Savaging the Dark

by Christopher Conlon

  “Connor, come on. We need to get you dressed.” He looks at me and his face grows petulant, but he moves away finally with a sleepy smile and reclines on the sheets. He stretches and then kicks his feet up into the air playfully. For a moment he looks exactly like a baby. It’s all I can do to not leap atop him, kiss him deeply, let him do anything he wants to do with me. Instead I stand, all business now. “Your clothes should be done.” I reach over, slap him on the hip. “I’ll get them for you.”

  I walk out of the room and into another world, as any world is another world now when Connor isn’t in it. The moment I’m away from him reality comes smashing into me. My mouth goes pasty. I’m clumsy as I head to the dryer, bark my shin hard against the coffee table. If I can get him out of here, I think. If I can get him out of here and no one has seen us then it’s all right. If I can wash the bed things and clean the bathroom then there will be no evidence. I’ll have done nothing wrong because there’ll be no evidence I’ve done anything at all. He could talk, of course. Connor could go to school and tell his friends all about me, about us. But Connor has no friends, I realize. He doesn’t even talk to Douglas Peterson anymore. And his father? Would he tell Mr. Blue? Preposterous. I pull his clothes from the dryer, shake them out. He wouldn’t tell his gruff, possibly abusive father a thing about this. Mr. Blue is the last one on earth he’d tell. And even if he did, the man would probably be proud. Connor’s a boy, after all. It’s not like it would be with a girl. Somebody would call me sexist for thinking that but it’s true, it’s not like it would be if it were some grown man with a little girl. No, it’s all right. Everything is all right. There’s nothing wrong.

  I return to the guest bedroom and, grinning at him, toss the hot laundry onto his belly.

  “Feels nice,” he says, running his hands through it.

  “Good?” I ask, sitting at the edge of his bed.

  “Yeah.”

  “Go ahead, put ’em on.”

  He grins. “Make me.”

  “Connor, I’m serious.” I note the clock on the wall: it’s nearly time to go pick up Gracie. I can’t believe how long we’ve been here together. It’s felt like only seconds, sweet seconds. “You have to get dressed now.”

  “I never want to get dressed again. I want to be naked forever.”

  I laugh, shake my head, pick up one of his socks and toss it in his face. He throws it back at me and suddenly it’s a laundry fight, his shirt and socks and shorts and pants flying between us as we shriek and giggle. Finally I grab his arms, pin them to his sides.

  “Okay, mister,” I say breathlessly, “now it really is time.”

  “Don’t want to!”

  “Oh, yeah?” I lean down and blow a huge raspberry on his belly. He laughs and kicks hysterically, tries to fight me, but I’m stronger and hold him fast.

  After a while we settle again and I loosen my grip on his arms. He’s splayed out on the bed panting, his clothes every which way across it. His erection is impossible not to see. I’m amazed at how resilient his young body is. Are all boys like this? I look at the clock again, realize I’m going to be late to pick up Gracie. But I can’t leave him this way. I smile wryly at him, roll my eyes, shake my head, reach to him. In a minute or two he’s finished again, breathing hard, semen splattered all over his legs and groin and stomach.

  “Well,” I say, using a Kleenex from a box on the bedside table to wipe my hand, “you wasted that shower you took, mister.”

  “I love you,” he says.

  That stops me cold. I look down at him for a long time. He meets my gaze, doesn’t look away.

  Finally he says it again: “I love you, Ms. Straw.”

  I laugh a little. “Sort of funny that you call me ‘Ms. Straw.’ Now.”

  “What should I call you? Your first name’s Mona...right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Mona. Mo-na.” He grins, shakes his head. “It sounds weird when I say it.”

  “Connor…” I hesitate. I pull more Kleenex from the box and start to clean him methodically. “Connor, you know that this is a secret, right? Us? This?”

  “I know.”

  “You understand that it’s very important you not tell anyone, right?”

  “I know, Ms. Straw. Mo-na.”

  “It’s—it’s really important, Connor. If anybody finds out we wouldn’t be able to see each other again.”

  “I know. You don’t have to tell me. I’m not stupid.”

