Equal Access (19 page)

--Psalm 22:2

Monday morning Dulsie left earlier than usual
for work, and Shad decided to go in earlier as well. Although his
impending discussion with Dulsie was largely what simmered in the
back of Shad’s mind, another matter he had been delaying over
occasionally surfaced in his thoughts. Wally was still out there.
And Shad had been a little too willing to focus on his other
problems instead of how to handle this dilemma.

Wally also wasn’t trying to contact him. Shad
wasn’t sure if he should find this recalcitrance on Wally’s part
unusual or not. But that fact did keep popping up occasionally in
his thoughts, so Shad figured even he had been able to assign some
kind of meaning to it.

Despite the fact it was a typical Monday at
the office when everything seemed to not work out the way it was
supposed to, Shad was able to head home by four-thirty. Upon
arriving at the house he saw Dulsie had beaten him there, which she
often did. He was still going to wait to broach the topic about
their family plans until after they had eaten and were ready to
start settling in for the evening.

When Shad walked into the living room, Dulsie
walked out from their bedroom. She was still wearing the purple
blouse and green skirt she had worn to work this morning, so Dulsie
apparently hadn’t been home very long.

She greeted him with a sparkling grin. “Hey
there, stud.”

“Hey there.” Shad placed his hands on her
hips as Dulsie stepped up to him and gave him a kiss. Then she
clasped her hands behind his neck and beamed up at him.

“I have a little surprise for you.”

There was no telling what she’d come up with
this time. “And what’s that?”

“I’ll give you a clue. Right now it’s smaller
than a breadbox.”

Her clue only mystified him more. “Right
now?”

“And in about nine months, actually less,
it’s gonna be a little bigger than a breadbox.”

Nine
months
. The significance
of those two words weighed heavily in his mind. No, surely not. Not
now
.

“You mean you can’t guess?” Dulsie smirked
when Shad hadn’t responded for several seconds.

“I don’t dare.” His voice was almost a hoarse
whisper.

Dulsie chuckled. “Then I’ll end the suspense
for you. Before work today I swung by the store to get a pregnancy
test. And according to it, we’re having a baby.”

Shad stared at her. The entire world seemed
to have fallen away and all that was left was the two of them ...
and the truth.

The truth was staring Shad in the face as
intently as Dulsie was smiling up at him. Why did this have to
happen now? Why were all these things happening to him now, piling
upon him as though trying to crush Shad under their weight? Why
couldn’t he have more time to take care of each crisis in its turn?
Why did time seem to be so rapidly running out on him?

“When?” Shad croaked.

“Oh, in more like eight and a half months.”
Dulsie’s smile was almost smug. “I’ve never been more than two days
late before, so I had a pretty darn good idea what was going
on.”

“Is there ... a chance the test could be
wrong?”

“Not when the result is positive.” Dulsie
leaned against him while continuing to hang from his neck. “Stop
acting so surprised,
Daddy
. It’s not like we don’t know how
it happened.”

As Shad stared at Dulsie the numbness that
started in the pit of his stomach crept into his torso and limbs.
The world seemed to have fallen away because his world was falling
apart. What if Dulsie had a daughter? Actually, the way his life
had been going lately, Shad was inclined to be convinced they were
going to have a daughter. And that could only mean he was going to
have to choose the path that would make him hurt Dulsie more.

Dulsie was still smiling, but it had faded
slightly and her brow furrowed. “Shad? This is the part where
you’re supposed to say how happy you are.”

Shad could only stare at her. Words evaded
him as though he were trying to grasp fluffy cottonwood seeds that
darted about just out of reach on the breeze. The happiness he was
supposed to experience had been stolen from him by the accursed
demon which lurked inside.

Dulsie stopped leaning against him but left
her hands clasped behind Shad’s neck as she peered up at him.
“What’s going on with you?”

This wasn’t fair. This was supposed to be one
of the brightest moments of Shad’s life, and yet all he could feel
was dismay and remorse and lots and lots of guilt. His time had run
out. Shad’s plans lay in ruins on a scorched plain, no longer
protected or concealed. But worst of all he was going to have to
drag Dulsie into this devastation he’d created.

