She was drunk. No, not drunk. Tipsy. Not puking, falling down, ugly drunk, of course—never that. But she was bouncy, giggly, silly. OTM was the code Claudia and her girlfriends used: One. Too. Many. OTM and you might get teary, telling your friends how much you love them, or laugh too loud, or dance with abandon—even though you were a terrible dancer. Which was fine under most circumstances. Perhaps not with your in-laws. But any more and you were going to regret it. Any more and tomorrow was going to be a bad day. Maybe that was the real reason Ayers wanted to go home. Because for his mother, there were limits. Pressed linen, it creased terribly. You could never tell if crinoline had been hugged too long or too tight. I love my mother, Ayers often said, as if such a thing needed saying. But I remember as a kid that she only had so much patience for affection. Claudia had no idea what that meant. Why would you need patience for affection? Claudia had maybe drifted too close to the line; there had been lots of hugging and declarations of affection (from Claudia to Sophie), and maybe Sophie was getting a little stiff. Anyway, if Claudia hadn’t been OTM, she might have noticed as soon as she came home what they only noticed later: That the lights in the kitchen were on, when they hadn’t been before. That a coat had been knocked from one of the hooks on the wall beneath the stairs. If she hadn’t been OTM, she might have seen those things and deduced the truth before it was too late. There was someone in the apartment. That was five.
Ayers was still outside, and Claudia came into the apartment alone. Claudia had taken on Mrs. Swanson, their impossibly elderly landlord. Which meant that she often loaned Ayers out to her. Oh, Ayers will help you with that. Won’t you, honey? They helped her with small things—like changing lightbulbs and getting dead mice away from Mittens, her ginger tabby. When Claudia was at the store, she often picked up eggs, bread, and 2 percent milk, dropping them off on her way upstairs. Usually Ashley, Mrs. Swanson’s daughter came to take the trash out. But Ashley was sick with the flu that night, so Ayers had promised to do it. That’s what he was doing. That was why Claudia went alone into their apartment. That was six.
Stumbling up the narrow duplex stairs, she’d noticed a strange smell. Something musky. She dismissed it. That was one of the reasons she’d wanted to live in the East Village, in an apartment where the windows opened. The city had a smell, especially in summer. And it wasn’t just garbage and bums and dog piss. There were aromas from trees and flowers, from bakeries and fine restaurants, from baristas and something else, hot asphalt and rubber, something indefinably New York. And you couldn’t smell it in Midtown. She thought absently on entering—see, she did it even then—had she forgotten to close the window? Was she too exuberant with Sophie? Was Ayers embarrassed of her? Maybe she shouldn’t have told that story about her friend Misha who had recently dyed her unapologetically long underarm hair neon green and delighted in showing it off everywhere possible. Her absentmindedness often kept her from seeing things that were right in front of her. That was seven.
A lot of women don’t remember the event, her doctor told her. And that must be a wonderful mercy. Because Claudia remembered. Every crushing, bruising, airless second from the moment he stepped out of the bedroom in front of her and grabbed her by her hair, pulling her inside and closing and locking the door. Every detail of his face from his dark eyes, to the stubble on his jaw, to the scar on his chin, to the rank of his breath, the black stains on his teeth. He punched her with a closed fist right in the face—so jarring, so brutal, blinding white stars and pain that traveled from her jaw and the bridge of her nose, up over the crown of her head, her neck snapping back.
She struggled for orientation. No, no, this wasn’t happening. Couldn’t be. He pressed his arm over her throat, cutting off air. She couldn’t breathe so she couldn’t scream. Funny how that went. She wouldn’t have thought about that. No air, no sound. She was silent, writhing. Utterly powerless against his far, far superior physical strength. She took kickboxing! She had thick powerful legs, athletic calves that never fit into those sleek high boots she so adored. She was bigger than Ayers—there was no carrying Claudia over the threshold, nothing that would have been pretty. They play wrestled all the time. He was strong, Ayers, but not like this. She couldn’t move. She was as helpless as a child. His eyes. They were blank, totally blank. He didn’t see her; she wasn’t even there. He thrust himself into her, a heinous ripping impact. The violation. It was unspeakable, beyond comprehension, and the pain. A horrible, tearing, burning. One, two, three. He shuddered, eyes closing—release, not pleasure—and it was done. He hit her again.
Stop looking at me! A hard crack against her cheekbone.
She fell back, and he kicked her brutally in the ribs. She threw up on the floor and managed to be humiliated about it even though he was already gone, out that window that offered such a pretty view of Mrs. Swanson’s garden and the graveyard. She lost herself then. Went somewhere else. The next thing she remembered was the door crashing in. Not Ayers but a uniformed cop. Why not Ayers? Why wasn’t he the first person through that door?
“Oh Jesus,” the young cop said. Claudia wanted to apologize about the vomit. Crazy, wasn’t that? Then she was out again.
It was two weeks later that she knew she was pregnant. No AIDS, no other sexually transmitted diseases. It was possible to determine paternity in vitro, but the test was invasive and caused risk to the fetus. They both decided. She thought that they both decided (though Ayers would later claim that it was all about Claudia, that he was just doing what he thought she needed) that they didn’t want to know. A baby was a gift, no matter how it was delivered. Wasn’t it? They would love the child. They would never seek to discover the true paternity. No matter what, they’d raise the baby as their own.
Don’t do this, Martha had begged. You don’t know how you’re going to feel. It’s not fair to the child.
So it’s fair to—terminate the pregnancy?
Claudia was shocked at how unanimous was the sentiment that she should have an abortion. What a horrible word: the brutal end of something before it began. Even her doctor seemed to assume. Do you want to schedule the D&C? No, said Claudia. I don’t know.
Life at any cost, then? Martha asked.
This baby is proof that even out of the most horrific possible moment, in your darkest hour, something wonderful is possible, Claudia had countered.
Martha, who was fifteen years older than Claudia, just shook her head, looked off into the middle distance as if she were the long-suffering knower of all things, just waiting for her little sister to catch up.
Ayers and I were together that night. It is equally possible that it is his child.
And if it isn’t?
It won’t matter. We’re enough—strong enough, in love enough. It’s possible. I’ve done the research.
Claudia remembered gazing out at the vista from their new apartment in a luxury Chelsea high-rise with windows that couldn’t be opened and a doorman who looked like a professional wrestler (they’d moved within two weeks of the attack) hoping—praying that she was right. She wasn’t right, not by a long shot. Not about that. Not about anything, it seemed, since that.
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