Crash Into Me_ A Survivor's Search for Justice - Liz Seccuro [5]
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