the road directly in my path. I see their faces contort with fear, hear the frenzied cries of onlookers, hear my own scream rise above theirs as I struggle to control the wheel. Tires squeal as the car mounts the sidewalk, continuing its sickening path toward the orange wire fence surrounding the construction site.

  “What the hell?” someone shouts as the front of the Porsche crashes into the chain-link fence, causing the wire to crumple and collapse. It falls across the hood of my car like netting from a hat.

  “Are you crazy?” another voice cries as instinct takes over and I manage to wrest the key from the ignition, stopping the car once and for all.

  I push open the door and stagger out.

  “Miss Carpenter,” Wes is shouting from somewhere behind me. “Are you all right?”

  “What happened?” Finn demands, both men racing across the street toward me.

  And then, a succession of overlapping voices: “Are you hurt?” “For God’s sake, you almost killed us.” “What’s the matter with you?” “Are you sick?” “What were you thinking?”

  “I have to go,” I tell the blur of bodies moving around me.

  “I think you should sit down.”

  “I have
to go.”

  “Do you want me to call your sister?” Finn asks.

  How many times has he asked me that lately? I find it ironic that a week ago, Claire barely existed. My half-sister in theory perhaps, but in reality little more than a name scribbled on the back of an old photograph. She was half of nothing. Now she is the half that makes me whole. I couldn’t have survived this past week without her. So why didn’t I listen to her when she warned me not to drive? Why didn’t I call a cab?

  My eyes shoot from side to side. I notice steam rising from the engine of my car and a large scratch etched across its hood like a deep scar. I see a woman ushering a small child away from the scene, as if staring too long in my direction might permanently damage her son’s vision, like gazing at a solar eclipse. I watch a few people starting to wander off even as several others jockey to improve their positions.

  I see David Trotter.

  He is standing by himself on the other side of the street, perusing the scene with cold, dispassionate eyes. He shifts from one foot to the other as his mouth curls into an insolent smile.

  “No!” I gasp, turning away.

  “What is it?” Finn asks.

  I dismiss his concern with a shake of my head. When I work up enough courage to look back in David Trotter’s direction, he is gone.

  Was he ever really there?

  A construction worker touches my arm. He is about thirty and of medium height and weight. “Are you okay?” he asks. His breath carries traces of the spearmint gum he is chewing.

  I cry out, as if I’ve been burned by the lit end of a stray cigarette and take a step back as a gloved hand reaches for my shoulder. I break from the crowd and take off down the street.

  “Hey, you can’t just leave the scene of an accident.”

  “Miss Carpenter …”

  As if by prior arrangement, a cab suddenly pulls to a stop in front of me. I open the door and hop in, not fully convinced the taxi isn’t a mirage. It is only when the stale aroma of perspiration emanating from the cracked green vinyl of the cab’s interior assaults my nostrils and I hear the driver’s heavy Cuban accent that I begin to accept this is actually happening. “Where you go?” the man asks.

  I struggle to remember the address. Then I hear Claire’s calm voice in my ear, reminding me. “2501 Southwest 18th Terrace,” I tell the driver. “Can you get there as fast as you can?”

  The driver smiles at me in his rearview mirror. I note with relief that he is about sixty, with salt-and-pepper hair and a paunch so pronounced that it actually crowds the steering wheel. He is not the man who raped me. For the time being, I can relax. “Hang on,” he says.

  —

  Suite 411 is on the fourth floor of a six-story, bubblegum-pink building, directly across the hall from the elevator. I am both sweating from the outside heat and shivering from the inside air-conditioning, an unsettling combination. I knock on the heavy wood door and wait, but there is no answer. I check my watch and see that I am twelve minutes late. Elizabeth Gordon has probably given up on me, I think with a mixture of disappointment and relief, about to turn away when the door opens and a pretty woman with frizzy brown hair and a mouthful of tuna sandwich stands before me. She is about forty years old, almost six feet tall, and dressed casually in gray slacks and a powder blue cotton shirt. A thin gold pendant dangles from her swanlike neck, matching the small gold loops in her ears and wide gold band on the third finger of her left hand. She wears minimal makeup, and she is smiling as she discreetly pries several stray flakes of tuna from her teeth with her tongue and wipes her right hand on the side of her pants before extending it toward me. I shake it, deciding she must be Dr. Gordon’s receptionist. “You must be Bailey,” she says, ushering me inside the small waiting room lined with high-backed plastic chairs. “I almost didn’t hear you. Sorry about the tuna. I was trying to wolf it down before you got here.”

  “No, I’m sorry. I’m the one who’s late. Did Dr. Gordon leave?”

  “I’m Elizabeth Gordon, and I’m not a doctor.”

