by Julie Smith
“So that was my first experience with betrayal; there was my dad’s first, then my mother’s. I had to accept the loss of my parents, realize that neither of them really loved me. Maybe they thought they did, but they didn’t. They were always telling me to be a big girl, to act like a big girl, not to cry because big girls didn’t cry. They never let me be myself and never asked who I really was. They just wanted me to be what they wanted, a big girl who didn’t cry even when she got deserted by her parents and beaten by strangers. That’s why I’m so grateful for this group and so glad to be able to cry now.”
Skip wrote down “grateful” and put a one beside it. She’d decided to count how many people expressed their gratitude before the meeting was over; she also wrote “stuffing feelings,” “inner rhythms,” and “higher power.” There was an art to sharing, she was beginning to see, and it had to do with using the correct terms.
“I’ve read that true adults can’t be betrayed. That they pay attention to their feelings rather than stuffing them.” Here Skip gave the proper term a one. “That they can catch on to what’s happening early, that they protect themselves, take care of themselves, don’t let people take advantage of them.”
Was she ever going to shut her face? Even one or two of the regulars began restlessly to cross and uncross their legs.
“But maybe in some ways we never grow up. I was betrayed recently—lost my innocence a second time. And it was as if my kid was in control—the adult me didn’t know what to do, couldn’t stop it.”
Skip perked up. Undoubtedly this would be a story of a love affair gone wrong, possibly with someone in the room. And then if they were lucky, maybe that person would “share” his side. She didn’t know how much closer this got them to catching a murderer, but it was a diversion.
“I had breast cancer,” said Di, “and I came through it just fine. The irony of it was that my real ordeal started after my recovery. For the next six months I kept finding fibroid lumps in my other breast, and it scared me to death every time.”
Some of the men in the room paled.
“Finally it came time for my reconstruction, and the doctors all agreed that with my history the best thing was this operation in which they amputate the other breast and start from scratch.”
Skip heard several gasps.
“They build you two whole new breasts out of tissue from your abdomen. My plastic surgeon said it was really great because you got a tummy tuck along with your reconstruction. But he didn’t tell me I was going to have a hideous scar. That was the first thing.
“The second thing was, I noticed I couldn’t get out of bed without drawing my knees all the way up to my chin. The first time I went to the doctor, he looked at my breasts and said, ‘Those are the prettiest ones I’ve ever done.’ I said I didn’t seem to have any muscle tone in my stomach anymore, and he said, ‘Well, of course not, dear. You don’t have any muscles.’ And then he picked up one of my breasts, almost fondling it, and said to his nurse, ‘Didn’t I do a beautiful job?’
“I said, ‘What do you mean, I don’t have any muscles?’ and he said, ‘Well, I cut your muscles when I did the surgery. Now you’ve got a flat tummy and you’ll never have to do sit-ups again.’ Then he laughed. And he said, ‘You can’t do sit-ups again. But you’ve got one of the prettiest pairs of tits in the parish.’ “ She stopped and sobbed into a tissue. Then she said, just to make sure everyone got it, “He treated my body like a piece of sculpture he was working on!”
“Then great big ugly lumps popped out on my stomach. Fist-sized lumps. Several of them. And it hurt. It felt like something was loose in there. He said, ‘Oh, you think you’re in so much pain; all you ever do is think about yourself. Well, you’ve got a really weak abdominal wall. This time I’m going to put nylon netting in there to reinforce it. That’ll hold you!’ So I had to have another operation, and it didn’t hold. Now I have nylon netting in my stomach and another ugly lump. Every time I go to see my doctor he tells me I’ve just got the weakest abdominal wall he’s ever seen, but I sure have pretty tits. So it’s my fault half the operation didn’t work, but all to his credit the other half did.
