Six thousand dollars usually earmarked for the Detroit Institute of Arts at this time of year, contributed now to the Friends of Saint Jude’s Endowment Fund.

  Most contributors of such substantial sums have children or are closely related to children who’d been treated at Saint Jude’s but Hannah is careful to emphasize that this is not the case with her.

  “My husband and I have been very lucky so far. But we don’t take our luck for granted.”

  “I think—I just think—that Saint Jude’s does such wonderful work … I’m happy to help out, I have plenty of spare time.”

  Signal that she’s the wife of a well-to-do man, Hannah has uttered this boastful remark without thinking.

  Instinctive in her, she thinks. Her caste.

  Also, Hannah makes it a point to hand the six-thousand-dollar check in person to the very nice woman who directs the Saint Jude Friends’ volunteer program and who smiles so dazzlingly at Hannah.

  “Mrs. Jarrett, thank you!”

  It’s clear, this very nice woman has no idea who “Hannah Jarrett” is, or was.

  “And so, Hannah—you’ve begun volunteering at Saint Jude’s, in memory of your cousin Susie?”

  “I—I don’t know. I’ve wanted to volunteer at Saint Jude’s for years—but …”

  Stammering foolishly. Taken by surprise. When had she told Dr. T__ about her cousin? Had she told him?

  Stricken with shyness Hannah scarcely dares lift her eyes to the therapist’s face for fear that the wise-old-man eyes will peer into her soul, stained as a filthy sponge.

  Dr. T__ has come to Hannah highly recommended, however. A lifesaver, Dr. T__ has been called.

  Virtually every woman friend of Hannah’s acquaintance is taking prescription medication for anxiety, depression, insomnia, or some combination of all of these, as they are likely also to be seeing therapists; among these, Dr. T__ is said to be outstanding. Oh that wonderful man!—saved my life.

  Hannah feels in Dr. T__’s office like one who has swum across a treacherous river, risking drowning, now lying exhausted on the shore, a broken figure, pitiable, not blamable.

  Kindly Dr. T__, whose voice is soothing, sympathetic. If only he would not settle his girth into the black leather swivel chair so frequently, causing it to creak: an immense chair with levers, little wheels. Hannah has visited Dr. T__ just three times in his attractive tastefully furnished office and each time imagines that the creaky swivel chair has been made of the (amputated) foot of a large mammal—hippo, rhino, elephant.

  And Dr. T__, too, reminds her of one of these creatures: massive man, pouchy eyes, sagging jowls, in his early seventies. His attention to Hannah is absolute, he could be her father.

  Not Hannah’s actual father who’d been Joker Daddy (who’d sneer at all this and demand to know the cost of each ridiculous session) but another kind of father—unjudging, forgiving. In a heartbeat, Hannah would trade one father for the other.

  Instinctively Hannah softens her voice in Dr. T__’s office. She is pained by her shrill voice at home, scolding the children, calling up the stairs for Ismelda, querulous over the phone, not really her voice but the voice of a stranger who has taken her place. Here, Dr. T__ sometimes has to ask Hannah to speak just a little louder.

  Carpeted office, subdued lighting: potted ferns, reproductions of Monet’s Water Lilies, van Gogh’s Sunflowers, comfortable chair for Hannah, the solace of the banal/familiar. After Hannah’s breakdown, collapse, relapse following the assault in the Marriott parking garage and its complicated aftermath she has seen several therapists, in each case just one, preliminary visit; Dr. T__ is the only therapist she has trusted enough to have seen several times.

  Simultaneously, once a month, Hannah sees a Far Hills psychopharmacologist, who prescribes a delicate cocktail of medications for her. Dr. T__ provides talk therapy which is considered equally important though Hannah is a reticent patient, often sitting mute for minutes at a time with no idea what to say that she might not, at a later time, regret: She has spoken only generally of her marriage, her family, her background, and she has provided only the most vague “memories” of the assault in the Marriott garage … Hannah’s physical injuries have faded, or nearly.

  Dr. T__ never saw these physical injuries (of course). As a therapist he doesn’t examine patients, indeed his patients are “clients” and the issues between them are rarely physical, exclusively a matter of speech. It is possible (Hannah supposes) that out of curiosity Dr. T__ has looked into the (alleged) rape, the (controversial) shooting death of the Black suspect, but he would never refer to any information acquired outside his sessions with any client.