  I smile. “No, you’re not. But maybe…you know, you’re hanging around with your friends, you start talking…”

  “You’d get fired,” he says, looking at me.

  I return the look. He understands, all right. “Yes. I would.” Arrested, too, almost certainly. As I look down at this sweet boy with his clear, innocent gaze—somehow even more innocent now, after what we’ve done together, not less—I realize suddenly how much power he now has over me. This eleven-year-old holds my life in his hands. But looking at Connor, at the adoration in his eyes, I know he’ll never tell. He means it. He does love me.

  I toss the tissues into the waste basket, knowing I’ll retrieve them once he’s gone and burn them or flush them down the toilet. No evidence, I think. No evidence and it’s all right. No evidence and it never happened.

  Our mood has gone serious. “Connor, honey, will you put your clothes on now, please?”

  “Okay,” he says. I watch him, watch his body vanish from me in stages until he’s completely finished except for his coat and shoes. He stands beside me, taller than me now since I’m sitting on the edge of the bed. I touch him, put my arms around him, feel him embrace me. We hold each other, hold on for dear, dear life.

  ***

  After he’s gone I call Gracie’s school, apologize profusely, say I got hung up in a meeting. The woman sounds considerably less patient than she had in the morning. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I say, “I’ll be there in a few minutes, just please give me a few minutes.” I rush around the house, wipe down the tub and shower and tile floor, pull all the towels down—did he touch any towels? I can’t remember—and throw them in laundry basket. Then I strip the guest bed, flush the Kleenexes down the toilet, push the blanket into the washing machine along with anything else that fits, switch the thing to Hot, the hottest water it has, the hottest water in the world, start it. I grab the half-filled tea cups off the table and run scalding water over them, soap them, rinse and dry them, put them back where they belong on the shelf. No evidence. No evidence and it didn’t happen. It did not happen.

  When I pick up Gracie I’m breathless, flustered. The woman tells me coolly that they’ll have to charge extra for this after-hours care and would I please not repeat this as the staff has responsibilities of their own and the day is supposed to end at yes yes I’m terribly sorry it won’t happen again I promise thank you thank you so much. By the time we get home the first washing is done and I pull the blanket and other things out, place them in the dryer, switch it on. Then I throw everything else into the machine and hit Start again. Gracie watches me, her expression curious. After a while she goes off to read her book in the living room.

  Finally I close the door to the laundry room and things grow quiet. I sit in a chair near Gracie, close my eyes, breathe. It’s done, I think. It’s over. And it didn’t happen. As far as the world is concerned it didn’t happen. There’s no evidence that anything happened.

  A moment later Gracie looks up from her book and says, scowling, “That boy was here, wasn’t he? I can smell him.”

  13

  I am someone’s mother.

  I am someone’s wife.

  I am a teacher of young children.

  I sleep alone that night, Bill away at his convention, Gracie tucked in bed in her own room. But I don’t sleep. Not at all. I stare into the darkness. Shapes seem to form in it when I gaze at one spot long enough: circles, expanding vortexes about to engulf me. I thrash back and forth on the bed, pull the covers over myself, kick the
m off again. It didn’t happen, I think. It didn’t happen. That was not me. That was a movie, some grotesque child porn movie that somehow found its way into this house. I did not act that way. I did not do those things. My life is secure and complete with my husband and daughter and job. I have no need of anything else. I’m happy, satisfied. I have everything a woman could want. My marriage is a good one to a good man. My daughter is an angel. We have plenty of money. My job couldn’t be more fulfilling. I am a good person.

  I curl up in a fetal position, tremble violently in the dark. I push my face into the pillow, cry, cry for hours, cry until my head throbs and my muscles ache and my stomach hurts and the pillow is covered with tears and saliva and mucus. When I’m not crying I’m screaming, screaming with the pillow pushed tightly against my mouth until my throat is shredded and inflamed. Oh my dear God, I think. I’m a child molester. I had sex with a child. I can hardly swallow. I cough and blood spatters the pillow. I’m one of those people, those people you see on the news, teachers, coaches, priests, usually men but sometimes women. Sexual predators. That’s not someone else anymore, it’s me. That’s my life. Back, I think. Turn backward, time in thy flight. Let me have the past twelve hours to do again. Or the past weeks, with Connor and I growing closer, ever closer, too close. I knew we were too close and yet I was unable to stop the train of catastrophe from racing at us, crushing us under its wheels. Let me do it again, those hours again, I plead with someone, anyone. I won’t make the same mistake, I’ll not invite him over at all, I’ll not gaze hungrily at him when I know he’s not looking, I’ll not let my thoughts go wild and crazed, I will do everything differently everything differently please please I will.

