Stalking: In His Sights

By Kate Brennan. Excerpted from In His Sights (Harper, 2008)

What if the man you'd loved for years vows, when you leave him, to destroy you? What if he transforms into a ruthless tormentor, stealing your freedom, undermining your sanity, and threatening your safety?

This is not a fictional scenario. Read the real story of Kate Brennan's life below.

Chapter 25
I was born in a Great Lake city and brought home to a Mississippi river town, both bodies of water left in the mineral -- rich wake of a glacier. When we exchanged our small town for an urban life, we moved to a city on the same river. Only twice in my fortyfour years have I lived more than a handful of miles from the Mississippi, so I feel most at home when its waters are as close as my back door.

My friend's house is a short walk from the river and just down the street from the college. Being in a neighborhood that feels familiar on two accounts eases the strain of not being able to settle somewhere in one clean move. That, however, is minor compared to how leaving Paul feels: as if I'm saving my life.

It's an old hodgepodge house devoted to function rather than aesthetics. Before I go to bed the first night, I unpack enough to make me feel at home. I set a white ceramic mug and a navy-blue tin of Earl Grey tea on the kitchen counter. I unpack a few books and stack them on the worn oak table I'll use as a desk. In an upstairs bedroom, I move a lamp to the bedside, and on the tall dresser I prop my painting of swans in flight.

From the day I leave Paul, I avoid anywhere I'm likely to run into him, which even in a big city isn't as easy as it sounds. Nearly every time I walk into one of my regular hangouts, I hear he's been there recently -- even the places he didn't frequent when we were together. One night I go to meet a friend for dinner at one of my old standbys, Niko's, and take a seat at my favorite table, midway down the room.

"I'm sorry about your breakup," Niko says when he comes out to greet me. He carries the look of attentive restaurant owner well: dark slacks and a crisp white shirt that's open at the neck. Mostly it's his clear, dark eyes that welcome you.

"Who told you about it?" I ask.

"Paul," he says. "He comes in a couple of times a week these days. In fact, he was just in last night. He gave a party for friends." He pauses. "Your break is amicable?" It's a raised-eyebrow question.

"Says who?" I ask.

"Paul," he says. "But I wondered."

"He's not the man I thought he was," is all I say, and add the detail that Paul seems to turn up at all my favorite places these days.

"I thought it was funny," he says. "He was never here unless you came in together. Now he's here all the time." He tells me not to let that stop me from coming.

This scene is repeated many times, and, of course, Paul does stop me from going to my favorite places. At least for a while, he wins the point. I want to spare myself any connection, even in passing. This must be his way of punishing me for not stepping into his long line of women who are left beholden and grateful.

In spite of my plan to avoid him, he’s in my life plenty anyway. He calls several times a day. He talks about trying again, doing better, making it work. I've decided he wants to get me back for one reason only: so he can rearrange the break in order to cast himself as the wonderful and generous one leaving. That, of course, would make me the one being left. Never mind that it would rewrite history: I refuse to give him such satisfaction.

For a while, I quit answering the phone altogether. That's when the drive-bys start. I keep well away from the window and park my car behind the house so he can't see whether or not I'm home. Every once in a while, he comes to the door. I make him stay on the porch as he tells me why he's come. For nothing, really.

Mostly he just circles the block, often calling from his car phone as he does. One day he calls twelve times. The lack of restraint he's showing is so opposed to his usual cool control. This actually gives me a bit of pleasure.

Chapter 26
I drive to my parents' home to get out of town for a while. When I walk through the front door, my father and Liz's youngest daughter are in the living room.

"Run to your aunt," my father tells the eager toddler. "She needs a hug." My niece shrieks in delight, runs across the room, and flings herself at me.

My father's more sober hug follows. "Your heart is broken," he says. "You loved him, so your heart is broken." He pauses as if to consider. "For a year," he adds, "your heart will be broken, for about a year." He hugs me again. "And then you'll be fine, because you're a survivor. You've always been a survivor."

Wondering what story from his past informs him of this one-year term for heartbreak, I am rocked by such tenderness from my proud old Irish father.

It’s more complicated for my mother, whose guiding rule is simple: if you love someone, you forgive everything. The disease of alcoholism swamps us from all sides, from both my mother's and my father's families. Since my mother never actually left anyone (though she occasionally planned an exit for us), she was practiced in forgiveness. Her mantra could have been: one more chance.

I didn't share her hyper-optimism. By the time I was in my late twenties, I'd given up hope for my father's recovery. I'd given up hope that my mother would see that in not standing up to her husband she failed to protect her children. I quit expecting I would love my father again and would forgive my mother. But my parents each did their part -- as did I -- and proved me wrong to lose hope. That's when I learned to believe in -- and practice -- redemption and atonement.

Redemption not as in a miracle, but as in the relentless emotional work that results in a person's taking responsibility for a life, day after day, the kind of effort that transforms a spirit.

I wonder if my leaving Paul feels like a betrayal of all my mother stands for. Perhaps she thinks I didn't try hard enough to make it work. She makes me feel welcome at home, as she always does, but a few days into my visit she says, "You're not the only one who's ever gone through a breakup."

"I know," I say. "Why would you say such a thing?" I haven't been moping around. I feel like a wreck inside, but I work hard to act cheerful.

She won't explain what she means. She could feel foolish to have liked him so much. We all do. But whatever her initial feelings were, before long she adjusts her view.

Once I'm at my parents' house, Paul turns his obsessive dialing on them. I avoid answering the phone, which leaves it to my mother to tell him I don't want to talk to him.

"Do I need to get on the phone and take care of this?" asks my father one day after yet another call.

