by Julia Derek
I entered the bathroom and took my time doing my business. I felt I needed a few minutes alone to decompress. By the time I came out, Shane had moved to the kitchen where he had set the table and was cleaning up the kitchen counter. I had made a salad for lunch and hadn’t bothered to clean up after myself a few hours earlier. A wave of warmth rolled through me. My son could be so sweet. He really was a great kid.
“The pizzas should be here in like twenty, Mom,” he said as I hobbled into the kitchen and over to the table.
“Thanks, honey. That sounds great.” I took a seat and put away the cane behind me.
“Do you want some Pellegrino?” Shane was standing by the fridge.
“Sure, bring me some.”
He pulled out a big bottle of the sparkling water and came over to the table where he filled my glass first, then his.
I cocked a brow at him. “You’re having Pellegrino? I thought you didn’t like it.”
“I changed my mind. I’m older and wiser now. It’s better for me than soda.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle a little. “Yeah, that sure is true.”
The pizzas arrived when expected and Shane tipped the delivery guy, then returned to the table with the boxes. We devoured our pizzas in silence.
It wasn’t until they were almost gone that Shane brought up the subject that would make me lose twelve pounds in the next two weeks. The story that would make me even more convinced that I had to protect my son, do everything in my power to heal him, make him into a functioning adult. After he was done telling me, I couldn’t see anything as being his fault.
It was all my fault.
Every single thing he did was because I hadn’t protected him from all the evil in the world.
22
Mom,” he said when he had finished eating his pizza and gulped down two glasses of Pellegrino. He wiped his mouth with a paper towel that he had turned into napkins for us. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
I put down my silverware and focused on him instead of on the remainders of my own pizza. I could instantly tell that he wanted to tell me something of grave importance, so he deserved my full attention.
“Yes, honey. What’s going on?”
“I’ve wanted to tell you for so long.” He glanced at some distant spot beside me, as though in a trance. “But I never knew how. It was never the right time. But I’m older now. I feel I can do it now.”
Against my will, I was suddenly frowning and there was a painful tugging in my stomach area. Anxiety floated through me. Whatever it was Shane was about to break to me, the one thing I could be certain of was that it would not be anything good. Quite the opposite. I could literally feel it.
He put his big hands before his face, muttering something I couldn’t make out. Slowly, he rocked back and forth on the chair. Then he started to cry. In shock, I just stared at him at first.
I put a hand on his shoulder, as upset as he acted. “Shane, honey, what’s wrong? What’s happened? Please don’t be afraid to tell me. There’s nothing you can’t tell me. You know that, right? I’ll love you no less no matter what you tell me.” Oh God, please don’t have him confess to me that he has murdered someone in cold blood, I thought, not sure why this was the first thing that occurred to me. I honestly didn’t know if I’d be able to keep the promise I had just made him then. I would do my best, but I honestly didn’t know how I would react. The mere thought of it made me want to hurl up the pizza on the floor beside me.
He kept crying, his body trembling. He looked so vulnerable, so small and helpless all of a sudden. No, I will love him no matter what he’s done, I decided. He was my son and he had been traumatized under my watch. Well, mine and Peter’s. We were responsible for his behavior, him acting out. Of course I would still love him. How could I ever think otherwise?
I squeezed his shoulder with my hand. “Honey, please tell me what’s wrong. What happened? You can tell me. I won’t be mad, I swear.”
At long last, he lowered his hands and showed me his face again. Because of the redness, his teal eyes looked more blue than green, a startling, electrifying blue. I handed him a paper towel for him to dry his wet cheeks with. He took it and dabbed his puffy skin.
“Please don’t hate me once I’ve told you,” he whispered.
I grabbed his free hand firmly. “Of course I won’t hate you! Nothing you say or do can make me hate you. I love you too much to ever be able to hate you.”
He nodded, looking slightly relieved. “It wasn’t Uncle Tony who abused me.”