  Hours of this. All night. As a gray dawn begins to glow dimly in the windows I am utterly, comprehensively exhausted, flattened, dead. There’s nothing left, I know. Connor will tell someone. Connor has been naked in front of Ms. Straw and she’s taken his privates in her hands and made him shoot off everywhere and he’s seen her breasts and nipples and held them and kissed them and he’s kissed her on the lips and she’s French-kissed him with her tongue and he will tell someone, he’s bound to. He said his friends talk about jacking off. How can an eleven-year-old boy not talk? He’ll talk. I know he’ll talk. Bogart’s line from Casablanca, absurdly, comes to me: Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life. He might not talk today or tomorrow but he will talk and then for the rest of my life I’ll be a criminal, a felon, jail time, damaged, dirty, sick, humiliated, unemployable, certainly divorced and never allowed to lay eyes on my daughter again let alone touch her or hold her. Stupid! I think, banging my fists against my head. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

  And what if he doesn’t? There are other ways it could come out. My body had been jolted, my face drained of its blood the moment Gracie had said, “That boy was here, wasn’t he? I can smell him.” Smell him! Of course. All his sweat, all his hormones raging. Of course my daughter could smell him. All the desperate work I’d done to wash the bed things and the bathroom and dispose of the evidence and it took a four-year-old girl only minutes to realize the truth. Not the whole truth. She could not even imagine the whole truth, at four. But enough to tell her dad, enough to make Bill wonder about his wife’s preoccupation with this boy, why she would have him over when no one else was here, why she was so late (for he might find this out, too) to pick up Gracie that afternoon, why (maybe even this as well) she was suddenly in such a frenzy to do laundry, lots of laundry, unusual things like the blanket in the guest room. What is going on, Mona? There’s something you’re not telling me.

  Yes, there is, Bill. Sit down and I’ll tell you about what this boy and I do together when you’re not home. I’ll tell you what your ten years of loyal marriage to me have earned you. I’ll tell you what being a good husband and father and always coming home at night and being caring and sensitive to us both has gotten you.

  As the dull dawn slowly brightens I clench my eyes shut. It’s gray and rainy and half-dark but it’s too bright, much too bright for me to face. I can never face such light again. I don’t deserve it. I can’t stand it. But I’m too depleted to feel anything about it. All I know, all I realize, all I suddenly remember is that in the bottom drawer of the nightstand on Bill’s side is a hand gun, an old pistol he insists on having around the house for protection. It was his grandfather’s. I drag myself across the bed and reach to the drawer, open it. The gun is there, gray, ugly. I don’t know what kind it is, I know nothing about guns. I’ve never shot a gun in my life, never held one until Bill brought this one into the house years ago and tried to get me to take shooting lessons. I would have nothing to do with it. I would only go so far as to hold the gun in my hands and pretend to aim it out into the back yard for a moment. After that I quickly handed it back to him. I’m terrified of guns. But now I need it. I take it in my hands. It’s very heavy. I look at it. I don’t know a thing about how it works, only where the trigger is. I hold the terrible gray pistol in my right hand and look down the barrel. I can’t see anything, of course, but I look, hold my eye close, peer into it, study its particular darkness. Then I press the barrel to my right temple quickly and pull the trigger, or try to. But nothing happens. I look at the gun, realize that there is the lever in the back of it, above the handle, that you have to pull back for it to fire. I don’t even know what the lever is called. The pulling back is called cocking, I know that. Cocking. They always do it in old Westerns when they’re having a gun fight. I try to cock the pistol with my thumb, but I can’t move it. I try to cock it with my other hand, but I still can’t do it. My fingers are shaking, my heart smashing. I have to do this quickly or I’ll never do it at all and I will live the life of a despised monster forever. I prop the gun between my knees and awkwardly pull with either hand until the lever finally snaps backward. The gun is now cocked, I know. The gun is cocked and all I have to do is aim and pull the trigger. I aim and pull the trigger. Again nothing happens. I look at the gun and remember that Bill told me about a safety switch, showed it to me. If the switch is on, the gun won’t fire. I look, find it. It’s on. I use my thumb to push it in the other direction, to off. I cock the gun, hold it to my head a third time, feel the hard barrel on my temple, clench my eyes shut, grit my teeth, and pull the trigger. The gun goes snap and jostles slightly in my hand but nothing happens. I cock it again, pull the trigger again. Snap. Again. Snap, snap, snap, snap.

