Billy's Bones (17 page)

“Kevin?”

“Why did you do this to me?”

Tom wasn’t certain if the question was directed at him or at Kevin’s father. But Kevin stood up in the tub, a little unsteadily, and said, “I want to go home.”

Fifteen

I
T
WAS
a challenge getting Kevin dressed again and into the car. His face was still blank and expressionless and he was behaving like a zombie—the old-fashioned kind of undead robot from pre-George Romero horror films that would just stand motionless and stare into space until its master issued a command. But Kevin wasn’t a particularly good zombie, and he had to be told two or three times to put on each article of clothing, one at a time.

Despite his reluctance to touch him, Tom was finally forced to take Kevin’s wrist and guide him down the stairs and into the car. He went back inside to fetch Shadow and lock up with Kevin’s key, and then he drove to his house.

As they pulled into the long driveway, Kevin appeared to become aware of his surroundings for a moment, and his face darkened. “I said I wanted to go
home
. Not here.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t want you to be alone right now. You can go upstairs and be by yourself, but I want you here.”

As soon as the car stopped, Kevin got out and slammed the door angrily. But he walked up onto the porch under his own power and let himself in with his key, while Tom retrieved the dog. By the time Tom was inside the house, Kevin had closed himself in the bedroom.

“Y
OU
were right to bring him back to your place, Tom,” Sue said on the other end of his cell phone. “It could be very dangerous to leave him alone right now.”

“He
is
alone,” Tom replied, pacing in his kitchen. “Well, except for the dog. Shadow was pacing at the foot of the stairs and whimpering, so I brought up him up to the landing. When he scratched at the bedroom door, Kevin let him in. But then he closed the door again.”

“That’s good. Shadow will make him feel less alone, without intruding on his privacy.”

“So you’re saying I should just leave him alone? I thought you said that was dangerous.”

“You have to give him some privacy, if he wants it,” Sue said, “but at least if you’re both there, you can be available if you’re needed.”

None of this was sitting well with Tom. He wanted to be up there in the room—not downstairs feeling helpless. “I can’t watch over him while we’re in separate parts of the house,” he complained. “What if he hangs himself? It could be hours before I figured out there was something wrong.”

There wasn’t much furniture in the bedroom yet—really just the bed and the lamp. But people had managed to hang themselves from bed frames before.

“I don’t have an answer to that,” Sue said, utterly failing to reassure him. “Just go by your instincts. One thing, though: if Kevin comes out of the bedroom, don’t push him to talk about what he remembered. If he wants to talk about it, then fine. That can be good for him. But pressuring him to talk about it could trigger another flashback or an anxiety attack.”

Tom wasn’t overly reassured, but he finally pulled himself together enough to ask about the crisis Sue had been dealing with all day.

She sighed. “She’s out of the woods physically,” she said. “They got the pills out of her system before there was any serious damage. But I spent most of the day counseling her family while she was unconscious. This is an enormous setback.”

“Two steps forward, one step back,” Tom said, but his eye was on the stairs leading up to his bedroom.

T
OM
fretted downstairs for a couple more hours. After the first hour, the bedroom door opened just long enough to let Shadow out and then closed again. Tom took the dog outside to pee and then brought him back upstairs. He saw the bedroom door open just enough to admit the pup. Then it closed yet again.

It was after dark before Kevin finally came out of the bedroom. Tom listened anxiously as Kevin used the bathroom and came downstairs, bringing the dog with him. He was naked, having removed his clothing in the bedroom.

“I’m hungry,” Kevin said, walking past the living room into the kitchen.

Tom put down the book he’d been struggling to read and scrambled after him. “There are some cans of soup in the cupboard, or I can make you a ham sandwich….”

“Do you have any peanut butter?”

“Sure.”

Kevin moved to get the peanut butter from the cupboard, but Tom gently shooed him away and made the sandwich for him, while Kevin sat at the kitchen table with Shadow under his feet. Tom started to ask how he was feeling and then bit his tongue. Kevin would talk when he felt like talking.

So Tom moved on to a more innocuous topic. “I really need to get more furniture.” Kevin didn’t respond, so Tom plowed ahead on his own. “Maybe another trip to Ikea this weekend would be a good idea.”

Kevin didn’t respond until Tom had set the plate down in front of him. Then he said, “Thank you,” and proceeded to wolf the sandwich down as if he’d been starving. Of course, he hadn’t eaten anything since early that morning.

When he was finished, he got up to put the plate in the sink and then went outside onto the deck. Tom could see him climb into the hot tub, and after agonizing over it for a few minutes, he followed him outside, Shadow trailing after him. They’d put up a gate at the end of the deck that led to the front porch—a flimsy thing Shadow could probably have broken through if he’d wanted. But while they were out on the deck with him, the gate proved enough of a deterrent to keep him from wandering off.

“Is it okay if I join you?” Tom asked as he approached the hot tub.

“Okay,” Kevin said, “but I don’t know if I feel like talking.”

Tom was still dressed, so he stripped out of his things and laid them on one of the deck chairs. Then he climbed into the water and settled into the tub, careful not to let his feet bump into Kevin’s. He was afraid any contact would spook him and send him back into the bedroom.

