On a night several months later, after I’d had a few drinks, I started telling Kevin about my wilderness days. Hunting with Papa Dick when I was a kid, the day Apache was shot, the crazy road trip with Mom and Karl. Kevin was a great audience—interested and empathetic. The next thing I knew, I was telling him about Barry: his quiet approaches to my bed, my mother sleeping an arm’s-length away, and finally, my hand landing atop hers as it rested on his penis. I didn’t spare details about my encounters with him, even revealing the deepest part of my shame—that Barry hadn’t actually touched me but rather had made me touch him.
Kevin said all the right things. How it hadn’t been my fault, how my mother should have stopped it, how he wished he could get his hands on that bastard right now. Meanwhile I kept drinking, and then I decided to tell him a story I’d never told anyone. The time I had never even allowed myself to think about.
It had been a typical day in the half-finished house, meaning not typical at all. We’d all come home from a shopping trip in the middle of the day. After we unpacked groceries, I was sitting on my bed engrossed in The Call of the Wild when I heard the all-too-familiar noises that I dreaded coming from their bed a few feet away. Puzzled—because although they had no problem doing it in front of me, they usually didn’t do it in the middle of the day—I glanced up. Barry’s naked body was on top of my mother’s. I jumped up in disgust and made a dash for the front door. The problem was that I had to pass the foot end of their bed.
As I scurried by, Barry called out my name. I froze, involuntarily glancing his way.
“What are you looking at?” he asked with a laugh.
Beneath him, Mom was quietly murmuring to him to leave me alone. My head was spinning.
“Well, what are you looking at?” he asked me again.
“Nothing,” I replied. The room felt like it was squeezing the breath out of me. I had to get out, out, out—
“Nothing, my ass. Here, why don’t you take a better look? Stay awhile. Maybe you can learn a thing or two.”
I turned and fled, but not soon enough to miss seeing him shift position to give me a better view.
“You like it, don’t you?” he said, laughing again, as I bolted out the front door.
I ran as far away from the house as I could, until my lungs felt like they would burst. I didn’t know who I hated more: Mom, for being too weak to make him stop—or better yet, not let it happen at all—or Barry, because just a couple months ago, it had been me he wanted instead of Mom.
After I told Kevin that story, I felt like I’d had handfuls of mud smeared all over my body and shoved down my throat. I ran to the toilet, gagging. Kevin followed me.
“I don’t know how you forgive something like that,” he said, as he sat on the floor beside me, and I said nothing.
I knew he was trying to be supportive, but what Kevin didn’t understand—what no one who hadn’t experienced the ambivalence of a parent who was neglectful and selfish and weak but also loving and encouraging and even sacrificing at times could understand—was that his comment just made me feel worse. Almost accusatory, like I was devoid of a backbone for continuing to allow my mother to be in my life. But at the time, she was all I had. I couldn’t explain to him that when you’re eight years old and have nowhere else to turn, you do your best to ensure that the one person who hasn’t abandoned you never will. That you do that by pretending the horrible thing is no big deal, so she doesn’t have a reason to leave you. That as you grow older, you may still remember the horrible thing, but it happened decades ago, and by then it’s mixed up with so many kindnesses and moments of closeness between the two of you that you feel you have no right to strike her down. That degrading events like those, especially when combined with others, can affect every single choice you make later as an adult. And that even though you know that you sold your childhood soul to hold on to a bit of security, the last thing you want is for someone, however well-intentioned, to point that out to you.
The next day, as I lay in bed hungover and regretful, Kevin took my hand and spoke to me in a voice that was almost painfully earnest.
“I love you. You don’t have to be afraid. I want to know everything.” I shook my head as the gravity of what I’d revealed to him hit me full force. Would he see me differently now, picture a childish image of me touching a grown man’s penis? Did he think about me watching them? But despite my fears, I had to admit to myself that releasing my pain to someone had made me feel a little freer and a little less ashamed. For a short time after that, I felt closer to Kevin. And then Halloween night came.
