Crash Into Me Read online

  And then it arrives. I see the “new mail” envelope icon in shiny bright yellow, I see his name, and I click on it.

  SUBJECT: How do I begin?

  “Dear Liz,” he opens. Liz? Now we’re on nickname terms? When he addressed me as Elizabeth in the letter, it felt more safely distant, somehow, since I never use my formal name.

  You asked me to write about how I lived w/ myself in the wake of this incident. So I will.

  He describes the selfishness of his youth, a time when he rarely thought about the consequences of his actions, especially when he had been drinking.

  I always felt a tremendous guilt for the ways in which I imagined my conduct had damaged you, and for years too the only solution seemed to be the bottle … This is to say that the way that I lived with myself was of course not really living at all.

  He joined Alcoholics Anonymous. He wanted to right the wrongs in his past. It seems, reading his e-mail, that he regards his crime against me as just one more instance of collateral damage from the alcoholic life he has put behind him.

  I gather from your response that you are indeed still quite angry, and you have every right to be. I can only hope that some good has come of this by your counseling other women, that they might be free of their own bondage to horrific memories.

  He says he prays for me. He signs it “Will.”

  I study his words. He has no way of knowing about my work with other rape victims, unless he has been doing his research well. It is dead silent outdoors, and the only sound I can hear is the roar of the blood rushing to my brain.

  Now I keep staring at the damn BlackBerry, carrying the device with me everywhere. I don’t tell Mike that I’ve heard back from Beebe. I tell myself I don’t want to alarm him or cast a pall over his vacation. But we’ve never kept secrets from each other before. I wish I could just delete his e-mail, but I can’t bring myself to do it. More needs to be said, to be learned, to be explained. I need to e-mail Beebe back, but I don’t know what to say. What I read is that he feels bad, but my brain also hears that he’s an addict who may be unpredictable. I don’t want to rock the boat.

  The next day, Friday, it’s cooler and rainy, not a beach day. Time for a mundane trip to the grocery store in East Hampton. I tell myself to leave my BlackBerry at home. But then the phone rings with a Connecticut area code identifier. For a moment, the thought crosses my mind that it’s Beebe, calling from outside my home. I answer it. It’s Peter from Polpo, a restaurant in Greenwich. Of course. I’ve been calling him daily about the menu for a dinner I’m planning for a client in October, a few short weeks away.

  That night, I e-mail Beebe back. Since he didn’t reply directly to this e-mail later, my own words weren’t archived, but I remember the questions I had and what I told him about myself.

  Mr. Beebe: Why did you drop out of school? What do you do for a living? Are you married? Does your wife know what you did? Do you have daughters? Tell me who you are. My life was a living hell after the rape. Despite early promise, I barely scraped by in college to graduate. Shortly after graduating, I married a selfish, arrogant man who also went to UVA, born to incredible wealth and intelligence, who wasted his life on neediness. Because of you, I married that person. Thinking I would be safe, thinking I needed marriage so early. You sound like him, although he would never have raped me.

  I want to know who this man is. Almost twenty-four anxious hours later, my BlackBerry buzzes and I see his e-mail address. I am scared of him and his words. I am worried for my wonderful family and my mind. I am trying to figure this person out through nothing more than words on a device. The red light keeps beckoning, so I take a deep breath and click on the little yellow envelope.

  SUBJECT: What happened …

  In his e-mail, he continues to refer to the rape only as “the incident.” He writes that he was disgusted by himself after the fact, but didn’t realize the enormity of the “problem” he’d caused until he spoke with the dean of students, Robert Canevari.

  He told me of the gravity of the situation from your point of view as he understood it, and from the U’s point of view regarding possible judicial proceedings.

  Beebe worried, too, about sullying the reputation of his fraternity. “It was,” he writes, “too much to bear,” and he withdrew from the university within days. (I learned later that his departure wasn’t as immediate as he remembered.) He went to rehab in Arizona, a treatment program recommended by a prep school drinking buddy. He emerged, he relapsed. He was in and out of AA for nine years before taking what was (he hoped) his last drink.

  He has no wife, no children.

  I have always secretly felt, consciously and unconsciously as though I didn’t deserve true unity w/ another woman after what I did to you.

  Good God. “True unity”? I feel sick.

  Once again, he speaks mainly about himself and not the effect he had on me. I don’t know him, and I can’t trust him drunk or sober. “I get it! Alcoholism!” I yell out loud. “So what? That doesn’t give you an excuse! Why did you choose to rape me? Why are you contacting me now?” I fire off another e-mail, insisting on more answers.

  A few days later I am stricken with a particularly acute stomach virus, head cold, yeast infection, and body aches all at once. Mike, in the dark about my continued correspondence, has no idea what is going on with me and takes me to the Wainscott Medical Clinic to be seen by a doctor. The doctor isn’t sure what’s going on, either. He takes blood, runs a pregnancy test (negative), and finally sends me home with antibiotics and sleep aids. I do not tell him about the letter. (If I had, I’m sure he would have sent me straight to a therapist.) Although I am falling apart, we try to enjoy the last few days of our vacation. We take long walks on the beach and collect pieces of beach glass we find shimmering in the sun. Ava especially loves helping to cull these little gems from the sand.

