“Dad’s family is all dead and Mom just has her sister.” She actually had an older stepbrother too, but he was in jail for robbery and Mom sure as hell didn’t consider him family. “It was hard, but now that I’m older I try to understand what my mom must have been going through. Back then, people didn’t go to counseling or grief support groups. The doctors gave out pills.”
“She sent you away.”
“It wasn’t that bad.” But I remembered my cousins’ whispers and the way my uncle and aunt would stop talking when I came into the room. If Mom was a blurred version of herself, my aunt was hard edges and crisp lines on the same canvas. Both were blond and small-framed, all the women in my family are blond except me, but Aunt Val’s lips were just a little thinner, her nose longer, and her eyes narrower. And where Mom was all emotion, good or bad, Aunt Val was calm, cool, collected. Not a lot of comforting hugs there.
“And then your mom sold your house, didn’t she? Half your family is gone and so is your home?”
“How do you know—”
“If you want to get to know someone, really get to know them, there are many ways. As there were many ways your mother could have dealt with the situation.”
“She had to sell it, Dad didn’t have any life insurance.” Six months after the accident Mom finally came and got me, and that’s when I found out my home no longer existed.
“Perhaps, but it couldn’t have been easy moving when so much had already changed. And into such a small house?”
“It was just the two of us. We didn’t need a lot of space.”
We moved to a cramped two-bedroom rental in the worst part of Clayton Falls, with a view of the pulp mill. The pill bottles had been replaced with vodka bottles. Mom’s pink silk robes were now nylon and her Estée Lauder White Linen perfume was a knockoff version. We may have been tight on money, but she still managed to scrape up enough for her French cigarettes—Mom thinks anything French is elegant—and her not-so-elegant vodka. Popov isn’t Smirnoff.
Not only had she sold our house, she’d also sold all Dad’s things. Of course she kept Daisy’s trophies and her costumes, which hung in Mom’s closet.
“But it wasn’t just the two of you for very long, was it?”
“She was going through a lot of stuff. It’s hard for a single mother. There weren’t a lot of options back then.”
“So she thought she’d found a real man to take care of her this time around.” He smiled.
I stared at him for a second. “She worked…after the accident.”
As a secretary with a small construction firm, but mostly she just worked hard at looking good. She never left the house without a fully made-up face, and she was usually half cut when she was applying the stuff, so it wasn’t uncommon to see her eyes smudged or her cheeks too bright. Somehow it worked for her, in a broken-down-doll sort of way, and men looked at her like they wanted to rescue her from the big bad world. Her recently widowed status didn’t stop her from smiling back.
Four months later I had my new stepdad, Mr. Big Shot Wannabe. The sales guy for the firm, he drove a Caddy, smoked cigars, even wore cowboy boots—which might make sense if he was from Texas, or even Alberta, but I don’t think he’s ever left the island. I suppose he’s rough-around-the-edges handsome in an aging Tom Selleck way. Mom quit her job right after they got married. Guess she thought he was a sure thing.
“What did you think of your new father?”
“He’s okay. He seems to really love her.”
“So your mother had a new life, but where did you fit in?”
“Wayne tried.”
I wanted at least some of the closeness with him I’d had with my father, but Wayne and I didn’t have anything to talk about. The only things he read were girlie magazines or flyers for get-rich-quick schemes. Then I learned I could make him laugh. As soon as I realized he thought I was funny, I turned into a total goof around him, doing anything I could to crack him up. But if he did, Mom would get pissed off and say something like, “Stop it, Wayne, you’re just encouraging her.” So he stopped. Hurt, I’d make fun of him whenever I could, just being an all-around smart-ass. Eventually we just ignored each other.
The Freak was staring at me intently, and I realized that my attempts at learning more about him had served only to further his knowledge of me. Time to get things back on track.
“What about your father?” I said. “You haven’t mentioned him.”