The Germans didn’t really celebrate Halloween, but the Irish did, at least at their pubs. I dug through my closet and pulled together a cat costume, and Kevin went as a lumberjack. Drinks flowed, music blared, tables were danced on. Friends snapped photos of Kevin and me kissing and laughing. We finally stumbled home, giggling, Kevin’s arm slung low around my waist. Kevin was the type to stay up and watch TV after a party, but I fell into bed. Much later, I awoke briefly when I felt him lie down beside me. He smelled like way too much gin, so I rolled away from him. As I was drifting off to sleep again, I heard him mumbling.
“Hmm?” I asked, only half interested. He let out a long, drunk-sounding laugh. I pulled the pillow over my head. “What are you laughing at?” I asked irritably.
“You.”
I peeled the pillow off my ear. “Me? What did I do?”
“You, and that . . .” He was slurring, hard to understand, but one thing was clear: Dark Kevin was back.
I sat up straight, suddenly wide awake.
“What are you talking about?”
He grinned in the dim glow of the streetlight. “You liked it. I think you liked it.”
“Liked . . . what?”
“Watching them,” he said softly.
I couldn’t be certain. My gut told me all I needed to know, but Kevin denied and claimed forgetfulness and too much to drink, and then, just for good measure, he bought me a new outfit and tickets to see Soundgarden. And I couldn’t accuse him of something I wasn’t a hundred percent sure of. Right?
Our jobs kept us apart. During the week, I lived in an apartment in Munich, where I did many of my bookings, and Kevin lived a four-hour drive north in a small town where he trained all week and played tournament games on the weekends. If we wanted to see each other, it was up to me to visit him—and I did, making the drive nearly every weekend for three years. But after Halloween, I started taking more bookings away. It wasn’t a conscious decision but a progression that felt almost natural to me. I told him I had to work on the weekends and went out instead, dancing in a boozy blur at the clubs until morning. Coke had always been available in my world, and for the first time ever, I stopped saying no. But mostly, I drank. I drank until I felt infallible and a little bit wild and until the thought of leaving my husband didn’t fill me with fear, and then I drank some more. When I awoke the next morning, I was once again certain I’d never have the strength to follow through and sever myself from the one constant in my life.
Sometimes he and my mother became mixed up in my dreams—I’d be kissing him, he’d turn into Mom, I’d pull away, she’d ask me where I was going, I’d tell her I didn’t need her anymore, that I was going to divorce her. But even then, I didn’t put their parallel roles in my life together.
Instead I’d dress in my tightest clothes and put pretty waves in my hair and finally go to visit him, and when he tried to kiss me, I’d roll away from him.
“You’re just not touching me right,” I would say, not caring if my words hurt.
Shortly after that, I cheated on him for the first time.
The obvious course of action would have been to leave him. But Kevin represented two things that I desperately needed: a piece of normal in a world I sensed would spin completely out of control without his grounding presence, and a person I could punish—justifiably, in my mind—for the pain of my past. And so I stayed, and he pretended not to know wha
t was clearly true: that I was having an affair with Chris. It became the great white elephant in our relationship.
“I’ve got secrets too, you know,” he said to me one night, and I wondered if he was sleeping with someone else.
“Tell me what they are,” I drunkenly implored him a few weeks later, but he laughed at me and promised he never would.
I knew our relationship was becoming increasingly depraved, but it wasn’t enough to make either of us leave. I kept working and lying and visiting Kevin and lying some more and sleeping with Chris and wondering how long we could all go on like this.
Friends who knew my situation suggested I talk to someone about it, specifically my mother. It was pointless to explain to them that Mom, who was now living with Sam after a reconciliation, wasn’t exactly someone I could turn to for advice. But if one thing was certain, it was that my mother was the one person who wouldn’t—and couldn’t—judge me. One night, I poured myself some wine and dialled her number.
“Cea!” she said. “How lovely to hear from you, darling. I’ve been missing you.”
