“No. I’m here to explain, if you’re willing to listen.”
What could Jonah tell me that would make everything all right? Nothing, I realize. But that’s not why he’s here. We can’t fix this; we were smashed up long before we ever met. Jonah only wants to tell me the truth. His truth.
And I should tell him mine.
I’ve come to realize that speaking the truth can be a form of love. Maybe listening can be too.
Thirty-four
Seton Central is located in a major urban area, not far from a highway—and yet, right next to it stretches Seider Spring Park. It’s a long, skinny green space that runs alongside the winding Shoal Creek Trail. Within a few minutes of leaving the hospital, Jonah and I are walking between trees, next to the water, seemingly away from the rest of the world—even though the distant roar of cars sometimes mingles with the rustling of leaves.
Pale skin, shadowed eyes, stubble, beat-up jeans beneath his coat: Jonah looks like hell. No doubt I do too. We’re long past worrying about appearances, yet I can’t help but notice.
Mom’s lessons die hard.
“I’m sorry I was so abrupt in the car,” Jonah says. “It was a difficult time for you, in many ways. I should’ve held it together for your sake.”
“You told me what you were honestly feeling. You don’t have to apologize for that.”
We walk on together, side by side. Our footsteps crunch on fallen leaves and drought-dry grass. In Austin we don’t get autumns of crimson leaves or winters of brilliant white snow. The year ebbs away into colorless cold.
Jonah finally asks, “Do you want to tell me what happened with Anthony?”
Once I thought I could never say this to anyone, least of all him. Yet now Jonah’s the only person I can imagine telling. “I was fourteen. He and Chloe were in college, dating. One night when he was visiting, Chloe went to bed early, and my parents did too. Anthony raped me on the couch.”
After a long moment, Jonah says, “He came on you. Didn’t he?”
God, graphic. But true, and nothing less than the whole truth will do anymore. “Yes, he did. I’ve hated that ever since.”
“You said you told Chloe and she didn’t believe you?”
I shake my head. “I told my mother and she didn’t believe me. Anthony told Chloe I tried to flirt with him, and she got angry with me for trying to steal her boyfriend. The week before her wedding, I made one last attempt at getting her to see who and what Anthony really is, and I tried to explain the whole story to her, but she didn’t want to hear it. Now my rapist is in the family, and he’s half of Libby, whom I love so much. That means he’s part of my life forever.”
Jonah’s gaze has turned inward, as if he’s studying my story from every possible angle. “I thought most rape victims couldn’t stand seeing even allusions to rape. Much less . . . what we did.”
“You’re right. Most rape victims have a very different reaction. But this is what it did to me. Who I am now.”
He nods, still deep in thought. “I should’ve realized,” he says quietly. “When you never wanted to fuck any other way—some of your limits—I should’ve known.”
“You have your limits, just like me,” I say. It’s mostly me parroting what Doreen and I talked about.
But then I find myself remembering that first night in the wine bar, when Jonah and I negotiated the terms of our arrangement. He asked me to defend him, not to injure him too badly, and—not to call him Daddy.
My stomach drops; nausea sweeps through me. My voice sounds strangled as I ask, “Jonah, did it happen to you too?”
“Was I raped? No.” But Jonah stands still, weighing his next words. “It was—so much more fucked up than that.”
What in the world could be more fucked up than that? I can’t imagine.
But I don’t have to imagine. I’m here, and I can listen. “Will you tell me?”
He doesn’t answer for a long time, long enough that I begin to think he’ll say no. Instead, he turns away from me, stares at the brook, and begins to speak.
“I was four years old when my father died. Not quite six when my mother married Carter Hale. Elise was five then, and both Rebecca and Maddox were two. They took formal portraits of the new family—you know, little suits for me and Mad, velvet dresses for the girls, Mom and Carter smiling. The money, the children, the airline, the real estate. They wanted the whole world to know they had it all.” He shakes his head. “No one ever guessed what was really happening behind the doors of Redgrave House.”
“Which was what?”
Jonah takes a deep breath. “The first time—the first time, it was late at night, and I heard my mother crying. I’d heard that before, after my father died. Sometimes it helped her if I came to her, gave her a hug, something like that. So I went to her bedroom. And Carter was . . .”
“They were having sex?” I say. That would freak out almost any kid, but surely even the archetypal Freudian event wouldn’t leave Jonah so deeply scarred.
He says, “Carter was raping my mother.”
“Oh, my God.” I can’t imagine seeing that, ever, much less as a small child.
“I didn’t understand.” Jonah’s voice breaks. “I had some idea of what they were doing, but my mother was crying. Bleeding. And then Carter saw me, and he was so angry. I thought he would beat me, but he did worse than that.”
“What?”
“He made me watch.”
Bile churns in my gut, and I think I might actually vomit. Who the hell does that to a child? Whose mind works that way? A monster. Only a monster. All these years I thought Anthony Whedon was the worst thing that could ever happen to me, but Carter Hale is another level of evil altogether.
“Carter took his time. I think I was in there an hour before he was done with her. He told me that—that this was what it meant to be a man. That this was what women wanted. What they deserved.”
All this time, I thought I was working out my darkest demons while Jonah just played our games for fun. Never did I dream what secret burden he might be carrying.
But even if I’d spent hours psychoanalyzing him, guessing what might underlie his own desires, I would never have guessed this.
“I didn’t believe him,” Jonah says. “I knew it couldn’t be right, the way he’d hurt my mother. But the next day, when I was alone with her, I asked her if we would run away. Mom said—she said it was just that way between men and women sometimes. She pretended everything was all right. I told myself that must be true.”
By now I remember how this story began. “Jonah, you said—you said, ‘The first time.’”
Jonah’s smile is sharper than any blade I’ve ever seen, maybe as sharp as the blade Jonah wishes he could hold to his stepfather’s throat. “Maybe it turned Carter on. He likes humiliating my mother, and what could be more humiliating than bringing her child in the room to watch? So he started coming into my bedroom when I was trying to sleep. He’d carry me into their room and wouldn’t let me leave. He made me say out loud all the things ‘Daddy’ was doing to her.”
I picture a small boy in his PJs, maybe with rocket ships printed on the cotton, having to speak those words. It’s as if the pain from that moment leaps through the distance and the years to pierce my own heart. “Oh, God, Jonah, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
He doesn’t seem to hear me. Now that this terrible story has begun, he can’t stop until he’s gotten it all out. “At first Carter made me watch from the corner. After a while, he started making me sit on the foot of the bed. And a couple of times—he—Vivienne, Carter made me ride on his back.”
Jesus Christ. I’ve gone from feeling nauseated to feeling faint. If it’s this terrible for me to hear this, what must it have been like for Jonah to grow up this way?
“Eventually he made Elise watch too,” Jonah says. “We were able to keep him from ever starting in on Rebecca and Maddox, though. We protected them. Sometimes I think that’s the only truly good thing I’ve ever done, protecting them. So they get to be the normal ones.” He runs one hand through his hair. “If you think I’m screwed up, you should meet Elise.”