I stared at him, the tugging in my stomach increasing in strength, hurting me. I stifled the gasp that wanted to come out of my mouth. I felt dizzy with nausea. I forced myself to get a grip because I was acting ridiculous. Why was I thinking I already knew the answer? I didn’t. It could be anyone!
I cleared my throat and held Shane’s glance. “Okay. Then who was it?”
Shane’s chest rose and fell as he sighed. “It was—it was Dad.”
It was too late for me to go to the bathroom and throw up. The pizza was already coming out of me as I turned my head and tried to stand, splattering down on the colorful rag rug on the linoleum kitchen floor.
I leaned as far away as I could from Shane while grabbing hold of the back of my chair and the table edge so I didn’t fall over. I continued throwing up until there was nothing left to throw up, merely dry heaves. Cool sweat was suddenly coating my skin under my baggy top. My heart pounded violently in my chest. I felt like I was in a bad dream, but I knew I wasn’t.
“Mom,” Shane whispered. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you that much. I knew you’d be upset. I should’ve kept my mouth shut. Oh, why didn’t I just keep my mouth shut?”
“Please stop apologizing, Shane. It’s not your fault. I just wish you’d have told me sooner. A lot sooner.” Or not at all, a tiny voice inside me whispered. I instantly shut it down.
“I’m sorry.”
Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I turned to him. “Don’t be. I’m glad you told me. Please get me a bucket of hot water, detergent, and some towels. I need to clean this mess up. Okay?”
“Um, sure.” He got to his feet and hurried out of the kitchen. I could hear him jog across the hallway to the cupboards next to the bathroom.
“Grab the oldest towels you can find, please,” I called out, my eyes watery. I peered down at the big mess I had created, numb inside. Distractedly, I tore off paper towels that I tossed over it. So Peter had abused Shane then? His own father had abused him? How could I not have known? Suspected? I should have suspected what was going on, but I hadn’t. Not even once.
Oh God. Another wave of nausea surged through me, resulting in more dry heaves. They lasted several seconds. What about Tony? What had Tony done to Shane? Nothing at all? Why had he killed himself then? I closed my eyes when the realization rushed through me, and I forced myself to breathe deeply through my mouth. My nose was full of snot. No, that couldn’t be. But I knew it could very well be so.
Had Peter killed his own brother and made it appear like suicide? Had he suddenly freaked out that Shane would tell? The more I considered this, the more likely it seemed. Peter could easily have made it look like Tony had hanged himself, then written the confession himself. Tony was already depressed, so no one had questioned the fact that he’d committed suicide.
Especially not after we had read what was in the note that he had left on his pillow in his made bed. After reading that, everyone was thankful and fully understood why he had chosen to finally take his own life. He hadn’t been able to look himself in the mirror, for perfectly understandable reasons. He was a monster, and he had known it himself. He didn’t deserve to live, and, at the time, I remember thinking that he got away much too easily. He should have been forced to go to jail and have the prisoners rape and torture him to death.
Hanging was much too lenient a punishment for what he had done.
Oh God… So it had been Peter all alo
ng. Oh God.
The only reason we had known Shane had been sexually abused at all was because of that suicide note. Why didn’t Shane ever tell me? Peter must have scared him into not telling me. It was the only explanation. Seeing what Peter had done to Tony must have really freaked him out. No wonder he had chosen to kill his father. It had been the only way to stop the abuse. Once a pedophile always a pedophile. They always revert back to their old behavior even if they realize they need to stop it.
Another wave of nausea rode through me and I shivered with cold.
God, how Shane must have hated me for letting this happen to him, I mused. I, his mother, who was supposed to make sure nothing bad ever happened to him. Frankly, after learning this, I was amazed that he hadn’t tried to kill me, too. I shook my head. His father was a worse monster than I had imagined his brother to be. A full-blown psychopath. Well, as they say, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
The thoughts speeded through my head as I waited for Shane to return to the kitchen.
