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“I ruined the songs.” He looked genuinely contrite. “I hadn’t thought about that. I may have ruined the songs, but I didn’t ruin you. Look at you, Elizabeth.”
She considered this. Her life had not been destroyed by Walter, far from it. She had an unusually good life, especially for these uncertain times. She had Peter, she had Albie and Iso. She had her parents-hale and hearty into their seventies. And, as the past forty-eight hours had reminded her, she could even rely on Vo
The world at large. No truly close friends, just Peter’s friends and some acquaintances. And this wasn’t a function of the multiple relocations or the temperaments of the women she had met in Houston and London and now Bethesda. It wasn’t, as she had always rationalized, because she was too eastern in Texas, too American in London, too Baltimore for Washington-centric Montgomery County. She couldn’t even blame her lack of friends on being the mother of the girl who might be renowned as the subtle bully and sneak thief of North Bethesda Middle. Eliza didn’t have friends because friendship led to trust and confidences. The thick black line drawn through her life, demarcating where Elizabeth ended and Eliza began, had always made that impossible, at least in her mind.
“No, you didn’t ruin me. But the fact that you didn’t destroy me doesn’t mitigate what you did.”
“I’ll say it: I raped you.” Walter’s voice was low, as if to ensure these words would be heard by her, and her alone. Out of consideration or shame? “I did. I would never deny your experience. You were raped, and I did it. But can you see that it felt like love to me, Elizabeth? Just a little.”
She shook her head. “This is not what we’re supposed to be discussing. There is no point in talking about this.”
“Actually, there is. Because before I can tell you anything, you need to understand this-that night with you was the first and only time in my life that I had sex.”
“No-” She wanted to turn her back on him, hide her face as she sorted through her emotions. It was a lie, it couldn’t be, why was he doing this to her? “You’ve said…I read…”
“I lied. I lied because I was ashamed. That’s how screwed up I was. I was more ashamed of my lack of sexual experience than I was about the things I’d done. I made up this whole story about how I’d done it back home and everyone assumed I’d done it to the other girls. The true first time-the only time-was with you. Remember? That hotel near the Blue Ridge Mountains?”
IT WAS THE NIGHT after Holly had died. Walter had barely spoken throughout the day. He was dazed, semicatatonic, and Eliza had to prompt him to do the smallest things. Moving forward when lights turned green, speaking up when the waitress asked his order at di
The hotel was a nice one, an actual hotel, with a restaurant, the kind of place that had linen tablecloths and an elaborate mural that showed people in old-fashioned clothes picnicking. Had there been that much money in Holly’s little tin box? A credit card? Walter urged Elizabeth to order whatever she wanted, but her stomach was sour, and she knew he would be angry if she wasted this food, expensive as it was. Yet Walter wasn’t eating at all. He cut his steak into ever smaller pieces, mashed his baked potato as if it were something he wanted to kill.
“Your dad eats even less than you,” remarked the waitress.
“I’m not her dad,” Walter said, and something in his voice made the waitress flinch. He softened his tone. “I’m her brother. She was a change-of-life baby, and now our parents are dead and all we have is each other.”
“That’s…nice. Real nice.”
They went upstairs. Eliza reveled in the shower, the nicest she’d had in weeks, although she had to put back on her dirty old clothes. The bedspread was wonderful, too, an old-fashioned white one with a raised design. It had been almost a week since she had been in a real bed, and she fell asleep quickly, the television humming in the background. She wasn’t sure what time it was when she awoke to find Walter standing over her.
“Turn over,” he said.
She did, even as she said, “Please don’t, Walter. Please?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I have to. But I’ll put some music on.” He picked up the remote, flicking through the cha
He was behind her. She had read a book one time, one of the best dirty books ever, where a woman’s boyfriend was always turning her over, and it was revealed that he really liked boys. But she didn’t think that was what was going on with Walter. He was having trouble. He was having a lot of trouble. “Dammit,” he said a time or two, arranging and rearranging her limbs, talking to her body the way he sometimes berated his tools during one of his handyman jobs. Eventually, he found his way. It hurt so much that she could not imagine that it ever wouldn’t, that anyone would do this voluntarily. His mouth was next to her ear, her neck, but he didn’t kiss her, and his arms were braced on either side of her, as if he were doing push-ups. He seemed to be holding his breath. Finally, he gave a little yelp, more surprised than anything else. Mado
“I’m sorry,” he said for the second time. She was crying, her face pressed into what had been the most wonderful bed in the world and was now the worst.
The next day, he was absentminded again, but she stopped helping him, retreating into her own trancelike state. They stopped at a grocery store and ended up having a fight over a box of cookies. He relented and let her have them, but not before pushing her hard enough that she stumbled and went down to her knees. Shortly after they crossed the Potomac into Maryland, he was pulled over for driving too slowly, and if he thought he had anything to fear from the state police, he sure didn’t act that way.
“Who’s the young lady?” the officer asked.
“Elizabeth Lerner,” Walter said. “I’m taking her home. She’s been missing, a runaway, but I’ve convinced her to go home.”
Did he expect the trooper to wave him through? He didn’t seem the least bit perturbed as the trooper walked back to his car, made a call on his radio. Before Elizabeth knew what was happening, Walter was on the ground, his hands above his head, and the state trooper was shouting at him not to move, even as he assured Elizabeth that she was going to be all right, that she was safe now.
And she started to cry. Because she was safe. Or, perhaps, because she realized she would never be safe again.
“THAT’S NOT POSSIBLE,” told Walter now. “You raped Maude. You tried to rape Holly.” Walter was gripping the bars. She wished she had something to grip. She wished she hadn’t refused the offer of a chair, but it would be weak to ask for it now. Besides, she didn’t want to engage the deputy. It was strange enough that he was watching them.
“I couldn’t. With the others. I tried, but it never worked. The first one-she laughed at me, and after that, I never could. Except with you.”
This was her opening. “Maude wasn’t the first one.” Tentative, yet determined.
“No.”
“Who was?”
He held up a hand. “Before I tell you what I promised to tell you, Elizabeth, I want you to think about the penultimate night.” He was obviously pleased with himself, if only for the use of penultimate.
“I’d really prefer not to.”
“It’s important.”
“I don’t see how.”
“Important to me, then. You went to sit in the truck.”
“You told me to go sit in the truck.”
“I gave you the keys. You locked yourself in. The doors were still locked when I came back to the truck. I knocked on the window, and you let me in. You sat there the entire time.”