  Only then do I notice the framed diplomas on the pale blue wall. One boasts an undergraduate degree from Vassar, the other a Master of Social Work from Yale. No medical degree, but impressive nonetheless.

  “Why don’t we go into my office?” Elizabeth Gordon opens another door to reveal a modestly larger room than the one we’ve just been in, which is painted the same soothing shade of blue. On one side of the room sits a desk, piled high with files and loose pieces of paper covered in illegible scribbling. On the other side are grouped a tan-colored sofa and two mismatched chairs, one green, the other navy, an attempt, I decide, to appear casual and get clients to relax and open up. I wonder if the tuna sandwich was another such ploy.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I apologize again, as she motions for me to have a seat on the sofa.

  I sit down at the far end while she folds herself into the navy chair across from me, crossing one long leg over the other and resting her hands in her lap. “You seem to be upset about that.”

  “I don’t like being late.”

  “Why?”

  “I think it’s rude. It shows a disrespect for other people’s time.” I recall that my father was a stickler for promptness. But I don’t tell her that.

  “Being late makes you anxious?”

  “Doesn’t everything?”

  “I don’t know. Does it?” She smiles. What exactly does she expect me to say? “I understand from your sister that you’ve been going through a difficult time.”

  I almost laugh, roll my eyes instead, the way Jade often does when talking to her mother. “I guess you could say that.”

  Elizabeth Gordon jots something down on the pad of foolscap she is holding. I don’t remember seeing this pad in her hands before and wonder where it came from. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Not really.”

  “Okay. What would you like to talk about?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She waits. “Why did you come to see me, Bailey?”

  “My sister thought it would be a good idea.”

  “Yes. She told me you’ve been having crippling anxiety attacks for some time now.”

  “It hasn’t been that long.”

  “I understand they’ve been going on ever since your mother died.”

  “I guess.”

  “Approximately three years.”

  “I guess,” I say again, although I know exactly—almost to the minute—how long it’s been.

  “Claire tells me that your father died recently as well.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And that a few weeks ago you were beaten and raped.”

  “My sister has been quite the blabbermouth.”

  “I think she was just trying to be helpful.”

  “Did she also tell you I’m having an affair with my married boss?” I watch Elizabeth Gordon’s face for any sign of disapproval, but her face remains impassive and judgment-free.

  “She left that part out. Is that what you’d like to talk about?”

  I feel a burning sensation in my chest that causes my face to flush. “No.”

  She chooses her next words with obvious care. “Look. I know from your sister that the rape has been an awful setback for you, and I can see you have a lot of feelings related to all the things you’re dealing with. I hope you’ll feel comfortable enough to start putting those feelings into words, that we can work together to integrate those feelings with your cognition of what happened, with the eventual hope of getting better.…”

  “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I realize certain events are harder to talk about than others.…”

  “What is it you want from me?”

  “I think the question is, what do you want from me?”

  “I want …,” I begin, then stop. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I want.” I shake my head, lower my eyes to the beige shag carpet at my feet. When I finally look up aga
in, my voice is a whisper. “I just want to stop feeling so damn scared all the time.”

  “What are you scared of?”

  “What do you think?” The sneer in my voice matches the sneer on my lips. “I was raped, for God’s sake. The man almost killed me.”

  “You’re afraid it might happen again?”

  “He’s still out there, isn’t he?”

  “That’s a pretty frightening thought.”

  “Is this what therapists do—state the obvious?” I’m being deliberately provocative, although I’m not sure why.

  “No. Therapists try to understand and assist the people who come to them for help,” she says, refusing to rise to the bait. “You seem frightened and hostile, Bailey. Both edgy and on the edge. I’d like to know what is most upsetting to you now.”

  “Are you fishing for details of my rape, Dr. Gordon?”

  “Elizabeth,” she corrects gently, “I’m not a doctor, remember? And no, I’m not looking for specifics. I’m just trying to get you to put into words what is most troubling you. That’s the only way I’ll be able to help. People usually feel better when they leave their problems here. But I know it’s a difficult process, and there’s a lot going on with you. It will take time. The good thing is that we have as much time as we need.”

  “We have less than an hour.”

  She checks her watch. “Today, yes. But I’m hoping you’ll trust me enough to want to come back.”

  “I’m not sure what good it will do.”

  “Well, you don’t have to make any decisions right this minute. Why don’t we see how the rest of the session goes first? Sound fair to you?” she asks when I fail to respond.

  “I guess.”

  “Why don’t we start with your telling me a bit about yourself. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-nine.” I wait for her to tell me I look much younger, which would be a lie, but she doesn’t, which I appreciate. I tell her about my job, supply vague facts about my life, steering well clear of any more intimate revelations.

  “Tell me about your mother,” she says.

  My eyes fill with tears. “What can I say? She was wonderful. The best mother … my best friend.”