The Gretchen Question

by Jessica Treadway

  He made a sound I interpreted at first as another dismissal, though a moment later it occurred to me that he’d allowed a bit of his own panic to escape, like steam from a kettle. “Impossible,” he told me, rising from his chair. “You need to get out of here, or I’ll call Security.” He went to his desk and picked up the phone, but did not dial. The only other time he’d ever gone to his desk, back when I was seeing him, was the day it was raining so hard out, thunderstorming really, and he had to get up to take from his drawer an inhaler, which he used discreetly, his back turned to me, looking out the window.

  “No, not impossible.” I remained seated. His agitation was giving me courage. I’ve always been that way; whenever I am nervous about something, but see that someone else is more nervous, my own nervousness vanishes. “You had me pinned,” I said. “You were between me and the door. I wanted to get out, I couldn’t get out, that’s rape.”

  He stared at me long and hard; I could feel his eyes on me, even though I didn’t look back. Quietly he said, “I remember now. This was always part of your presentation; you worried that you sometimes encouraged others to think of you as being something you were not. Something about your mother. And Christmas letters … do I have that right? This must be one of those times.”

  I growled at him. I growled! If we hadn’t been talking about what we were talking about, I would have been amused by the sound I made. He took a step back, and I thought he might topple—I wanted him to.

  “I could identify those two moles on the inside of your left thigh,” I told him. “You said, ‘That’s my extra pair of eyes, so I can see you better down there.’” At this he drew in more breath than he should have needed, and I realized he recognized his own line. “I could compel your DNA. There’s no statute of limitations; I looked it up.”

  These were not things I had planned to say, but I didn’t want him to know that. I did my best to keep my chin steady, and to avoid letting the room swim in front of me.

  It was his turn, but instead of speaking, he made an impatient waving gesture with the hand not holding the phone. How dare you, I thought, feeling sour phlegm rise in my throat. “We may have had consensual intercourse, I’ll grant you that. I shouldn’t have agreed to it, but I thought you were saner than you were.” Agreed to it! “Saner than you are.” He jabbed a finger toward me as if I might not understand who he was speaking to, otherwise. “Look, doctors have affairs with their patients all the time. Maybe not all the time, but often enough. They don’t have to lose their careers over it, there are ways of working it out. So whatever you think you have over me—this rape threat—it would be your word against mine.”

  I was tempted to be scared by this. But that was what he wanted, I realized.

  Then a familiar dismay overtook me. Was it possible that I was wrong about the rape part? He sounded so certain. And he was so angry at me … was the way he looked the way somebody might look if he’d been accused of something he didn’t do?

  But no: I remember the smell of his breath, and the way he forced that tongue tasting of peppermint mocha into my mouth. I was wearing jeans that day, and I went home with the waistband ripped. Feeling sore on top of stunned. I fell asleep in the bathtub, woke up two hours later in cold water. My thighs and my wrists were bruised. I remember his voice in my ear grunting This feels good, don’t tell me it doesn’t. Stop moving, you’re pissing me off

  Also: if he hadn’t done it, he had no reason to be angry—right? If he had nothing to be afraid of from what I said.

  He put the phone down. I thought he might come at me, as he had that day—he looked as if he wanted to—but instead he flexed and unflexed the fingers of both hands at his sides. An exercise aimed at relieving stress? I wondered if it had worked for him, before now.

  The pulse in his temple had gotten more pronounced. Thank God that was the only piece of resemblance, or I would have had a much harder time all these years. Aside from the little dent and the asthma, Will took after me.

  “You’ve made a mistake, coming here,” he said finally, when it became clear to both of us that he was not going to call Security or anyone else.

  “I could have pressed charges,” I told him. “I should have. But you were too important to me. Did you know that? It took me a long time just to realize what you’d done was rape.” I’d said the word more times in five minutes than in the past twenty years. It got easier each time; I didn’t know whether I should feel glad about this or not. “It doesn’t matter that it was that long ago, I’m still within my rights to file a paternity complaint.”

  Slowly, he came back from the desk to resume his position across from mine. I wondered if he was thinking about using my purse strap to strangle me.

  “I do want something from you,” I told him. “But it doesn’t involve pressing charges, or a paternity test.”

  As he shifted in his chair I caught a familiar look on his face, but it wasn’t because I’d seen it in him before. “You feel like throwing up, don’t you?” I said, as the bells in my own head went Ding ding ding. It was exactly the way Will looked when I asked him to clean up after Scout or when the urge to vomit grabbed him suddenly by the throat.

  “Jesus, you smell.” The therapist leaned back in his chair. “What, do you live in a Dumpster?” With a hand that shook slightly, he took a sip from the mug on the table beside us. Did he still drink that peppermint mocha? Peppermint was known to settle the stomach.

  “My son has emetophobia.” I refused to say Will’s name again—not for the therapist’s sake, but my own. I wouldn’t say our son, either. “I bet he got it from you.”

  “I don’t have emetophobia, for Christ’s sake. But why does it not surprise me that he does? With you for a mother.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” It didn’t mean anything. I had read all about it, there was nothing to suggest that a mother had anything to do with a child’s phobia, about vomiting or anything else. But hearing him say it upset me, that should be no surprise.

