“I’m sorry you’ve had such trouble, Paul, but you know how I feel. My pictures are private. I have no desire or need to share them more widely. And I don’t think of it as a ‘waste,’ simply because my photographs won’t be up on public walls,” I add with heat. Paul’s gaze intensifies, hardens. I step back from him a little, though I’m vibrating with anger.
“Itisa waste. It’s irresponsible. Selfish, even. I don’t believe this whole worry over privacy—I think you’re just afraid. You want to curl up in your safe little life and reject anything that might challenge the way you’ve lived, that might set you free.” He shakes his head. “Your work is trying to free you, Judith. Listen to it. Andshareit. Otherwise, yeah, it’s afucking waste.” He spits the last words. I stare at him, stunned. “Judith—”
“I have to go,” I say. Paul grabs my arm and I nearly scream.
“Let me go,” I manage to whisper. He does, then lifts both hands in the air. I walk toward the door with him calling after me. The other students turn their heads, soaking up the drama between us, assuming things that aren’t true. I push through the gallery’s front door and stand on the sidewalk, shocked and blinking in the sunlight. There’s a squeezing pressure in my head. I can’t believe what Paul said, the language he used—foul and hateful, like the man’s. Every inch of me saysflee. So I do: I spot the nearest subway stairs and run forthem.
31.
I stumble down the stairs and into the tunnel that leads deep inside the station, looking over my shoulder now and then, but Paul hasn’t followed me. He can’t, of course; he can’t leave the others behind.And why would he bother following afucking waste?I think bitterly.
Standing on the platform, a sudden wind blows back my hair. The uptown train is coming.Here I am, Paul, being free, I think, stepping into the car. It’s overheated and half-full, but I easily find a seat. I sink down onto the hard plastic, feeling as though I’ve escaped danger, but I’ve only escaped a humiliating public episode. I try to let it go as the train plows forward, but I can’t help reliving the moment—my anger, Paul’s fervid energy, the terrible embarrassment of those words.
The muggy heat and the swaying of the car through the dark make me drowsy, but even as my head nods, I stare around at my neighbors. I’m too tired and defeated to lift my camera from my purse, so I just take in their faces, knees, chests, hands, shoes, and eyes with faint hunger. My eyes flutter closed, then open. Closed, then open. Closed…
When I open my eyes again, I panic. I can tell time has passed; the subway car has emptied but for the man sitting next to me. Right next to me. I lean away from him a little and watch the stations blur by. I can’t read the signs to get my bearings; the train speeds past every stop. The only person to ask for advice is the tall, slim man beside me, but he seems to be dozing.
I consider him carefully from the corner of my eye. He looks like a well-off businessman in his navy-blue suit and shining, tasseled brown loafers. I’m relieved to see that his hands, long and folded in his lap, are nothing like the Buick driver’s hands. They’re pale and almost feminine. His face, tipped forward and hidden under his wide hat brim, only reveals a somewhat pointy chin. As I look, I become more aware of the side of his body touching mine. I could get up and move, but if he woke, I’d be embarrassed. Embarrassed to have overreacted, embarrassed to be alone with him in an empty car. When I shift, the man stays still; he’s asleep, as I suspected. A harmless rider, asleep on the train—nothing more.
Still, I think of the knife nestled deep in my purse. There if I need it.
I only have to make it to the next stop—if the train ever stops. I’ll get out then and head downtown to Penn Station. A simple fix. For now, I watch the two of us reflected in the darkened train window: the top of his hat; his neatly folded hands; my pale, pinched face. My fingers itch to take a picture; I’m not too tired anymore. Mentally preparing the shot gives me energy. I reach into my purse and close my hand around the camera, preparing to lift it out.
His hand is instantly on my wrist. His cold fingers wrapping it, pressing it down. I try to wrench free and stand, but the pressure of his hand keeps me pinned in place, and then the old pain sears through me. I sink back against the seat and whisper, “Let go.”
He tightens his grip until my wrist bones grind together.
“You’re hurting me,” I manage through the sharp pain of my wrist and the deep burning in my middle. As the train slows, finally nearing a stop, the man releases my wrist but quickly brings his arm up to circle and clinch my neck, pinning me to his chest, his head over mine, his hot breath in my hair like a lover’s. The way the first man’s breath was in my hair, slow at first, then quickening, quickening, then slowing at last while I turned my head and retched.