Shadow settled down beside the tub, and the three of them lay back for a long time, watching the stars in the clear night sky. The hot tub lights illuminated the water so that it glowed a pale cyan, gradually fading to pink, and then to green. Some modern tubs, Tom had learned when he’d been considering replacing this one, had little waterfalls—which he could do without—and music players built in. A music player might be nice. He’d have to see about rigging some speakers someplace on the deck that would be safe from rainstorms. There must be some way of doing that….

“Isn’t it supposed to feel better,” Kevin asked, breaking the silence at last, “when you remember something that was blocked?”

“No, not necessarily. You’ve been hiding the memories from yourself all this time for a reason. They aren’t pleasant and remembering them isn’t going to make you feel good. Sue is the expert on PTSD, but from what I know of it, remembering is just the beginning. The memories themselves can trigger flashbacks, so you may need to be deconditioned to them over time.”

“How do I do that?”

“Basically, you make yourself remember, but in a controlled environment—one in which you feel safe and apart from the memories. You need to be continually reminded that the memories happened somewhere else, in some other time, and they can’t hurt you anymore.”

“They didn’t… hurt…,” Kevin said slowly. “They just… I don’t know… they just didn’t feel right….”

Tom didn’t want him to be delving into this so soon, so he tried to curtail it. “You don’t need to talk about it if you don’t want.”

“You’re afraid to hear it, aren’t you?” Kevin snapped. “You don’t want to know all the disgusting details… what I let him do to me….” He seemed to be growing angry again.

Tom tried to soothe him. “I’ll listen to anything you want to tell me. And nothing you tell me will make me disgusted with you. Whatever happened—even if you went along with it—it was forced on you. You were just a kid, doing what your father told you to do.”

“I didn’t… I never told him to stop or anything….”

“But you did,” Tom said emphatically. “I heard you. You told him it was ‘gross’. You told him you didn’t want to do it. You may not have known how to say ‘no’ to him, but you tried to tell him you didn’t want what was happening, and he ignored you. You’re not the guilty one.”

Kevin wiped his eyes with his hand, as if they were threatening tears again. “You don’t fucking get it. There were times when… times when I fucking
liked
it!” He shook his head angrily, his face screwed up in a mask of revulsion. “Not everything. Not the…
mess
when he was done. God! I still… the smell still sickens me… but the massages… the cuddling… touching… some of it felt
good
, goddamn it!”

“Kevin, everybody likes being caressed and touched and massaged. It’s the way our bodies are built. These things feel good to us, even when we go to a total stranger who might be the opposite of what we’re sexually attracted to and pay him sixty dollars to give us a body rub. But there’s a thin line between that and sex. Even a little kid can sense when that line is being crossed, and it can be confusing or terrifying when that happens. And,” Tom added, enunciating very slowly and carefully, “it is never… the child’s… fault.”

Kevin was silent for a long time. When he spoke again, at last, he said, very quietly, “I don’t think I can do this anymore, Tom.”

It was the first time he’d used Tom’s name in a very long time, and for that reason, Tom found it unsettling.

“I wanted you to be happy with me,” Kevin went on, “but this is killing me. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry about.”

“I’m sorry, but I just can’t do it.” Kevin didn’t seem to be listening anymore. “I don’t want to think about this shit anymore, okay? I can’t keep going to therapy. I know you need somebody you can have sex with; I know you’re afraid of me snapping and hurting you. And I thought I could make you happy. But I just can’t. I’m sorry.”

“Make
me
happy?” Tom asked in confusion. “This is about making
you
happy!”

Kevin snorted and shook his head.

“I thought you wanted this.”

“Why would
I
want it?” Kevin asked. “I had everything I wanted: someone I felt completely comfortable with, someone who looks great naked and doesn’t mind me ogling him. A great place to hang out with a hot tub, and all the burgers I can eat, and a great dog to play with. It was Kevin Heaven.” He smiled at that, but it was a sad, bittersweet smile.

Before Tom could think of anything to say, Kevin climbed out of the hot tub.

“I like you,” he said, unable to look Tom in the eye. “I really…
really
like you. But I’m not what you need.”

The words struck Tom like a slap in the face.

“You’re not…?” He gasped, struggling to scramble to his feet against the water jets. How the hell did things start spiraling out of control like this? “What are you talking about, Kevin? You aren’t breaking up with me…?”

Kevin picked up his towel and dried off, taking his time as if he were thinking about it. Then he shrugged. “You can’t fuck me. You can’t kiss me. You can’t even touch me. What’s there to break up?”

He draped the towel over the hot tub railing, turned, and walked into the house. Tom scrambled out of the hot tub and ran after him. He spent the next few minutes while Kevin dressed pleading with him to stay until he’d had a chance to sleep on it.

But it was already too late.

Sixteen

“H
E
’
S
not right for you,” Sue said for the thousandth time that week.

They were having lunch at Tea Bird’s Café. It was Friday again, and there had been no word from Kevin all week. Tom was going out of his mind. He’d tried calling, but Kevin either wasn’t home or he was screening his calls. None of Tom’s messages were returned.

Trying to focus on his client’s issues instead of his own had been pure hell.