“Father? That man was never a father to me. And he wasn’t good enough for her either, but she didn’t want to see it.” His voice rose. “He was a traveling salesman, for God’s sake, a fat hairy salesman, who…”
He swallowed a couple of times, then said, “I had to set her free.”
It wasn’t just his words that sent the shiver up my spine, it was the flatness of his voice when he said them. I wanted to know more, but my instincts told me to back away. It didn’t matter. Whatever storm was stirring in him had passed.
He leapt out of bed with a smile, stretched, and after a sigh of contentment said, “Enough talk. We should be celebrating the beginnings of our own family.” He stared hard at me, then nodded. “Stay there.” He threw on his clothes and coat and disappeared outside. When he opened the door, the smell of rotting leaves and wet dirt drifted over to the bed—the scent of a dying summer.
When he came back in, his skin was flushed and his eyes glittered. One hand was behind his back. He sat next to me, then brought his hand out. His fist was closed.
“Sometimes we have to go through difficult times in life,” he said. “But they’re just a test, and if we stay strong, we’re eventually rewarded.” His eyes met mine. “Open your hand, Annie.” Maintaining eye contact, he pressed something small and cool into my palm. I was scared to look at it.
“I gave this to someone long ago, but she didn’t deserve it.” My palm itched. He raised his eyebrows. “Don’t you want to see?” I slowly looked down at my hand, and in it a fine gold chain glistened. His finger reached out and touched the tiny gold heart that lay at the center. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” I wanted to throw the necklace as far away from me as I could.
I said, “Yes, yes, it is, thank you.”
He took it out of my hand. “Sit up, so I can put it on you.” My skin crawled as the chain tickled against me.
I wanted to ask what happened to the girl who owned the necklace, but I was scared he might tell me.
SESSION EIGHT
All righty, Doc, I’m seriously starting to question my attitude—yeah, yeah, I knew I had one. But now it’s really beginning to get in the way of things. You know, things like my life. See, I may not have always been Little Mary Sunshine before all this went down, with some damn good reasons—dead sister, dead dad, drunken mom, dumbass stepdad—but at least I tried not to take my shit out on the entire world. Now? Man, there doesn’t seem to be anybody who doesn’t piss me off. You, the reporters, the cops, the mailman, a rock in the middle of the road. Actually, I’d probably be okay with the rock. And I mean, I used to like people. Hell, you could even say I was a goddamn people person. But these days?
Take my friends. They call or try to visit, they still invite me to stuff, but right away I start thinking they’re just hoping to get the inside scoop on how the investigation is going, or the offers are just your we-really-should-invite-the-poor-girl kind of thing. Then, when I say no, they probably sit around and talk about me
And see, that’s a spiteful, childish thing for me to even think, let alone say, because I should be grateful people care enough to try, right?
Thing is, there’s not much going on in my life I want to share, and I’m out of touch with half the shit they’re discussing. I’m behind on movies, world events, trends, and technology. So if I do run into someone I know during one of my brief forays into the outside world, I ask them about their lives, and they look relieved and blather on about a work crisis or a new boyfriend or a trip they’re taking. I tell myself it’s almost comforting to he
ar that even though my life is fucked, people are getting up and going about their lives every morning. One day I could be bitching about my work too.
But after we say our good-byes and I watch them walk away, back to their nice normal lives, I just start feeling all pissed off again. I hate them for not being in pain like me, hate them for being able to enjoy themselves. Hate myself for feeling that way.
I’ve even managed to alienate Christina, although she didn’t go down without a fight. When I first moved back to my house she busted her ass setting up the place, gathering furniture, hooking up the utilities. She even stocked the fridge. Her take-charge attitude used to be one of the things I liked most about her. Hell, in the past, I was more than happy to let Christina run my life. But when she started marching around my house with her feng shui book in hand, looking for things to rearrange so I’d attract healing energy, bringing me lists of shrinks’ phone numbers—this was before you—and pamphlets on retreats for rape victims, I got more argumentative and she just got more aggressive.