Had I ever seen signs of Peter being a psychopath? I searched my mind and couldn’t think of a single instance where that suspicion had even entered my mind. He had been a great guy from the get-go. We had met at a beer hall in Astoria, a neighborhood in Queens, when I was twenty-four and he twenty-seven. I, a struggling actress, and he, a junior accountant, at Ernst & Young. The connection between us had been instant and we had started dating seriously right away. We both wanted the same things out of life—a family that we could raise in the suburbs. He would bring home the dough while I pursued my creative urges. First, I’d make it as an actress, then, eventually become a stay-at-home mom. Neither of us had planned on Shane arriving as quickly as he did, but we were nonetheless excited about it even if it meant that I had to ditch my plans to pursue acting. Our son deserved my full attention, especially after we found out the abnormalities in his brain.
Peter had been the perfect man, always happy and attentive. Funny and resourceful. We never ever fought, not even when we found out our son’s diagnosis at age three and later, the abuse he’d been through. Mostly, we were insanely, Hallmark-card happy despite our challenges. Maybe that should have raised red flags for me. No one was as good and kind as Peter had been all the time. If anyone was ever grumpy and picked a fight, it was me. Thankfully, Peter had been so adept at putting me in a good mood again that any fight always defused before it could escalate into something serious. My occasional grumpiness was a symptom of me missing the acting a lot the first years as a stay-at-home mom. I simply loved playing different people, submerging myself in their heads, fully becoming them. I had been told I was very good at it, too. Extremely convincing. Peter had cured my agony by suggesting I start to write screenplays. It turned out that it did.
I suppose Peter had been the better actor in the family, I mused bitterly now. He sure had had me and everyone else fooled. I finally understood that he’d been acting all along, to hide what kind of a person he’d really been, the worst of all kinds: a pedophile and a psychopath. Yes, he had been an even better actor than me. If he had known just how good he’d been, maybe he’d have pursued such a career himself instead of wasting his talents on accounting.
“Mom?” I turned my head slowly toward the doorway and spotted Shane standing there with a bucket in one hand and a bunch of old towels under his other arm. I forced myself to focus on the here and now. There was nothing I could do about the past.
Together, we cleaned up the mess I had made, no one saying a word in the meantime.
23
We threw out the rag rug instead of attempting to clean it. It was cheap, so it made more sense to buy a new one given its soiled state. We spent thirty minutes scrubbing the blue linoleum kitchen floor with strong detergents that made the sour smell of vomit fade away. The hard, monotonous manual labor was just what I needed in that moment. I didn’t want to think about what kind of person I had been married to. I could do that later, when I was alone. Right now, Shane needed my full attention. I couldn’t give him that if I was crawling on the floor, bawling and screaming curses at a god I no longer believed existed. Not that I had ever been very religious; I was more of a spiritual person. Now, though, I really didn’t think there was a god anywhere, or at least not one I could look up to and love. Making my husband and my son people with psychopathic tendencies, then adding the pedophilia and incest on top of that, was just too much for me to handle that evening.
When we were satisfied it was clean enough, we went to have a seat in the living room, next to each other on the same couch. I felt less sad now and instead anger was flowing through my veins. Ice cold anger and determination to stand by my son no matter what.
He was going to have a good life. I refused to let anything else bad happen to him. With the right treatment, he would evolve into a fine person. Unlike Peter’s, Shane’s brain was no way near fully developed, so he could definitely be fixed. I was glad that Shane had killed Peter, because, this way, he couldn’t hurt anyone else. I didn’t even want to think about what other horrors my dead husband might have perpetrated; surely, Shane hadn’t been his first victim. Even so, I should focus on what I knew, the damage he had done to our son. Whatever his abuse had resulted in could be reversed if I tried hard enough. Psychology and neuroscience were both young sciences. There was a lot to be discovered yet. I would devote the rest of my life to make sure I found a solution. A cure for Shane. I owed him that.
