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Published in the anthology The Secret Lives of Lawfully Wedded Wives: 27 Women Writers on Love, Infidelity, Sex Roles, Race, Kids, and More, edited by Autumn Stephens, published by Inner Ocean, 2006

Copyright Debra Anne Davis 2006
 
 
Always, Always There
 
I sat in the room, but I couldn’t stay there. I was perched on the bed, and, as usual, had plunked my shoes down in front of me. It was early morning and I was getting ready for work. This is what people do. They get up, like grown-ups, get dressed and put on their shoes, so they can go to their jobs. I slid one foot in one shoe. But that was all I could manage.

I went to find him, clumping awkwardly in one untied shoe. “Bobby,” I said, cautiously. “Could you come in here, please?” He did, without asking, without smirking, without betraying surprise or condescension. For that, I am eternally grateful to him. He stood in the doorway, looking in. Now I would be able to continue. I sat back down on the bed, put my other foot in my other shoe, and bent down to tie both laces. That had been the problem, the tying. I was afraid if I bent down to tie my shoes, I would be vulnerable, too vulnerable. In danger. I was afraid, in short, to sit alone in a room and tie my own shoes. I was afraid, specifically, that as I tied my shoes a stranger would enter the room and rape me. I was twenty-five years old.

I had been raped the week before. He’d been a complete stranger, the rapist. He’d forced his way into my home and ripped my clothes off. Shoved me around, threatened me with a knife, torn my underwear and made me bleed. He raped me in the bed Bobby and I shared in the apartment we shared. Bobby had been out of town for the weekend; I think he will regret that always.

Regret of course is not the right word.

*

The night I was raped, Bobby was my boyfriend. Nine months later, unfortunately exactly nine months later, he was my husband. Three years later he was my ex-husband. Bobby and I were madly in love. And then, eventually, we weren’t. In fact, as our marriage ended, we were each in love with someone else. We are both remarried now.

How did all this happen? I don’t fully understand, but I will try my best to explain.
Here’s part of the explanation: There’s no way to think about the marriage without the rape. The rape struck before the wedding, sat like a toxic fog over the marriage, and made one final stab—a diabolical reprise—as we divorced.

*

At my wedding, I wore a puffy white dress and a headband with a pouf of netting, the late twentieth century version of a veil. I had on satin shoes that my dad had actually helped me pick out, although no one could see them because the dress was so big and so long. My childhood girlfriends had done my hair; a bridesmaid was in charge of my make-up, lipstick, mascara. A bouquet of red roses, a garter, two rings.

And of course: old, new, borrowed, blue—I wore or carried them all. I wasn’t the kind of bride who could afford to ignore superstition.

*

“The road is long/With many a winding turn/That leads us to who knows where/Who knows when.” Late one afternoon, back when we were in college, five years before we got married, Bobby and I took a drive. We were driving to a special restaurant for a special dinner. The road we drove curls along the edge of the continent. As you drive, there is rock above you, to the right, and cliff below, to the left; stretching up above the rock is the sky, down below the cliff the ocean pounds. As we drove along, daytime shifted into evening, and evening into darkness. I drove, we talked. Bobby and I always talked a lot. Our friend Donna had dubbed us, early on, the “Babbling Duo”—not flattering but apt.

“He’s not heavy, he’s my brother.” We were listening to the second song on the tape Bobby had made for me. It was the Hollies, a band from the Sixties, even though we were here in the Eighties. Bouncy music, mysterious-sounding vocals. Happy music, I decided. But then I really began to hear the words. “That’s stupid,” I said.

“No, it’s not,” Bobby countered.

“No burden is he to bear/We’ll get there.”

It is too a stupid song, I told him. Ridiculous. Bobby is a musician and I’m not, but I didn’t feel I had to defer to him for that reason. It was the lyrics I was having trouble with. I imagined the literal scene: a grown man carrying his grown brother. One guy slung over another guy’s shoulder—of course that’s going to be heavy. I’m not sure why, after three years of a perfectly respectable liberal arts education, I was interpreting an extended metaphor so literally.