“I miss you too,” I replied, suddenly realizing it was true. There was something about Mom’s unfailing optimism that I’d never found in another living human being. It was one of the few things I deeply admired about her, especially when I thought about our shared past. Men had left her. She’d lost track of her parents. For years on end, she hadn’t had a penny to her name. But again and again, she had picked herself up and found a way for us, without ever complaining or victimizing herself.
“How’s work?” she asked.
“Great, really great. I’m pretty much fully booked for the next few months.”
“That’s wonderful, sweetheart. I’m so proud of you. You know that, right?”
My voice caught in my throat. “Of course.” I did know it. And maybe we could have a chance, I thought, if we tried our relationship on different ground. I hesitated and then blurted it out. “Hey, Mom, I was thinking. Do you want to come and visit me? I could send you a ticket.”
“Wellll . . .” she said slowly. “That would be kind of tough. I’d have to check with—”
“Yeah, right,” I interrupted before she could say his name. Just the sound of it on her tongue was enough to make my skin crawl. I took a deep breath, trying to control myself. “Mom, listen. Do you want to be a part of my life, or what?”
“Cea, what a silly question. Of course I do. Having you was the best thing I ever did, I’ve always told you that.”
“Yes. But you say that, and you don’t show it. Time and again, all you show me is that your boyfriends are more important than me.”
“Cea, don’t be that way. It’s not true—”
“But do you see why I might feel this way? Does it even make any sense to you?”
“I had you. I kept you. Doesn’t that tell you everything?”
“Yeah,” I said softly, as tears filled my eyes. “Your duties to me are over now.”
I hung up the phone and reached for a cigarette. I wanted to feel angry, but all I felt was sadness, which was always worse. Every time I talked to her, she went on about how strong and independent I was, as if that let her off the hook for not being there for me. And whenever I tried to reveal the truth—that the picture wasn’t quite as pretty as it seemed—she hid behind the shield of her boyfriend. But maybe it wasn’t fair of me to expect so much from the person who had at least stuck around to raise me. I did have two parents, after all.
I took a swig from my wineglass, gathering my courage. I would call my father. As I dialled his number, I rehearsed in my head the person I wanted to be: collected, together, happy. Not needy. I know, it’s been much too long [light laugh]. Things are really great! Did I mention in my last letter that I’m going to Africa for a job? So listen, I was wondering if you might ever have a reason to come this far across the globe. No? Well, I was thinking, we haven’t had much chance to spend time together, and I’m kind of travelling all over the place, so if you ever wanted to come my way it would be really great. I could take some time off . . .
I got his answering machine. I hung up, gulped more wine and then dug out my stationery set. It would be great to see you, I wrote to him. Let me know if you’d ever like to visit. As was my habit, I carried my empty wine bottle directly out to the recycle bin, so my roommate wouldn’t question how much I was drinking, and then I opened another bottle. I need you, Mom, I thought. I really need you.
But I didn’t have Mom. I had Kevin.
Two months later, Kevin and I went on another Band-Aid trip, this time to Italy. We spent the weekend in Venice, trying to stroll romantically by the canals and pose for smiling, coupley photos on the gondolas. My heart wasn’t in it, but Kevin was determinedly happy, cracking jokes and springing for pricey wines and announcing to anyone who would listen that he had the most beautiful wife in the world. I smiled tightly, embarrassed and guilty for feeling like I wanted to run away.
The next morning, we headed for Florence. I was driving, winding through the countryside on roads slicked with a light rain.
Halfway there, Kevin turned to me. “Well, I guess this is it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean . . . let’s stop pretending. You’re in love with someone else.”
I was just going into a curve in the road. I hit the brakes too hard, and our rented BMW fishtailed. The next thing I knew, the back of the car was careening into the cement divider. The vehicle spun around once and came to rest at the side of the road, facing the wrong way.
We were in the middle of nowhere. Kevin and I got out of the car and inspected the damage, and a passing motorist offered to call us a tow truck on his mobile phone.
“It will be here . . . one hour,” he said in broken English.
