by Wendy Walker
We had come to discuss her affair with the same acceptance and nonchalance as her tennis game. This was intentional on my part. Her affair was anything but normal. But she had to come to this conclusion on her own. And she did not need my opinion of her behavior to muddy the waters. I had maintained meticulous neutrality.
Oh, I don’t know. She said this with a heavy sigh. It’s been different since that afternoon—you know, when we found Jenny in the pool house. We meet at this house on the west side of Cranston. A friend of his asked him to house-sit while he’s traveling in Europe. I go only when the cleaning lady comes. That’s on Mondays. I don’t leave Jenny alone in the house. Not for more than an hour, maybe—if I need to go to the grocery store or dry cleaners. I don’t see friends. I don’t play tennis. When I get in my car and pull out of the driveway, all I can think about is Jenny lying on that floor.…
Charlotte did her reset: The long breath. Closed eyes, just for a second. A slight shudder to chase away the demons.
So on Mondays when the cleaning lady comes, I drive forty minutes to see Bob for one hour. We don’t really talk anymore. We say hello. He asks about Jenny. I give him an update. I ask how he is. I ask about the boys. Then we have sex.
“You say that with less of something. Enthusiasm? Interest?”
I feel less of something. In fact, last week I actually felt irritated. He was taking longer than usual. I pretended to have an orgasm so we could be done. I don’t know why, but I just didn’t like the feel of his hands on me that day. It’s been like that more and more since that night when I met him in the parking lot. That horrible night. It feels like it’s dying a slow death.
“Do you think it’s because of you or him?”
She shook her head from side to side. I really don’t know. I mean, he says the same things to me. And he does the same things to me. He still sends me text messages.
“The suggestive ones?”
They’re more than suggestive. Some of them I delete immediately. They’re pornographic. Pictures of his erection. Descriptions of things he wants to do.
Charlotte seemed disgusted as she spoke about it. In the past, she had been embarrassed. And aroused.
He always says he loves me. But it’s not the same.
“That must be very difficult. Bob has been an important piece of your framework.”
He made me feel whole. Like we talked about. He knows about my past and he still loves me. He still wants me.
“So what’s changed? Why isn’t that working its magic anymore?”
Charlotte shrugged. She didn’t know. I looked at her and sighed myself. She asked if I was upset with her, and I assured her I was not. I said I was just very tired. I never share my personal feelings with my clients, but I was growing impatient—remember, I had not yet taken the lorazepam. I had been hobbling myself together for the better part of our session.
I left Charlotte to consider why things with Bob had changed. Of course, I knew the answer. Bob had not muttered those four little words that night by the Dumpsters at the Home Depot. He did not say, “It’s not your fault.” The supply of acceptance and forgiveness had been interrupted, and she now had an inkling of the truth—that all this time, as Bob held her and told her that he loved her, even though she had slept with her mother’s husband, even though she had been sent away to live with her aunt, he was lying. Bob was a liar who wanted to fuck her. He was masterful. Cunning. I have to admit that a small part of me was impressed by him. He knew somehow what would appeal to her, that bad Charlotte would feed on his acceptance like the starving child she was and that she would open her legs and not care about her own satisfaction as long as he brought the food. But now his words were empty. The food he was serving her was rancid, and she was having trouble swallowing it down.
I wondered what he was feeding Lila at the Jag showroom. What did she need so desperately that she would bend over a silver XK and let him shove her face into its hood while he rode her like an animal? Money, perhaps, as Tom said. Or maybe she needed her daddy’s love. It could have been a million things. And Bob, that sly dog, had figured it out. Yes. I was impressed.
By the time Tom left my office later that day, my thoughts were in a frenzy. I kept thinking over and over—This is too good to be true. It was. It was too perfect.
You probably cannot picture this, but I actually got up and paced the room, back and forth like some primal beast. I had seen Charlotte. Then I had seen two other patients. Then I’d seen Tom and learned about Bob and that little slut at the Jag showroom. I hope you’re following along. This day, this Friday, was absolutely pivotal. I had become monomaniacal in my mission to save my son from accusation. My wife was right. The accusation alone would change his life forever. Social media would leave its nasty indelible footprint. I also have to admit—to you and not my wife, because it would continue to upset her—that the consequence of not being able to treat Jenny also weighed heavily upon me. No parents in their right mind would allow that to continue under such a cloud of suspicion. And I needed to finish my work with her. I am a selfish bastard, aren’t I? God, how I was coming undone that day!
But I was not too undone to continue with my fledgling plan.
Jenny arrived just after four in the afternoon. Three Kramers in one day. I was immersed in their stories, and it was helping me immensely to piece together the details. I heard them arrive in the waiting room. Charlotte always brought Jenny. Lucas was with them as well. It didn’t matter. They would leave as soon as I opened the door, and I would be alone with Jenny for an hour. More, if I needed it.
I finished the work I had been doing on my computer. Then I opened the door.
I’m starting to feel like I live here, Charlotte joked. She seemed sad. I imagine she had started to figure out why Bob had lost his magic.
I smiled but said nothing. Jenny walked past me and sat down on the sofa.
