Something Wild

by Hanna Halperin

  “I’ve had trust problems before,” Jesse goes on. “Not that it excuses my behavior. But Lorrie’s very attractive. I mean, look at her—she’s beautiful. And I know how men’s brains are, Dr. Keller—as I’m sure you do—being a therapist and all. I can’t help getting protective.”

  “Thank you, Jesse. And please—call me Lou. All of that is important, I think. And I’d like to hear more, in particular about your family growing up. It sounds like a truly painful place for a child. First, though, I want to get back to what Lorraine was saying. Lorraine, can you tell me what Jesse’s anger looks like to you? You said he threw a bottle of soap across the room?”

  “Just like Jesse said,” Lorraine says. “A lot of yelling and getting heated. A little aggressive.”

  “If you can, paint me a picture. Things you said, things he said, things you did, things he did. I’d just like to get an idea of what a fight between Lorraine and Jesse looks like, sounds like, feels like.”

  Lorraine nods, wondering how she’s supposed to paint a picture with Jesse sitting right next to her.

  Lou looks at Jesse. “Jesse, do you feel comfortable if Lorraine describes to me what the fight between the two of you was like, from her point of view?”

  “Of course,” Jesse says. He looks at Lorraine. “Honey, you can say anything.”

  A strong feeling takes hold of Lorraine, though she can’t name it. “I don’t really know how to describe it,” she admits.

  “I yelled at her that night,” Jesse says. “I got in her face. My anger got the better of me and I—I shoved her.” At this point Jesse’s eyes fill with tears and he takes a huge breath. “I hate myself for doing that,” he says. “I’m so ashamed.”

  “Thank you, Jesse,” Lou says softly. “Thank you for sharing that. Lorraine, was that your experience, too?”

  “He did shove me.”

  “Were you injured?”

  “No.”

  “Have there been other fights where things have become physical?” Lou asks Lorraine.

  “In a sense.”

  For an incredibly long minute, nobody says a word.

  “I did have to go to the dentist,” Lorraine says, unaware that she’s about to say it before it’s too late and there it is—hanging in the air like one of those giant red balloons in front of their house. Lorraine doesn’t dare look at Jesse.

  “Why did you have to go to the dentist?” Lou asks.

  Lorraine is conscious of her face heating up. “It wasn’t related,” she says. “I had a cleaning scheduled. I was just remembering.”

  Lou takes a deep breath and when he speaks again, his voice sounds chipper, lighter. “Jesse, why don’t you tell me about your living situation? When I spoke with you over the phone, you told me Lorraine had spent the night at a hotel but she was moving back in. How has it been going since then?”

  Jesse lets go of Lorraine’s hand and leans back against the couch. “She’s back at home and things have been much better. This whole thing made me realize how much my marriage means to me and how stupid I’ve been, to risk losing it. I would never want to do anything to drive Lorrie away from me. I feel one hundred percent committed.”

  “I can see that,” Lou says. “Tell me more, if you can.”

  * * *

  —

  AFTER THEY SAY GOODBYE to Lou and schedule another appointment for the following week, Lorraine is nervous walking to the car. She’s worried she’s said too much. But when they climb in, Jesse looks at her gently. “I feel like we’re already making progress, don’t you?”

  Lorraine is so relieved that Jesse isn’t angry that she reaches over the console and hugs him tightly. “I think we are, too,” she says, and then she begins to cry.

  “Why are you crying, baby?”

  “You can’t ever hurt me like that again, Jesse, okay?”

  Jesse looks surprised. “I won’t. I promise, Lorraine, I’m never, ever doing that again.”

  “But you’ve said things like that before. You’ve made promises that you haven’t kept.”

  Jesse looks at his lap. “I know,” he says. “I’ve fucked up so many times. I know I don’t deserve all the chances you’ve given me.” He looks up. “But, Lorrie, this time it really hit home. When you left . . . when that police officer showed up at our house. God, I died inside. But I get it now. I need to figure my shit out. Lorrie, I think I was really fucked up by my parents. Like, as a little boy, watching my dad fuck my mom up. I think any kid who sees that happening, he’s—well, how can he not be a little messed up by it?”

  “I know,” Lorraine says. “I know it was hard for you as a boy.”

  “It was.” Jesse’s eyes fill with tears. “Those nights when you were gone, when you were with Nessa and Tanya and I was alone in the house, I just kept remembering things. There was this one time my dad came home. I must have been eight. He was piss drunk and he just went at my mom. I mean, worse than I’d ever seen it. She was on the floor and he was kicking her over and over in the stomach. He just wouldn’t stop. I ran in and tried to get in between them and he hit me so hard I blacked out.” Jesse touches his face: his chin and his jawbone. “He didn’t let me go to school the whole next week ’cause of how bad I looked. I never want to be like that, Lorraine. I’m not that kind of man. I’m not my father. And, Lorrie, you’re such a beautiful woman. Such a kind and beautiful woman. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  Lorraine puts a hand on his leg. “Next time we meet with Lou I think you should tell him that story.”

  Jesse laughs a little then. “He’s kind of an old geezer, Lou, isn’t he?”

