Denial (26 page)

I started toward the counter.  "Does this really count as two outfits?" I asked.  I held up the teddy.

She smiled.  "What are you doing here?"

"Shopping.  Are you available?"

"Yes, sir."

"Lead the way."

We walked out back to a lobby with several rooms off it.  Rachel stopped in front of one of the doors, opened it and took the teddy and body suit from me.  "You wait in there while I get changed."

The room was small, around seven by seven.  A platform was built into one corner.  A love seat filled the opposite wall.  I sat down, careful not to step on a box of Kleenex on the floor in front of me.  I figured it must be for cleanup.

Rachel walked in a few minutes later, wearing a blue satin robe.  She dimmed the lights, then pushed a button next to the switch.  "Close the Door," by Teddy Pendergrass started to play.

I watched as she stepped out of the robe and onto the platform.  She was wearing the rhinestone teddy, which speckled the walls with reflected light as she started to dance.  Her body and the music became one.  Her skin was visible through a jeweled net.  Our eyes met, then she lowered her gaze to my groin.  Without thinking about it, I had moved my hand there.  She closed her eyes, then opened them, like a cat in the sun.  I unbuckled my belt, unzipped my jeans and freed myself from my boxers.  I began stroking myself, something I had never done in front of a woman.  My hand felt rough against my skin.  I tightened my grip as Rachel unfastened the snaps between her legs and lowered herself onto the platform.  She raised her back off the floor while she ran her fingers over her lips, then between them.  I had the impulse to tell her to turn over, so I could watch her, without her watching me.  I resisted it.  I wanted to see her when she came, and I wanted her to see mine.  In that moment of release, as in the moment of death, there is truth, and I needed to start sharing the truth with someone.  I may not have picked Red Lace Lingerie as the place to start, but that's probably because I was still learning that God is not attracted to mountaintops or church steeples.  God is drawn to suffering, and the dark places it surfaces, which is why sharing pain freely feels very much like love, and may be the same thing.

Rachel moved her fingers faster, and I matched her pace with my hand.  Our breathing became erratic.  I heard low groans and couldn’t say for certain which belonged to me and which to her.  Nor did it seem to matter.

Chapter 14

It was after 3
A.M.
, and we were sitting on the antique church pew Rachel kept in front of the sliding glass doors to her deck.  The Boston skyline shimmered in the distance beyond the Tobin Bridge.  I took her hand, pushed the sleeve of her leotard over her elbow and lightly scratched the underside of her arm.  My nails glided over the four vertical scars where she had cut herself years before.

She looked down at the scars.  "You asked me the other night why I'm not shocked by what people do to one another."

I nodded.

"Am I protected by physician-patient confidentiality?  Under that oath you took?"

"I think we're as far from a profession relationship as you can get.  But you have my word.  Whatever you tell me stays between us."

"My uncle sold me to his friends."

Just like that. 
My uncle sold me to his friends
.  I made an effort to keep my nails moving along her arm.

"I was thirteen.  My parents left me with him when they were out of state for two months."

"Why weren't you with them?"

"They didn't want to take me out of school.  They were working at the General Electric plant in Lynn and had to go to New Jersey for some sort of training program, or something.  I was in the eighth grade, so I guess they thought it would be better not to drag me around."

"But it wasn't better."

"No."  She took a deep breath.  "The first few weeks were fine, but then my uncle started acting... strange.  He'd walk into my bedroom while I was getting dressed or open the door to the bathroom while I was in the shower.  He always had some lame excuse — that he thought I had called him or that he didn't know I was in there.  But I knew he was lying."

"Were you frightened?"

"Not until later."  She ran a fingertip over her scars.  "He had poker games at his house for the men he worked with.  Four of them came over every Tuesday night."

"What sort of work did they do?"

"I don't remember.  Why?"

"No reason, really.  You just seem to remember so many other details."

She rubbed her eyes.  "It had something to do with construction.  Houses, maybe.  No.  I think it was roads.  Or bridges."

I glanced out at the Tobin arching over the Mystic River.  The past always dominates the horizon.

