Freedom

“Coach Nagel wants me to go to the hospital.”

“Are you not all right?”

“I already said. I’m fine.”

“Then just stay put, and don’t either of you do anything until I get there.”

Patty hung up the phone and told Coach that her mother was coming.

“We’re going to put that boy in jail for a long, long time,” Coach said.

“Oh no no no no no,” Patty said. “No, we’re not.”

“Patty.”

“It’s just not going to happen.”

“It will if you want it to.”

“No, actually, it won’t. My parents and the Posts are political friends.”

“Listen to me,” Coach said. “That has nothing to do with anything. Do you understand?”

Patty was quite certain that Coach was wrong about this. Dr. Post was a cardiologist and his wife was from big money. They had one of the houses that people such as Teddy Kennedy and Ed Muskie and Walter Mondale made visits to when they were short of funds. Over the years, Patty had heard much tell of the Posts’ “back yard” from her parents. This “back yard” was apparently about the size of Central Park but nicer. Conceivably one of Patty’s straight-A, grade-skipping, Arts-doing sisters could have brought trouble down on the Posts, but it was absurd to imagine the hulking B-student family jock making a dent in the Posts’ armor.

“I’m just never going to drink again,” she said, “and that will solve the problem.”

“Maybe for you,” Coach said, “but not for somebody else. Look at your arms. Look what he did. He’ll do that to somebody else if you don’t stop him.”

“It’s just bruises and scratches.”

Coach here made a motivational speech about standing up for your teammates, which in this case meant all the young women Ethan might ever meet. The upshot was that Patty was supposed to take a hard foul for the team and press charges and let Coach inform the New Hampshire prep school where Ethan was a student, so he could be expelled and denied a diploma, and that if Patty didn’t do this she would be letting down her team.

Patty began to cry again, because she would almost rather have died than let a team down. Earlier in the winter, with the flu, she’d played most of a half of basketball before fainting on the sideline and getting fluids intravenously. The problem now was that she hadn’t been with her own team the night before. She’d gone to the party with her field-hockey friend Amanda, whose soul was apparently never going to be at rest until she’d induced Patty to sample piña coladas, vast buckets of which had been promised at the McCluskys’. El ron me puso loca. None of the other girls at the McCluskys’ swimming pool were jocks. Almost just by showing up there, Patty had betrayed her real true team. And now she’d been punished for it. Ethan hadn’t raped one of the fast girls, he’d raped Patty, because she didn’t belong there, she didn’t even know how to drink.

She promised Coach to give the matter some thought.

It was shocking to see her mother in the gym and obviously shocking to her mother to find herself there. She was wearing her everyday pumps and resembled Goldilocks in daunting woods as she peered around uncertainly at the naked metal equipment and the fungal floors and the clustered balls in mesh bags. Patty went to her and submitted to embrace. Her mother being much smaller of frame, Patty felt somewhat like a grandfather clock that Joyce was endeavoring to lift and move. She broke away and led Joyce into Coach’s little glass-walled office so that the necessary conference could be had.

“Hi, I’m Jane Nagel,” Coach said.

“Yes, we’ve—met,” Joyce said.

“Oh, you’re right, we did meet once,” Coach said.

In addition to her strenuous elocution, Joyce had strenuously proper posture and a masklike Pleasant Smile suitable for nearly all occasions public and private. Because she never raised her voice, not even in anger (her voice just got shakier and more strained when she was mad), her Pleasant Smile could be worn even at moments of excruciating conflict.

“No, it was more than once,” she said now. “It was several times.”

“Really?”

“I’m quite sure of it.”

“That doesn’t sound right to me,” Coach said.

“I’ll be outside,” Patty said, closing the door behind her.

The parent-coach conference didn’t last long. Joyce soon came out on clicking heels and said, “Let’s go.”

Coach, standing in the doorway behind Joyce, gave Patty a significant look. The look meant Don’t forget what I said about teamwork.

Joyce’s car was the last one left in its quadrant of the visitor lot. She put the key in the ignition but didn’t turn it. Patty asked what was going to happen now.

“Your father’s at his office,” Joyce said. “We’ll go straight there.”

But she didn’t turn the key.

“I’m sorry about this,” Patty said.

“What I don’t understand,” her mother burst out, “is how such an outstanding athlete as you are—I mean, how could Ethan, or whoever it was—”

“Ethan. It was Ethan.”