Chapter 5: The Aftermath of the Visit
The eggs were gluey and cold on the plate. Lisa watched Susanna push them around with a fork, the triumph in her eyes sharpening into something else. The silence wasn’t comfortable anymore; it was a held breath.
“She put her card on the box,” Lisa said eventually, her voice casual. Too casual.
Susanna kept her eyes on her plate. “I saw.”
“Why would she do that, you think? If she was so satisfied with our little chat?” Lisa’s chair scraped back. She came around the table and leaned against it, arms crossed, blocking the light from the window. “What did you tell her about me, Suze? In your little sessions.”
“Nothing.” The lie was automatic, thin as rice paper.
“Nothing.” Lisa echoed, a flat, disbelieving sound. She reached out and caught a strand of Susanna’s short black hair, twisting it around her finger, tightening it slowly. “You sit in that room with her for fifty minutes and you talk about the weather? You tell her your dreams? Your little writing ideas?” She pulled, just enough to tilt Susanna’s head back, forcing eye contact. “Or do you tell her stories about me? Paint me as the villain in your fragile little narrative.”
“I don’t—”
“You don’t what?” Lisa’s whisper was venomous. “You don’t remember? Or you don’t think I’d find out?” She released the hair, her hand smoothing down Susanna’s cheek in a parody of a caress. “The thing is, I know you. I know the words you’d use. ‘Intense.’ ‘Overprotective.’ Maybe you even used the words they love. ‘Toxic.’ ‘Abusive.’” She spat the clinical terms out like they were rotten.
Susanna’s heart was a trapped bird. She remembered the last session, her own voice trembling as she described the locked bedroom door, the way Lisa would count her pills. Dr. Wick’s calm, noting expression. She’d felt seen. Now, that feeling felt like a betrayal with consequences she couldn’t fathom.
Lisa saw the memory flicker in her eyes. Her own went cold and clear. “Get up.”
“Lisa, please.”
“I said get up.” The command was a whip-crack. She grabbed Susanna’s forearm, yanking her from the chair. The plate clattered to the floor, yellow yolk smearing the linoleum.
She marched her down the short hall, past the locked bedroom, into the bathroom. The air was damp, mildew and cheap lavender soap. Lisa flicked the harsh overhead light on. “Strip.”
“No. God, no, Lisa. Don’t do this.”
Lisa’s laugh was short, humorless. “Do what? Make sure my girlfriend isn’t hiding anything? After a stranger comes to my home trying to pull her away?” She leaned in, her voice dropping to a intimate, hateful murmur. “You could have passed her a note. You could have written something on your skin. I need to check.”
Trembling, Susanna complied. The mundane horror of it—the peeling paint, the rust-stained sink, the everyday setting for this violation—made her disassociate. She was a body, shaking in the cold air, her arms crossed over her chest.
Lisa didn’t look at her with desire. It was an inspection. Her fingers were cool and businesslike, turning Susanna’s arms over, tracing the inside of her wrists, probing between her fingers. She made her open her mouth, ran a thumb over her gums. She checked behind her ears, the nape of her neck, pulled her hair to examine her scalp.
“Turn around.”
Susanna faced the shower curtain, its plastic patterned with fading seashells. Lisa’s hands traced her spine, the backs of her knees, the soles of her feet. She was looking for marks, for hidden slips of paper, for any evidence of a secret life. Finding only familiar skin, old bruises yellowing at the edges, the topography of their own history.
A long silence. Then, a sigh that wasn’t relief. It was frustration.
“You’re clean,” Lisa said, the words heavy with implication. “For now.”
Before Susanna could move, Lisa reached past her and wrenched the shower knob on. A blast of icy water shot from the showerhead. She shoved Susanna forward, fully clothed, into the tub.
The shock stole the air from Susanna’s lungs. It was painfully, gaspingly cold. She stumbled, her jeans and sweater instantly saturated, heavy as lead. She tried to scramble out, but Lisa was there, a hand on her chest, pinning her under the spray.
“Just washing away the outside world, baby,” Lisa said, raising her voice over the drumming water. She wasn’t getting wet herself; she stood just beyond the curtain, a blurred silhouette through the plastic. “All that doctor’s skepticism. All her nasty little questions. You feel them running off you?”
Susanna choked, shivering so violently her teeth clacked. The water beat down on her head, streamed into her eyes and mouth. It was a drowning on dry land. Her sobs were lost in the roar.
Lisa watched, arms crossed. “See? It’s for your own good. You let people pollute you. You’re too open. Too trusting. This hardens you. This reminds you.”
The water began to run clear after what felt like an eternity, the initial gray from the fabric leaching away. Susanna had stopped fighting. She crouched in the tub, arms wrapped around her knees, a soaked, shrinking creature. The cold was inside her now, in her bones, in the cavern of her chest where hope had been an hour before.
Lisa turned the water off.
The sudden silence was deafening. Dripping. Susanna’s ragged, hitching breaths.
“Out,” Lisa said, her voice back to normal, almost cheerful. She tossed a thin, rough towel at Susanna’s head. It landed on her like a shroud.
Susanna climbed out, her clothes dumping pools of water on the floor. She hugged the towel, her body a map of goosebumps and tremors. She didn’t look at Lisa. She couldn’t.
Lisa surveyed her, a artist reviewing a finished piece. The inspection was over. The contamination, in her mind, had been cleansed.
“Go put on something dry,” she said, turning to leave. In the doorway, she paused. “And clean up that egg on the kitchen floor. It’s starting to stink.”
She left Susanna standing there, dripping and hollow. The water in the tub drained with a slow, gurgling sigh, circling the drain before disappearing completely. From the other room, Susanna could hear the familiar sound of Lisa flicking on the television, the mundane laugh track of a sitcom floating down the hall.
The normalcy of it was the worst part. The horror wasn’t in the act, but in its seamless integration into the day. It was just something that had needed doing. A chore.
Susanna looked at her own reflection in the steam-fogged mirror—a pale, waterlogged ghost with holes for eyes. She didn’t see a person who had been wronged. She saw a problem that had been managed. A possession, wiped clean. The magnets on the fridge down the hall seemed to pulse in her mind.
YOU BELONG TO ME.
The words didn’t feel like a claim anymore. They felt like a simple, inarguable description of fact.