  “Do you remember,” I asked, to take his mind off the way I smelled, “how you used to leave the newspaper out there in the waiting room? Do you know that I tore a corner off a page once because it had a thumbprint on it, and I thought it might be yours? And I took it home with me. I actually thought that if I touched the thumbprint, it would be almost like you were there with me.” He looked down at the crease in his slacks—did what I said move him, somehow? “I had no idea if it was yours or not—anybody could have been reading that newspaper! It was probably some sociopath who had an appointment right before mine.”

  He gave a small smile, which chilled me; it was not a good smile. “I don’t treat sociopaths. I never have. It doesn’t do any good—they don’t get better.”

  “Ha.” Now I was the one who smiled. “So it’s a matter of integrity? I guess I don’t have to point out to you the irony of your saying that.”

  “It’s not integrity. Treating them would just be a waste of my time.” Grudgingly, silently, I gave him credit for being honest about this. You can see why it screwed me up so much to see him, and always had—I never knew what kind of person he really was, the one I wished him to be or the one he seemed to be, more of the time than not. The one who continued speaking now. “Look, just get on with it. What do you want?” I heard How can I get rid of you? but I don’t think he said it out loud.

  Get on with it, I echoed to myself. “My son wants to know who—fathered him. All his life I’ve told him it was an anonymous donor, that he’ll never be able to find out, that it’s just something he needs to accept. Make peace with. I thought it was working, he hadn’t said anything about it for a long time. But when he turned eighteen last year, he asked me again. And when I wouldn’t tell him, he got angry and cut me off—I haven’t seen him since Thanksgiving.”

  It took my breath away, saying those last words. Maybe because it was still a shock to me that it had been
that long, but it was also because I hardly ever say so much at once. And—it was a little hard, now, for me to breathe.

  “I came here to ask if you would let me tell him,” I said. “That it’s you. I don’t have to use the word father, I never have. And of course I wouldn’t tell him about the rape, or even that you were my therapist. I’d just say we met at the hospital or something—that wouldn’t even be a lie—that we fell in love” (I had to pause and run my tongue over my lips, before I could go on), “that one thing led to another, and he was conceived.”

  He grimaced when I said the part about falling in love. I tried to avoid letting it sting, but I failed to slam the door on that feeling fast enough.

  He let a long time go by, without speaking. Well, it might not actually have been a long time, but it felt that way. Then he said, “Why the fuck didn’t you just get an abortion? I would have paid for it.”

  It made the room shimmer, hearing him use the obscenity from that chair. So many times I’d sat across from him and listened to his voice, which had been so kind and gentle (hadn’t it?), the opposite of the cruelty I heard in it now.

  I told him I’d considered an abortion, though it wasn’t true. What was harder to admit to myself, when I could bear to, was that I’d gone through with the pregnancy because I wanted someone to love, and someone to love me back. It also gave me something to share with Grettie—motherhood, being a mother, we were in it together; we’ve ended up sharing more because of that than we ever could have, if I’d been alone.

  “You’ve never told anyone?” the therapist asked. “Not even … your woman friend?”

  I shook my head. “And I’m not saying we have to tell anybody now, except him. I’m not asking you to tell your family.” I had been feeling hot, but now I shivered; I wasn’t sure if it came from my body or the room. “I’d leave that up to you. I’d tell him it was delicate, he’d have to be content with knowing who you are, maybe you two could just have dinner from time to time. He’d have no claim on you—I’d make sure he understood that.”

  He laughed. He laughed! I felt the sound curdling in my stomach. He laughed as if I’d said something truly funny. “Maybe we could ‘just have dinner from time to time.’” When I heard my own words mocked by his voice, I thought I might pass out. “You’re a lunatic, you know that? You have some goddam nerve.”

  Even though I did not have my wits entirely about me, I wondered how he could say such a thing, when I had already mentioned the possibility of criminal charges. Was he calling my bluff? “You really are sick. You don’t get it, Roberta, do you?” He had never said my name before, I had never heard him say it. I told myself, Stop shaking. “There’s nothing I could possibly want less in this world than to meet any fucked-up kid of yours.”

  I gasped. Then I couldn’t stop gasping. I had decided before I came in that even if he didn’t agree to be identified or to meet Will, I would still tell Will the truth. I would give him the sanitized story I’d just recited, about how he had come to be conceived; I would ask his forgiveness for not telling him sooner; and, for his own sake, I would advise him not to go against the therapist’s wishes and try to contact him.

  But the worst I’d expected was that the therapist would be shocked by what I told him. Possibly even hurt because I’d kept this news from him, all these years. In all my imagining about this encounter, I had not envisioned the anger I’d seen in him today. The vitriol, the violence. I hadn’t thought of that word, violence, the day he raped me. To myself I said he got carried away. But now I saw that it had been just a corner of what I peeled off now.

  “Why did you really come to see me?” he asked, in the same tone he might use to inquire what kind of cars were available for him to rent. My gasping seemed to flummox him not at all. “After all this time?”

