Safe with Me: A Novel

On Monday morning, James brings Olivia breakfast in bed. “Wake up, beautiful,” he says as he sets a tray on the bed next to her. “The breakfast fairy has been hard at work.”

“What’s all this for?” she asks as she braces her arms behind her and uses them to push herself up into a sitting position. A glance at the clock tells her it’s six thirty—she slept through her alarm, and she can hear the water running in Maddie’s bathroom.

James takes the napkin and sets it carefully across Olivia’s lap. “Do I need a reason to spoil my wife?” He moves the tray over her legs and lifts up a cup of coffee for her to take from him. “Two Splendas, no milk. Right?”

Olivia smiles and gently retrieves the white mug from his hands. “Right.” She takes a small sip and gives him another smile. “And of course you don’t need a reason. Thank you, honey.” She wishes she could just accept this loving gesture from her husband at face value, the way she used to, instead of wondering what his motives might be.

“You’re welcome,” he says as he picks up the fork and scoots a bite of scrambled egg whites onto its tines. “It’s the least I can do for my amazing wife.” He hands her the fork, watching as she chews. “Good?”

“Very,” Olivia says, nodding.

“I was thinking we should all take a cooking class together. Maybe Thai food, since Maddie loves it so much.”

Olivia sets her fork onto her plate and sips at her coffee. “Really? You could find the time?”

James nods. “It might not be until the first of the year, after the fourth quarter numbers come in, but it would be fun, don’t you think?”

Olivia nods, and James leans over to give her a kiss. “I have to go,” he whispers against her lips. “But I’ll be back.”

“I’ll be front,” Olivia jokes, and he laughs. A few minutes later, he heads to the office, and even though she knows better, even though she’s been through this with him a hundred times before, Olivia can’t help but wonder if she really needs to leave him after all.

•  •  •

A few minutes before ten o’clock, after dropping Maddie off at school, Olivia walks into her criminology class with her belly squirming. She wonders if this is how Maddie felt her first day at Eastside Prep, twitchy and insecure, wishing she could melt right into the floor. The room buzzes with the low hum of conversation, punctuated by the occasional squeals of girls closer to Maddie’s age than to Olivia’s. Eyeing the boys wearing jeans that ride low on their skinny hips, exposing the tops of their boxers, she has to squelch the motherly urge to tell them to pull up their pants.

What the hell am I doing here? Olivia thinks as her fellow students file through the wide double doors and into their seats in Whitaker Hall, practically carrying her along with them. James was so sweet to me this morning. Do I really need to go through with this? She clutches the strap of her purse, thinking she should probably just make a run for it. James might call her and she wouldn’t answer, and then what would she do? Tell him you were swimming at the athletic club, she thinks, trying to calm herself down. Tell him you were vacuuming or taking a shower. Tell him whatever you have to. This is your plan. You need an education. You won’t be able to take care of yourself or Maddie without one. He may have been sweet to you this morning, but you know all too well how quickly that can change. You can’t back out now.

Her phone vibrates in her bag and she jumps at the sound, wondering if it’s possible she’s just manifested a checkup call from her husband. But then she looks at the screen and sees a text message from Hannah, wishing her good luck. “Thanks,” Olivia quickly responds. “I’m scared as hell.” A moment later Hannah answers: “Don’t be. If you need a cover story, just say you were with me. I’ve got your back.” Olivia smiles, then quickly deletes the messages, in case James decides to do a random check on her phone. She knows he wasn’t crazy about Hannah, though once dinner was on the table Friday night, he’d been nothing but the most charming, animated version of himself. It wasn’t until later, after Hannah had gone home and Maddie was ensconced in her room, that he told Olivia how he really felt.

“She’s very guarded,” James said as they got ready for bed. “And how successful can she really be if she’s living in an apartment above her salon?” He leaned over the counter to peer closely in the mirror, then plucked a few stray eyebrow hairs with his fingers.

“She owns a house, too,” Olivia explained, crossing her arms over her chest and resting her shoulder on the threshold of his bathroom, hating that her husband measured a person’s worth by their level of wealth. “She just had a hard time living there after her daughter died, so she rents it out. Too many memories.”

“That’s another thing,” James said, straightening, then staring hard at her in the mirror. “She barely mentioned her daughter the entire night. Don’t you think that’s strange?”