“Shane,” I began and turned my body toward him. “Why didn’t you tell me what your father had been doing to you?” I had to know this despite that it would make Shane uncomfortable. I needed to know what else Peter had done to silence our chatty, cheerful son.
He averted his gaze and stared at the black TV screen. He kept picking at his nails.
“Please tell me why,” I pleaded with him.
“Dad said he would kill me if I ever told you,” he whispered, lowering his gaze to the floor. “I didn’t want to die.”
Peter had threatened to kill him? Even though it only confirmed my earlier suspicions, I felt like I had been shot in the heart in that moment. I couldn’t even begin to imagine the trauma Shane had been through. He’d only just turned five when the abuse started. The terror he must have experienced at the hands of a person who was supposed to love and protect him, be his hero, not someone to fear, was incomprehensible. I couldn’t imagine the physical pain he must have experienced each time his father violated him. The humiliation. The doctors had explained to both me and Peter exactly what had been done to our son. There had been lots of tearing in the rectal area, so there was no doubt he had been raped. Repeatedly. Oh God.
He turned to look at me then and big tears fell down his cheeks. “I was too scared to tell you. So I killed him instead. I did it on purpose, but I had no choice. Do you think you can forgive me, Mom? I know it’s wrong to kill another person. I know you loved him so much, but it hurt so much. I just wanted him to stop.”
I pulled him toward me and hugged him close. “Shh,” I whispered in his ear. “The one who should beg for forgiveness is me. Forgiveness from you, who’s been put through hell on earth. I’m glad you killed him, Shane. I’m just sorry I couldn’t have done it for you. He got what he deserved. He was a monster. I can’t believe I ever loved a monster.” I really couldn’t. How could I not have even suspected what was going on? It was unforgivable.
I let go of him and placed my hands on his shoulders, holding his gaze.
“Will you ever be able to forgive me, Shane?”
He looked confused. “Forgive you for what? I never thought any of it was your fault. You didn’t make him do what he did to me, did you?”
“No, but”—I averted my gaze from my son’s—“I should have stopped him before he could hurt you. I should have known. I’m your mother, for God’s sake! Mothers always sense these kinds of things. Why didn’t I?” I realized tears were streaming down my cheeks then, blinding me.
Shane hugged me hard, pressin
g his cheek to my chest. “Please don’t cry, Mom. I’m not mad at you. It wasn’t your fault. Any of it. It was his. Only his.”
His words only made me feel worse. I hugged him back, stroking his smooth hair over and over. He was such a good kid. Despite everything he’d been through, he was still such an amazingly kind person.
Slowly, we let go of each other. Shane handed me a tissue from a Kleenex box on an end table. Gratefully, I took it from him and dabbed my wet face. He smiled at me.
“Wanna watch a movie?” he asked. “Like, Star Wars or The Goonies?”
Those two were Shane’s favorite movies at the moment. “Or how about Pretty Woman? You love Pretty Woman. It’ll cheer you up.”
I ran a knuckle across his cheek. My son was so not a psychopath, trying so hard to make me happy again. “Let’s watch The Goonies,” I said and smiled at him.
24
The following morning I nearly choked on my morning coffee. I was watching the local news right after Shane had left for school:
“…an anonymous tip to the NYPD has led to a breakthrough in the gruesome murder of Dr. Jonathan Wilkins,” the female anchor stated. “The NYPD is now on the lookout for a Caucasian boy about twelve or thirteen years old with light brown hair and piercing blue eyes. He is skinny and around five foot eight. According to the tipster, the boy came out of the walk-up building where Dr. Wilkins lived about three a.m. the Thursday morning when the psychologist was killed. He was wearing jeans and a baggy, light gray hoodie that was stained with blood…”
That was all I needed to hear to pick up my phone and call my son’s number.
“Hi, Mom,” he answered after the second ring, a little out of breath. “I’m about to walk into the subway. What’s up?”
