The Forgotten Hours(76)
She began to cry, trying to swallow the noise, hide the tightening of her muscles.
He pulled back to get a look at her. “It will be all right, Katie,” he said, his eyes an unstable gray. “I promise you. We will work it out.”
“There’s something else I really need to tell you,” she said.
Zev made her some Manzanilla tea he’d brought back from Spain while she changed into leggings and splashed her face with cold water. He threw on a T-shirt and jeans and took a seat on the armchair. He’d pulled away from her, not just his body but his spirit, his whole being screaming of separation, as though their sense of communion had been a brief delusion. Perhaps he thought she would tell him she had been sleeping with someone else, that the baby was not his. After all, they hadn’t agreed to be exclusive; they had been careful, both of them, to keep their options open.
“It’s not about being pregnant,” she said. “It’s, um. It’s about my father. Something I haven’t told you.”
“Okay . . .” he said.
“Something awful happened, at that place I went—my grandfather’s place at Eagle Lake. When I was a teenager.”
“To you, Katie?” Zev’s careful, neutral expression collapsed. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “What happened?”
“No, no—not me. To my father, and, well, my friend was part of it. She was my best friend.”
She started with meeting a girl named Lulu at a Walmart. The endless carefree summers at her grandfather’s house. The cabin, the rope. They met a boy; they were so young—the memories tumbled out. An insidious jealousy, a sense of competition began growing between them—then, months later, the accusation of rape, out of nowhere.
That ugly word: rape. When you spoke it aloud, it changed the very air you breathed. Zev remained silent as she was talking, but his face told the story of what his heart felt.
She explained that her father had just been released from jail, and she had been getting calls from reporters that stirred up something murky inside her. That his freedom was not like she’d expected. She was—and she hesitated here, picking her words carefully—she was confused.
“You think it was wrong?” Zev asked. He looked as though gravity had tugged at his face and body and he could not resist the terrible downward pull. “You think he did not deserve to go to jail?”
“I was so sure, totally sure it was all a lie.” She stared at his face, and the intensity of his concentration gave her courage. “But I could never figure out why. I mean, why would she lie?” She told him about the transcripts, about finding the paperwork from the trial at the cabin and how all this had set her off on a journey. The explanation came out of her in an astonishing rush of energy and fear. She choked on her words and just kept going.
When she mentioned the article she had read about dissociative disorder, his eyes sharpened. “And this girl, Lulu. You have spoken with her?” Zev asked.
“I called her last week. But she wouldn’t talk; she, um . . . she hung up on me,” Katie said. The tea was cooling, and she took a sip, but the mug clanged against her teeth, and she set it down. “It was awful. Awful. I felt so bad for her, and I was trying to tell her I understood things better now, but it all came out wrong.”
There were footsteps on the stairs leading to her apartment, a rap on her door. She hadn’t even noticed night falling. Windows looked out onto the building opposite, where lights were being switched on, like fireflies awakening. While they’d been talking, she’d forgotten her father was coming, and now he was at the door, iridescent shadows under his eyes and even more stubble on his chin, his clothes unchanged.
“Daddy!” she said. A flash of impatience was almost instantly supplanted by concern: Had he slept at all? “Are you okay?”
“Hello, beautiful lady,” he said, bustling past her and putting down a large blue nylon bag, which still had a cardboard price tag attached to it. “Your father has been one busy man, and he’s here to get some nosh. My lord, it’s good to be back among the living.”
Turning toward her, he caught sight of Zev in the living area, standing with his hands deep in the pockets of his jeans.
“Aha,” John said. “You’ve got company.”
“Dad, this is Zev. My, uh, boyfriend,” Katie said, letting out a tentative laugh. “Zev, this is John Gregory, my father.”
“I see. Your boyfriend,” John said, reaching out to grab Zev’s hand and smiling broadly. “Delighted.”
It had been six years since John had eaten seafood, so they decided to get sushi instead of eating the steak Katie bought. The three of them headed off to a hole-in-the-wall restaurant two blocks from her apartment. They sat in the back at a small table near the kitchen. Zev was oriented toward her father, as though pulled in by the net of his energy. John talked unabashedly about his years in prison, telling one ludicrous story after another, and after a while Zev relaxed and began to laugh along with him. Katie could see this was her father’s intention: normalizing that which usually made people feel uncomfortable. He didn’t want to be treated like a leper. He wanted people to admire his fortitude, his good humor, and his strength. See that he’d turned this experience into something positive, something that made people at dinner in a restaurant laugh into their glasses of sake.