Lake Success

Lake Success becomes C.J. Townsend’s new home after her release from Jamaica Hospital, a place chosen to put distance between her and Bayside after the assault. The move takes her into an eighteenth-floor apartment at North Shore Towers; it offers a fresh address, but the journey there and the days that follow show how little a change of location can quiet her fear.

Setting and the New Apartment

C.J.’s mother found the one-bedroom apartment by searching the obituary section of the New York Times rather than its real-estate listings. It had belonged to a ninety-year-old widow and her seventeen-year-old cat, Tibby; the widow died before the cat. With two new Ben Franklins, C.J. was able to secure the apartment immediately. Her mother considered it nice for a New York apartment.

The building stands in Lake Success, just over the Queens–Nassau county line. Its eighteenth-floor apartment contrasts with the home C.J. is determined to leave behind: she does not want to return to Bayside, and tells her parents to sell, burn, or give away the belongings in her old apartment. She wants nothing from the bedroom transferred to the new place. The move is not simply a change of address but an attempt to keep the past from following her into her home.

The Move from Jamaica Hospital

C.J. leaves Jamaica Hospital on a rainy Tuesday, five days after arriving unconscious on a stretcher. Although her doctor declares her well enough to be discharged, the approaching departure frightens her; she has been shaking all day, and her heart races. In the crowded hospital lobby, she searches the faces around her for the attacker, knowing she would not recognize him without his mask.

Even the short step from her wheelchair into the car causes searing abdominal pain. With her mother and a friend helping, she climbs into the back seat carrying a shopping bag of prescription drugs. She watches the parking lot and the passing strangers through rain-streaked glass, imagining the attacker could be anywhere. Her father drives her toward Lake Success through the rain, with Jamaica Hospital receding behind them. As they leave, she asks him not to use the childhood nickname he has called her; his subdued response gives the departure a further note of separation.

A Refuge That Cannot End the Fear

C.J. wants the new address to be difficult for her attacker to discover. Michael Decker thinks her fear that the rapist might watch people and follow them to learn where she is moving is far-fetched. He agrees that she should leave Bayside, but wants her to move in with him; he will not give up his Manhattan apartment. Their disagreement leaves C.J. choosing a separate home in Lake Success rather than relying on his proposed arrangement.

The change of residence does not bring emotional recovery. In the mornings, C.J. tries to believe that getting through one day will make the next better, yet her fear continues to grow even as her wounds heal and her scars fade. Insomnia disrupts her nights, while debilitating fatigue marks her days. Lake Success therefore serves both as a practical refuge from the place she cannot bear to revisit and as the setting in which the persistence of her trauma becomes unmistakable.