“I’ll be right back, Jenny. I just want to talk to your mom for a moment.”
Jenny said, Fine. She pulled out her phone like every teenager. It’s not possible for them to sit in the silence. Of course, the room was not silent today.
I closed the door, leaving Jenny inside. Alone. I spoke to Charlotte about the schedule and pretended to need an update on Jenny since that morning. She didn’t think twice about it. She pulled out her phone and checked some dates and times. I reminded her that I go to Somers on Tuesdays.
“Hello, Lucas,” I said. I shook his hand and met his eyes. I had not been seeing him as a patient, and he still looked at me the way children look at doctors. They are right to be apprehensive. Doctors mean something is wrong with you, or might be wrong with you. Doctors do things to you that sometimes hurt or make you uncomfortable. I did not take offense.
All of this took not more than three minutes. But that was all I needed. I said good-bye and then entered my office.
My computer was on, playing a looped commercial from Bob Sullivan’s dealerships. It was all Bob, his voice, over and over. Jenny wasn’t bothered by it one way or another. She smiled at me when I passed by and walked to my desk.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I’d left this on.”
It’s fine, she said.
I turned off the commercial, then walked to the chair across from the sofa and took my seat. “I like to watch the news sometimes. But I hate those commercials. I know your dad works there. I think I just hate commercials, period.”
She smiled and I settled into my chair. I was pleased with myself for completing this part of the plan, the mission. But then I saw her face. Her eyes. I lost my breath.
I have described my impressions of Jenny before, how I had been confused by the girl I saw the months between the rape and suicide attempt. How she did not present as a trauma victim. Certainly not a rape victim. And then, when the truth came out about her receiving the treatment, it all made sense to me. I think I even said that I felt relieved to know I wasn’t losing my professional mind. After I began my work with her, and
if I’m being honest, after she met Sean Logan, she changed again. As her father said, the life was back in her eyes. The last time I’d seen her, that Wednesday, we had the breakthrough, a light piercing the blackout. The memory. I had seen the panic rip through her as she relived that one moment. I had seen a glimmer of pain and shock and horror. But then it all collapsed into exhaustion. When she left, it was hard to detect anything. Two days had passed. Two days of living with the memory.
I tried to smile politely as I studied her face. I could see it then. For the first time. I could see the rape in her eyes, running alongside the life.
“How have things been since Wednesday?” I managed to say.
Oh, what a horrible person I am! I could not believe what I had done. I could not believe that I had set in motion the most devious betrayal. I had opened up this path back to that night. The patient was on the table and I was about to infect her with the germs of a lie. I had the chance to give it all back to her, the truth in all its purity. But instead, I was going to go in with my evil plan and corrupt it to my own end. To save my son. To save my family. I told myself I could do just this little bit but keep the rest, find the rest, intact. But how could that be? This one corruption would be the end of the truth. The germs would cause an infection that would feed on the healthy flesh until it was all dead. The truth, dead. My despair was profound. The irony staring me in the face. If I pulled back now, my son would be questioned and I would be taken from my work. To save my son, I would have to defile my work. Do you see? Do you?
Jenny started to talk then, about the memory and how it had become clearer and clearer. The hand on her back. The hand on the back of her neck. The smell of the bleach. His penis entering her and the shock that followed as he pushed harder and harder, tearing her inside. The violation. The pain. The animal broken. Its body and its spirit. Broken. It was perfect, the way this memory was coming into focus. I am not sick to think this. But it was perfect because it was real. It had been there all this time, carefully preserved, and now it had found its way back. Not only as a series of facts, but in the past two days it had connected to the feelings it created. They were no longer floating inside her, the ghosts that Sean Logan had described. They had found their home, and now they could be recognized and, finally, processed. It was working! Jenny cried. She sobbed. I hate him! She screamed in my office. I hate him!
“Yes!” I said. I wanted to cry myself. I was overwhelmed by the power of what we had unleashed inside her.
Why did he do this to me?
“Because he is nothing without the power he took from you. He is nothing, and you are everything. Can you feel that? How desperate he is to take your power? How hungry? He is the animal, Jenny. Not you. He has no soul.”
So he took mine. He stole mine.
“He tried to. But he took only a small piece.”
I want it back! Do you hear me? I want it back!
Oh, how her strength moved me that day! I nodded my head and said the only words that came to my mind.
“I know.”
I let her sit with this for a moment. And I allowed myself to enjoy that moment. To savor it. And then I swallowed every ounce of integrity I had left and pressed ahead with my plan.
“I want to focus on sound today. Maybe on a voice.”
She agreed. She trusted me completely. I had in my mind the events of that afternoon in the pool house. I did not have the investigator’s tape by then, but I had Charlotte’s recollection. She had told me what was said. How Bob had repeated over and over the same exclamatory expression. Oh dear Lord!
“There are some things that might have been said. Things people say when they are highly emotional. I imagine this creature, this animal, was in a heightened emotional state. I’m going to say some of them to you. You need to close your eyes and just let the words float in like we did with the smells. Don’t force them. Just see if any of them resonate.”
