Jack & Jill (11 page)

"Wait," I said, and only J
enny was slow in giving me her attention.

"They're going to miss—" Chris started to say, and I waved away his words.

"I'll drive them."

The kids looked at each other, surprised.

"You sure?" Chris asked.

"Yes. I want to."
I gave the kids as warm a smile as I could muster. "It's been a while since Mommy drove you guys, right?"

Sam nodded. Jenny shrugged.

The benefit for the kids of being driven to school was an extra forty minutes before they had to leave. For Sam, this meant a quick fix of cartoons; for Jenny, extra talk-time on her cell with her best friend Sarah.

Chris looked as if he wasn't quite sure what to do with himself now that the impetus of the morning had been stalled so unexpectedly. Hands on hips, he looked around the kitchen. I watched him for a moment, carefully, then pushed back my chair and rose. That caught his attention and he offered me a slight smile lit more by hope than affection.

"I'm going to take a shower," I said.

* * *

There was more than one ulterior motive behind my offer to drive the kids to school.

First, I wanted to get out of the house and away from Chris now that he had made the inconvenient decision to take the day off. I anticipated endless hours of him hovering around me, waiting for some small sign tha
t I was willing to let him in, if only so he could plead his case sober after making the drunken mistake of confessing in the first place.

Second
ly, I needed to talk to the children without their father present. And as I turned the truck out of our driveway, I looked at them both in the mirror.

"Sam, tell your sister to turn the music off. I need to talk to her."

I watched as he tugged on her sleeve. She jerked away from him. He poked her with a finger and she glared, bunched her fist to threaten him with a punch, until she saw my eyes in the mirror. She sighed, did not remove the ear buds, but turned the iPod off.

"What?" she said.

"I want to ask you a question."

"Okay, so ask."

"You too, Sam."

He said nothing, just looked at his sister, then back to the mirror.

I waited until the house was out of view, then slowed and angled the car into the long winding driveway of the Crescent View Horse Ranch. In the distance, backlit by the sun, the half-dozen or so horses out in the fields looked majestic. I sighed, killed the engine and turned around in my seat so I was facing the children.

"This isn't an easy question to ask, and it's not going to be an easy one for either of you to answer. But I want you both to know that even though I haven't been there
for you much over the past few months, I'm here for you now, and you can tell me anything, no matter how bad. Ok?"

Sam nodded eagerly, excited by the mystery. Jenny frowned. "What's this about?"

The words crowded my head, alternate means of conveying such a terrible question suggesting themselves in a maddening rush until my headache began again. I massaged my temple with a trembling hand and closed my eyes for a moment, willing it to leave me be, if only for a little while.

"Mom
my?" That was Sam's voice, filled with concern.

"I'm okay," I said. "Just a migraine."

"You should go to the doctor," Sam suggested. "He'll fix it."

I smiled, opened my eyes. "You're right, and I will."

That, I couldn't tell them, was a part of my promise to Chris I had decided to break. No doctors and no shrinks. I hadn't trusted them as a child, and I trusted them even less now. No adults could be trusted, period.

"Jenny..."

"What?"

I waited a beat as a car raced by, the wake of its passage enough to rock the
truck.

"Wow, that was fast!" Sam said, turning around in his seat to see if the racer was still in sight. "Bet it was a Ferrari!"

"Jenny, does your father ever touch you?"

Puberty had made a cheerless, morose creature of Jenny. Regardless of whether she was happy or not, she looked solemn. That forced solemnity dropped now, replaced by genuine look of
horror and embarrassment. "Why would you
ask
me that?"

Sam turned back to face us, alerted by the tone in his sister's voice.

"He may have told you it was okay for him to do certain things, but..."

Her face turned beet red. "Mom, stop."

"It's all right, honey. You can be honest with me. Has he ever touched you in a way that made you feel uncomfortable, or scared?"

Sam frowned. "What does that mean?"

I turned my attention on him. "It means being touched where you don't want to be. Like in your...your private area."

Sam giggled. "Gross!" The reaction seemed a little too genuine, too
him
to be forced, and that came as a relief. From Jenny, however, I got no such reassurance. She stared down at her hands, her face still flushed.

"Jenny, honey, tell me."

"Tell you what?"

"Does your father ever—"

"No!" she cried, slamming her palms on her knees. "No, and you shouldn't be asking sick questions like that. What's
wrong
with you?"

I gave her my best maternal smile. "It's natural to be angry, baby."

"I'm angry at
you!
" she screamed, hot tears spilling down her cheeks. "You've been acting crazy and you're scaring me and Sam."

I looked at Sam, and saw that she was right. He did look scared now, but no more than he always did when Jenny threw a fit. It was
she
who was angry, and, misdirected as it was, I fully understood that reaction. Hadn't I had nurtured the same flame inside myself my whole life? Who better then to recognize its nature and probable cause?

"I'm sorry," I said. "You're right. I just worry." The words were meant to pacify not persuade. I was beyond such deception now. Clearly I would need to get Jenny alone before she would feel secure talking to me. Sam's presence only embarrassed her, and I realized I should have known that. She was a grown
-up now, or so she liked to think. As such, it would be beneath her to admit anything in front of her younger sibling that might make her appear weak in his eyes.

I turned back in my seat and started the engine.

