I turn to Lawrence. What have you done? I was just a kid. Right? Wasn’t I?
I’m trapped here, in this courtroom, on this bench. Trapped, always, with Lawrence, my gift and my curse. Cassie + Lawrence forever and ever.
“Cassandra,” he whispers sharply, his hand on my thigh. “What is going on?”
Lawrence’s hands, hairy and masculine, scrolling his phone, pecking a keyboard, sliding along my skin. His hands, under tables, behind doors, reaching for me.
“Nothing, Lawrence,” I promise. “I’m fine. I told you that.”
His voice flows through my veins like blood. He seeps into every crevice, clogs every pore. This is how I keep him close, how he possesses me. I will never escape Lawrence. I will never escape Marcus. They are one and the same. The secret, special men who loved all of me.
And yet, how can this be a secret? How can anyone not know? To me, Lawrence + Cassie is as obvious as the sky. How can you not see him all over my face?
I look at Billy. Time stops for a minute. And then something terrible happens. As I watch my brother, composed and contained in his suit, it occurs to me that maybe I’ve been wrong all along. Maybe Billy is a criminal. Maybe he did rape Diana Holly. Look where we are. A judge wields a gavel. Prosecutors rifle through briefcases. Defense attorneys take notes. Why would they be here if my brother wasn’t guilty?
Fear fills my senses. My mouth dries up. I bend over, trying to calm myself.
Lawrence puts his hand on my back. “You okay?” he whispers.
I shrug him off. “Why do you keep asking me that?” I hate to be babied; I’m no one’s baby. “I said I’m fine.”
But I’m gasping for air. You can’t sit in a courtroom with a boy, any boy, even your own brother, and not question his innocence. Too many women in the world have come forward. They have too many stories. What shocks me, and keeps shocking me, is that their stories are about men we know—loving men, caring men; men trusted by wives, revered by daughters. Men like Lawrence. Wives like Eleanor. Daughters like me. So, yes, I do have to wonder about Billy because I know, better than most, that anyone is capable of anything. Tap deeply enough, and you’ll find we’re all monsters below the surface.
45
THE DAY ENDS ON A SOMBER NOTE. WE LOWER OUR EYES and quietly file out of the courtroom. One by one, people look away from Billy, who’s become tainted, radioactive. The tide has turned against us; I can feel it.
I’m deluged by memories. I’m a senior in high school. Lawrence and I are a couple, sweethearts. We are together, in the same house, eating the same meals, but we’re also separate. He’s still married to Eleanor, though he will soon leave her. “After college,” he promises. “It will be easier.” Plus, after college, I’ll be closer to my king’s ransom, and we won’t need Eleanor’s money. “Just wait a little longer.” He pauses. “Please.”
Most women wouldn’t believe Lawrence, but I know I can. I’ve known him my whole life, and we’ve been Lawrence + Cassie since I was twelve. Not sexually, not in the beginning. Intimately. Privately. Look at all we survived: missed connections, jealousy, suffocation, his refusals, my meltdown. Waiting. More waiting. But along the way we had the park, the ducks. And each other. Besides, what choice do I have? To say no isn’t an option; the idea never even occurs to me.
“Okay,” I agree. “I’ll wait.”
I graduate from Spence and enroll in Columbia, across town and up a couple dozen blocks. I move into my own apartment on Riverside Drive, ten minutes from the Valmont by cab. Right by the park, our special bench. Lawrence visits frequently. I’m seventeen then eighteen, finally an adult. I’ve never known such freedom. Out of Eleanor’s house, away from her disapproving eye, I spend entire mornings without clothes. I stand in my small galley kitchen, in broad daylight, my windows wide open. My body will never be this firm again. I flash the Upper West Side. No one tells me what to wear, when to eat, who to fuck. Our sex is consuming, satisfying; unobserved and finally, truly alone. Lawrence can’t keep his hands off me. “I can’t stop,” he tells me. Neither of us can.
These afternoons aren’t enough. We both want more. Someday, Lawrence promises, we’ll have a kitchen, his-and-her cars, our own celebration room. “Call me ‘Sweetheart,’” he begs when he’s wrapped in my arms. “Say I’m your sweetheart.”
But someday is too far away. “Now,” I say.
“When you graduate,” he reminds me. He’ll tell Eleanor it’s over; he doesn’t love her anymore. He loves me. “You’re the Forever Girl. My one and only.”
Two years pass. I study stupid shit.
Two more years pass. I study more stupid shit. Sometimes I care, mostly I’m waiting.
Finally, I graduate. For me, there are champagne toasts. Two strands of Mikimoto pure white South Sea pearls. Diamond stud earrings. Fifteen thousand shares of Class A stock. A round-trip ticket to Morocco. For Lawrence + Cassie, there are bickering and tears, arguments and ultimatums. Opposites coexist. It’s the best time of my life and the very, very worst.
Lawrence + Cassie devolves. We are as fraught and miserable as spouses in a thirty-year marriage. Fights are never resolved; resentment can’t be assuaged. We are always seething, always tense. I make a pronouncement. “I’m going to grad school; I found a program. It’s at Yale. Have you ever seen Yale? It’s gorgeous.”
“You went to see it?” He can’t believe it. “When was this?”
“When you were with your wife.”
“What about me? What about us?”
“I knew you’d do this, Lawrence. You’re so fucking weak.” I’m frantic with rage and scared half to death, but I’m doing it. I’m going.
There is begging, and promises are made. “Wait a little longer,” he tells me.
“I’m done waiting, Lawrence.” Far off in the distance, Rachel is humming, singing a sad lament about beautiful things. In this moment, I realize she’s speaking to me. I walked away, Cassie, she is saying. But I wasn’t leaving you; I needed to do it for me.
I can do it, too, I tell myself. I have to do it.
I leave Lawrence, the Valmont, New York, Eleanor, Nate, Billy—my whole life. And ever since that day, he’s been dragging me back. Every conversation—my selfish behavior, his business that’s barely a business, the foundation that will never take off, my responsibilities, my obligations, my future—is about Lawrence + Cassie. Billy’s trial is about us. Lawrence doesn’t want me to meet DeFiore. He doesn’t want me to go to court. He doesn’t want me to testify. He wants Billy to plead guilty. He’s willing to sacrifice his own son. All because of us.
Lawrence + Cassie is my darkest secret and deepest craving, my festering sore. What the mind closes off, the body remembers. Memories fade, emotions die, but the skin erupts, the flesh screams.
“After the trial,” Lawrence promises. We’re alone in the car, heading to the hotel from the courthouse. “We’ll be together. I’m begging you, baby. Don’t leave me.”
“I don’t know,” I tell him as he tries again to reel me back in. His hand strokes my bare thigh. “I don’t know.” Maybe.