Lie Still by Julia Heaberlin Page B

bare skin showing above my jeans.
    His gaze rolled up to my breasts, a C cup for the first time in their lives. My nipples tingled like he was physically touching them, and I felt the familiar flush of shame. The experts say the body is cued to respond, even under attack, even when we don’t want it to.
    “Watch where you look.” My voice pulsed with anger.
    “You seem a little on edge, Mrs. Page.”
    He stepped over the threshold to the porch, and I slammed the door.
    I waited for Mike in his favorite armchair, facing the door, my feet propped up on a moving box. I pulled my grandmother’s afghan tight around my pajamas. When I was five, I liked to waggle my fingers like little puppet people through the crochet holes.
    There is blood in my house
.
    Staring at the door, I thought about how I could never survive Mike leaving me. About how ironic it was that I married a man immersed in violence when I can barely make it through a full episode of his favorite cop show on cable.
    Mike takes my idiosyncrasies in this area in stride. He knows what’s off the table. Horror movies with the word
Saw
or a Roman numeral in the title. Torture scenes that involve fingers, clippers, knives, cigar cutters, or water. Children in peril.
    The truth is, I was like this before Pierce raped me. Ever since Beth died in
Little Women
, I’ll check out the end of any bookthat foreshadows the death of a character I love. As long as I know what’s coming, it’s OK. But don’t surprise me.
    Yet I have no problem at all murdering Pierce Martin. I see him in my head right now, arms crossed, lazy grin. I’m pulling the trigger. One, two, three, four, five. Always five. This isn’t the first time I’ve killed him. It helps that I
know
he’s going to die.
    His body lurches like a floppy fish with each blast until he crumples, finally harmless. I’ve never felt any guilt about making this bloody mess. I haven’t successfully reconciled that with my belief in a loving, forgiving God who asks me to reflect His image.
    In my night dreams, when I’m not on guard, Pierce is alive. He lurks while I’m soaring through a happy, nonsensical plot, vanishing the second I turn my head.
    While I sleep, my rapist is still my stalker, even though I’ve killed him over and over in the daytime. Even though I know he can’t hurt me anymore.
    When Mike walked in the door, my Cartier watch said it was 3 a.m.
    “I have to tell you about the box,” I said.
    Except that when I woke up, I wasn’t wearing a Cartier watch. I didn’t own one. A pillow from our bed was tucked under my head. I hadn’t put it there.
    When I woke up it was morning, and Mike was already gone again.

9

    T he sign near the receptionist’s desk had promised WOMEN CARING FOR WOMEN , as if that was worth bragging about, and so far, so good.
    Dr. Gretchen Liesel’s waiting room was like a giant womb, bathed in warm red tones and indirect light, without a harsh fluorescent bulb in sight. Somehow, I hadn’t expected Texas to be like this.
    After filling out a little paperwork, my body nestled itself into one of six overstuffed chairs as a classical music station played faintly, the way I imagined the baby could hear music in his insulated cocoon. I dug into the Sunday Arts section of
The New York Times
, a treat, because I’d started reading it on Mike’s iPad since we moved, and it just wasn’t the same. I had taken exactly one bite from a chocolate chip granola bar from the loaded snack basket when a sweet-faced nurse named Anna called my name.
    I obediently followed her into an exam room, outfitted with the same soft lighting, a couch, and custom oak cabinets that hid the cold, glistening tools that made every muscle in my body clench. Or maybe they used those awful disposable plastic ones here. Surely women caring for women knew that, for some reason, cheap, hard, disposable plastic hurt more than steel. Anna left the room, and I shed my clothes and pulled on the cuddly,