“No, I don’t.” Olivia took a measured breath, knowing she was walking a fine line with him by defending her new friend. “She’s grieving, James. Talking about it—especially with someone she’s just met—is probably like digging around in an open wound.” And then, because she couldn’t help but try to drive her point home, she continued. “You don’t like to talk about how your father beat you . . . right? How your mother let him? When feeling our pain is too much to handle, we push it down. It’s human nature.”

He turned around slowly, and Olivia braced herself, thinking he might lunge at her, but he only stared, his green eyes wide and disbelieving that she had the nerve to challenge him. “And what are you pushing down, O-li-vi-a?” He spaced out her name into four distinct syllables, and his tone was shot through with contempt. He wanted her to say that she didn’t have any pain, that her life with him was one beyond her happiest, wildest dreams. But Olivia only stared back at him, unwilling to give him what he wanted. She held her breath—it was dangerous to defy him like this, knowing how deeply her silence would offend him.

Finally, he blinked, and shook his head. “Just be careful,” he said. “I don’t trust her.”

You don’t trust anyone, Olivia thought, and now, as she slides into a seat in the last row of the auditorium, she wonders if Hannah picked up on how James felt about her, and if she senses the real reason why Olivia needs someone to have her back with her own husband. It’s a little odd that Hannah is willing to lie for Olivia when they barely know each other, but it has been so long since Olivia felt like she had anyone on her side, she decides not to question Hannah’s motives. It feels too good to have a friend.

“Hi!” a young woman chirps as she slides in next to Olivia. “This seat isn’t taken, is it?” She is a tiny thing with almost white-blond hair and pale blue eyes—more like the negative image of a picture than an actual girl. She wears a light blue broomstick skirt and a snug matching T-shirt. When she lifts her arms over her head to take off the book bag that is slung crosswise over her chest, Olivia sees a quick flash of her flawless pale stomach, and she can’t help but think of the thick, red scar across her own daughter’s flesh.

“Nope,” Olivia says. “It’s all yours.”

“Thanks!” The girl plops down next to her and drops her bag to the floor in between her legs, quickly pulling out a small laptop and placing it, along with her cell phone, on the half desk in front of her. She presses a button to boot up the laptop, and suddenly, Olivia is embarrassed by the three-ringed notebook she bought at the campus bookstore. She glances around the room to see that the majority of students are sporting shiny silver netbooks or iPads. Apparently, the method for taking notes has changed since Olivia last went to school. She suddenly feels very, very old.

“Do you know anything about this professor?” the girl asks, keeping her eyes on the screen of her phone, rapidly tapping out what Olivia assumes is a text message.

“I don’t,” Olivia answers. It amazes her, how many technological tasks teenagers are able to juggle simultaneously. Maddie doesn’t watch television unless her laptop is in front of her, too, or she’s playing Angry Birds on her phone. She’s always plugged into something—usually two or three things at a time. There doesn’t seem to be a nonstimulated moment, a chance for her brain to breathe. It worries Olivia sometimes, that Maddie spends so much time interacting with what other people’s imaginations have dreamed up that she’ll never learn to imagine things on her own.

“I’ve heard she used to be a cop and is kind of a badass.” The girl glances away from her phone and looks at Olivia. Her eyelashes are so pale, they’re almost invisible. “I’m Natalie.”

Olivia introduces herself, too, and just as she speaks her name, a short, broadly built woman enters from the side door of the auditorium. She charges up the steps to the stage and makes her way over to the podium, moving with a decided swagger—a don’t-mess-with-me swing of her shoulders and hips. She wears black slacks and a blue button-down shirt with thick-soled, no-nonsense black shoes. Her blond hair is pulled tightly into a bun at the base of her neck, and as far as Olivia can tell, she’s not wearing a stitch of makeup. She looks like a cop—hard and unyielding. Maybe Natalie’s right.

“Hello?” she says, then blows into the microphone. “Is this thing on?” The chatter in the auditorium continues, ignoring her question, and so she leans closer to the microphone and opens her mouth again. “SIT!” she bellows. This unexpected noise causes Olivia to jump and all the conversation and movement in the room to cease.

“Holy shit,” Natalie says under her breath as the rest of the students silently find their seats.