  In Dr. T__’s presence Hannah presents herself as vulnerable, hesitant, seductive as a young girl might be, not sexual, or not overtly sexual, but seductive, arousing in the (male) therapist a wish to protect, to shield from harm.

  It’s a subtle distinction: seductive, sexual. Hannah would not want to misjudge.

  For Dr. T__ Hannah doesn’t dress in the bright-flowery colors she wears to Saint Jude’s to cheer up child cancer patients but in more conservative colors, in more elegant clothes, never trousers but skirts, dresses; her legs are sleekly encased in nylon, her shoes are stylish pumps, but not showy; if Dr. T__ is in his seventies he has formed his notion of feminine beauty in another era, that favored dresses, stockings, pearls, soft-haired and soft-voiced women.

  “… wanted to volunteer at Saint Jude’s for years, they do such good work. Nothing sadder than children with cancer. Just breaks your heart … I think we all want to ‘give something back’ to the community, the society … We all—we all feel …”

  Each word Hannah utters is a sincere word, a legitimate word, yet the accumulation of words leaves her mouth numb, as with Novocain: All that she says is fraudulent, anyone can tell.

  Daring to lift her eyes to Dr. T__ and sees, appalled, that the wise eyes are not kindly at all but contemptuous, cold. He is not deceived.

  Rich man’s wife, pretending to be penitent.

  Claiming to have been a rape victim.

  Claiming to be suicidal. What a joke!

  Some bullshit about her cousin she’d avoided when she was needed, years ago.

  Hannah is so stunned, for a moment she can’t move, then, hurriedly, stumbles to her feet, desperate to escape this place in which she has been exposed. Her face is hot with blood. Her “soft” hair has fallen into her face. She murmurs an excuse to Dr. T__ who stares at her in surprise.

  “Hannah? Mrs. Jarrett? What’s wrong? Are you—leaving? So soon?”

  The therapist seems to be genuinely alarmed. His contempt for Hannah, his loathing of her, he must have assumed he’d successfully disguised.

  “I—I need to leave. I’m not feeling well …”

  Hannah does feel faint. She has located her handbag, beneath her chair like a sprawled dead thing. Dr. T__ makes a gallant effort to heave himself up from the elephant-foot chair but he is too heavy, he falls back, wheezing.

  Blindly Hannah flees from the therapist’s office as Dr. T__ calls after her in a voice Hannah wishes to think is repentant, remorseful, but no, she will never return, she has been unmasked by the lifesaver himself.

  In her car in the parking lot where no one can see Hannah bursts into tears, hiding her disfigured face.

  Still, her happiness is Saint Jude’s. Where the afflicted children adore the pretty lady in bright clothes, reading to them in a bright bunny voice, never betraying their trust by bursting into tears, nor even brushing tears from her eyes.

  Through the looking glass, Hannah thinks. No remnant of her other life follows her here. The children see only her, they know nothing of Hannah Jarrett. No cause to fear Hannah as they might fear a medical worker, or their own mother stricken with hope.

  “Is it—Hannah?”

  On her way to the volunteers’ lounge where the children await her Hannah turns, sees a (woman) physician, in a white jacket, smiling at her tentatively, as if unsure of her identity; too late now for Hannah to continue as if she hadn’t heard her name called for the woman is Norman Schell’s wife—Marcella, Melissa?—and there is no way to avoid an awkward exchange. Indeed, Melissa appears uncomfortable, as if she regrets having impulsively called to Hannah.

  Not friends but social acquaintances. Tenuously linked to each other by mutual friends. It has been some time since they’ve seen each other, at one of the large, lavish Far Hills holiday parties the previous winter.

