My Dark Vanessa(113)

I curl into myself as he goes on. Don’t I understand what that kind of accusation could do to him? It’s slander, a literal crime, enough to take down any man, let alone one who’s already hanging by a thread. If the wrong people caught wind of this, he’d be finished, thrown in jail for the rest of his life.

“And you know this. That’s what I can’t understand. You know what an accusation could do to me, and yet . . .” He throws up his hands. “I can’t wrap my head around it, the deceit that requires, the cruelty.”

I want to defend myself, except I don’t know if anything he says is wrong. Even if the word first slipped out by accident, I never corrected it. I kept the lie going, showing Henry the dozens of missed calls, letting him call Strane “deluded” and “beyond the pale,” all because I wanted to be wounded and delicate, a girl deserving of tenderness. But I think, too, of those memos Strane wrote to cover his tracks. I was oblivious back then, doing my best to follow his lead, and he saw no problem framing me as a troubled girl with a crush, knowing what it would do to me. If I’m deceitful and cruel, so is he.

I ask, “Why did you wait months to tell me about what happened with that girl?”

“No,” Strane says. “Don’t try to turn this around on me.”

“But that’s what this is all about, right? You’re mad because you’re already in trouble for groping another girl—”

“Groping? Jesus, what a word.”

“That’s what it’s called when you touch a kid.”

He grabs the plastic cup, turns on the faucet. “There’s no talking to you when you’re like this, determined to paint me as a villain.”

“Sorry,” I say, “it’s kind of hard to avoid.”

He drinks, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “You’re right. It’s easy to make me into a bad man. It’s the easiest thing in the world. But that’s just as much your fault as it is mine. Unless you truly have convinced yourself that I raped you.” He tosses the half-full cup into the sink, braces himself against the counter. “Raped while writhing in orgasm. Give me a fucking break.”

I clench my fists, digging my fingernails into my palms, and will my brain to stay in the room, in my body. “Why didn’t you want to have children?”

He turns. “What?”

“You were in your thirties when you had a vasectomy. That’s so young.”

He blinks, trying to figure out if he ever told me how old he was when he had the surgery, how I could know this if he never did.

“I saw your medical chart,” I say. “When I worked at that hospital in high school, I found it in the archives.”

He starts moving toward me.

“The doctor’s notes said you were adamant about not wanting kids.”

He comes closer, backing me up into my bedroom. “Why are you asking me this?” he asks. “What are you trying to say?”

In my room, my calves hit the side of my bed. I don’t want to say it. I don’t know how. It’s not a single question, rather a haze of unspeakable things: not understanding why he touched another girl in the same way he touched me if he hadn’t wanted her the same way he wanted me. Why his hands shook when he gave me the strawberry pajamas, why it felt as though by giving them to me he was revealing something he’d spent his whole life trying to hide. When he asked me to call him Daddy on the phone, how it felt like one of his tests. I did it because I didn’t want to fail, didn’t want to be narrow-minded or scandalized, and afterward, he’d hung up as soon as he could, like he’d revealed too much of himself. I felt shame pulsate out of him that night. It had soared through the phone, straight into me.

“Don’t turn me into a monster because you’re looking for a way out,” he says. “You know that’s not what I am.”

“I don’t know what I know,” I say.

He reminds me of what I’ve done. It’s not fair to think of myself as blameless in all this. I’m the one who came back, showing up on his doorstep after two years apart. I could have forgotten about him, moved on with my life.

“Why did you come back if I hurt you?” he asks.

“It didn’t feel finished,” I say. “I still felt tied to you.”

“But I didn’t encourage you, not even when you called. Do you remember that? Your little voice coming out of the answering machine. I stood there, didn’t let myself do anything.”

He starts to cry then, as though on cue, bloodshot eyes filling with tears.

“Wasn’t I careful?” he asks. “Always checking you were ok?”

“Yes,” I say, “you were careful.”

“I wrestled with it. You have no idea how much. But you were so sure of yourself. You knew what you wanted. Do you remember? You asked me to kiss you. I tried to make sure you really wanted it. You’d get annoyed with me, but still I made sure.”

Tears run down his cheeks, disappear into his beard, and I try to steady myself through the softening that comes from seeing him cry.

“You said yes,” he says.

I nod. “I know I did.”

“Then when did I rape you? Tell me when I did that. Because I’ve been—” He sucks in a shaky breath, rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I’ve been trying and I can’t understand . . .”