"Jesus," Jenny muttered, and I should have chastised her for that, but knew if I wished to gain her trust, it was better not to. Maybe as a footnote to a future conversation, but not here, and not now.

Sam gasped. "I'm telling!"

"She heard me, dummy." Jenny sneered.

I reversed
the car onto the road.

It didn't matter whether or not Jenny ever admitted to what Chris was doing to her. I knew.
A woman knows
, I'd thought while watching Chris preparing his confession of adultery. I amended that now, because yes, a woman knows, but not nearly as much as a
mother
does. And if there were any gaps in my logic, they were filled with the evidence at my disposal.

Chris's words, repeated in the dream because I'd missed the implication when he'd said them the first time: "I've done something I'm not proud of, honey." Not, "I had an affair" or "I slept with another woman" or any of the myriad variations of the theme. The woman was never specifically mentioned at all. No names, n
o explanations of how the treachery had come to pass. No details. Because no details were necessary. What he had done, he'd done to
our
daughter, in
our
house, and he was not confessing to an affair, but a weakness, a lapse in restraining the very same disease that had inhabited my father.

In the dream, my brother had told me many things I had taken at face value rather than reading deeper into them. He was trying to tell me what was happening, what was coming. Or rather, some part of
me
was trying to warn me, using the image of my brother to convey the message for fear I wouldn't heed it if it occurred to me in the light of day.

Don't be a fucking idiot, sis. You know what he did, what he's doing still.

I had assumed he was talking about our father.

Then you aren't really listening.

And yes, perhaps I had only imagined Jenny sitting in her room when I'd gone to tuck her in that night, but now I knew the words she'd said had been real and not misheard. They had come from her dreams, where the truth can hold court with no lips to block it.

He touches me, Mommy.

The headaches, the nightmares, every awful thing I had seen or thought I'd seen...it could all be traced back to the moment Jenny began to blossom from a child into a young girl. She was now the age I'd been when hell had found me. The only difference was that I hadn't had anyone to protect me. And rather than face the reality of what was happening, I had obsessed over my pathetic father and his sins, even as my subconscious tried to show me the light.

"Mom, you went the wrong way," Sam piped up from the back seat.

He was right. Distracted by my thoughts, I had missed the turn.

I slowed the car, checked the rearview for traffic and caught sight of Jenny's eyes. They were moist, but she was no l
onger crying, and in them I saw a flicker of anger.

The flame.

I smiled.

That'
s my girl.

TWENTY

I returned home after dropping off the kids to find the house quiet and Chris dozing on the couch. He had his face turned away, mouth open and snoring, arms crossed as if his falling asleep had been an act of petulance. He hadn't changed his clothes, which meant he hadn't showered, and as I knelt down on the floor beside him, I detected the noxious smell of alcohol still seeping from his pores.

"You never knew so many things," I whispered, knowing he wouldn't wake. "Some, because of your ignorance
and stupidity. Others, because I chose not to tell you. And I chose not to tell you because a part of me always suspected you had the darkness inside you, that I couldn't trust you no more than I could trust any grown-up." This, I realized, was why I hadn't told him about my visit to my father, or that the old man had died. Knowing that the object of my focus was gone, leaving him vulnerable to scrutiny, might have made Chris more careful, more cunning, and then I'd never have exposed him for what he was.

But a mother always knows.

I brought my hand close to his face, but did not touch it. I could feel the heat rising from his skin and wondered what feverish, perverse dreams were running through his head. What was he doing to Jenny in that dark theater behind his eyes? I withdrew my hand as if afraid the poison that coursed through his veins might leap out and infect me, and let my gaze wander down over his body from the cleft of his unshaven chin down over his throat, to the hairs curling out over the neck of his sweater, to his chest as it slowly rose and fell. Here I placed my hand, so that I could feel his heartbeat, and there it was, racing with excitement. At once, depraved images of my husband and my little girl tried to implant themselves in my head, pulsing into my brain in time with his heartbeat, and I quickly stood, my body quivering with repulsion. The flashes had been brief, but enough. His tanned, muscular body crushing her pale skin while she screamed against the hand he had clamped over her mouth. Her eyes wide with fear, glassy with disgust, self-loathing, and horror. And in her mind, the desperate hope that it would be over soon, that I would discover them and make it all better.

For only the briefest of moments I watched him, sleeping like a baby, like an innocent, before I hurried into the kitchen, fetched what I needed, and returned, tears streaming down my face. My skull became a cave roaring with the echoes of a thousand voices, all of them united in a singular chorus in order to drown out the only one not in tune. The one that screamed:
What if you're wrong?

I told myself it was possible.

But then, anything was possible.

Thunder grumbled somewhere in the distance.

Sudden rain hit the window in a scattershot spray.

Chris twitched, moaned in his sleep.

And woke.

Jesus Christ, Gillian
, stop. What if you're wrong?
the lone voice whispered. It was not loud enough, not persuasive enough to make a difference, or to be heard above the ululating crowd, who now filled my head with their bloodlust song.

I could be wrong
, I thought.

Chris opened his eyes, blinked and looked blearily up at me.

But I'm not.

"Honey?" he asked, a quaver in his voice as his confused gaze dropped to the knife I hel
d tightly in one trembling hand. "What...what are you doing?"