Rape: A Love Story Read online

  RAPE

  A Love Story

  Joyce Carol Oates, a National Book Award winner, is the author of numerous works of fiction including We Were the Mulvaneys which was an Oprah Book Club Choice and Blonde which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Her books have been translated into many languages and her short stories widely anthologized. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton University.

  Praise for RAPE A Love Story

  ‘An extraordinary writer… she should be widely read: she writes about violence in a way that can make Michael Moore seem a hit-and-miss buffoon. Her writing is dainty yet macho – it won’t allow you to smile. And she never misses her targets… Rape: A Love Story, is as powerful as anything she has produced. It is written with contained fury, fiction in the service of polemic… Right from the start, the narrative is skilfully interlaced with its ugly aftermath… but the author’s way of developing the story is anything but usual… a remarkable book… She is interested in the difference a single day, or a single violent night, may make.’ Kate Kellaway, Observer

  ‘Joyce Carol Oates continues her remarkable investigation into America’s emotional landscape… Each of the brief chapters is a kind of detonation… Only when you have finished the novel do you realize quite what Oates has reached for and achieved. The effect is troubling and remarkable.’ Lavinia Greenlaw, Daily Telegraph

  ‘A brutal distillation of Oates’s obsessions… The characteristically interrupted rhythms of her prose, inflected by a fiercely controlled lyricism, are refined to a point of rebarbative perfection.’ Jonathan Derbyshire, Financial Times

  ‘Oates’s drip-drip feed of chilling information is perfectly balanced between revelation and suggestion… With her characters Bethie and Teena, Oates illustrates how such a traumatic event can change lives forever and how the effects of a crime like this radiate from the central victim to affect everyone involved.’ Edel Coffey, Sunday Tribune

  ‘An important book… all men should read it.’ Lewis DeSoto, Literary Review

  ‘The title… is as simple and as shocking as the story itself… As with Lionel Shriver’s Orange Prize-winning We Need to Talk About Kevin, it seems tailor-made to trigger debate and fuel book group discussions.’ Natasha Tripney, New Statesman

  ‘Oates at her darkly enthralling best.’ Andrew Ervin, New York Times Book Review

  First published in the United States in 2003 by

  Carroll and Graf, an imprint of the Avalon

  Publishing Group Inc.

  First published in hardback in Great Britain in 2005 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd.

  This paperback edition published by

  Atlantic Books in 2006.

  Copyright © Joyce Carol Oates 2003

  The moral right of Joyce Carol Oates to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

  The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  1 84354 413 X

  eISBN: 9781782395256

  Printed in { } by { }

  Atlantic Books

  An imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd

  Ormond House

  26–27 Boswell Street

  London WC1N 3JZ

  Contents

  Part I

  She Had It Coming

  Rookie Cop, 1994

  The Friend

  Luck

  Like Mother, Like Daughter

  The Boathouse

  The Lagoon

  In Hiding

  “Gang Rape”

  Witness

  The Enemy

  Defense

  “That Girl, Teena Maguire’s Daughter”

  Off-Duty

  The Vigil

  Insult

  “Why”

  “Bitch You Better”

  Secrets

  The Hearing: September 1996

  Part II

  Wind Drives Us Crazy

  Genius!

  The Broken Woman

  The Female Prosecutor

  “Self-Defense”

  Double-Edged Knife

  Vanished!

  “Teeeeena!”

  Hawk

  How Things Work Out

  Media Frenzy

  You Lived!

  If

  Forgiv Me?

  “Destroyed Son’s Life”