  Lorraine pauses. She’d liked Lou and she’d thought Jesse liked him, too. “I thought he was nice.”

  “Yeah, he was nice. I guess I just don’t necessarily see the point in paying someone to ask us questions like, Tell me more, and How did that make you feel. I feel like we could make just as much progress on our own, maybe even more, since we can really be ourselves in front of each other.”

  “But, Jesse, you said you’d do therapy.”

  “I know, Lorrie, and I’m doing it. I showed up today, didn’t I? All I’m saying is I think any old fart could be a therapist if they wanted to. You don’t need special training to do what the guy in there did.”

  “Maybe.”

  Jesse reaches over and squeezes her knee. “Let’s get out of here. Are you hungry?”

  Lorraine isn’t, but she says sure anyway.

  “How about Rocco’s? You want to go to Rocco’s?”

  “Okay.”

  “Great,” he says, starting the car. “Me too.”

  * * *

  —

  LATER THAT EVENING Lorraine misses a call from an unknown number and when she listens to the voice mail, she’s surprised to hear the therapist’s voice over the phone.

  “Hi, Lorraine,” he says. “This is Lou Keller calling. It was a pleasure meeting you and Jesse today. I wanted to ask you a question when you have a minute. Give me a call back when you have a private moment to talk.” He leaves his phone numbers—both his office one and his cell phone—and she jots them down on a napkin. His message makes her nervous.

  Lorraine waits until Jesse’s in the shower that night to call back, and once she hears the water running, she dials Lou’s cell phone number.

  He answers on the second ring. “This is Lou Keller.”

  “Hi, Lou. It’s Lorraine. Lorraine Bloom.”

  “Lorraine,” Lou says. His warmth comes through over the phone. “Thank you for calling. Do you have a moment to speak privately?”

  “Yes,” she says. “I’m at home.”

  “Great. And is Jesse there?”

  “He’s in the shower,” Lorraine says. “I could call back with him, if you wanted to speak with both of us?”

  “No, I was actually hoping
to speak just with you. If now’s not a good time, though, we could plan something for tomorrow, maybe?”

  “Now is fine,” she says. “Jesse takes long showers.”

  “Alright then,” Lou says. “This should really be a longer conversation, and I’d like to talk with you more face-to-face. But what I wanted to call to say was, I’m concerned about your safety, Lorraine.”

  Her heart begins to pound. “What?”

  “Obviously we only got to the tip of the iceberg today, but I wanted to reach out, just to you, because to be quite clear and direct with you—and I wouldn’t be a good therapist if I wasn’t—I’m concerned about your safety.” He pauses for a moment and when Lorraine doesn’t say anything, he continues. “Couples therapy is an interesting thing. For some couples, it can do wonders. Really wonders. And for some, it doesn’t do much of anything. But one thing that has to be in place, for couples therapy to work, is that there has to be an equal balance of power in the relationship. What I mean is, if one partner has more power over the other, couples therapy simply does not—cannot—work.

  “In other words,” he says, “if one partner is exerting power or control over the other, and I mean there are many different kinds of power—physical, verbal, emotional, sexual, financial even—that’s going to make it difficult for therapy to work. Lorraine, when you were talking in my office today, how did it feel, telling me about the fights you’ve been having with Jesse?”

  “It felt good, I guess,” Lorraine says. She’s humiliated. Did she do something wrong? Did she fail at therapy? She hadn’t known it was possible to fail at therapy.

  “Hmm,” Lou says. “What felt good about it?”

  “Getting it off my chest,” she says. “Telling somebody else about it.”

  “Telling somebody else about what, specifically?”

  “I guess the things Jesse’s done to me.”

  “And what sorts of things has he done to you?”

  “His jealousy,” she says. “His anger. The times he’s hurt me.”

  “Did you notice that Jesse did most of the talking today?”

  “I guess,” she says. “But I thought everything he was saying was important. He was apologizing, after all, and talking about his past. In the car after we left your office, he was telling me about this time he was a kid and his father came home—”

  “Hold on to that for now. I do want to hear, but I also want to get to something else, while we still have time over the phone. Lorraine, what would have happened if you had told me why you had to go to the dentist?”

  Lorraine feels her entire body go hot. “What?”

  “What would have happened if you had told me today why you had to go to the dentist?”

  She pauses. “Jesse would have been upset.”

  “Why?”

  “He just would have. But, Dr. Keller—Lou—you have no idea what even happened.”

  “I don’t need to know, Lorraine,” Lou says. “I know enough to know it was bad.”

  Lorraine doesn’t say anything.

  “So if you had told me today what happened that made you have to go to the dentist, how would Jesse have reacted?”

  “He’d be angry. Threatened.”

  “And when he’s threatened, what does he do?”

  Lorraine swallows. “He hurts me.”

  Upstairs she hears the shower turn off.

  “I had to go to the dentist because he smashed my face into the kitchen sink,” she whispers into the phone. “Three of my teeth fell out and the rest were bashed in. That’s why I had to get braces.” And then, even softer: “He just got out of the shower.”

