“Nothing wrong with spontaneity.”
“No, but there’s something wrong with me. I feel it in my shoulders and at the back of my neck,” she said. “If a boy or a man touches me there, I can’t help myself. When Marty put his hand on my shoulder, he was just being friendly, but after that he couldn’t stop me. I’ve been like that ever since I was fourteen.”
“With other kids at school?”
“And two teachers.”
“What teachers?”
“I won’t say, Daddy. They shouldn’t have done it, but I’m the one who came on to them.”
Again I thought about being guilty. I humiliated my daughter by shining a light on her indiscretion. Now she opened a door for me to pass through. Where was I when she was so vulnerable? Where was I when she was a child having sex with men? And why would I burden her with my troubles? I felt responsible but out of control, like when I would go out on a drinking binge in California and Colorado.
My little ugly duckling, that’s what I had always thought about Seela. Could she have read my thoughts? Had I ever called her beautiful, as she was to me now? Had I looked into her eyes when she got home from having sex in the cloakroom with Mr. Hodges or maybe Mr. Rhynne?
My strength left me and I fell to my knees in the wet sand. Seela knelt down beside me.
“Don’t tell Mommy,” she said, “not ever.”
“Have you written about any of this in your diary?” I asked. “No one knows. I haven’t written about it and I haven’t told anyone, not a soul but you.”
The cold wave on my knees sent a tremor through me. And a thought came into my mind.
“On those days that you, that you did that, what did you write in your journal?”
“I just wrote down things that happened a long time ago,” she said, “or I made something up.”
She was my daughter all right. She protected herself automatically, like a seasoned boxer or some amphibian hatched onshore but who instinctively knows to run for the water before the ominous shadows descend.
“Would you consider going into therapy for a while, Seel?”
“You think I’m crazy?”
“Uh-uh, no. But I do think that you feel guilty for things you’ve done, and if you can talk to somebody who’s safe, maybe you’ll learn how not to feel bad.”
“But I don’t feel all that bad most of the time,” she said.
“Yeah, I know. But sometimes isn’t it like you can’t feel anything? Like there’s a dead space where your life ought to be?”
The glow of realization in her eyes told me I was right. My daughter had been created out of my own cold remove.
She put her arms around my neck and I felt naked, exposed. The passion of her hug was one thing, but there was much more going on. It felt as if I were on an abandoned beach with the first true love of my life. And in a way it was true. My ability to touch her was electrifying — something that I hadn’t felt for so long I couldn’t remember the last time it had happened. My heart was pounding. My breath was ragged and out of control.
“Daddy, you’re hurting me.”
“Let’s go wake your mother up and get some breakfast, okay?” I said.
On our walk back to the house Seela said, “I’d like that, Daddy.”
“What?”
“To see a psychologist. I’d like to talk to somebody about how I feel.”
I called my own therapist after pancakes and bacon at Myrtle’s Seaside Diner.
“I was waiting for you,” he said.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Shriver. I needed to take my family away. They’re hurting and most of it is because of me.”
“What about tomorrow?”
“I don’t know if we’ll be back. We might stay here another day.”
“If you can’t make it,” Shriver said, “I’ll keep the appointment open. I know you’re going through a lot, but try to get in to see me.”
“I can’t make it in the morning,” I said, “but I could do it about three.”
“Three then.”
I hung up and Mona was standing there smiling at me. Smiling. When was the last time that had happened?
That was the last day that we were a family: Mona, Seela, and Ben. We rented a rowboat but never made it more than a hundred feet from the dock. There was a strong current that our oars couldn’t master. But we laughed a lot and then spent the afternoon swimming. At least Seela and her mother did. I’m not a very good swimmer. I get frantic in the water, fearing I might sink. So I lay down on the sand and drifted in and out of wakefulness, having little naps and blinking at the sun.
In one reverie I was in a garden in Colorado in the spring. I was walking with a brown and beautiful woman wearing a see-through, gossamer white dress. Her dark nipples were hard, pressing against the pale fabric. We stopped at a rosebush with large orange and red and yellow flowers. The woman leaned toward a huge rose, got the whole thing in her mouth somehow, and bit it off. As she chewed the petals, I noticed that a thorn had tom her bottom lip. She felt the pain and licked off the blood and then smiled her bloody and beautiful smile for me.
I awoke with a start to see my wife and daughter on their knees on either side of me.
“Take us to dinner,” Mona said.
“Yeah,” Seela added.
That night our daughter fell asleep early. Mona and I were still wide awake. We had gone to bed, however, because that’s what we were used to doing. We had even kissed good-night but our eyes remained open.
I was thinking about Star Knowland and her testimony that I had murdered a man twenty-some years ago. Certainly there was the possibility in the air that I would spend the rest of my life in a Western prison. It didn’t matter if I was guilty or not. I could be convicted.
Fear was gnawing at me. It was building into panic when I turned to Mona and said, “Tell me how this thing with Harvard Yard started.”
“I thought this was a vacation, Ben.”
“It’s after midnight. By noon tomorrow you’ll be back at work. He’ll come to your office and you’ll fill into his big, strong arms.”
“It’s over between us,” she said, not looking at me.
“You mean, if he came to you and said he was sorry and that he loved you, you’d tell him no and spend the rest of your life with me?”
It almost was funny, how honest Mona was. She heard my words and considered them. Of course she’d run to Harvard; he was Ivy League, whereas I was just a two-year training college.
“Tell me,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because I’m sitting here in the dark thinking about prison. Because you knew about Barbara Knowland and didn’t even say a word. Not only that, you left me alone in the house to fend for myself when Winston Meeks was looking for me. Because you would have told him where I was if I had told you.”
Mona sat up exposing her breasts. This revelation was shockingly unsexual.
“You wouldn’t understand, Ben,” she said.
“What?”
“I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stop myself.”
“Why wouldn’t I understand that?”
“Because your whole life is like a day-planner. You wake up at the same time every day whether or not there’s an alarm or clouds or sun or if the curtains are pulled. Because you go to work each day and come home every night and you’re never mad or excited or frustrated. Because you never tell me that I need to do more or to be home. You never get jealous when men call and I flirt with them on the phone.”
“I was jealous of Harvard Yard.”
“His name is Rollins.”
“I don’t care what his name is.”
“That was the first time,” she said, “the first time you ever got the least bit jealous and I had already been fucking him for over a month.”