Satisfied, the professor smiles—a beautiful movement that suddenly makes her appear warm and thoughtful instead of hard shelled and rough. “I’m Regina Lang,” she continues in a pleasant, normal tone. “Please call me Professor Lang or Regina. Mrs. Lang is my mother.” Everyone titters appropriately at her joke, and she goes on. “If you’re not supposed to be in Criminology 201, you should leave now. Otherwise, let’s get started.” She flips open a laptop in front of her, and a large theater screen behind her lights up with an image of a man choking a woman. His fingers are wrapped tightly around her neck, and he is grimacing, the muscles in his arms straining beneath his skin in ropy cords. The woman’s face is red and her eyes are bulging, her hands tear at the man’s wrists, seemingly trying to get him to release her. And even though Olivia knows these people have to be actors—the picture can’t be real—her muscles immediately go rigid. Is that what I looked like ten years ago? she wonders. Before Maddie got sick . . . the night I first decided I needed to leave James? She pushes those thoughts down, trying to breathe, wanting to hear what Regina says next.

“I want you to think about what you would do if you were this man’s lawyer,” Professor Lang begins. “If this scene is what the police walked in on after a neighbor called 911 and the woman in the picture decided to press charges against her husband for attempted murder.” She pauses. “Is there any defense for this man? If there are pictures of his finger marks around his wife’s neck? If she has years of hospital records listing numerous broken bones—spiral fractures of her forearms, a shattered cheekbone?”

“He’s indefensible,” a girl’s prim voice pops up from somewhere in the auditorium. “And she’s an idiot for not reporting it sooner.”

Her words make Olivia feel ill. She leans forward, arms over her stomach, and Natalie puts a hand on her back. “Hey, are you okay?” she asks, and Olivia straightens. “I’m fine,” she whispers. “I just didn’t have breakfast.”

Natalie reaches into her bag and pulls out a cereal bar—the kind Maddie can’t eat because of her celiac disease. Olivia gives Natalie a brief smile and thanks her, taking the bar, even though she doesn’t think she can eat it. She turns her attention back to what Professor Lang is saying to the girl who called the woman in the picture an idiot.

“And what do you base your judgment of this woman upon?” Professor Lang’s expression is blank, and Olivia can’t tell if she agrees with the girl’s proclamation or not. “Do you know her? Do you understand there are a hundred possible reasons why she might not have reported her husband’s abuse?” She pauses, runs her gaze over all the students. “Anyone want to hazard a guess at a reason?”

“Maybe he’s threatened to take custody away from her,” Olivia says loudly, unsure why, exactly, she speaks up, but that it likely has to do with the fact that Regina seems to understand something Olivia thought no one else could. “Maybe he’s extremely powerful and respected in the community. She knows if she presses charges against him, he’ll find a way to prove her unfit and she’ll lose her children.”

Professor Lang peers at the back row, making a visor out of her hand. “Can you say that again, please? It’s a large room, and I don’t think everyone caught it.”

Olivia takes a deep breath before repeating herself, and is ridiculously pleased when the professor nods in agreement. “That’s right. People tend to have this image of abused women as weak, low income, and uneducated, when in fact, the opposite is often true. Many women stay because their husbands are upstanding, successful men and they think no one will believe them if they tell the truth about what’s going on behind closed doors. Abusers are expert manipulators—of their victims and everyone else in their lives.” She pauses, moving her gaze over the room. “But here’s my point—and the reason I opened class with this particular picture. If you feel like you can make a case to defend the husband, then you should think about focusing your studies on defense law. If your heart aches at the plight of the wife and you feel like you sort of want to tear the husband’s eyes out, you might do better in prosecution. I use the picture to show you how polarizing legal issues can be, and how varied and muddy our individual reactions are, too. We’re all shaded by our personal experiences and perceptions. That’s the most difficult aspect of working in the legal system, whether you are a cop, lawyer, or judge. Staying neutral, relying on process and procedure to do its job, can seem impossible. And yet, if you remain in this program, you’ll need to learn how.”

The room is silent again, everyone seeming to allow her words to sink in, and for the rest of the class, during which Professor Lang goes over the syllabus and discusses the literal definitions of probable cause, Olivia is haunted by the image of that woman on the screen. She wonders if becoming a lawyer is really such a good idea, considering her life with James. Would she be better off prosecuting the men who abuse their partners, or defending the women who sometimes snap and kill them? Will she be too close to the issues involved to do her job? When she was younger and working as a paralegal, she’d always imagined herself as a defense lawyer, researching case law to vindicate her wrongly accused clients. But what would she do if her client were guilty—if he wrapped his fingers around his wife’s throat and squeezed until she was almost dead? She isn’t sure if she could defend a man like that now. She’s afraid she might just shoot him instead.

These questions concern her deeply enough that after class ends, Olivia works up the courage to approach her professor on the stage. She waits as the other students talk with her then walk away—she doesn’t want anyone else to overhear her. When the last of the other students is gone, Professor Lang looks up and smiles at Olivia. “Ah, a grown-up. What can I do for you . . . ?” She trails off, waiting to hear Olivia’s name.