After dinner, we drove back down the coast. This was our last night together before summer. Bobby would be going to his family on their side of the country; I’d be staying here with mine. I found our summers apart excruciating. It was like being homesick for a person. “But I’m strong/Strong enough to carry him.” A relationship, our relationship, at that point, was child’s play. We were in love, yes, for real—but what worries did we have? Final exams and cooking dinner and going to parties. “And the load/Doesn’t weigh me down at all.” We hadn’t had to sacrifice anything yet, not for each other, not even for ourselves.

Halfway down the coast, the cassette tape popped out. It was black plastic; on the little lined label, the album title, “The Hollies Greatest Hits,” was scrawled in Bobby’s loopy, angular printing. I took my hand off the wheel, flipped the tape over and pushed it in again.

Then the fog began to close in on us. Shimmering white, it was dangerous and beautiful. We kept talking, about music and art and literature, about politics (there was a Cold War going on then); we shared observations, insights, gossip about our friends, plans for the summer. We disagreed about most of the things we talked about; this was what we had in common, our glue. “If I’m laden at all/I’m laden with sadness/That everyone’s heart/Isn’t filled with the gladness/Of love for one another.”

We arrived safely home.

I listened to that tape all summer long.

*

I’d known Caroline since third grade, and so I was only slightly embarrassed to be standing in front of her wearing nothing but my underwear and socks. The two of us had been shut in, from the outside, like prisoners into this tiny mirrored room; she, though, was fully dressed. Caroline was the one who’d brought me here, to make my dream come true. I was afraid I’d step on a pin. We had been shown to the dressing room, and I had been instructed to disrobe. There was no question but that I would obey. The saleswoman, the owner of the shop, opened the door, again, without warning. But what did it matter? We were all girls here.

I’d found the gown I’d wanted, ivory silk, so soft and shiny. So, well, pretty. But the one on the rack wasn't my size. “We’ll make one for you,” the shop owner had told me. And so here I was, waiting for my fitting.

The shop owner brought the dress in, helped me pull it down over my head, and then held the dress cinched at my waist with one hand. There was no zipper yet, so she pinned me in. The front was incomplete; the seams (“princess seams,” she’d told me) which ran from the neckline to the waist were exposed. She must have seen me looking because she said, “The front here,”—she ran her hand up and down my flimsily concealed chest; it seemed nothing to her that she, a stranger, was touching me in such a private way, and so, it seemed nothing to me, either—“will be covered, of course, with the same fabric and also with tiny beads, beautiful little beads in a lace pattern.” Ah.

Next, the sleeves. Complacent now, and trusting, I held my arms out, just as I had when I was a child so my mom could quickly tug my coat onto me. I’d never had anything custom-made for me before, and here I was, an integral part of the assembly line, my very own mannequin.

Satisfied the sleeves were in place, she, gingerly, expertly, spun me exactly 180 degrees, so I faced the mirror. I looked up and what I saw was this: A princess. I was beautiful. Anyone would be beautiful in this dress, of course, but we all know the only thing that mattered at that moment was me. Yes, I was going to be a beautiful bride. And so the world would continue to spin.

I understood, now. The allure of the wedding gown, the seduction, the tradition that endures.
Caroline beamed. She’d known all along that this was the right dress shop, the right gown, the right thing to do. She’d taken me, her poor, damaged friend, here, to this place, here, to this dress. For the past several months I had been, to my family and friends, my colleagues and the police, to the doctors and the psychologists, a rape victim. But now I was transformed, a bride. Yes, it is crass and commercial, this princess fantasy. But it was also exactly what I needed at this moment. Tears of absolute delight stung my eyes.

*

Two months before our wedding, I’d gone back to my hometown and stayed with my parents for a week to make all the arrangements. Bobby wasn’t able to come because of work—but also because I was making him crazy with all the wedding plans. Really, I’d become obsessed; I read the thick bridal magazines as if they were weighty tomes and I was preparing for a literature exam. I took notes. I made phone calls. After a while, Bobby made a rule. I could only talk to him about The Wedding once a day, at a pre-specified time. That seemed to work for both of us.

I enjoyed a week of shopping and consulting with wedding professionals. I pored over shiny catalog books and picked out all my favorite flowers, red and white and pink, and sought expert opinions on baby’s breath and greenery and sprays. Mom and I met with the caterers. Caroline took me to buy my gown. I found two pairs of shoes I liked, and since Dad, quite uncharacteristically, preferred one pair to the other; I bought those. Dad also volunteered to help me taste test the cake; we agreed the chocolate mousse was the superior choice.