"They would drink nonstop when they played, and get loud.  I couldn’t sleep.  So I would read in bed until they left.  But one night I had a cold and I was exhausted.  It was after midnight.  They were laughing and shouting.  I walked out to the kitchen to ask my uncle if he could make them quiet down."  She squinted into the darkness.  "The place was a mess.  Beer bottles everywhere.  Money all over the table."

I pictured Rachel naked on the Lynx Club runway, surrounded by beer bottles, gathering dollar bills off the floor.

"They stopped talking, one at a time, and stared at me in my nightgown.  My uncle asked what was wrong, but I couldn’t tell him in front of everyone, so I said I was thirsty.  I poured myself a glass of water and went back to bed."

I nodded.

"A few minutes later he opened the door to my bedroom.  I could barely see his face in the light coming from the hallway, but he was looking at me differently than he had before.  Like he didn't
know
me.  Like I was a
thing
, not a person."

"What did he say?"

"He just looked at me that way and left.  I thought he was mad because I'd gone out to the kitchen.  I couldn’t figure out why he would be, though, unless he didn't want my parents to know he drank and gambled.  I tried falling asleep.  But then the door opened again."

I tightened my hand around hers.

"It was one of the other men.  He was fat, with long, black sideburns.  He took a few steps toward me.  I remember I sat up in bed, and he stopped.  He seemed embarrassed."  She rolled her eyes.  "I thought he had wandered in by mistake, so I told him the bathroom was down the hall."

I stayed silent.

"He stood there, like he hadn't heard me.  Then I saw my uncle in the doorway.  And he... uh..."

I moved my fingers along the underside of her arm.

"He said, ‘Go ahead, Jimmy, you paid, fair and square.’"

I felt my eyes fill up.

"I tried to get away, but he was huge.  So most of the time, I didn't move."

"You couldn’t."

"More than one of them came in.  They all reeked of beer.  By the end, the whole room did."

I knew that smell from the Lynx Club.  "Did your uncle force himself on you?" I asked.

"He watched.  I still remember him directing everything."  She swallowed hard.  "One of the men wanted to use his beer bottle on me.  My uncle told him it would be ten dollars extra."

"To use—"

"It happened two weeks in a row."  She shook her head, then shrugged.  "After that, nothing much surprised me."

"Did you tell your parents?"

"I told them a few days after they came home."

"And..."

"They didn't believe me.  Uncle Paul had already complained that I kept him up, screaming in the middle of the night for no reason at all.  He also told them he'd caught me fooling around with one of the boys from school.  They figured I was wracked with guilt and looking to blame somebody for my own sins."  She touched her scars.  "Finally, I did this."

"Did they get you help?"

"They took me to a shrink."

"Did he believe you?"

"He prescribed sleeping medication.  But he was mostly worried I might be showing signs of schizophrenia."

My throat felt tight.  "I'm sorry," I said.  "Didn't anybody listen?"

"I stopped talking about it.  The doctor was at the point of hospitalizing me and putting me on Thorazine.  Once I shut up, he seemed to think I was improving."

"Where is your uncle now?"

"Orlando.  He retired there."

I let my breath out.  "The bad things don't seem to happen to the bad people."

"That's because they already did.  There's no original sin left in the world.  My uncle and those men were recycling pain, not inventing it."

"You feel sorry for them?"

"On good days.  On bad days I want to track them down and make them pay for what they did.  But that's the hardest part of healing."

"What?"

"Realizing there's no one to hate."

"And the dancing?  You told me that was part of healing, too."

"Like I said, I'm naked, but no one can touch me.  I move as much as I please.  The most men can do — like tonight, at Red Lace — is touch themselves."

"Talk about diving into your fear."

"It beats being afraid.  You should try it.  You might actually sleep at night."  She lifted my hand to her lips and kissed it.  "What are you scared of?"

I took a little while to think, and a little while longer to convince myself to share what I was thinking.  "I'm scared of the part of me that remembers being humiliated as a child," I said, "the part that can still hear my father's footsteps on the staircase to my room and the sound of that maniac's belt on me."