“When he says that, I feel shamed just like I did when I was a little kid and I got beaten just because some pervert wanted to make a little girl lie down on his lap. I know it’s not my fault my body’s ugly now, I tell myself it’s not my fault, I know this man has betrayed me, has violated all his oaths—don’t they have to say, ‘First, do no harm,’ or something like that? I know he’s the one at fault and yet I still find he intimidates me, I don’t know how to tell him to stop leering at the part of the body he likes—that he ‘created’— and I don’t know how to stand up for myself with him. It’s as if I’m so discouraged, so unhappy about the whole thing, I’m nine years old again.” She paused and screamed, “And I can’t grow up!” The sentence came out with a new sob.
Everyone was quiet for a minute, taking it in. Skip felt shaken, ashamed of herself for imagining romantic trifling, and almost on the verge of tears herself. But she felt angry at Di as well. She wanted to shake her and say, “Quit complaining and do something! Sue! Call the Board of Medical Examiners. At the very least curse him out.”
And that, she told herself, is codependency in action. Of course you know how to run Di’s life. No problem.
Di said, “Thank you. I just needed to put that out.”
Sonny raised his hand, announced he was Sonny and he was codependent and was told hi.
“I guess you can be betrayed by someone who doesn’t mean to betray you,” he said, and stopped, gathering his thoughts. It was a while before he started again, and it occurred to Skip that this was difficult for him, that perhaps he hadn’t done it before.
“The worst thing that ever happened to me happened when I was four years old. I guess that’s loss of innocence. It felt more like loss of a limb or a vital organ. But it was like I grew up, I learned what the world was like when I was only four.”
His face was starting to contort with the effort it cost him not to cry. Skip felt her whole body starting to soften, her heart opening to him. There were things she hated about these groups, but many things she liked. What she liked best was when a successful, self-assured man made himself vulnerable, actually talked, in a roomful of people, about feelings.
They never talk to us, she thought. To women.
“There was only one person I really loved, who I thought really loved me. Well, let’s put it this way—there was only one person who was nice to me, and that was my grandfather.” His voice was going out of control. “He died at home, but first…” He started to sob, letting himself do it. Skip wondered why not just Sonny, but any of them, did it. Cried in front of strangers. Told these horribly painful stories. “First he was sick. He was sick for a long time. I was just a baby so it seemed like forever to me. Maybe it was six months, maybe two or three. I don’t know.
“It seemed like a game at first, having my grandpa home all day.” He stopped and smiled through his tears. “I didn’t call him Grandpa. It’s funny I can talk about this part of it, but I’m embarrassed to tell you what I really called him. Anyway, he was home all day and that made me happy, but then I noticed he couldn’t walk; he wasn’t just pretending, he really couldn’t. And he got so he didn’t look like himself. Sometimes he’d want me to sit by him for a long time, just holding his hand. But I’d get bored—you know how kids are—and I couldn’t do it very long.
“And then he got so he’d just lie there and moan. I’d get down on the floor and moan with him. Sometimes I’d get under his bed.” He smiled again, quite the Southern gentleman, rising to the occasion. “I was about the most miserable little kid you ever saw. And then one day he told me he was going to get well. He was a doctor. My father’s a doctor, we’re all doctors. So he said he was going to get well and I was happy again.” He contorted his face, squeezing his eyes shut. A tear or two escaped despite his best efforts. The words seemed squeezed out too:
“And that was the day he died.”
Sonny opened his eyes. “Thank you.”
Skip felt as if someone had been messing in her chest with a Roto-Rooter. She looked at Missy, sitting across the room from Sonny, not next to him as usual. Her body was shaking; she was holding a tissue to her mouth. Steve, next to her, was almost pale, looked as if he wanted to flee and probably did. Take that, she thought. Nobody asked you to come.
A couple of people talked whom Skip didn’t know—she noticed Abasolo and O’Rourke perking up—and then Abe did.
“I hardly knew my father,” he said, looking down at his bare lap—no teddy bear for Abe. “He thought the way to show his … affection was to work sixteen hours a day so we could have a pool and a color TV set before anyone else in town did.”