We thanked him and sat down on the gravelly shoulder to wait. No cars passed, and the silence settled over us. I lit a cigarette with shaking hands, wishing that a truck might run over me, or that at least that motorist had remained with us. Anything was better than facing this horrible moment of reckoning.
“How did you know his name?” I asked finally.
He laughed dryly. “You talk in your sleep. Always have.”
I nodded, humiliated. Who knew what else I’d been babbling at night? Maybe we’re even now, I thought. My infidelities for his betrayal of my trust.
As if reading my mind, Kevin turned to look at me. “We could see this differently. As a new start, you know? All the cards on the table. Hey, I’ve got my stuff too—maybe we should talk about it. I mean, even after everything, I still love you.”
I shook my head. Whether Kevin had mocked me that night or not made little difference, because his knowing my shame now was enough.
“It’ll never work,” I said softly, looking down the road away from him so I couldn’t see his face. One day, I thought, this would all just feel like a sad and distant dream.
Chapter 17
February 2015
Galiano Island, British Columbia
Nerves jangling, smile in place. My first literary festival. Stepping through the doors of the Galiano Inn, I glanced around for a familiar face. None were to be found, which just made me smile harder. These were the times I called on Tough Cea, because if there was one thing that still felt less than natural to me since my book came out, it was promotion. I’d never been one to talk about myself much, which was, of course, ridiculous considering I’d written a memoir. It was getting easier—dealing with the jumble of gratitude, wariness and even pride that came each time someone said to me, “I read your book.” What had started out as appreciation that anyone had read it had morphed into a slight guardedness when I was pressed for more details, and now, with practice, I’d become more open to people’s curiosity. But the face-to-face encounters were different from the emails, tweets and Facebook messages; I could read and respond to those at my leisure, giving thought to the written responses.
The festival coordinator waved at me from
across the room. Relieved, I was walking her way, when a woman of about sixty-five stepped toward me.
“Do you know me?” she asked in a friendly tone.
Long white hair, and the telltale flowing clothing of a lifetime hippie. She wasn’t familiar. “No, I’m sorry. Have we met?”
The woman nodded. “Long, long ago. I knew your grandparents. And you too, when you were a child. My husband, John, and I visited you several times when you lived in the tipis. John Bristow.”
An image flashed through my mind of a red-haired, bearded man grinning at me, mountains in the distance behind him. “Adrienne?”
“Yes! You remember me?”
“Of course!”
We hugged and then gazed at each other for a moment. Adrienne looked nothing like the young mother I remembered from four decades ago, holding her son’s and my hands as we tripped through meadows and streams.
“When I heard you were going to be here, I just had to come,” she continued, gesturing to the scene around us. People milled about, on their way to readings or workshops. “I have some pictures. Can I show them to you?”
“I’d love that,” I responded.
She drew a worn photo-developer envelope from her purse. “Your book, it just brought me right back to the wilderness, like I was reliving it. What a time that was!”
“Yes. It certainly was,” I said, flipping through old photos of my grandmother making bread, holding a small child in her lap. Me, I realized.
“Your family would have been proud. Dick might have been a little pissed off, but he’d have gotten over it.”
I laughed. “I don’t know. We saw things pretty differently, he and I.”
Adrienne leaned in and touched my shoulder. “After reading your book, I have to tell you that I questioned everything. My convictions, the lifestyle I led back then. I mean, I couldn’t help but wonder what I could have done differently. To rescue you, I mean.”
“Rescue me?” I repeated, taken aback. “Hey, um . . . don’t think twice about it.” I gave her a huge smile, as if proving how absolutely fine I was. I’d never thought of myself as a child who should have been rescued—that was for kids who were beaten, neglected, sexually abused. My childhood had only been brushed by those atrocities, and I’d always been loved—my mother had told me that I was, every single day, even if she hadn’t always shown me. And if the people who’d known me in the past had questioned my safety, I certainly didn’t see it as their responsibility to do anything about it.
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