Jenny opened her bag and took out the props. She sat with them as she always did and then nodded and closed her eyes. I did not put on the music. I did not let her smell the bleach. I did not want her to go back to the night in the woods, but instead to that afternoon in the pool house.
Now we would see. We would put to the test the theories and studies about memory. Jenny had been unconscious as Bob Sullivan stood over her, wrapping her wrists, trying to save her life. Would his voice be in there somewhere? Would his words be lingering, waiting to be pulled from the stacks of files? Could I pull them out and refile them, not with that afternoon in the pool house, but from that night in the woods?
Jenny closed her eyes.
“Are you ready” I asked.
She nodded. I took a breath and shook my head with disgust at myself and what I was about to do. Then I started to say the words.
“Oh my God.… My God … Yes … Do you like that?… Yes … Oh my God … Mmmm.… Uhhhhh … yes!.… Oh my God … Good God.… Good Lord.… Dear Lord … Oh dear Lord, dear Lord, dear Lord…”
Chapter Twenty-two
Jenny did not falsely remember Bob Sullivan’s voice from the night of the rape. Did you think it would be that easy? That session was just the beginning. It was a little seed, planted in the fertile soil. It would take more than just our sessions. More than the gimmick of playing Bob’s commercials right before our sessions. If this work were that simple, any moron could do it. It is not simple. Nor was my plan. But nothing more could be done until Monday.
I went home that night hopeful. And destroyed.
My son was waiting for me. He was annoyed at having been detained on a Friday night by his mother.
“Hi,” I said. He was in the family room playing on the Xbox. My wife remained in the kitchen after saying a nervous hello and kissing me on the cheek.
I stood in the doorway and did not go further. His back was to me and he could not hear anything with his headphones blaring. Soldiers were killing combatants in an urban village. My son was using a knife to cut their throats. He was screaming at his friends who were playing the game with him through the Internet. They were playful screams, followed by laughter. A combatant came up from behind and stabbed my son. He yelled, then laughed very hard. He told his friend, You’re a fucking idiot. Where were you? What? Stuck at the bridge. Dude, you have to get on the bus to get over the bridge. You killed me, dude. What the fuck. Hahaha.
It had been less than two days since I learned that my son had a blue sweatshirt with a red bird. Since I realized that it must have been he who was going into the woods the night of the party. My wife and I had discussed what we would do to keep him safe.
I have always been fascinated by the bond between parent and child. I’m sure you have gleaned this already. It is in us. It is why we are here. To fornicate, to make babies, and then to die protecting them. In that respect, we are animals. And yet, we also have morality, and that is what distinguishes us from animals. I don’t care what anyone says about animals. They do not have morals. Any animal behavior that mimics morality is nothing more than a coincidence. They are driven by the need to survive and this need, this raw instinct, sometimes causes them to act in a “moral” way. When they protect a vulnerable member of their tribe. When they band together in a herd to keep a lion from picking them off, one at a time. When they accept members from another tribe or herd into their own. All of that is about self-preservation. Something is gained by the herd. There are just as many behaviors that are immoral. Male pigs who kill their own offspring so the mothers will stop lactating and become fertile again. Old rhinos who are shunned by the herd because they are of no use being alive. Female dogs who literally eat their defective newborn pups. On and on I could go.
I see it at the prison, where the forces of socialization are stripped away. I see it with the Axis II disorders, people who lack empathy. Sociopaths. We are not far from the animals. The very thing that distinguishes us is fragile. But it is real.
I have been observing my wife and have come to the conclusion that she ha
s not ruled out the possibility that our son raped Jenny Kramer. It has been difficult to accept this because I know he is innocent and am disturbed by her ambivalence. It is not that she does not love him. If I investigated, I know what I would uncover. She cannot explain his presence in the woods or the shaving or the bleach. I admit these are difficult hurdles to overcome. And so she has gone down a less strenuous mental path, the path of justification. Perhaps he was high on drugs. Perhaps it was a “date rape” gone wrong. Perhaps one of his friends followed him and was also involved, and maybe it was the friend who was so violent. Surely our son could not have done what they are saying. But the girl doesn’t remember, does she? The “facts” of the rape are still just speculation. Anyone could poke holes in the story they had created.
She had spoken of the now infamous date rapes down in the southern part of the state. We both remembered when that teenage boy was on trial. We both remembered hearing the evidence at the trial, how the victims were persecuted, their stories broken down and torn apart. He had known them all from school. They had gone places with him willingly. He went to jail anyway, but there was always doubt. His loving parents had spent a fortune defending him. There was no question we would do the same for our son.
When the teenage rapist came up for parole years later, we watched the hearing on cable. He presented as such a nice man, repentant, remorseful. Rehabilitated. Then his victims spoke. For the first time, they told their stories without the interruption of clever defense attorneys. Julie and I were shocked at what we heard. They were horrible stories of violence, rape, sodomy, verbal obscenities, and strangulation. The press had not relayed the facts truthfully those many years before. It had all been spun to create an interesting he said–she said controversy. Parole was denied. The nice young man was transformed. He became belligerent. My wife said she could suddenly see the “crazy” in his eyes. I was disappointed in myself that I had not detected his Axis II condition. I would see that today, having worked at Somers these past few years.