"You don't look frightened now.  You look angry."

Then it came to me without great drama, as moments of epiphany do.  "I think I'm most afraid of the part of me that's still angry enough to kill him."

She seemed to relax.  "How?" she said.

"How what?"

"How would you kill him?"

I chuckled a boy's nervous laughter.

"I mean it.  You've been around enough killers.  How would you murder your father?  A knife?  A gun?"

"Who knows?"  I smirked.  "How would you murder your uncle?"

"You don't want to go first.  That's OK."  She paused.  "I'd chain him to the bed and poison him.  Then I'd stay with him as he got sicker and sicker.  When I picture him, he has vomit on his face and in his hair, and blood seeping from the corners of his eyes.  Before he sucked in his last breath, I'd slash his wrists."

"I'd use a belt," I said.  "
His
belt."  I pictured my father with the leather strap tight around his neck.

She reached over and brushed her fingers across my neck.  "Here."

I nodded.

"You'd pull it until your father couldn't breathe."

My pulse quickened.

"Even if he fell to the ground?"

My jaws were set.  "It wouldn't matter if he clawed at his skin to get free."  I felt light-headed.  "I'd drag him around until he was exhausted.  Then I'd loosen the belt for him to get air.  But only a few breaths.  Then I'd pull it tight again."

"You'd keep it tight even if he tried to scream?"

"It wouldn't matter."

"What if he gave up?  He sat perfectly still and started to cry?"

"It wouldn't..."  I had a memory of listening to my father as he sobbed in the bathroom the day Dr. Henry Davis had treated my cracked ribs.  I closed my eyes.  "I'd..."

"Tell me."

"I'd let him go."  I felt defeated.

Several seconds went by.

"Me, too."

I looked at her.  "Your uncle?"

She nodded.

I couldn’t help smiling.  "What difference would it make?  You already poisoned him."

"That's true," she laughed.  "I'd let him call an ambulance.  Or I'd give him an antidote."

"Because he cried."

She nodded.  "Once you let yourself feel pain,
really
feel it, you can't make someone suffer very long.  Only a monster could.  I promised myself I wouldn’t turn into one."  She touched my hair.  "Neither will you."  She leaned to kiss me.

I moved closer.  Our mouths opened for one another.  I felt her working my zipper and slipped my hand between her legs, over her thigh and onto her wet lisp.  I slid my fingers inside her.  She sighed and lay back on the bench, with her knees slightly apart.  I pushed her skirt over her hips.  She spread her legs further.  I kneeled in front of the pew and caressed the slightly bowed flesh between her navel and groin.  Then I picked her up and carried her to the platform bed.  I slowly undressed while she watched.  She started to turn over, to give me her ass, but I stopped her.  I stroked her hair and traced the curves of her face.  Then, looking at each other, into each other, as if for the first time, I took her knees in my hands and pulled us together.

*            *            *

"So tell me," Rachel asked later, "why are you in my bed, instead of with your girlfriend?"

I cleared my throat and prepared to defend myself.

She propped herself on one elbow.  "You look nervous," she smiled.  "I didn't say you're wrong to be with me.  I just wondered, with her being a doctor and everything.  Don't the two of you have a lot in common?"

My words came effortlessly.  "We do.  We're not in love with one another."  I felt like softening what I'd said, but I knew it was true.

"She wouldn't mind you being here?"

"Oh, she'd mind.  She's possessive.  Intensely.  But I think that's because we've never had a clear commitment to one another.  Even living together, we haven't gotten really close."

"Why not?"

"I guess we didn't feel safe enough."  I paused.  "I don't know how anybody figures out the right time and place to open up.  Plenty of patients used to pick my office, but I was never sure why they did."

"They sensed they could trust you."

"Well, they weren't always right."

"Meaning?"

I told her about Billy, especially that final phone call when he'd reached out to me.

"Most doctors would never get that call."  She ran her fingers lightly down my face.  "He was saying goodbye.  He just didn't know how."

My throat tightened.

"Not everyone can be saved."