Then she started in on her let’s-talk-about-it kick, bringing over bottles of wine and her tarot cards. She’d do a spread, then read key phrases from the book like, “You have struggled greatly on your own. It’s time to share your burden with those closest to you.” In case I didn’t get the point, each statement was followed by eye contact and a pause. I was dealing with these visits, if not actually enjoying them, but when she set the cards down one day and said, “You’re never going to get over this if you don’t start talking about it,” I lost it.
“Your life must really suck if you need to get off on my shit, Christina.”
She got such a hurt look on her face. I mumbled an apology, but she left not long after.
The last time we talked, months ago, we arranged a time for her to bring over some of her old clothes—I tried to get out of it but she wouldn’t take no for an answer, insisted they’d cheer me up. An hour before she was supposed to arrive, my guts were twisted into knots of anger and resentment. I paged her and canceled, then went for a three-hour drive. I came home to a big box of clothes on my front doorstep, which I promptly stuck down in the basement.
When she phoned the next day I didn’t answer, but she left a message, sounding giddy and excited, asking if I got the clothes and saying she couldn’t wait to see them on me. I called back and thanked her voice mail, but I’ve never returned any of her messages since.
What the hell is wrong with me? Why am I so fucking mad at everyone?
One night, I’m sure I heard The Freak say some name. It wasn’t loud enough for me to make out, but I could tell it wasn’t mine. I wasn’t stupid enough to ask about it, but I wondered.
He was pretty basic in the sex department. Thank God. I guess as far as freaks go I got an okay one. Look, I’m not complimenting him. I just mean he wasn’t ramming me up the ass or making me give him blow jobs—he probably knew I’d try to bite his dick off. I had my role down pat. I knew just where to touch, how to touch, what to say, and how to say it. I did whatever it took to get it over with fast and I got damn good at it.
Physically it made things easier to help him along, but emotionally one more part of me gave up and slipped away.
As soon as The Freak knew I was pregnant, he no longer seemed to care about doing it every single night, but the baths never stopped. Sometimes he’d just rest his head on my chest and talk to me until he fell asleep. His voice mellow, he’d give me his theories on everything from dust to vomit. But he was mostly fixated on love and society, like he’d say our society is all about acquiring and keeping—not that it had stopped him from acquiring and keeping me.
The idea of my genes mixing with his to create something made me sick. The last thing I wanted was to be connected to him in any way, and when we lay in bed at night I willed my body to miscarry. Every negative thought I could dream up, I aimed at this monster growing inside me and visualized it being expelled from my body. My sleep usually ended in cold sweats after nightmares about hideous fetuses tearing my insides apart.
All that winter, my head was filled with images of giving birth up there with The Freak by my side. When he made me read aloud from one book about childbirth at home, I had to force every word out of my throat. In the past, if I saw a delivery on TV I covered my eyes, because I couldn’t stand looking at some poor woman screaming while this thing was being ripped from her body. Always thought if I ever gave birth I’d be on lots of drugs, with a husband murmuring encouragement while I zoned out.
The Freak’s good mood over my pregnancy only lasted a couple of months. Then one day he was pleased with the way my nails looked, but the next he was ordering me to do them all over again. One minute peeing at two o’clock was okay, the next I was jerked off the toilet and told to wait until three. For a pregnant woman who already had a small bladder, it was excruciating.
In the morning, I’d put on what he picked out for me to wear, then halfway through the day he’d make me go change. If there was even a minuscule fleck on the dishes when he inspected them, he made me do them over again. Once I refused to scrub the bathroom, insisting it was clean, and earned myself a backhand across the face and a wall-to-wall scrubbing of the cabin floor. I learned to keep the perfect amount of submissive shame in my expression, forced myself to look down, and curled my shoulders like a beaten dog.