  Hannah feels a stab of dread. Melissa Schell is Norman Schell’s wife, staring at Hannah now with pitying eyes, clearly sorry she’d detained Hannah, for certainly Norman told his wife about Wes Jarrett bringing Hannah to his office for an emergency examination back in May, certainly Norman could not have resisted telling his wife that Hannah Jarrett had been (evidently) raped, badly bruised, injured, and that he’d urged Wes Jarrett to take her to the ER at Beaumont; since then, no doubt both Schells have followed the disjointed story as it made its way through local media, in which the rape victim remains unidentified though (Hannah is sure) many people know who this “victim” is by now, and everyone knows that the rapist was a Black valet attendant at the Far Hills Marriott, a violent predator involved in dealing drugs (at the Marriott?), subsequently shot and killed by Detroit police acting in conjunction with Far Hills police …

  Suffused with shame Hannah backs away from Melissa Schell in her smart white physician’s coat. Can’t linger to chat, she’s expected in the volunteers’ lounge at this very minute, she has brought The Cat in the Hat to read to the children. Desperate to escape Melissa Schell’s grave eyes.

  But now, Saint Jude’s has become contaminated. For (of course) Melissa Schell will tell others on the staff, within a day or two it will become generally known at Saint Jude’s that one of the volunteers is the “unidentified” rape victim from the Marriott, and this person is Hannah Jarrett; an object of sympathy but also pity but also revulsion, Hannah knows.

  This final session at Saint Jude’s, Hannah doesn’t read in so lively and entertaining a way as she’d read previously. Hannah doesn’t smile as happily as she’d smiled previously. Her face is strained, stiff—not pretty. The children are unusually quiet, subdued. Why are they not laughing? The Cat in the Hat is funny.

  But The Cat in the Hat is not funny. Too much happens, too much for small children to process. Too much breakage, smashing. Too much that is terrifying.

  For the first time Hannah sees individual children too clearly. She glances up from The Cat in the Hat, distracted. Very sick children, some of them in wheelchairs. Pale, malnourished, bruised arms, stick legs, disfigured faces, eyes fixed upon Hannah in unspeakable yearning. Why on earth had she ever imagined, in her vanity, that she was bringing happiness, any kind of cheering up, to these children …

  Hannah’s eyes fill with tears, tears spill over onto her cheeks, exactly as forbidden.

  “Suspect”

  There comes the (dreaded) day Wes will ask Hannah how her volunteer work at the children’s hospital is going and Hannah will say quietly It isn’t.

  Holding her breath as Wes seems about to reply except a headline in the newspaper rivets his attention. It is breakfast time, for Wes, but it is also newspaper time, the two times overlapping, conflicting, for as he peruses columns of newsprint Wes is also consuming food on a plate Hannah has placed before him, scarcely glancing at the plate, scarcely aware of the food, for something in the columns of newsprint absorbs him utterly, causes his shoulders to stiffen like a soldier’s.

  Silent as a wraith Hannah passes behind the husband to place a mug of steaming-hot coffee before him. Her vision which has been underwater since dawn seems to further occlude so that even if her eyes move involuntarily onto the front page of the Detroit Free Press she is unable to make out headlines, photographs.

  Hannah has arrived at that stage in life: soothing underwater. Floating beneath the surface of a stagnant lake nonetheless dazzled with sunspots as alive as algae. The drug cocktail promises to blur harsh headlines, ugly photographs.

  Steeling herself for the husband’s reply to her abashed murmured words but clearly Wes hasn’t heard a syllable.

  It isn’t. Is not.

  It is not.

  Much else in Hannah’s life is not. She isn’t sure what Wes knows, wishes to know, does not know, does not wish to know. A murky area of underwater, unexplored.

  No reason for Wes to know what Hannah does/does not do in his absence. Since it—(unnamed by Wes: the rape)—he avoids her as discreetly as a husband who shares a (king-sized) bed with a wife can avoid the wife, rising early, going to bed (calculatedly) later than the wife, away from the house approximately twelve hours each (week)day but sometimes also gone overnight, over the weekend, “on business.”

  Avoiding Hannah, which means avoiding touch. Avoiding close quarters, intimacy. Eyes lifting to eyes, smiling in the old way—no.

  Her touch is poison to him, Hannah thinks: He is the husband of a woman who (he believes) has been raped.

  More shameful yet, to Wes: raped by a Black man.

  That is the shame, the mortification. What Wes knows, or believes he knows. What he believes, when he is most unhappy, that a substantial number of people in Far Hills know.