Dulsie took half a step back as she moved her
hands to his shoulders. “You’re starting to freak me out a little
here.”

“I’m sorry,” Shad murmured.

Dulsie cocked her head to one side as she
studied his face. “I think we qualify as co-conspirators.”

“I can’t....” The words he needed to say were
so awful that Shad couldn’t bear to speak them.

Dulsie frowned. “You already did.”

“I don’t ... want to do this.”

Dulsie stared at him as though Shad had
sprouted antenna. “It’s a little late to change your mind about
this.”

“It’s not....” Shad reached up and clasped
Dulsie’s wrists in his hands. As he took a step back Shad lowered
her arms and released them. “I haven’t changed my mind ... exactly.
Something else changed.”

Dulsie stood with her arms at her sides and
was momentarily the one at loss for words. Years ago Shad would
occasionally drop an emotional mask over his face, making him
inscrutable even to her. Usually he did this whenever Shad was
undergoing extreme personal duress, and she could see that mask
settling over him now. Dulsie focused on the ripple of pain in his
eyes because she knew it would be the last flicker of his
personality before Shad completely shut her out.

Pain? Why?

“What change?” Dulsie could feel her stomach
twinge. His last emotional flat line had been before they were even
married, but this one somehow seemed to loom as threatening.

“I thought it was gone. I never told you
about it because I thought I would never have to deal with it
again.”

“It? What’s it? What are you talking
about?”

“There was ... there is ... I have this....”
Shad’s eyes became dull as his gaze drifted downward and to the
side like a wrecked ship being swallowed by the depths of the
ocean. Dulsie knew she’d lost him.

“Tell me what’s wrong.” Dulsie made sure her
demeanor remained calm even though an unknown panic had been
sparked inside her.

As Shad spoke again his voice was monotone
and completely devoid of emotion. “I have issues with
pedophilia.”

Dulsie could practically feel the weight of
his statement settle on her chest. Was she hearing him correctly?
Surely Shad didn’t really just say that?

“What do you mean?” Dulsie’s own voice seemed
to be scarcely more than a whisper, as though the wind had been
knocked out of her.

“I mean ... I experience the symptoms of
pedophilia. Again. I thought it was gone. I haven’t felt this way
for years. But last week.... It’s happened more than once. It’s
back. Definitely.”

Some sort of eerie sensation began spreading
through her, starting in the marrow of Dulsie’s bones and working
its way to her skin. How could this be? How could Shad actually be
attracted to children? Then her panic flared.

What exactly did “It’s happened more than
once” mean?

“Have you ever ... touched a child like
that?” Dulsie heard the words come from her mouth in a hoarse
whisper but they seemed to arise by their own accord. A very
unpleasant sensation prickled through her as she braced to hear an
answer Dulsie almost feared.

“No.” Shad’s response was immediate and there
was even some emotional force behind it.

Dulsie felt as though she’d been holding her
breath for the last minute, and relief swept through her as she
drew in a lungful of air. All right, he hadn’t
done
anything
wrong. But still that eerie sensation writhed within her as Dulsie
tried to better grasp what had just happened.

“How is it – that is – how can you get
something like that?” Some of the strength had returned to her
voice, but Dulsie noticed she now felt a little weak in the
knees.

“I don’t know.” Shad was flat again. “Nobody
knows.”

“What
do
you know?”

“I know it started by the time I was twelve.
I know I lived with it every day until college. I know it was a
particularly pervasive manifestation.”

“A what?”

Shad’s gaze rose slightly but he still didn’t
make eye contact. “It’s not the same for everyone. Some people have
it with a regular sex drive and some people have it with other
problems and some people have it ... like I did. It was exclusive.
I ... wasn’t attracted to any adult women.”

