Echo Bridge

Chapter 2

What made me craziest, at first, was not telling anyone. I desperately wanted to, as if saying it out loud would diminish the horror, but at the same time, I was terrified of what would happen if I did. I didn't want to tell my parents—they were very hands-off, having expended all of their energy on my older siblings, and I knew it would break my mom's heart and that they'd both blame themselves. And I couldn't imagine telling anyone else without telling Ted first, because he was sure to find out no matter whom I told, and I didn't know how he'd react. At the very least, I'd break up the group of friends I'd had all through high school while everyone chose sides, get Melissa in trouble for having a kegger at her parents' house, and ruin senior year for all of us. And what proof did I have that I hadn't wanted it? I was afraid of the man-eater image Hugh had implied I gave off. It was true that my clothes and demeanor were intentionally inspired by my favorite screen seductresses: Ingrid Bergman, Lauren Bacall, Marlene Dietrich, both Hepburns. But reflected in Hugh's icy eyes, I felt over the top and garish. I felt like Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass when she wears her pink dress and new bobbed hair to the dance, all tarted up and crazy. I couldn't help feeling like if I came forward, and it was Hugh's word against my own, his harsh vision of me would become infectious, and everyone would see me that way: my family, my teachers, my friends, and especially Ted.

So I acted like everything was normal. I read Not the Girl Next Door: Joan Crawford, a Personal Biography and Marilyn's My Story and Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman. I memorized my lines for The Crucible. I drafted the statement of purpose for my Tisch application. I turned in a history paper on the Industrial Revolution in the British Isles a week early, because I couldn't sleep and needed to do something with my nights. In public, in the student lounge between classes with Melissa and Hilary or while getting lunch in the refectory ("cafeteria" just wasn't formal enough for Belknap Country Day School) with Lindsay Stevens, I felt like I might go full-on Frances Farmer and start screaming, tearing at my hair, rolling on the floor with mashed potatoes and gravy dripping down my face. I only felt safe with Ted.

There was so much I didn't know, then.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Ted and I both had last period free, and we spent it in the back of his Rover at Echo Bridge, Belknap's answer to Inspiration Point. Once part of an aqueduct that carried water from Lake Cochichewick in North Andover into one of the reservoirs that ring Boston, the bridge was partially hidden in the woods and consisted of a series of small brick and stone arches on the sloping banks, with a single large arch leaping the Souhegan River. On one side of it was Aqueduct Park, in a neighborhood of large Tudor-style houses, but coming from school, we took a small dirt road that turned off Riverview Street and ran past a few small, shabby houses, coming to a dead end in a patch of woods. A narrow footpath lead through the trees down to the bridge, with a series of stone steps descending from the top to a wooden platform below, where you could yell whatever you wanted and hear the eponymous echo. Upstream, the river was calm and flat as a mirror, but downstream the river cut through Polk's Gorge and ran rough and white for maybe a quarter mile before calming again, eventually merging with the Charles River downstream in Newton. I liked the bridge, which wore moss like shreds of a green velvet gown and was covered with spray-painted proclamations of love and hate and pride, but Ted and I tended to stay in the car when we went there. With the backseat laid flat, there was plenty of room to stretch out, and parked down by the woods, it was fairly private.

It was just over a week after Hugh raped me, and I was keeping all my clothes on. Ted and I had been sleeping together for months, but I was afraid that if he saw me naked, he'd know everything, as if my skin was covered with Hugh's fingerprints. But in the back of the car, wrapped in Ted's thick, sinewy arms, listening to his heartbeat through his shirt, it felt like no one would ever hurt me again.  Unfortunately, Ted was confused by my newfound chastity.