  We have been home for a few days, and I have been lulled into the routine of work, laundry, and preparing for the start of preschool for Ava, when Beebe e-mails a response to my last round of questions. I have asked him about his talks with the university officials, whether or not he was aware of the rape epidemic on campus, and if he had happened to see an interview in the college newspaper, the University Journal, shortly after his attack on me, with an anonymous victim, speaking about her horrific rape. That was me, working with college journalists to bring some awareness to a grassroots cause.

  SUBJECT: More answers I hope will be useful …

  Hi Liz,

  From what little I remember of Dean Canevari’s talk w/ me, I don’t recall any words from him one way or the other about dismissal from UVA.

  He just knew, he says, that he had to leave. He reiterates that he now has “no excuses, no defense.” He wants to understand my hurt more fully.

  What’s hard is, pray and ask direction though I have, and continue to do … I just sense such inadequacy to the task.

  As if he expects it to be simple. “I’m sorry.” And “It’s all okay now.”

  He tells me more about life after leaving school. Back home with his parents after rehab, then back to Charlottesville, where he delivered pizza for three years. He didn’t see my story in the press, but he saw others.

  Perhaps you started something that no one else had the courage to do before. I like to believe that about you.

  And why is he contacting me now? He quotes to me steps 8 and 9 of the AA program. Step 8: “[We] made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.” Step 9: “[We] made direct amends to such people, wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.”

  In 1993, he was sober, he had a sponsor. He wanted to reach out to me, but his sponsor told him it was not time yet, that it could dredge up old pain, that I might not be “ready to receive the approach.” Of course, his sponsor was right about the pain, but he was wrong that it was just a matter of time.

  In 1998, a new sponsor told Beebe to pray about the matter,
and to start looking for me. Now living in Las Vegas, he has been in touch with a woman in AA in Los Angeles. She experienced an “incident” like mine in her life, and he is currently consulting her on every move with me. When his sponsor told him to look for me, he went through the UVA Alumni Office. They gave him my old address in another city, so his letter was sent back. Later, files updated, he got an address in New York, but that letter was also returned.

  It sinks in that he has been hunting me down for years—and with the help of the university. This is the last straw—a further violation by him and by the university that never protected or defended me. Sitting on my porch in the fall twilight, I smoke and drink wine as Ava sleeps upstairs in her nursery. I vow not to write back ever again, and decide I must speak to the current university brass about what happened to me, so they will take a good look at their current sexual assault policies, as well as to dig up the files about my attack. But that’s not enough to calm me. I creep into my kitchen and grab a knife. I hold it to myself on the chilly porch, alert, a sentinel, afraid and empowered all at once. I don’t believe I’d know how to use it, but the blade feels comfortable in my hand. Sitting here, I realize the extent of my fear, and the lengths I would go to protect myself and my family, and I understand that I have to write him back, if only to ascertain if he really is in Las Vegas and not hiding in my bushes, lying in wait to attack again. And I have so many more questions that demand answers.

  SUBJECT: Therapy

  Dear Mr. Beebe:

  Part of my therapy in putting this behind me, now that it is currently very much at the forefront of my consciousness, is to get a truer sense of what happened to me that night, as I have most of the details burned into my brain. To that point, I need to know (and please, if you have any decency, you will tell me, as I do have memory of it, but I need confirmation) the following:

  Were you my only attacker? I recall other people in the room. Were they merely spectators or participating?

  I don’t care how much or little you remember. But I clearly have an impression of this being either a gang rape or a “spectator sport” for the rushees. No names, please. But the nightmares for me must end. And I must know everything I can in order to heal and move forward.

  The question of whether there were other attackers has been gnawing at me for twenty years. I know that the answer could be painful, but now that he has already reentered my happy life, how can I ignore it? I have to know.

  Thanksgiving Day dawns cloudy and chilly in Connecticut, and I set about putting together a gorgeous feast for our family, including my parents and in-laws. Although I spend my professional life planning events for others, I still love hosting my own, and I’m happy in my spacious kitchen as I baste a turkey and make oyster and mortadella dressing, butternut squash lasagna, glazed carrots, asparagus with Hollandaise sauce, and mashed potatoes with homemade pan gravy. I turn out a chocolate-banana tart, apple pie, and cinnamon ice cream. But after my guests have arrived, between setting the table and arranging flowers, I creep upstairs like a thief to check my e-mail. It has been a while, but I feel a chill in my heart, padding up the stairs, my family happily gathered by the glowing fire in the living room. I just know, as those who hear the phone ring in the middle of the night sometimes simply know that something is amiss. And I am right. I have one new e-mail on this day of thanks and giving.

  SUBJECT: More Answers

  The night of the attack comes rushing back to me as I read his account of it. In his version of events, I passed out early in the evening, woke up around three A.M.

  I noticed you, we talked a while, how you were from Yonkers, how I’d been to Camp Dudley w/ your cousin, Bob Malafronte.