Olivia introduces herself, then shifts her weight from foot to foot, gripping the straps on her shoulder bag, as though this might keep her from running away. “Well,” she begins, haltingly. “I was hoping I could ask you about a hypothetical situation.”

“Of course,” Professor Lang says, tilting her head toward one shoulder, slipping both hands into the pockets on her slacks, then rocking forward and back, toe to heel.

“Great-okay-thanks,” Olivia says, hurriedly, squeezing the words together so that they almost come out as one. “I’m wondering . . . what if you had a student who is interested in the law, but she’s not sure if she would be a good candidate for becoming a lawyer.”

“Why not?” Again, Olivia can’t tell what her professor is really thinking from the expression on her face—it’s careful and measured, something she must have learned from her years on the police force. She confirmed her previous career during her lecture, citing a back injury for her early retirement from the force and subsequent switch to teaching.

Olivia swallows to help wet the case of dry mouth she’s suddenly developed. “Maybe she’s had some trauma in her life,” she says quietly, not making eye contact with her new teacher. “And she’s worried she’d be too personally influenced by this to do a good job . . . as a defense lawyer or a prosecutor.” She pauses, finally looking up. “Do you have any advice I could pass along?”

Professor Lang blows out a quick shot of air from between pursed lips before speaking. “Well, that depends. What kind of trauma are we talking about?”

Olivia hesitates, unsure how close she should keep her hypothetical situation to the truth. “Let’s say she’s been attacked. More than once.”

“Like raped?”

Olivia’s face burns and her stomach twists at the sound of this word. She’s struck silent by images of James on top of her after he’s hit her—after she’s told him no over and over again—pushing himself into her anyway, like he is jabbing her body with a knife. Is it rape when your husband tells you he’s only doing it to show you he’s sorry?

She bobs her head, trying to keep her expression clear of the revulsion she feels. “Yes,” she finally says. “And beaten.” She thought she could do this without falling apart. She thought if she made it seem like it happens to an imaginary woman, she wouldn’t give herself away. Professor Lang’s expression—blond brows stitched together, the deep curve of a concerned frown—tells her different. She knows Olivia is talking about herself.

“I would tell her that she needs to get serious professional help before she makes any kind of commitment to this career path. Or any other, for that matter. Things come up when you’re trying cases . . . triggers that spark all sorts of weird emotional baggage. Victims of abuse can sometimes turn their past suffering into motivation to help other people, but only if they’ve dealt with it on the deepest levels.” She gives Olivia a good, long look. “Even then, it’s a challenge for them to work within a system that betrays them more often than not.”

All Olivia can manage to say is “Oh.” She is reeling—not only from the images of James swirling in her head but from the realization that if she ever leaves her husband, if she ever works up the courage to confess how he treats her, she won’t be seen as the woman who nobly endured years of abuse in order to protect her daughter—she’ll be seen as a victim. The idiot woman who let her husband beat her. Who let him rape her and never said a word to anyone. Shame burns through Olivia’s body, making her feel ashy and weak. She suddenly wants nothing more than to escape this room. What the hell was she thinking, talking to her professor about this?

“Does that help any?” Professor Lang asks.

“I think so,” Olivia says, forcing a weak smile. Yes, it helps. It helps Olivia realize that she’s made a huge mistake, attending this class. And another mistake, talking to her teacher. “Thanks for your time. I appreciate it.”

“That’s why I’m here.” Her professor closes up her laptop and slides it into a carrying case, then looks at Olivia again. “It was you, right?”

“Me?” The word barely squeaks out of Olivia. Is she going to make me admit what James does to me? Oh god. I’m so stupid.

Her professor nods. “Right. You spoke up in the back row, at the beginning of class?”

Relieved this is what Professor Lang wants to know, Olivia bobs her head, once, and turns, ready to walk away, but then her teacher stops her with a hand on her arm. “A person like that could talk with me anytime she wants . . . okay? I can help.” She pauses and gives Olivia another look that leaves no doubt she sees right through her. “My hypothetical door’s always open.”

Olivia pulls away, feeling her professor’s eyes on her back as she leaves the auditorium. She walks quickly to her car, knowing she needs to get home, and suddenly, no matter how hard she fights them, she’s unable to stop the memories she pushed down earlier from tumbling through her mind—the image of that night ten years ago, the first time James put his hands around her neck and took her breath away.