And then I met alone with the minister to discuss the wedding.

I’d had a date in mind for the ceremony, but it turned out that the minister was busy that day. He said he could marry us the following week, though. I didn’t like the date he suggested. Although it was a different month in a different season, it was the same day of the month that I’d been raped.

I have forgotten my best friend’s birthday, and even, once, my wedding anniversary. But the rape is one anniversary I’ve never forgotten. I doubt I ever will. Yes, I remember every year when it comes around. But it’s been fifteen years now, and I also still notice, every single month, that one specific date that is the anniversary day, the anniversary of my attack. I hate the look of the numeral that represents that day. And I hate the name of the month. They’re tinged now, forever, for me. Even the weather of that season whispers to me, rape.

But that was the only date that worked for the minister. And so in the end we got married that day, exactly nine months after the rape. Nine months. The exact gestation period for a human life.

I’m not an especially superstitious person. But just look at what this Big Day had against it from the get go, what it would have to try to overcome.

*

After I’d agreed to his date for the wedding, the minister asked me some questions. I guess this is the usual procedure. He asked what kind of ceremony we’d like. He asked about my background, my job. Then he asked , “Why get married now?” It was a pointed question, especially from someone I didn’t know very well. But he was a professional, like a doctor who asks probing questions about physical conditions. He would officiate at this wedding; it made sense that he would want to know its impetus.

I didn’t want to get into it, but I knew, of course, that I would end up telling him. And so I just led off with my story, to get it out of the way, to get it out, once again, into the open. “Seven months ago, I was raped.” The minister looked shocked, and then sad. It was the usual reaction. And then he waited. In what way was my statement an answer to the question he had posed, he asked.

“Bobby has been so wonderful about it all,” I told him, hoping this would be an explanation. “He has helped me through every part of it, the police stuff and the therapy and everything.” But maybe this wasn’t enough. “Our relationship has really grown from this. It's stronger now, and deeper.” That was the only answer I gave to the question, Why get married now? That was the only answer I had. An answer about our love, to be sure, but also, about the rape.

*

The Big Day arrived. Our wedding ceremony and reception were held in my bridesmaid’s parents’ backyard. Her mother had been preparing for months, planting roses, twining ivy along the arch, setting potted flowers around the gazebo. The yard was perfect. There were eighty guests, all smiling, all smiling at us.

My father walked me down the steps; Bobby met us and took my hand. “It’s a beautiful day,” the minister began. And it was.

It had sprinkled, just a bit, that morning, but the sun had come out and shone down warmly, as I knew it would. The sky was the color of my favorite Crayola. I felt the warmth on my arms as I stood before the minister and said my vows and listened to Bobby say his; I felt the warmth of everyone there as Bobby slid the gold band on my finger and I on his. I felt the warmth as I danced, alone with my husband, as everyone I loved most in the world watched us, smiling, smiling and following our every move with their wide eyes. My gown, my beautiful gown, swirled around me, the tiny beads picking up the sunlight just so.

After our first dance was over, the minister caught my eye, smiled, gave a little wave. I excused myself and went inside the house. I retrieved the envelope I had prepared for him, with a check from my father in it. We two, he and I, bride and minister, stood by the grand piano. I smiled and thanked him for the ceremony and handed him his check. He smiled, too. And then this is what he said to me. “Stop by and visit next time you’re in town.” Yes, of course. “Sometime when you’re here without him,” he said and gestured outside. He smiled again. "Him" was my husband. The husband he had just married me to, quite literally moments before.

Of course I was shocked. Of course I was angry. Was that the minister's usual line? Did he try to pick up on all his brides—or just me? I felt completely insulted. But also: I felt scared. His invitation was tinged with threat, maybe not in his mind but certainly in mine. He had, in one second, ruined my Day.

The minister left the wedding. The bride went back outside to her reception.

*

I didn’t tell anyone what had just happened.

The sun glared.

I danced with my male guests. I ate cake and chatted. The folds of my wedding dress imprisoned me now, so much fabric. My white satin shoes pinched. I accepted, graciously, the compliments on my gown; no one but I could see that the seams were showing once again.

Eventually the words the minister had said seemed to evaporate into the air, float up into that beautiful sky of my day. But I’d learned this much in my life: Just because you can’t see it, now, doesn’t mean it won’t be back, later.