  The gun is not loaded.

  I drop it into the drawer again, close it, fall back and lie motionlessly across the bed, this bed where once upon a time in another kind of life my husband and I conceived our beautiful daughter. I stare at the brightening ceiling. I’m beyond tears now. There’s nothing left.

  After a while I get up and start making Gracie’s breakfast.

  14

  Yet in the light of a bright December morning, Christmas vacation upon us, the tree mounted in the corner of the living room with tinsel and decorations and lights, I can’t think of Connor or what we did together in any way but happily, excitedly. I’m aware of the need for absolute stone secrecy, of course. I know what could happen. But that’s the rest of the world, outsiders. They have nothing to do with Connor and me. They would never understand what’s happened between us. Never. But it has happened. He’s in love with me, we’re in love with each other. It has nothing to do with molestation, with abuse. I did not molest Connor Blue. I loved him. I took a boy from a broken home whose father, I believe, beats him and I gave him pleasure, happiness, joy. I gave him the greatest experience of his life. I gave him something he’ll never forget for all his days. I gave him love. And it was beautiful. It was not sick or perverted or any of those things the braying masses would call it. But I know they would never understand, know that this can never be spoken of, not ever.

  At first I’d thought the holidays would have allowed us to see each other more but just the opposite is true. Without daily classes I don’t see him at all. Day after day I li
ve only my other, plebian life, the life of wife and mother and organizer of Christmas fun for Gracie, trips to the mall to see Santa and shopping for presents for Daddy and watching the carolers when they come to our neighborhood at night. I don’t begrudge her any of this. I enjoy it, really. I want the holidays to be magical for her. For us, for all of us. We watch A Charlie Brown Christmas as a family, Gracie contentedly in my lap laughing at Snoopy’s antics. We make Christmas cookies with green and red sprinkles. We watch Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. We watch Miracle on 34th Street and It’s a Wonderful Life too, but sitting there with my daughter I’m overcome with yearning for Connor, wishing he were here with us to view these old classics. He’d probably think they’re corny but how I wish he were here on the sofa with us to tell us that, holding my hand beside me while Gracie sits in my lap. How I wish I could adopt him, bring him here, keep him warm and safe with me always—not instead of Bill and Gracie, but in addition to them. To put the two parts of my life together without shame, without embarrassment. With joy. Bill would be a great dad to Connor. Connor would be a terrific big brother to Gracie. But I’m dreaming, of course. I know that. I know that in the real world Connor must remain a secret, must be treated as something dark and dirty in my life when he’s not that, he’s anything on earth but that.

  Christmas goes by. On the way to and from the grocery store with Gracie I sometimes take a slight detour to pass by Connor’s house, just to try to get a glimpse of him in his front yard or standing at the window. But I never do. Day passes day and I feel as if I’m going crazy waiting for him, waiting for this eternal damned holiday to end. It doesn’t even snow, giving me an easy excuse to call him and ask him to come over. I know I must see him, see him soon, but there’s no chance.

  Yet finally there is. Bill’s elderly mother has checked into a hospital in Boston and Bill decides to drive up to see her. Three days! He’ll be gone three days! At first the thought was that we should all go, but we both know Gracie will tire the infirm old woman, make it impossible for Bill to have the quiet, peaceful visit with her he wants. It may be the final visit, after all. We talk of hiring someone to care for Gracie but three days is too long. In the end it obviously makes the most sense for Bill to go alone, for me to stay with Gracie for these few days between Christmas and New Year’s. Yes.