  After “what seemed like hesitation,” he says he “convinced” me to stay with him in his room instead of walking all the way home. He says he saw the “opportunity to have a good time with me.” His roommate was away. Yes, there were other fraternity brothers milling in the hallway, but they were “not really involved.”

  He claims that we “started to make out” in his room. The door was closed and the house, quiet.

  There was no fight and it was all over in short order. When we awoke in the morning it was still chilly out, so i lent you my jean jacket, and you walked home … There were no other men present. I was the only one.

  Best to You and Yours This Thanksgiving,

  Will

  This scene of seduction, this romanticized version of events, is sickeningly removed from the reality that haunts me. Yes, some parts are foggy and I still have questions I hoped he could answer, but of course I remember the struggle, the terror, the pain. My blood boils with anger as I read. For the first time, I understand that, in part, he blames me for what happened. I furiously type back, oblivious to my family downstairs. I type as fast as my shaking fingers will allow.

  SUBJECT: Re: More Answers

  Dear Mr. Beebe:

  This is completely different than my recollection. I was with a date, Jim Long, who the other brothers snatched away in order to smoke pot after giving us a “house tour.” I kept looking for him as I was separated like a weak sheep. I had only had a beer or two and played foosball upon arriving at the party. I remember what I was wearing. The only person I knew in your house was Hudson Millard, who was an RA and friend to some of us. Some of the other, larger brothers physically picked me up and jammed me in your room. This, after fixing me a green drink which they called “The House Specialty” and repeatedly telling me that Jim was almost finished and ready to take me home. The drink disoriented me and made me very scared. I looked for Hud and could not find him for some time. Then I saw him. He was being carried into a room by some other brothers and locked in from the outside. With a padlock. My purse was in there.

  I begged him to help me. I broke my toe kicking on his door and I realized I was in trouble. I was not passed out during most of your attack upon me.

  I don’t really understand your initial letter to me now. I thought you knew you had raped me and were trying to atone for it. I see now that your version is completely different. I remember every detail I possibly can, given the effects of whatever was in that drink given me.

  I didn’t walk home. I went to the ER. What exactly are you then atoning for? I don’t have a cousin named Bob Malafronte, I can assure you of that. “We” did not wake up in the morning. I awoke wrapped naked in a bloody sheet while you were on your way out the door. As I recall, you were off to sell drugs, which I saw you take out of the top drawer of your dresser.

  I do not understand any of this. I thought after all this time, you realized you had raped me and were apologizing. I trusted that your apology came from a good and honest place and I see this is not the case.

  I send, and stumble back downstairs, to wrap myself in the comfort of the family gathering.

  I wait three agonizing days for his reply, and, when I get it, it is only full of more half-truths. I have allowed the correspondence to go this far in order to finally make sense of the crime, and now I feel utterly dejected as I read his words. Is he talking about the same crime?

  Dear Liz,

  From what you write, I simply do not know what more I can tell you … I am sincere in my recollection, though it may not be the whole truth of what happened to you that night.

  He writes that he was drunk, of course, but he doesn’t think so drunk as to not remember. He assures me that he was not selling drugs—he could only afford small amounts for his own use. He is confused that Bob Malafronte is not my cousin. I was from Yonkers, Bob was from nearby Bronxville.

  Also he is a natural blonde, as I recall also you are.

  That phrase, “natural blonde,” sets my eyes on fire.

  He says he is “alarmed” by what I said happened to me, but that he believes what I said.

  My lady friend in CA has asked that I ask God in prayer to reveal any facts as yet consciously unknown to me.

  What I did to you, I did upon Matt’s bed. Only the street light af
forded any vision.

  This is torture. But I can’t let this e-mail be the last word. I want to let him know how much is clear to me all these years later. I know it is not helping anybody, especially not my family. Shamefully, I haven’t discussed with my husband the ongoing correspondence since we returned from the Hamptons, and he hasn’t asked. Can’t he tell something is wrong? He definitely looks at me with concern. Since he hasn’t told me to stop, I rationalize I can keep going, get more information. But he can’t tell me to stop something he does not even know is happening.

  Dear Mr. Beebe:

  To answer your questions …

  1) I had never seen or used drugs before in my life, so perhaps the drugs you had on you that morning were just for personal use. I am recalling something you said.

  2) I did know of a Brooke Malafronte from home. Bob is not my cousin. As I was sober, I don’t know how this translated. Brooke was a friend of a friend.

  3) Jim Long was a dorm mate of mine, who was rushing your house. He asked me to be his date and I did not want to go. He desperately wanted to belong. He was sweet and funny and from Nashville. The other brothers upstairs took him away from me when I wanted to go home. I was lost and alone, waiting for him. These brothers then pretty much delivered me to you. He never pledged the house.

  4) I could show anyone the room I was raped in. It is the room you describe. On the bed you described as Matt’s. I was moved to the sofa afterwards and wrapped in a sheet, where I awoke, bruised and bloody. I don’t know how much you weigh, but I was about 5'6" and 115 lbs. at the time, which explains my injuries.