  “Okay, I’ll be quick, then. I’m going to tell you what I suggest. I don’t think couples counseling is going to help your marriage, Lorraine, or you. Or Jesse, for that matter. If you don’t feel safe talking openly with Jesse in the room—which, of course, you don’t, because you’ll be punished for doing so—therapy will be useless. Dangerous, actually. I think it’s important that we continue to meet, though—you and me—and if you’d like, I can refer Jesse to his own therapist. Or, of course, if you want to see somebody else, I can refer you elsewhere. I’d like for you both to come in next week as planned, and I can present the idea of each of you meeting with individual therapists so we can make that transition without putting you on the spot. I don’t know very much about what’s been going on between you and Jesse, but my impression, from meeting with you today, is that you’re not in a safe situation. Lorraine, if you felt unsafe, would you feel comfortable calling the police?”

  “Um.”

  “Do you have somewhere you could go if—”

  “I have to get off,” Lorraine says. “He’s out of the shower.”

  “Will you call me—” Lou starts to say, but Lorraine hangs up the phone.

  For a long time, Tanya did not consider what happened at Dan’s house rape. For a long time, she understood that night to be two things.

  One, something that Tanya had wanted and, therefore, something she deserved.

  And two, the night when something between her and Nessa broke.

  Drinking beer in Dan’s living room wasn’t Tanya’s first or even second time drinking alcohol. She’d drank twice before, both times in friends’ basements, and both times, she’d kissed a boy.

  Her first kiss had been with Matt Humphreys, and though she’d had nothing to compare it to, she knew it wasn’t very good. Matt had vacillated between poking a lizard-like tongue in and out of her mouth and opening his own mouth wide enough to do a strep culture. After Matt left, she told her friends about it and the girls laughed, mimicking the awful kiss in the air with their tongues.

  It was only a few weeks later when she’d had her second kiss, that one with a boy named Scott Meeks. Scott, who was cuter than Matt, and whose mouth had tasted like Skittles, had told Tanya that she was “one of the hottest girls in their grade” and though Tanya pretended not to care, she’d carried the compliment around with her ever since.

  When the email from Dan showed up in their hottgirls@hotmail.com email account, Tanya had no interest in meeting up with a stranger to have sex. It occurred to her that she’d never actually wanted that; and though the idea had been kind of fun to think about, it had also embarrassed her—especially the way Nessa talked about it, with a dark, relentless sort of enthusiasm.

  She’d wanted to get out of it, but Nessa had persisted and, ultimately, Tanya agreed to go. Her sister rarely looked that happy, and Tanya felt guilty, with her two kisses tucked away in her back pocket while her sister had never so much as held a boy’s hand. So they emailed Dan back. They bought bras and underwear, walked from their house to Alewife, took the T to Central Square, and knocked on his front door.

  It was only once they sat down in the living room, after Dan handed them beers, when a bud of desire sprouted up from somewhere deep and unexpected in Tanya. It was different from the desire she’d felt with Matt Humphreys or Scott Meeks. With those boys, kissing had felt like getting away with something—like cheating on a test or stealing a lip gloss from CVS. Things that Tanya, who was always good, always well behaved, did not do. Kissing those boys had been more about the moments afterward, once she was alone and could remember it in all its high school glory, when she could describe it later to her friends. Those kisses were a rite of passage—nothing more, nothing less.

  But Dan stirred something in her, and beside Tanya, Nessa was stirred, too. Tanya could sense it, the self-conscious way Nessa kept touching her face and hair. Each time her sister spoke, her face turned beet red. The way Nessa was looking at Dan—with a petrified sort of wonder—reminded Tanya of the way her mother looked at Jesse. It unnerved Tanya—the unbridled, almost animal hunger that her mother and sister wore on their faces, as plain and forthright as noses.

  And then Dan chose Tanya, and something spiteful clicked in her ch
est.

  Nessa, upset, had fumbled getting up, and Tanya had watched her sister walk out, thinking, Serves you right.

  She’d followed Dan upstairs, the beer like a trophy still in her hand. It wasn’t until they were inside his bedroom, and he gently but firmly closed the door, that Tanya started to feel frightened. Dan turned on the lamp and sat down on his bed, then looked at her expectantly. She stared back, unsure of what to do. With Matt Humphreys and Scott Meeks, it had been an awkward dance of flirting and eye contact and tiny incremental moves closer to one another on the couch. Dan was a grown-up, though. Tanya understood this, now that they were in his bedroom. He didn’t have posters or photos on his walls. The objects in his room were those of an adult’s: a queen-sized bed, a television, a beige-colored shag rug on the floor.

  “Can I see you?” he asked, and Tanya nodded, confused. She stood there for several moments more before Dan spoke again. “Without clothes, I mean.”

  “Oh,” Tanya said. “Okay.” Trembling, she put her beer down and undressed, unbuttoning her shirt and pulling off her jean shorts, until she was down to her lacy bra and underwear.

  Dan looked at her, in awe, his mouth slightly open. If it had ended there, Tanya thinks to herself sometimes, it would have been okay. It humiliates her to admit it, but when she’s honest with herself—which she isn’t always—there was a part of her that enjoyed that moment. Standing in front of a grown man, watching his face go dumb with desire. She felt powerful. She felt, for the first time, sexy.