Driving With Dead People (24 page)

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he yells. “You’re goddamn crazy. Nervous as cats, every one of you.”

It wasn’t his touching my leg that disturbed me, it was my over-reaction. I was sure, as irrational as it seemed at the time, that Dad was going to do something inappropriate. Afterward, I felt exactly the way Dad had described: crazy and nervous. Mostly I was embarrassed. He thought I was nuts, but it couldn’t have come from nowhere.

When I was nineteen, Dad told me he’d slept with a young waitress in Elk Grove. He said that he “still had what it took.”

But I didn’t remember what JoAnn remembered.

I opened my eyes.

I wanted another cigarette. I got up and searched the refrigerator in vain for a Pepsi. I still didn’t like to smoke without one, but this was an emergency so I settled for another Mountain Dew. I was already jumpy, and after more caffeine, I’d never get to sleep. I didn’t care.

I popped open the can, sat down at JoAnn’s desk with
The Courage to Heal
, and looked through the table of contents. “Believing It Happened,” “Breaking the Silence,” “Grieving and Mourning”—all of these seemed very far from us. I turned the page.

Mom would believe JoAnn, but Dad would disown her. I believed her and yet it seemed impossible at the same time. I continued to read.

A woman wrote:

I thought about all the irrational fears I carried around. My entire life I’d been afraid of being in a bedroom with the door closed and a light shining underneath it. I couldn’t quit staring at that light, waiting for a shadow to cross it, indicating someone was coming in. In my apartment the bedroom door had to be open.

I never entered my car without looking in all the windows first, in case someone was hiding inside, ready to attack me.

Walking across the tranquil town green in Madison, Connecticut, I was sure that someone was waiting to rape me, even though that had never happened to me before.

I had sex only with men who were married or otherwise unavailable. Once someone was loving, like Daniel, I could no longer be intimate.

I had symptoms but no evidence. Not really. Now I was really disturbed. Ashes from the cigarette I forgot I was holding tumbled onto my gray sweater, burning a small hole in it. This fucking night was just getting better and better.

A thought occurred to me. When I had sex for the first time with Adam in high school, there was no question that I was a virgin because of the pain and the blood. That didn’t mean other things couldn’t have happened to me, but I knew for sure it hadn’t gotten to the point of penetration.

When I was at Kenyon, I had my first orgasm. I thought it was going to be mind-altering—something completely new. But when it finally happened, it was the most familiar feeling in the world—something I’d felt many times in childhood. I couldn’t remember what had been going on when the orgasms occurred, but they were not new to me.

By the time the sun came up, I’d read most of the book. I was exhausted and disoriented, not knowing what to think. I was not the same person—neither was JoAnn. Who were Mom and Dad? What had happened in our house?

I put on my new red wool coat and drove to the Sunshine Market to pick up two coffees and blueberry muffins. My throat was sore from smoking cigarettes. I should have left the damn things alone. When I came back, JoAnn was awake.

“I should stay with you,” I told her.

“It’d be better for me if you went to Ohio. I could use this vacation from work to figure out what I’m going to do.”

“I’m worried about you. You’re so thin. Do you want me to pick up some groceries?”

“I don’t need anything. Look in the refrigerator; you’ll see there’s plenty of food in there,” she said.

“Do you have someone to talk to?” I asked.

“I see a therapist three times a week. If I need her, I’ll call. She calls me too, just to check in.”

Thank God she was being supported by a therapist who knew what she was doing, because I had no idea what to do.

I was glad JoAnn was okay with my going home. I wanted to see Ohio. Being there might unlock some of the mystery. I expected it to look different now that I knew the depth of what had happened there.

“If you need me, I’ll drive straight back,” I said.

“I know, but I’ll be all right.”

“Mom will ask about you. What should I tell her?” I asked.

“Tell her the truth,” she said.

“Really?”

“She might as well know.”

I pulled onto Interstate 70 west with my lukewarm coffee and thought about the man who’d raised us, the good Dad and the bad. I remembered my graduation from Kenyon and how I’d spotted him up in the corner of the packed football stadium. He had stood and waved, thumbs up, happy that I’d found him in the crowd, and I had unexpectedly cried because my dad was proud of me and I was glad he was there.

I stuck in my Joni Mitchell
Blue
cassette and put on my glasses. My eyes were so tired, the road was looking wavy.

I remembered Dad taking Becky and me to the Shrine Circus when I was eight. He was mad at Mom for making him bring us, so he refused to buy anything to eat or drink the whole day. We were hungry and afraid to even ask to go to the bathroom.