  Heaven

  Part III

  Lonely

  RAPE

  A Love Story

  Part I

  She Had It Coming

  AFTER SHE WAS GANG-RAPED, kicked and beaten and left to die on the floor of the filthy boathouse at Rocky Point Park. After she was dragged into the boathouse by the five drunken guys—unless there were six, or seven—and her twelve-year-old daughter with her screaming Let us go! Don’t hurt us! Please don’t hurt us! After she’d been chased by the guys like a pack of dogs jumping their prey, turning her ankle, losing both her high-heeled sandals on the path beside the lagoon. After she’d begged them to leave her daughter alone and they’d laughed at her. After she’d made the decision, Christ knows what she was thinking, to cross through Rocky Point Park instead of taking the longer way around, to home. To where she was living with her daughter in a rented row house on Ninth Street around the corner from her mother’s brick house on Baltic Avenue. Ninth Street was lighted and populated even at this late hour. Rocky Point Park was mostly deserted at this late hour. Crossing the park along the lagoon, a scrubby overgrown path. Saving ten minutes, maybe. Thinking it would be nice to cross through the park, moonlight on the lagoon, no matter the lagoon is scummy and littered with beer cans, food wrappers, butts. Making that decision, a split second out of an entire life and the life is altered forever. Along the lagoon, past the old waterworks boarded up and covered in graffiti for years, and the boathouse that’s been broken into, vandalized by kids. After she’d recognized their faces, might even have smiled at them, it’s Fourth of July, fireworks at the Falls, firecrackers, car horns and whistles, the high school baseball game, festive atmosphere. Yes she might’ve smiled at them, and so she was asking for it. Might’ve been an edgy, nervous smile the way you’d smile at a snarling dog, still she smiled, that lipstick smile of Teena Maguire’s, and that hair of hers. She had it coming, she was asking for it. Guys who’d been drifting around the park for hours looking for trouble. Looking for some fun. Drinking beer and tossing cans into the lagoon and all the firecrackers they had, they’d set off. Throwing firecrackers at cars, at dogs, at swans and geese and mallards on the lagoon sleeping with their heads neat-tucked beneath their wings, Christ! It’s hilarious to see the water-fowl wake up fast and squawk like they’re being killed and flap their wings like crazy flying away, even the fat ones. The All–Niagara Falls High School game went into extra innings, now the brightly lit baseball field was darkened, bleachers emptied, most of the crowd gone. Except these drifting packs of guys. The youngest just kids, the oldest in their late twenties. Neighborhood guys whose faces Teena Maguire would know, maybe not their given names but their family names, as the guys knew her, at least
recognized her from the neighborhood though she was older than they were, calling out Hey! Hey there! Mmmm, good-lookin’! Hey foxy lady, whereya goin’? After she’d smiled at them not slackening her pace. After she’d reached for her daughter’s arm like her daughter was a small child and not twelve years old. Show us how your titties bounce, foxy lady! Heyheyhey whereya goin’? After she’d gotten herself trapped. After she’d teased them. Provoked them. Bad judgment. Must’ve been drinking. The way she was dressed. The way Teena Maguire often dressed. Summer nights, especially. Partying over on Depew Street. Party spilling out onto the street. Loud rock music. That kind of behavior, she had it coming. Where’s her husband? Doesn’t that woman have a husband? What the hell is she doing out alone with her twelve-year-old daughter, in Rocky Point Park at midnight? Endangering the safety of a minor? Endangering the morals of a minor? Look: Teena Maguire probably was having a few beers with the guys. Smoking dope with the guys. Maybe she was hinting at something she’d like to be paid for? In cash, or in dope. A woman like that, thirty-five years old and dressed like a teenager. Tank top, denim cutoffs, shaggy bleached-blond hair frizzed around her face. Bare legs, high-heeled sandals? Tight sexy clothes showing her breasts, her ass, what’s she expect? Midnight of July Fourth, fireworks at the Falls ended at eleven. Still there’s partying all over the city. How much beer has been consumed in Niagara Falls tonight by residents and visitors? Better believe it’s a lot. Like, the volume of water rushing over the Horseshoe Falls in a minute! And there’s Teena Maguire, drunk on her feet, witnesses would report. One of her boyfriends, guy named Casey over on Depew, a keg party at his place spilling out into the backyard and street and neighbors complaining, wild weird bluegrass music Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder for hours. This Casey, he’s a welder at Niagara Pipe. He’s married and has four kids. Separated from his wife, must be Teena Maguire’s doing. That woman! What kind of a mother would drag her young daughter with her to a drunken party and then on foot through Rocky Point Park at that hour, what kind of poor judgment, she’s lucky it wasn’t worse what happened to her, and what happened to the girl, couldn’ve been a lot worse if they’d been black men, coked-up niggers invading the park it would’ve been a hell of a lot worse, the woman had to be drunk, high on coke herself, partying since early evening and by midnight you can figure the state she was in, how the hell could Teena Maguire even recognize who had sex with her? And how many?

