Page 52 of The New Year's Party
I give myself a shake and put everything back in its place.
Ah. Nothing like emptying the old bladder alfresco.
Chapter 25
Olivia
While Hellie tried to give the tequila shot to Jenn and Jenn made a big show of refusing, Olivia just stood there, frozen to the spot.
Her conversation with Jenn had shattered her. As Jenn had gone on about Will’s bedroom penchants, Olivia couldn’t focus, because she was trying to hold herself together as her heart splintered: five years ago, Phelps had sexually assaulted her.
It was clear as day the moment Olivia heard herself say out loud to Jenn,I was really drunk, blackout drunk. And a woman who is blackout drunk can’t give consent.
What waswrongwith Olivia? It shouldn’t have taken her five years to realize this. She of all people, given her history...
As the BB gun passed to Bennett and tequila and laughter flew around like confetti, reality beat its cruel bat into Olivia. She had been assaulted, yet she had spent five years thinking it was her fault. She had wasted five years of silent agony. Sleepless nights, anxiety attacks, entire days she couldn’t stop crying for the guilt—all because she hadn’t understood what happened, when the pieces were there all along. She shoved her hands into her coat pockets and tucked her nose under the collar. Why was shelikethis? Always the last person to connect the dots about her own life.It was excusable at nineteen. But at thirty-five...Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Even though she could feel the first sign of panic in the electric snap of her heart, she wasn’t completely freaking out yet. She could still hold it in... she wasusedto holding things in... She was Olivia, Miss Always Has It Together. Standing in a different dimension. A piece of glass dividing her from everyone else. The same piece of glass that had been there her whole life, like Olivia was an exotic animal in a zoo. Sometimes smiled at, sometimes admired, but never belonging.
“Bennett, you aren’t nearly as good with that gun as your wife is!” Doug guffawed as Bennett’s shot soared above the line of plates and to the right, embedding itself into the siding of the Dog House.
“Five bucks if you don’t hit my shed again,” said Phelps.
“Five bucks if you can stop talking,” Bennett returned. Her husband always got snappier, mouthier, around his friends.
Olivia felt herself teeter. On one hand, she didn’t want to believe Bennett’s oldest friend was capable of assault. How could Phelps lie as coolly as he had behind the refrigerator when they were serving the mousse, claiming not to remember something of this magnitude? Unless... unless hehadforgotten.
Oh, dear God.
Maybe it was such a small event in his dramatic life that it had faded into the noise. Maybe Olivia was nothing. Maybe assaulting her counted as less than nothing.
Her heartbeat was frenzied, her head hot. Didshegive Phelps the idea that he could take advantage of her? Because of what she shared with him, right beforehand? The idea made her sick. Maybe he thought that since Professor Larkin got away with it...
Olivia hadn’t even realized she was raped by her old professor until ten years after it happened. Strange how you could be raised by two doting parents in a fairly liberal household, have a feminist mother who regularly talked about consent,and somehow not realize what was happening when it happened to you.
It was at the eighth New Year’s party that her eyes were opened. The year before her supposed mistake with Phelps. Kylie, who was still married to Phelps at the time, was going on about her first husband, and how when a woman saysno, it has to be over right away. Without thinking, Olivia said, “Well, sometimes people say no, but they kind of let it happen anyway.”
Mild Hellie seemed to come to life. She’d been reclining on the couch, but she sat straight up. “That’s rape, Olivia. If you say no, and it keeps happening, it’s rape.”
The conversation kept going, barreling right past Olivia as, unbeknownst to everyone else, she fell backward in time. Back to her sophomore year of college.
She never told Bennett about her relationship before him. It was too embarrassing. After all, she was just nineteen. He was fifty-six.
When her art history professor asked her to come to his office hours to discuss her first paper—a silly one-page statement about why she was taking the class—she couldn’t believe her ears. He said that just by her personal statement he could tell she was special... she was one in a thousand students, one in ten thousand... deeper, more mature, not like the others... she could have a real future in academia, if she wanted... she should come back and the two of them could just talk about art together, it would be so refreshing to talk to someone whogotit, he could make some tea and set up the projector so that Olivia could see Monet in large format, as it was meant to be...
She fell for it.
She told herself she wanted it. He was divorced, and Olivia was a legal adult, and if it felt a little icky, well, she was used to not feeling the right things. After all, she wasn’t comfortablewith her own peers. Olivia’s sister, Emily, had died so young, Olivia had practically grown up an only child. A third wheel to her parents. She did adult things with them. They skipped Candy Land and went straight to Scrabble. Skipped Disney movies and went straight to foreign films with subtitles, which they’d see together at various film festivals in Chicago, with cocktails afterward and a Shirley Temple for Olivia. Adults were her comfort zone.
When Professor Larkin said,Youknow you’re the work of art, it felt sweet.You were meant to be an artist’s muse.So painfully obvious in retrospect. When he touched her leg, it didn’t feel like she could say no. He’d been so nice, so complimentary... She didn’t want to seem ungrateful, or accuse him of something that would embarrass them both.
Bennett was in Art History 101 with her. He sat behind Olivia for the first half of the semester. Then he moved down next to her. She remembered—stupid Olivia—feeling so superior to Bennett. She had a relationship he could never comprehend. And then, the semester was over and Professor Larkin told her they should pull back, Olivia was young, he didn’t want to cheat her of the college experience.
“But I’m falling in love with you,” she said, to her shame.
He reached forward and tucked her hair behind her ear. “We’ve fallen for each other. But you have your whole life ahead of you. It wouldn’t be fair for me to hold you back, Olivia. I’ve loved having the chance to mentor you, but...”
Is that what it was called, when she was face down on his desk in the blue light of the projector with her skirt hitched up, murmuringnoso quietly she figured he must not be able to hear her, so filled with shock at what was happening that she went completely numb, because it was the only way to deal with it?Mentoring? Now she saw he was just ready for a new semester. Out with Olivia, in with the next mentee.