  I’d anticipated this question, and prepared an answer. I’d intended to use the phrase revised circumstances, the one that struck me so hard in a Joan Didion book; she was writing about her daughter who, six months after she walked down the aisle as a happy bride, fell sick with pneumonia, septic shock, and a brain bleed, all kinds of terrible things. The daughter ended up dying. She did not want to talk about those revised circumstances, Didion wrote. She wanted to believe that if she did not “dwell” on them she would wake one morning and find them corrected. I read this right after my second diagnosis (Grettie lent me the book) and, oh, I felt that way myself! I’ve thought about them every day since, those words. Revised circumstances. My circumstances have been revised, I was going to tell the therapist. But in the moment, I forgot.

  I wasn’t just sick, I told him. I was dying. He asked me what kind of cancer, and when I answered he said, “But that’s very treatable. Most women don’t—”

  “I know. Lucky me, I drew one of the rare short sticks.” What I would have given, twenty years ago, to have had something so dramatic to tell him, certain as I would have been of his sympathy and concern! But it would have been fake concern and sympathy, I saw now. It would have been aimed at getting me to come back to him, week after week. “Plus, I waited to have it checked out, longer than they told me I should.”

  He didn’t ask why, and I understood that he couldn’t have cared less; asking me what kind of cancer had just been to buy some time while he considered how to get rid of me, once and for all.

  Instead what he asked was, “But why did you come in person? You could have sent me a letter. An email. Or called.”

  I was absurdly proud of myself for producing, on the spot, an answer that sounded plausible. “Those things could leave a trace. A record of some kind. I didn’t want to do that, I wanted it just between us.”

  What I didn’t say: “I wanted to see you. I thought it was possible you might be able to explain everything. Why you did what you did to me, and how sorry you are. I had this fantasy that you would be happy about the idea of meeting Will and getting to know him.” I had this fantasy, I would never say, that I’ve been wrong all these years—that you aren’t that person, it didn’t happen the way I remembered. Though I didn’t really want that, either, because wouldn’t that be a tragedy of its own?

  I left it at that: “I wanted it just between us.”

  I wished I had been able to say more. Why didn’t I tell him, “Hey, I have an idea, why don’t you act as if you care about what I’m saying? As if you’re sorry for what you did back then, as if you want to know your own son, as if you give a shit about anybody besides yourself?”

  But of course, I didn’t. He said, “How much,” and got up to cross to his desk.

  “They told me maybe six months. But that was a while ago.”

  He gave another brusque wave at my answer. “No, how much do you want?” He had removed a checkbook from the drawer.

  I didn’t understand, at first. Then it dawned on me, the pieces clicking into place. “You want to buy me off?”

  “That’s really what you came for, isn’t it? If you actually think I’m a rapist, which I am not, I find it hard to believe you’d want your son to know that’s where he comes from.”

  “But I wouldn’t tell him that, I already said so.” It was true. Will would never get over knowing he’d been born out of a rape. He’d take it into himself, drink it like a poison that would always leave a trace, think it meant there was something wrong with him. That he was conceived in violence, in a crime, might mean to him that he was defective, a demon, some kind of freak. That this was the source of all he perceived to be wrong with him; worst of all, that he might turn out to be such a person himself.

  The therapist laughed again. “And I’m supposed to trust you?” His eyes moved to the photograph on his desk, the one of his wife and children. I knew the therapist hadn’t intended for me to see him glancing at the photo, but I also knew he could tell that I had. “Look, I’m sorry about what’s happening to you. I mean that.” (He didn’t mean it.) “But let’s make this work for b
oth of us, shall we?”

  I wanted so much to believe him, to believe he was sorry. Yet I could not.

  “You said he was eighteen. Is he in college?”

  I nodded. I no longer wanted him to have any information about Will, but he knew he could ask whatever he wanted, and he knew I would answer. We both knew it. It was in the air between us and always had been, my compliance to his will.

  “Well, he’ll need money for that, right? Once you’re gone. I’m guessing you don’t have a whole lot saved up—not enough, anyway. And I’m assuming you don’t have a spouse.” I had not given him any of this information; how could he tell? But I knew the answer: I wore it, my aloneness, like a wrong-fitting shawl. “So how about if I take care of his tuition, and we call it even. You never tell him anything, and I never hear from him.

  “And I mean ever, Roberta.” There it was again, that thrill at hearing my name in his voice. It made me sick to feel that way. “If he ever tries to see me, if he ever calls or writes, I’m sure you can imagine the kinds of things I could get him to believe.” He paused before delivering the final blow, and as I watched the light widen behind his eyes, it occurred to me that a part of him was enjoying this. “Including things about you, which might or might not be true.”

  It had been a mistake, telling him about the emetophobia. Now he knew my son was vulnerable on the inside, now he had something on him.

  His tuition—what it would cost for him to go to school for the next three years—was one of the things I had planned to talk to Will about, once I told him the cancer had returned. Grettie had already told me that she and Jack could help out, but I said No, he can take out more loans, that’s what they’re there for. Then let us loan it to him, she said.

  What the therapist was offering meant that Will could finish his degree without owing anyone. He’d have enough to manage, losing me, without also having such a debt hanging over his head. “You’re trying to bribe me,” I said.