When the train begins screeching to a stop, I reach up and back to scratch at his face; I think of what it looks like, my red nail marks alongthe skin of his face. I wait for his cries, but there’s nothing—yet suddenly I’m free. His arms release me. The doors open. I throw myself onto the platform, stumbling to the ground, staring wildly at the doors as they close, expecting to see him come through behind me. He doesn’t. He’s let me go easily—so easily that it puzzles me. Wasn’t he pinning me against his chest a moment ago? So desperate to have me that he nearly choked me? When the car passes by, I see nothing but strangers in the windows. No tall, pale, hatted man, but many more people than I remember. This must be a different car; I must have missed mine passing. Somewhere in the dark of the tunnel that man sits alone, flexing his hands and gently prodding the cuts to his face. Feeling bested and furious, vengeful.Next time, he thinks,next time I’ll put an end to this.
I feel heavy, so heavy, as I start the long walk downtown, the camera like a small anvil around my neck. I’ve lost my quick, light city stride and stop to check behind me frequently. I don’t see him; he hasn’t found me yet.But he will, I think.He will.It isn’t until I pass a butcher shop window and glimpse myself, caught between bloody sides of beef and dangling sausage links, that I’m moved to use my camera. There I am—wide-eyed, disheveled, and forlorn. But slightly defiant, too.
I raise the camera and shoot, knowing he’ll be there, behind me somewhere. I look around fearfully, trying to spot him. When I shift my eyes back to the window, I’m startled to see: the woman split in two. The photographer thrilling to her hurt subject’s face, and the hurt subject resentful of the woman with thecamera.
32.
I stand under the spray of the hot shower for thirty minutes or more, trying to wash it all off. The whole day. The sensation of his iron grip on my wrist, my neck. My tumble through the subway car doors. I will never ride the subway again. Never go to the city again. Never go anywhere. I’ll take my pictures here or nowhere; possibly nowhere. I was right to give it up before. And I’ll give up the class, too—along with Paul’s praise and censure. Why shouldn’t I, anyway?A fucking waste.
Once I’ve toweled off and wrapped myself in a robe, I feel calmer, steadier. I try to tell myself a new story, a more logical one: The man on the train was just a pervert. What happened was a fluke. The train car I saw was a different car, the one after mine. I wipe fog from the bathroom mirror and study my wrist and neck, looking for bruises. I turn my wrist back and forth, turn my head back and forth, pulling at the skin of my neck, but there’s nothing. No dark smudges where he touched me. No evidence of what occurred.
This heightens my sense of distance from what happened—as though I’ve drifted over it like a bird. It happened, but now I’m far away and safe at home. It doesn’t matter now. Tom will be back from work in two hours, and we’ll have a quiet evening made of dinner and light conversation, dishes and bed. I look at my camera bag bursting with film rolls on the hall table and feel distant from it, too. I’m not eager to processthe film the way I usually am. Instead, I’m content to sit quietly in the living room, staring at my animal figurines.
Into this quiet the telephone explodes with its sudden, shrill ring.
Even though I shouldn’t, I glide into the kitchen to answer it.If it’s him,I can call Tom at work. Or just handle it myself. I’m safe; he didn’t get me. He got me, but I got away. I’m out of reach now.Calm spreads through me as I reach for the phone.
“You have such deep regrets about going today, don’t you, Judith? The way I handled you. Marked you, even if you can’t see it. I can see it from here. You’re covered in cuts and bruises, from here,” he says in a soft, confiding voice.
“Shut up,” I gasp, as the day comes hurtling back into focus: the cool, dry skin of the man’s hands, his breath on my hair, the pressure on my neck and wrist. I clench the phone instead of hanging it up. I drift down into a crouch to try to ease the pain in my side.
“I mean I see your bruises fromhere, Judith. I see themright now.” I stand abruptly and look through the kitchen window, scanning the backyard for any sign of him.
“Shut up,” I repeat, though I’m breathless with hurt. I don’t see him anywhere, but his seeming absence doesn’t comfort me. I focus on familiar things to steady myself and gain control: the twisted branch of the cherry tree, the shape of the dirt mound that covers Rosie’s bones, slightly flattened now from time and weather. The man doesn’t speak again for a while, as if he’s obeyed my command toshut up. The weight of his presence begins to lift and I step back from the window toward the phone’s cradle, determined to hang up, but then he speaks in a low, gentle voice.
“When I walked through your grandmother’s door that day and found you, you were willing. You wanted all of it—the burning, too. Because who would you be today if I hadn’t marked you? Not Judith Stanley, right? Who?”
I scream into the receiver then and slam it down—again and again and again. Then I drop it so it hangs, swinging back and forth, sending its dial tone and then its urgent beeping into the air.