Dulsie stared at him as their history flashed
through her memory. When their relationship started to grow closer,
he had always been the perfect gentleman. It wasn’t until they were
engaged Shad did a bit of a “Mr. Hyde” turn. Although he always
immediately obeyed her “Stop,” Dulsie quickly figured out he
assigned her with full responsibility of saving anything for their
wedding night. If she understood him correctly, Shad shouldn’t be
as
interested
in her as he had proven himself to be for over
six years. Then she remembered a little fact about herself, and the
eeriness rippled through Dulsie again.

“But you were attracted to me because I
reminded you of a child?”

“Not anymore.”

“Not
anymore
?”

“It started one day you were at my apartment.
You told that joke about the girl who fell in the mud hole, and you
imitated a little girl. I ... had a response to that.” Shad’s voice
was not quite so monotone, but it remained low and hushed. “It was
a response to the wrong stimulus, but at least you were actually an
adult woman. You were the first adult. You’ve been the only
adult....” His voice trailed away as Shad’s gaze returned to the
floor.

Dulsie continued to stare at him as she tried
to piece together what Shad was saying. The memory that was so
obviously burned into his brain was elusive for her. Dulsie wasn’t
even sure what the joke was Shad had referred to. But this event
apparently happened shortly after she started college. So that
could only mean –

“That was why you started going out with
me?”

There was a flicker in his eyes as Shad
removed the carrying case from his shoulder and took a step toward
the couch to deposit it there. “At first I hoped to use that memory
to help condition me toward preferring adult women. It didn’t work,
and what I didn’t foresee was that focusing on you in that way
would make me ... want to be with you.” Shad seemed to stare at the
far end of the couch. “I had a choice. I either had to get over you
or win you over. I chose the second option because....” A tremor of
tenderness stirred in his voice. “It seemed like it was meant to
be.”

Dulsie wished those words could have lifted
the weight from her heart, but she was still trying to comprehend
how Shad could be the way he was. “How did you manage to hide it so
well? Why didn’t I notice something wrong?”

“I believed it was abolished. There came a
point that I realized ... a few weeks had passed where I wasn’t
having those impulses anymore. We had just started actually going
out, and time went on and it never came back. By the time we were
engaged I was convinced it was gone.” Shad’s voice cracked a
little. “So I never told you.”

Dulsie could tell this revelation was even
harder on Shad than when he recounted years ago some of the abusive
events of his childhood. Back then he’d been able to keep his
emotions perfectly neutral, as though Shad was sharing a story that
he actually found a little boring about somebody else. The
breakthroughs of emotion Shad was experiencing now proved how hard
he was struggling to keep them at bay. When they were kids Dulsie
had started to good-naturedly refer to him as Spock because she had
been mystified by his reserved behavior. The confirmation Shad had
been abused helped to explain that, and suddenly Dulsie remembered
there was much about his childhood he still hadn’t told her.

Her voice became hoarse as Dulsie found
herself contemplating that yet another act of evil had been
perpetrated against Shad. “So did you ... could this be ... were
you molested as a child?”

Shad’s focus remained on the end of the
couch, and for several seconds he was as still and as quiet as a
stone statue. When he finally spoke, only Shad’s mouth moved, and
his tone was low.

“It hasn’t been proven that childhood
molestation leads to pedophilia.” The fact he tried to skirt her
question confirmed what happened even before Shad added the next
statements. “Don’t worry, you’re safe. I got myself tested for
everything. They all came back clean.”

Her heart ached from more than just the
crushing weight. And her sympathy for him only made Dulsie’s next
question even harder to ask.

“So ... is it only girls? Or do you also ...
what about boys?”

“Only girls.” Shad was as still and
emotionless as she’d ever seen him. “Four to six years old.”

Dulsie was starting to feel a little sick to
her stomach. Why did he have to be like
this
? Of all the
psychosis and neurosis out there, why did Shad have to be stricken
with something so abhorrent? Of all the abuse he’d suffered as a
child, why was it only the molestation seemed to stick to him?

“Why girls?” Dulsie could hardly believe she
was trying so hard to understand something she found incredibly
detestable. “Weren’t you molested by men?”