Points for sincerity, thought Skip. You almost brought yourself to say the I word.
“We were reform Jews,” he continued. “Reform Jews worship the TV set.”
A little on the rehearsed side.
“It was a bad feeling when I really got that; when I understood that for my parents nothing was important except the things they could get. And I was just one of their things. Another possession to be shown off as part of their success. So I thought I had to do what they wanted to make them look good. Make all A’s, get into Harvard, that kind of stuff.”
Bet you didn’t get into Harvard, but you’re hoping everyone’ll think you did.
“I didn’t know what I was doing, but in a way I turned out just like them. I married a woman I don’t think I ever really … uh … had any affection for. I guess I thought of her the way my parents thought of me—as just another possession.”
This sounds real. Do my ears deceive me?
“And I guess I got what I deserved. Betrayal breeds betrayal.” He paused for a long time. “She’s a bitch.”
A quickly stifled gasp went round the room.
“I guess I’m upset tonight because she called and tried to keep me from coming. She had the kids and she made me take them. You know why? Because she had a date. She went back on our agreement because she had a date. So I had to take the kids and get a baby-sitter just so she could go out on her damn date. And that was after she made me move to this burg in the first place. She uses the kids as a bludgeon.” He paused again, building tension. “Well, I picked her. I suppose it’s no more than I deserve.”
You’re not kidding.
“Thanks. I guess I’m a little angry tonight.”
Backwards, Abe. Skip had noticed that one of the conventions of these meetings was that often, before people started to share, they’d say how they were feeling. She liked it. It was honest and it prepared you—if they were sad or angry or something else hard to deal with, you were ready. Abe might not have understood how he felt at first, had probably meant to grab group sympathy on the coattails of the others, to use it for whatever advantage he could (possibly getting laid or maybe setting up a murder victim), but he had talked it through, however unwittingly, and at least figured out how he did feel. She gave him credit for that. A lot of people didn’t know.
I wonder if that’s one of the reasons people do this.
Nah. Not Abe. He’d never do anything without an ulterior motive.
Missy was speaking now, distractedly. Her eyes kept darting to Sonny and her voice kept failing her, kept coming out whispery and unwilling, but she seemed bent on getting something out.
“I’m having the kind of night I’ve had all my life. I came here determined to talk about something I need to talk about and I find myself so wrapped up in someone else’s problems I can hardly remember what it is. And it’s real important to me. I really need to say this, out front, in this group, but really what I want to do is keep my mouth shut so maybe we’ll get out of here early and I can start comforting the person I’m worried about.
“And it’s me I should be worried about. Me I should have my attention on. But I think if I put my attention on somebody else, then maybe we’ll get closer and closer and I’ll find myself that way. I’ll be reflected in the golden light of his love and that’s how I’ll know I exist and I’m worthwhile. Now I know that isn’t true. I know that I won’t find myself, that really what’ll happen is I’ll lose myself. Just like it’s always been. Intellectually I know that, but I still feel that way, do you understand?
“Listen to me asking for your approval. What’s wrong with me? I’m sorry. I want to talk. I want to say that when I heard the subject was betrayal, I knew my higher power was working because that’s what I need to talk about and what I would have talked about tonight even if the subject had been Good Things About Childhood.”
Skip looked at Sonny. His eyes were on her, seeming to say, “Go, Missy!” She hoped Missy was watching, knew she had such a staunch supporter.
“Well, there were a lot of good things about my childhood. We had money and my dad was prominent in the town we lived in and I was always popular in school, always the kid chosen to be the lead in the school play and later the homecoming queen. And why shouldn’t I have been? I worked so hard to please everybody.
“Because I knew that what I was doing with my dad was bad; really, really, really bad. And I knew he wouldn’t do it if I weren’t the kind of girl who was bad.”