*

That night, in our hotel room, I told Bobby what the minister had said. But releasing that secret made it worse, the comment not just a blot on my day but also on our first night as husband and wife. Bobby was angry at the minister. I felt shaken all over again—why would he say such a thing to me on my wedding day?—and frightened again, too. Would I encounter threat at each turn now, even in places where I should be able to feel safest? And so in the end this is how I spent my wedding night: curled up on a fancy hotel room bed, crying.

This scene could symbolize what Bobby and I had been through together and what we’d overcome, I suppose, if only we hadn’t divorced. So maybe then this moment represents the heavy burden that threatened to crush our marriage before it began.

It’s not that we were, either of us, unwilling to shoulder such a load. It’s just that, it turns out, we were unable. Two people together are usually stronger than one alone; we marry for this strength. And when a heavy burden is shared by a couple, it connects them more tightly still. It binds them, ties them together. But there is always the danger that this tie may constrict itself into a noose; the individuals remain connected but the relationship slowly strangles. Bobby and I were strong, each alone, and stronger together—except when it came to the rape. There, we couldn’t say, “No burden was this to bear.” We couldn’t say this load didn’t weigh us down at all. It weighed heavily, on us both. Constantly.

If I had never been raped, maybe Bobby and I never would have gotten married—or, married, maybe we wouldn’t have gotten divorced. There’s no way to tell, of course, about these theoretical alternate routes, the roads we weren’t able to take. But the rape was there, it was always there, it was something we had to struggle with, over and over again. I think we tried our best.

*

Soon after our wedding, Bobby and I moved into a big apartment complex. It had a security gate; at the end of the driveway, we slid a plastic card into a slot and watched the gate slowly roll open for us, slowly close tight behind us. Bobby started a new job, one he really liked, even though he had to work nights. I didn’t like the idea. But the apartment, after all, had a deadbolt on the door—and the gate at the entrance. I’m an adult, I told myself again; I should be able to handle this, . Maybe it would even be good for me.

It wasn’t.

One night, about two weeks after Bobby had started this new job, I was at home by myself, a situation which I now found terrifying. I turned on the radio, turned up the radio. I read. I wrote. There was a sound. Since the rape, I had tried to cultivate bionic ears; the eyes of an eagle, sharpsighted and quickmoving. I crept silently to the front door. I jammed my eyeball at the peep hole. I searched up and down, left and right, seeking as big a circumference as I could from that maddeningly tiny hole. No, I saw nothing. But I heard yelling. Man’s voice, woman’s voice. He sounded mad. Really mad. Somewhere in this complex a man was yelling and a woman was yelling back. And I knew what was happening: she was being raped by him, or about to be raped by him. And I was afraid that I, too, would be raped by him. If his yells could reach me, he could reach me. He could slide in through the window, bash in through the deadbolt, seep in through the keyhole.

I hesitated five or maybe ten seconds. Then I called the police. They came, quickly. Whey they knocked on my door, I told them about what I’d heard, the voices. Politely, they said that they had neither seen nor heard anything unusual when they arrived at the complex. And indeed, I now noticed that I no longer heard any yelling, either. Nothing really bad was happening. Nothing really bad had, in fact, happened. The police thanked me for calling. I thanked them for coming.

When Bobby got home, I told him what I’d heard and what I’d done. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it. Maybe if I hadn't, my life might be different now. But I did. Bobby quit his job the next day, without consulting me. I didn’t want him to quit—jobs are where money comes from. And even more, I didn’t want to be the cause of him quitting. Although it wasn’t me, exactly, who'd caused him to quit; it was my fear. It was the rapist reaching his long shithead arm into my life once more, into now my beautiful, new marriage. Into my fragile, burdened marriage.

It’s not that Bobby wasn’t willing to face my fear with me. He dealt with it better than anyone else could have. It’s just that it was always there, my fear, my multiple fears, causing so many changes in our lives. We tiptoed around those fears, placated them as well as we could. Then we castigated them, kicked and screamed at them. We attempted the silent treatment. We ignored them as best we could. But the fears remained impervious.