  Some of the things that would be said of your mother Teena Maguire after she was gang-raped, kicked and beaten and left to die on the floor of the filthy boathouse at Rocky Point Park in the early minutes of July 5, 1996.

  Rookie Cop, 1994

  HE WASN’T THAT YOUNG. He didn’t look young and he didn’t act young and most of the time he didn’t feel young. He was a rookie, though. A damn rookie almost thirty years old and just out of Police Academy.

  Weird a guy like him wearing a uniform! He had not the temperament for wearing a uniform. He had not the temperament for following orders, saluting. He had not the temperament for listening closely to others, designated as superiors. (His superiors? Bullshit.) Since grade school he’d had trouble with authority. Restless under the eye of anybody and looking to find his own private way, sullen and sly like a chimp hiding something behind his back.

  What he liked was the idea of justice, though. Putting-things-back-to-right he liked. Such abstractions as law, good conduct, valor in service, eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth.

  The U.S. flag had a powerful effect on him sometimes. Not if the damn thing hung down limp but if there was a wind, not too strong a wind but a decent wind, making the red-white-blue cloth ripple, shimmer in the sun.

  Saluting that flag, he’d feel tears come into his eyes.

  Also, he liked guns.

  Now he was a cop and wore a gun on his hip, holstered up, liking the familiar weight of it, like an extra appendage. And the eyes of strangers drifting onto it. With respect.

  The police service revolver he was issued, like his badge and uniform, he liked, and other firearms he would acquire singly, as a collector. Nothing fancy, he had not that kind of money. A cop with his shrewd eyes open, he knew there was money, different sources of money, available, if not immediately, then someday. He would pursue these sources. In the meantime, his purchases were modest. He liked handguns, and he liked rifles. He had not (yet) much experience with a shotgun, so he could not speak for that. (No one in his family had been a hunter. They were city people: factory workers, dockside workers, truckers. Dublin in the 1930s, Buffalo/Lackawanna in the 1940s. He was mostly estranged from them now, and the hell with them.)

  A gun excited him. It was a good feeling. Quickened his pulse so he could actually feel it. Sometimes, a tinge in the groin. What that meant, he had little curiosity about knowing. He was not a man to examine his own mind or motives. Frowning into a mirror, he saw what had to be done, and done deftly: brushing his teeth, shaving, dampening and combing his hair, practice-smiling to flash the idea of a smile but not to show his crazy-crooked left canine tooth. He was a man of little vanity, though. Asked the barber to shave his head at the back, sides, keep the rest trimmed short so it more resembled wires than human hair, glinting like something that might cut your fingers if you touched it.

  It wasn’t 100 percent true, he didn’t feel young. A gun in his hand, he felt pretty good. Cleaning a gun. Loading a gun, aiming a gun. Firing a gun (at the firing range) and never flinching at the noise or the recoil. Noting calmly if you’d struck your target (heart, head) and if not, how far off you were. And try again.

  The thing about guns: you were always improving. A matter of discipline, progress. In school he had always been uncertain of his standing, sometimes he did all right and his teachers praised him (such a tall snaky-lean kid with moody eyes and a close-shut unsmiling mouth, his nervous teachers were quick to praise him), other times he fucked up. Hit-or-miss it seemed. Books made him uneasy, resentful. Damn words, numerals. Like stones shoved into his mouth, too many and he’d choke.

  But guns. A gun is different. The more you handle a gun, the more expert you become. And the gun gets comfortable with you, too.

  His NFPD uniform wasn’t his first. He’d enlisted in the U.S. Army out of high school. In the army they’d taught him to shoot. Almost he’d been selected for an elite sniper team. But he hadn’t been that good, for those guys were really good, awesome. He’d conceded it was probably just as well.

  Might’ve liked it too much. Killing.

