Dear John(38)

“It’s okay,” she said, raising her hand to cut me off. “But it’s hard. I’ve tried to forget about it, and it’s something that I’ve never even told my parents. Or anyone, for that matter. It’s such a cliché, you know? Small-town girl goes off to college and meets a handsome senior, who’s also president of his fraternity. He’s popular and rich and charming, and the little freshman is awed that he could be interested in someone like her. He treats her like she’s special, and she knows that other freshman girls are jealous, so she begins to feel special, too. She agrees to go to the winter formal at one of these fancy out-of-town hotels with him and some other couples, even though she’s been warned that the guy isn’t as kind or sensitive as he appears to be, and that in reality, he’s the kind of boy who carves notches in his bed frame for every girl he’s had.”

She closed her eyes, as if summoning the energy to continue. “She goes against the better judgment of her friends, and even though she doesn’t drink and he happily brings her a soda, she starts getting woozy anyway, and he offers to take her back to the hotel room so she can lie down. And the next thing she knows, they’re on the bed kissing, and she likes it at first, but the room is really spinning, and it doesn’t occur to her until later that maybe someone—maybe him—put something in her drink and that carving another notch with her name on it had been his goal all along.”

Her words began to come faster, tumbling over one another. “And then he starts groping at her breasts and her dress gets torn and then her panties get torn, too, but he’s on top of her and he’s so heavy and she can’t get him off, and she feels really helpless and wants him to stop since she’s never done this before, but by then she’s so dizzy she can barely talk and can’t call for help, and he probably would have had his way with her except that another couple who was staying in the room happened to show up, and she staggers out of the room crying and holding her dress. Somehow she finds her way to the lobby bathroom and keeps crying there, and other girls she’d traveled to the formal with come in and see the smeared mascara and torn dress and instead of being supportive, they laugh at her, acting like she should have known what was coming and got what she deserved. Finally she ends up calling a friend who hopped in his car and drove out there to pick her up, and he was smart enough not to ask any questions the whole way back.”

By the time she finished, I was rigid with anger. I’m no saint with women, but I’ve never once in my life considered forcing a woman to do something she rather wouldn’t.

“I’m sorry,” was all I could muster.

“You don’t have to be sorry. You didn’t do it.”

“I know. But I don’t know what else to say. Unless . . .” I trailed off, and after a moment she turned to me. I could see the tears running down her cheeks, and the fact that she’d been crying so silently made me ache.

“Unless what?”

“Unless you want me to . . . I don’t know. Beat the crap out of him?”

She gave me a sad little laugh. “You have no idea how many times I’ve wanted to do just that.”

“I will,” I said. “Just give me a name, but I promise to leave you out of it. I’ll do the rest.”

She squeezed my hand. “I know you would.”

“I’m serious,” I said.

She gave a wan smile, looking simultaneously world-weary and painfully young. “That’s why I won’t tell you. But believe me, I’m touched. That’s sweet of you.”

I liked the way she said it, and we sat together, hands clasped tightly. The rain had finally stopped, and in its place I could hear the sounds of the radio next door again. I didn’t know the song, but I recognized it as something from the early jazz era. One of the guys in my unit was a fanatic about jazz.

“But anyway,” she went on, “that’s what I meant when I said it wasn’t always easy my freshman year. And it was the reason I wanted to quit school. My parents, bless their hearts, thought that I was homesick, so they made me stay. But . . . as bad as it was, I learned something about myself. That I could go through something like that and survive. I mean, I know it could have been worse—a lot worse—but for me, it was all I could have handled at the time. And I learned from it.”

When she finished, I found myself remembering something she’d said. “Was Tim the one who brought you back from the hotel that night?”

She looked up, startled.

“Who else would you call?” I said by way of explanation.