She looked at her hands in her lap, tossed her head like a coltish teenager, started again. “I don’t know when it started. I can’t ever remember a Sunday when he didn’t say, ‘You look so pretty in your little dress. Climb up here and give me some sugar, Missy.’ And he’d pat his lap and I’d climb up.”
Skip could see perspiration on her upper lip, more starting at her hairline.
“And he’d put his hand up my dress.” She said it so quietly they’d all have missed it, except that everyone in the room knew by now what was coming. Skip looked around the room. O’Rourke’s eyes seemed to have sunk about three inches into his head, his body to have withdrawn itself into the tiny curve of the narrow chair. He looked half his usual size, and still shrinking. For once Skip suspected the man of having a human feeling deep in his toe or somewhere. Hodges held his head in his hands, clearly willing the thing to go away, just go away.
Abasolo was cool. He’d been going to AA for years—there was probably nothing he hadn’t heard.
“My mother’d be in the kitchen. He’d say it was our secret. The books say they all say that, but they don’t have to. I don’t know why they bother. No one would tell. No one would tell anyone, even her mother. It makes you feel so shamed. So humiliated. So small. You think the only way you can possibly function in the world is to make sure no one knows, no one ever finds out.”
She stopped, apparently remembering she was telling her own story and she was supposed to say “I”; the books said so. “At least that’s how I felt. Telling it is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. My therapist knows. My boyfriend knows. My incest group knows. And I’m not dead and I’m still functioning in the world.” It took her a while to get control of her face. “And now you know.”
A weird thing happened. Skip had been to certain meetings in which, if someone said he’d done something appropriate to the program—an overeater who’d “been abstinent for twenty-three days,” say—everyone applauded. She hadn’t been to this meeting enough to know if there was such a custom here, but nonetheless the whole group broke spontaneously into applause, including O’Rourke and Abasolo. Everyone seemed to need the release.
It was a hard act to follow, but these people weren’t into one-upping. None of them seemed to have a problem so trivial it couldn’t be aired. Everyone, it seemed, had been betrayed by their parents, either by abuse or neglect, and had gone on to repeat the cycle, finding new betrayers in adulthood.
Alex’s problem was just huge. “I didn’t get what I wanted today. My mother left my father when I was very young, and I guess I’m really afraid of women leaving me. It’s a funny thing—my father and I never got along that well, but I guess I was used to him. Being without him was like bein
g without one of my toes or something. He might be an asshole, but he’s my asshole if you know what I mean.”
Nervous laughter fluttered through the room.
“I thought that once you made a commitment to someone, you stuck with them. But she didn’t and I guess I can’t really forgive her for that. I guess I thought I could make him like me if I could spend more time with him. So maybe I blame women for taking away my father. I don’t know.
“Today I really felt bad—I had a bad break in business and I really needed someone to talk to. So I went to see an old friend and she wouldn’t see me. Sure, she might have had something else to do”—he twitched his shoulders, shrugging off the preposterous idea—“but I couldn’t help feeling the way I felt. The shrinks say there are no inappropriate feelings, so it can’t be wrong, the way I felt. Can it? I felt really bad, really rejected, really—well, betrayed, really. I really needed her and she wasn’t there.”
Really? thought Skip. She wondered if these groups could function without that word. It could make anyone sound sincere.
Without it Alex would have been in big trouble. Because he didn’t sound hurt, he sounded angry.
TWENTY-THREE
THERE WERE A few new faces at PJ’s for coffee that night—Cindy Lou’s black gorgeous one and Steve’s familiar one, for two. And the carefully made-up ones of two other women, shining with eagerness to chat up the new guy.
Or maybe that was just Skip’s proprietary assessment. Nini, plump, snow-skinned, with blacker hair than nature ever made, was clutching her breasts, one in each red-taloned hand. But not seductively; out of obvious distress. “Oh, Di, you poor thing, what a horrible story. What a terrible thing to have happen to you.”