  (Though the alleged “rape victim” has never been identified in the media and the alleged “rapist,” shot dead by Detroit police officers, has never been linked definitively to the rape and had not even been arrested at the time of his death, not a “suspect” but only a “person of interest” in another police department’s investigation.)

  Wes never, but never discusses it. Those events of the previous spring he’d endured stoically. Enough!

  After Hannah’s breakdown, collapse, relapse when Wes was obliged to be sympathetic, husbandly. And somewhere around that time, he’d still loved her. Or felt as if he loved her. Or could recall having loved her.

  Still, husband and wife share the spacious bed, and husband and wife share the spacious house. Most mornings, if she is downstairs in time, and if her hands don’t shake too badly, the wife prepares the husband’s breakfast, reasoning that this is something she can do, a simple task, a task that suggests loving attentiveness while requiring a minimum of neither, even underwater and with the wife’s vision occluded.

  Hannah also prepares the children’s breakfasts. This, too, she reasons, is something she can do, though the children are pickier than their father, which cereals they will eat, which fruits, which flavors of yogurt, changing their tastes frequently as if to stymie her.

  If the kitchen at breakfast time is too much for the wife/mother, Ismelda will take over. Profound relief for the wife/mother, knowing that Ismelda is close at hand: as a tightrope walker is grateful for a net to break her fall.

  Somehow, Wes has managed to finish breakfast but for a yolky scum and smear on his plate, amid toast crumbs the size of tiny ants. Swiftly and efficiently if without tasting anything, scarcely glancing at it, the husband has eaten. He has finished with the Free Press, its pages shuffled dismissively together, set aside. Rising now hurriedly from the table—(for the children are clambering downstairs, accompanied by Ismelda, Daddy just doesn’t have time for the children at this hour)—on his way to work, half-hour commute if he leaves early enough, which he intends to do this morning.

  Wistfully Hannah recalls the (young) husband kissing her cheek before leaving for the day but that has been years, years ago, possibly romantic-minded Hannah isn’t even remembering clearly, confusing a breakfast-husband-goodbye scene from the movies with a scene out of her own (younger) life, probably yes, this is so, for the scene in Hannah’s memory is in black-and-white, the wife was wearing a ruffled apron, the husband a fedora, might’ve been Claudette Colbert, James Stewart.

  With a vague distracted-husband smile, not quite meeting her eyes, Wes is assuring Hannah how good it is for her, volunteer work that’s important, worthwhile, helping out those poor children and what an excellent opportunity, too, for Hannah to meet new friends—which reminds him: He will be late coming home tonight, don’t wait dinner for him, no need to keep his dinner in the oven, he’ll probably eat out with __, __ (Hannah never remembers the names of Wes’s associates).

  Hurrying now to escape the house, to drive away in the station wagon, before the children burst into the kitchen crying Where’s Daddy? Is Daddy gone?

  Only after the children have had breakfast, and Ismelda has driven them to school, and Hannah is alone in the eerie silence of the house as in a mausoleum from which even echoes have faded, does Hannah realize that something is wrong: She’d seen Wes set the newspaper aside as he usually does for someone else to discard but the paper isn’t in its usual place on a counter, isn’t anywhere in the kitchen, which means that Wes made a conscious decision to take it away himself, without Hannah noticing; which means, Hannah thinks, that there is something in the newspaper that Wes prefers Hannah doesn’t see though Wes must know that Hannah has more or less ceased reading local papers even as she has ceased watching local newscasts, in fact Hannah avoids “news” whatever the source. And so, Hannah thinks, whatever is in the Free Press this morning that Wes doesn’t want her to see must be serious, indeed.

  Hannah hurries to the garage, to retrieve the slovenly slew of newspaper pages from the trash where Wes tossed them, seeing nothing of interest on the front page but then, in the lower right-hand corner, an article headlined Police Shooting of Rape Suspect Ruled “Justified.”

  Hannah begins to tremble so badly, she can barely hold the newspaper steady enough to read the article.

  Hannah learns: There has been a five-week investigation by a Wayne County civilian review board, determining that Detroit police officers have been cleared of charges of “excessive force” in the fatal shooting of Zekiel Jones back in May.

  Hannah turns to the continuation of the article, on an inner page, but not much more information is provided.