*

Bobby had been on his high school wrestling team. He’d shown me his moves before, in our bedroom in college. Though he was slightly shorter than I, he was a few pounds heavier, and, I had learned, much stronger. When we would pretend to wrestle, he could twist me around and land me on my back every time, no matter what I did. “Let’s do it again,” I’d tell him. I’d try to stop him with my shoulders, my forearms, my thighs. Each time I landed flat on my back, gasping for air. Always I was amazed he could pin me so easily. Never was I afraid when he did.

And then, ten years later, I was afraid.

I’d invited Bobby over to my tiny apartment to sign the divorce papers. Though we were still good friends, though we still loved and cared for each other, we had recognized the marriage was over. We each were already, maybe inevitably, going our own way. The taut cords of our union had stretched and then snapped. But the paperwork was easy, really; Bobby and I had no assets, no financial ones, at least. It was over so quickly, the signing, the marriage. We thought maybe we’d go for coffee. “I’m gonna go pee,” I told him, in the unselfconscious way one says this to someone close.

I stepped into my bathroom. But then, a noise. Bang. And again: Bang bang. My invisible antennae went up. My post-rape sixth sense, the one that allowed me to hear inaudible threats, see through walls, smell danger, kicked in. So what the hell was the sound? Not so much a bang, I realized as I listened, my heart pounding, but more of a clack. Clack, clack, I clarified for myself.

Bobby was going to kill me. He hadn’t come to sign the divorce papers; he’d come to murder me. That, of course, was the explanation for the ominous clacking; and that was why I was now crouched down, my ear pressed against my thin bathroom door. But how, I wondered, would he do it? What kind of weapon makes a clacking sound? A few possibilities occurred to me. So, eventually, did the fact that the sound was not getting any louder. Okay. So Bobby wasn’t coming at me. It took me ten seconds, an eternity, to get to this: Maybe he isn’t going to kill me after all. Bravely, I stepped back into room.

Bobby was holding two cassette tape boxes in his hands. He was slapping them together, keeping rhythm to some silent song in his head. He looked up, surprised to see me back so soon. We went to get that coffee.

Bobby had never physically hurt me. And, though I knew he could, I knew he never would. I knew that. But still. I had listened, statue-still, trying to figure out the source of that terrifying sound. And when I couldn’t find a logical explanation, my imagination rushed in to offer an illogical one. A fearful explanation. An explanation that cast me, once again, as the victim.
That rape. That fucking rape. It had made me suspicious even of people who’d saved me from it.

*

The day before our wedding, when Bobby and I stopped by the church so that he and the minister could meet each other, the three of us wound up in an argument.. Perhaps this should have been a warning. Bobby and I had selected a passage from Ecclesiastes to be read at our ceremony. Nothing out of the ordinary there, certainly; that same passage is practically the hallmark of the modern wedding. “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.” So common, these words, clichéd from well-deserved repetition. “A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.” The human condition in the natural world, simply and elegantly expressed.

“A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.” Yes, we knew the cycle of joy and grief, all too well. But of course these words did not describe just our lives, what our marriage would be. All humans experience the ebb and flow of happiness. And so this, too, was a sentiment the minister would allow. And yet the preceding phrase, an integral part of the passage--"A time to kill, and a time to heal”--he found too distasteful to recite.

He was visibly surprised when we both, spontaneously and strongly, objected to his suggestion that we edit those nine words out of the ceremony. “You don’t want that said at your wedding, do you?” he asked. “A time to kill?” But in fact, we did. Of course Bobby and I had someone very specific in mind. Although even we could see that the desire for revenge doesn't have much place at a wedding.

Human beings, though, aren't the only things you can kill. What about fear, for example? Yes. Kill violence, we thought, kill degradation; kill the grip this attack, this outrage, the hold it has on us. Kill it off with this wedding—kill it off with the talisman of our vows. If the burden is too heavy, then let’s kill it with our unified strength.

The minister didn’t understand our insistence that this passage be read, that this sentiment be expressed aloud on our wedding day. And in the end, he refused to say the words about killing. And the grip was not broken.

He did, though, say this to us both as we stood before him becoming husband and wife: “What greater thing is there for two human souls than…to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories?” This line from George Eliot is, of course, also commonly invoked in wedding ceremonies. Every marriage has, or will have, burdens it must bear, silent memories it must hear. But: how often is it that the bride and groom already know what those “unspeakable memories” will be?

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