  They’d sent him to the Persian Gulf. Operation Desert Shield that became Operation Desert Storm. Only just a few years ago in his life but it seemed longer. In the life of his country, so fast-moving and not-looking-back, the Gulf War was nearly forgotten. He wasn’t a man to look back, and he wasn’t a man of regrets. What happens, happens. He’d returned to the States with a medal for valor under fire and the exposed areas of his skin permanently clay-colored, lizardy. Ever afterward his eyes would appear lighter than his face, spook eyes some women would call them, shivering at his touch. In the Iraqi desert he had participated in killing an indeterminate number of human beings designated as enemies, targets. These had been Iraqi soldiers of approximately his age and younger. Some of them a lot younger. He had not seen individual enemies die but he’d smelled their deaths by frying, explosion. Inhaled the unmistakable burned-meat odor, for he’d been downwind from the action, either that or not breathe. Telling of the Gulf War to those few persons to whom he spoke of such matters he would say the worst that had happened to him was fucking sand-flea bites. In fact, the worst that had happened was diarrhea. And one bright hallucinatory morning in the desert he saw his soul curl up and die like an inchworm in the hot sand.

  At first he’d missed it. Then he forgot.

  Back in the States he learned to be a cop. He got married to a girl he’d known in high school. He wasn’t ambitious careerwise but he had certain goals. He saw that the civilian police were a branch of the U.S. armed services and the
same authority/rank bullshit prevailed. That was all right with him, mostly. If authority merited his respect, authority had his respect. Captains, lieutenants, sergeants, detectives. They liked him on sight. They trusted him. He was an old-style cop of another era. In his patrolman’s uniform he made a strong impression. It surprised him to learn that most cops in the NFPD had not fired their weapons at any human targets let alone killed these targets let alone felt good about it and though he would not tell anyone on the force about his Persian Gulf experience, for he was not a man to talk much about himself, somehow he exuded that air.

  Yet his first partner, an older, paunch-bellied cop who had not advanced beyond patrol after eighteen years on the force, requested another partner after only three weeks.

  “Guy like Dromoor, no question he’s smart, he’s a born cop. But he’s too quiet. He don’t talk, it makes you talk too much. And when he don’t answer you then after a while you can’t talk either, then you start thinking too much. That ain’t good.”

  In the NFPD he had bad luck at first. But usually balanced by good.

  He was hurt, sure. Pissed. That his first partner had dumped him. His second partner, a guy nearer his age, hadn’t lasted long either. Not Dromoor’s fault, just bad luck.

  He’d been on the force just seven weeks. It was a domestic disturbance call. Late one muggy August night on the East Side where the smoke haze from the chemical factories makes your eyes sting and breathing hurt. Dromoor was driving the patrol car. As he and his partner J. J. pulled up outside a bungalow, an individual looking to be a white male, midthirties, was pulling away from the curb in a rust-stippled Ford van. It was J. J.’s call to pursue the van. What was inside the bungalow would be discovered by a backup team. The chase lasted eight minutes involving speeds of sixty, sixty-five miles an hour along narrow, potholed residential streets in that part of the city of Niagara Falls few tourists have discovered. At last the van skidded, fishtailed, collided with parked cars, and the driver was thrown against the front windshield, lay slumped over the steering wheel. There was reason to think he was unconscious. Very possibly he was dead. The windshield was cracked, there was no movement inside the cab. There came J. J. and Dromoor behind him, both with guns drawn. J. J. was anxious, excitable. Dromoor perceived that this was not a familiar experience for him. J. J. called out for the driver of the van to lift his arms from the wheel, keep his hands in sight, stay in the vehicle but keep his hands in sight. The driver of the van was unresponsive. He appeared to be bleeding from a head wound. Yet somehow it happened, Dromoor would replay the incident many times afterward seeking the key to how precisely it happened, that the driver of the van stooped to retrieve a .45-caliber revolver from beneath his seat and opened fire on J. J. through the side window as J. J. approached; and there was J. J. suddenly down in the street, a bullet in the chest. Dromoor, approximately three feet behind his partner, was struck by a second bullet in his left shoulder before he heard the crack! before he felt the impact of the bullet which carried no immediate pain with it, no clear sensation other than a rude, hard hit, as if he’d been clubbed with a sledgehammer. Dromoor was on one knee as the driver climbed out of the van, preparing to fire again, except Dromoor swiftly fired at him from his kneeling position, upward at an angle, three bullets each of which struck the shooter in the head.