"No, I can handle it," she replies. And she does. She doesn't want to talk to you anymore, Paul, my mother tells him the next time he calls, and neither do we. She finishes firmly, not easy for her: "Quit calling here."

His calls to their house stop, but as soon as I’m back in the city at my friend's house, they begin again.

One afternoon Paul leaves a message on my answering machine begging me not to give up on him. He wants to figure out a way for us to get back together. "I want to become the kind of person who's able to be in a loving relationship," he says. "I know I'm not that kind of person now." No shit, I think, when I hear his voice on the message.

Maybe he can change. My father had. I'd given up on him, and I'd been wrong to. I hate thinking I've picked such a maniac. Yet I've promised myself I won't go back, no matter what.

I'm strong, but I'm not perfect, so three times -- exactly -- I give in and meet Paul, always in public, and never for long. I regret it each time.

After that, whenever I feel weak, I remember the advice of the last therapist we saw together. I'd called him right after I left Paul. He fooled me, the therapist said. He told me that he believed Paul when he said he was prepared to do anything to make our relationship work. The therapist's parting words were: "He'll want you back. Don't do it."

Chapter 27
Some people are oblivious to their surroundings. They can live anywhere. I'm not one of them. It's not a question of size. It's about the aesthetics, the charm of a place, inside and out. The renovated apartment I'm leasing occupies the third floor (the top floor) and part of the second floor in a large house on the edge of downtown. I especially like the peaked ceilings that create cozy nooks in every room: My nieces and nephews will love these ready-made forts. A couple of blocks from a city lake, it's also within easy reach of a theater and art complex, several coffeehouses, and a multiscreen movie theater. I can't believe my luck in finding it.

As soon as the movers and the friends who've helped me have left, I pick my way through cardboard boxes and start to nest: filling bookcases, plugging in lamps, and setting up my desk and enough of the kitchen to have breakfast the next morning. I set out the electric kettle, the toaster, and my well-seasoned Sadler teapot. Finally, I hang three paintings, the swans first. I plan to live here for a long time.

When I arrange my books in my new place, I put the ones I regularly reread in one bookcase and arrange them alphabetically by author—Brookner, Byatt, Cather, Dickinson, Durrell, Eliot, Fairstein, Fyfield, Grennan, Hardy, Jouve, de Leon, Oliver, Sanford, Sayers, White. When I lived with Paul, I categorized my books by genre, but I don’t do that when I live alone. I must have done it there to put order to a fragment of my life.

Paul takes to calling me late at night. It's before the days of caller ID, so I don't know who’s calling until I pick up. One night I'm sitting at my desk, facing away from the windows overlooking the backyard and garden. I'm trying to make sense of notes I'd taken when I was in London last year. The ringing phone startles me. I look at my watch. It's nearly midnight.

"It's me," he says, in the soft seductive voice he used on the phone when we were first dating. "You're still working, aren't you?"

I look outside to see if anyone could be seeing in. "What do you want?" I ask.

"Just to say hi," he says, and he goes on, without a pause, to tell me he's looking at my picture right now. "I keep it at my bedside so I won't ever forget you," he says.

Silence on my part. I don't know what to say. He fills in the gap: "I saw you this afternoon." And as if he's briefing the next shift of a surveillance team, he tells me exactly where and when.

I slam down the phone. The next time I answer and it's him, I ask if he knows where I live. He laughs. I know exactly where you live, he says. Besides, he adds, I can see you whenever I want. From now on, it doesn't really matter if I answer or not. I get his message either way.

This annoys me more than it frightens me. I haven't seen him in weeks. I call friends and family and ask them not to tell him anything about me. My sister Liz tells me he's called and he's told her that he knows where I live and that he sees me often.

One day I come home to find a box outside the door to my apartment. Inside are things I'd thrown away when I left Paul's: papers torn in half, a black leather glove with a hole in the middle finger, an empty print cartridge, impossible to mistake as anything other than garbage.

A few weeks after the move, I realize I can't recall the last time I received any personal mail. I seem to get nothing but junk mail. When I call the post office, the man who takes the call tells me the mail-forwarding order I filed in June was canceled. I tell them I didn't cancel the order. He insists my signature is on the form. I tell him it isn't my signature. I drive to the post office and resubmit a mail-forwarding request.

The next time Paul calls, I ask him if he knows anything about it. "Your mail is here," he says in a taunting voice. It's been piling up for weeks. "If you want it, pick it up."

"This one's a federal crime," I say. "I want my mail and I want it now. I want it left outside my door tomorrow." The next day I come home to several weeks' worth of mail on my dining room table. He knows a mutual friend has a key to my apartment. He had her make the delivery. She thinks she's doing me a favor. I explain that I don't blame her but that I will feel most comfortable if she doesn’t have a key. We've become friends, but she's working part time for Paul these days, and I don't trust that he wouldn't "borrow" my key and make a copy of it.

When he calls a few nights later, I have something to say. He starts out by telling me how excited he is to be in medical school. As if I'd still care. "I wouldn't be there if it weren't for you," he says. Of course, by now I'm thinking how much harm he can cause as a doctor.

"Do you think I still love you?" I ask.

"I know you do,” he says.

"Well, you're wrong. Don't ever call me again. And if you ever see me in the street, you'd better turn around and walk the other way. Because if you come up to me and talk to me, I'll spit in your face."

"You wouldn't dare," he says.

He may be right. I feel this way, though I'm not sure I could actually do it. But I keep my voice firm: "Try me." I wait for a few seconds. "I look like a lot nicer person than you do, so everyone would assume you're the asshole."

These are the last words I ever speak to him.