Toward the end of January, we’d just finished breakfast one morning and I was cleaning up. The Freak watched me for a while and then said, “I’m taking a trip,” like he was telling me he was going to carry out the garbage.
“For how long? Where? You can’t leave me alone up here—”
“I make the rules, Annie.” His face was impassive.
“You could take me with you. You can tie me up in the van or something? Please?”
He shook his head. “You’re safer here.”
The Freak took some food out of the cupboards, mostly vita-min drinks and protein powder you mix with water, and left those on the counter. No utensils.
Usually I wasn’t allowed near the woodstove, but he unlocked it and took the screen away. Then he stacked up a ton of wood inside the house and lit a fire for me. I didn’t have an axe, or newspaper, or anything to light a new fire with, so I’d have to make damn sure I never let that one go out.
He hadn’t left for a few months, so I figured we must be running short of supplies and he was going into town to stock up. I had no idea where he kept the food, and anything he brought in was in zip lock bags so I could never identify a store, but I assumed he had a deep freeze and a cellar or shed outside. I hoped supplies were the reason behind his trip. Was he going to go see Christina again? What if he found another woman he liked better and forgot about me? How long does it take to starve to death? I was more scared of being left alone up there than I was of him.
A girl disappeared from Clayton Falls a couple of years before I did, and I used to worry about finding her body in the woods when I was walking Emma. Now I wondered if the world was full of girls like me. Their families had moved on. They weren’t front-page news anymore. They were locked up in some cabin or dungeon with their very own freak, still waiting to be rescued.
When I made another mark on the wall, I tried not to think about how long I’d already been there. I tried to believe as each day went by I was getting closer to being found. The longer I stayed alive, the more time I was giving them to find me. I thought about what would happen if I was rescued while I was pregnant. I was close to five months, and I was pretty sure that was too late for an abortion, but I didn’t think I could have gone through with one no matter how I felt about the baby. I wondered how my family and Luke would feel about my being pregnant. I couldn’t see Luke cuddling my rapist’s child in his arms and welcoming it into his life. I was having a hard enough time seeing myself doing that.
You’d think I would have liked it when The Freak was gone, but every day I was more anxious. Waiting for the door to open, praying for the door to open. I hate
d him, but I couldn’t wait to see him. I was completely dependent on him.
Not knowing how long he was going to be, I rationed out the food he’d left. He wasn’t there to tell me what time to eat, so I tried to follow my body’s rhythm, but I was hungry all the time. I know a lot of pregnant women feel sick in the beginning, but I never felt nauseous, just sleepy and famished.
All my life I’d preferred to be outside as much as possible—I went swimming every night in the summer and skied every weekend in the winter. But there I was, staring at four walls. I constantly paced back and forth on one side of the cabin. Years ago I saw a bear in a zoo who kept running along the fence, one end to the other. He’d worn a deep groove in the ground. I remember wondering if he’d rather be dead than live a life like that.
When I wasn’t pacing, I leaned on the walls and wondered what was on the other side, or sat in the bathroom with an eye pressed to my hole in the wall. If the sun was out, the hole made a small spot of light on the back of the bathroom door, and I spent hours watching it inch its way down until it disappeared.
Without him there were no novels, so I made up cinematic fantasies. I visualized my mom at home praying I was okay, talking to the police, pleading for my return on TV. I could see Christina and Luke combing the woods for me every weekend with Emma trying to pick up my scent. Best of all, I saw Luke breaking down the cabin door and lifting me up in his arms.
I imagined that Mom had even quit drinking and started a mom’s search-and-rescue group like you see those mothers of missing children doing. I dreamed up an epiphany for her—realizing how she’d treated me my whole life, she wanted to make it all up to me. Once I was rescued, we’d be closer because of all this.
I never thought I’d miss Wayne’s dumbass jokes and the way he sometimes ruffles my hair like I’m still twelve. But now I made bargains with God and promised that if I could just go home I’d listen to a thousand of his lame business ideas.
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