I thought of all the things he had almost done: almost bought a Cadillac, almost ran for mayor of Elk Grove, almost created rain on the sundeck of his lake house by stringing up a series of flat green sprinklers from Big Lots.

I pictured him singing “Goodnight, Irene” around the campfire at the lake, his head tilted to the side, eyes closed. He cooked us Saturday night steaks on the grill even when it was below freezing, even when he hated us.

When Dad was little, he worked as Papaw’s slave. Maybe he was sexually abused. It said in
The Courage to Heal
that “the abused often abuse.” There was no way to know. Maybe Dad’s rage was enough to cause all of it.

I pulled into a rest stop to call Mom. I should have told her in person, but I couldn’t carry that secret by myself any longer. I needed to lock arms with Mom. I needed to know during the long drive back that there’d be support waiting. Mom and Jim rarely stepped in to help with anything, but this was so huge—her daughter being molested by her ex-husband—surely they’d come through on this one.

“Hello?” Mom sounded happy. Her
Greatest Songs of Christmas
album, which she’d had since I was in first grade, was playing in the background.

“Hi, Mom,” I said. “I’m running late. I’m still seven hours away.”

“What happened?” She was talking in her “baby” voice, wanting Christmas to start as soon as possible.

“I got a late start from Washington. Is Jim home?” I asked, making sure she wasn’t alone.

“He’s sitting in the breakfast nook cracking walnuts for me. I’m making fudge,” she said.

“JoAnn’s not coming home this year,” I told her.

“Why not?”

“She’s going through something difficult,” I said. “Remember how depressed she’s been, how depressed she was even as a kid?”

“She’s sad about Christine,” Mom said.

“That’s what I thought, and I’m sure the breakup didn’t help, but that’s not what it is,” I said.

Mom didn’t say anything. She was holding off the inevitable. I knew how she felt.

“Well, there’s no easy way to say it so I’ll just say it; Dad molested JoAnn. For years.” There was an excruciatingly long pause. “Mom?”

“It’s not possible,” she said. “In bed your dad was always gentle and sweet with me.”

“
That’s
your response?” I asked. My brain was about to explode.

“What am I supposed to say? Your dad didn’t do this. He couldn’t have.”

“Why not?”

“He’s not capable,” she said. “He wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

“Wouldn’t hurt anyone? Are you serious?” She couldn’t have been living in the same house as us.

“He’s a bully, that’s all,” Mom concluded.

“When Becky was in junior high, you told her to be careful around him.”

“I don’t remember saying that,” she said.

“I do.”

“He did not do this.” She was getting irate.

“I hope you’re right, but I doubt you are. JoAnn seems sure of it,” I said. “And he was inappropriate with me, too.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, this is absurd,” Mom said. “It’s Christmas.” There was a pause. “Let’s at least try to have a nice holiday. We can deal with this after.” I stared at the receiver as if Mom was inside it. She had already hung up.

I sat down on the cement curb and put my head in my hands. For Mom, JoAnn’s crisis was just one more thing to deal with later, like taking down the Christmas tree. But for me, JoAnn’s revelation had upended everything I’d ever known to be true. Who cared about Christmas?

I walked back to the car remembering the quote from the book:
The family might refuse to believe her or even disown her so they can keep up the false pretense under which they have been living.

If JoAnn were my daughter, I’d be tearing down to Lake Hiawatha to confront the bastard who’d molested my child. But I knew Mom was just standing there, stirring the Christmas fudge.

Seeing Ohio did not make it better. Looking at the familiar—the flowered wallpaper in my bedroom, Pizza Palace, the cemetery behind the house, Whitmore’s field—only made me realize how ordinary the unimaginable felt to us.

My first night there, Mom and I sat up until three thirty in the morning talking over what we knew so far about JoAnn’s recollections. Actually, I talked; she sipped Earl Grey tea and busied herself stringing popcorn for the Christmas tree. I wanted to run my fist through a window and feel every jagged shard piercing my skin. How could we be having Christmas as if nothing were wrong? And yet, I didn’t know what else to do.

Becky had flown home from San Diego. She’d built a great life for herself out there, and was standing on her own two feet with good friends and an excellent job. She’d bought a flute and was finally taking lessons—a lifelong dream. We had started talking on the phone regularly after I’d moved to New York, but she had recently started dating someone, so now we rarely spoke.

After Mom talked to Becky, I approached her.

“What do you think about JoAnn?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” She shrugged; her face was flushed. She was as scared as I was.

“Did anything like that happen to you?” I asked.