Public Secrets

as Emma, but when her voice grew crisp, she projected total authority. “Would you like me to quote you statistics on how many women are abused every year? I believe it runs about one every eighteen seconds in this country. Surprised?” she asked when Emma stared at her. “Did you want to feel as if you were the only member of an exclusive club? How about how many of them stay with their abusers? It isn’t always because they don’t have friends or family who would help them. It isn’t always because they’re poor or uneducated. They’re afraid, their self-respect has been shattered. They’re ashamed, they’re confused. For every one who finds help, there are a dozen more who don’t. You’re alive, Emma, but you haven’t survived it. Not yet.”
“No, I haven’t.” Emma spun around. Her eyes were damp, but there was fury behind them. “I have to live with it every day. Do you think talking about it helps, finding excuses, choosing reasons? What difference does it make why it happened? It happened. I’m going for a walk.” She raced down the steps and headed toward the surf.

K ATHERINE WAS A patient woman. For two days she said nothing, made no reference to the talk she and Emma had had. She waited, while Emma kept a polite distance.

The days were anything but uneventful. Because it was her first trip to the States, Stevie wanted to show Katherine everything. They spent hours sightseeing, taking in all the tourist spots from the walk of the stars to Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm. There were clubs in the evening. Sometimes they went alone, sometimes as a group. She liked best the nights they spent at home, with Stevie sitting for hours making love to his guitar.
But she thought incessantly about Emma. Stevie understood —perhaps that was why Katherine had fallen in love with him—that she had to help, even when help was rejected.
She took her chances when she heard Emma go downstairs before dawn one morning. Following her down, Katherine found all the lights shining. Emma was in the kitchen, sitting at the breakfast bar and staring out the dark window.
“I wanted some tea,” Katherine said easily and walked to the stove. “I always find it comforting when I wake this early.” She didn’t comment on the tears drying on Emma’s cheeks, but busied herself with cups and saucers. “I admire your mother. The way she adds a few touches and makes the kitchen the coziest room in the house. With mine, I always feel as though I’m standing in someone else’s closet.”
She measured out tea in a painted pot shaped like a cow.
“Stevie took me through the Universal Studios tour yesterday afternoon. Have you ever been?” She waited only a beat for Emma’s response, then continued. “I got a close-up look at Jaws and wondered why the film had terrified me. But then it’s all image and illusion.” She poured the boiling water into the pot and let the tea steep. “The little tram rode by Norman Bates’s house—you know, from Psycho . It looks exactly the same, just what you’d expect, but without the terror. It seems when you lift something out of context, even something frightening, it loses power. It becomes just an odd little house or a mechanical fish.”
“Life isn’t the same as films.”
“No, but I’ve always thought there were interesting parallels. Would you like cream?”

“No. No, thank you.” She was silent while Katherine poured the tea. Then the words came out before she could stop them. “Sometimes it’s as though the time I spent with Drew was a film. Something I can look at, detached. And then, on mornings like this when I wake up before the light, I think I’m back in New York, in the apartment, and he’s sleeping beside me. I can almost hear him breathing in the dark. Then the rest, these last months, are the film. Docs that make me crazy?”
“No. It makes you a woman who lived through a terrible ordeal.”
“But he’s gone. I know he’s gone. Why should I still be afraid?”
“Are you?”
She couldn’t keep her hands still. She poked and pushed at items on the counter. A wine glass that hadn’t been put away from the night before, a bowl of fresh fruit, the sugar bowl that matched the bovine teapot.
“He used to play tricks. After I’d told him about Darren, everything I remembered, everything I felt. He would get out of bed after I was asleep.” It was all rushing out now, unstoppable. “He’d put on that song, the one that was playing the