Part of me doesn’t want to hear what follows, but I have probably heard worse. In 1993, as a college junior, I interviewed six Bosnian women who had been repeatedly raped in a camp set up solely for that purpose.
Jet wipes her eyes with her torn blouse, then continues in the same lifeless voice. “When I first woke up, I thought it was Paul on top of me. He’d done that before, drunk. This is TMI, but . . . what brought me to my senses was how hard he was. And how rough. Paul was practically impotent by that time. Now and then he would take a Viagra, but he’d never admit it. The whole situation was just . . . shit.”
“It was Max on top of you?” I prompt quietly.
She nods, still facing forward.
“He did this with Paul in the next room?”
“Just down the hall. Max had seen enough of Paul in those years to know he wasn’t going to wake up, not even if I screamed.”
“Did you? Scream?”
“At first. Max just clapped his hand over my mouth and kept on ramming me. I could have screamed after that, but I started thinking about what would happen if I did. If Paul woke up and came in there. Would they fight? Would Paul get a gun? If he shot Max, would he go to jail? Or would Max kill Paul and find some way to blame him? Paul was taking drugs back then, a lot of them. Opiates, but some Adderall and other things, too. He bounced back and forth between zoned out and fighting mad. Anyway, as I lay there spinning all this out in my head, it suddenly ended. Max collapsed on top of me, then rolled off.”
“Did he say anything?”
Jet purses her lips like someone trying to recall a distant detail from childhood. “No. He didn’t even bother warning me not to tell anybody what he’d done. He knew nobody would believe me. Not in that family. He knew I wasn’t going to the police. The Poker Club owned the police then. They still do, but it was worse then. No rape kit evidence would ever have made it to a courtroom.”
The enormity of what she’s telling me has overloaded my analytical faculties. All I can do is try to elicit as many facts as possible, to try to make sense of them later. “Was that the only time this happened?”
“Yes, thank God.”
“Why, do you think? If you kept quiet about it the first time?”
She slowly shakes her head, as though trying to figure this out herself. “I think that’s complicated. You know Max—he always has to be the alpha male. I think he’d been watching me for a long time. He had to have me, to mark me, like a dog pissing on a tree. He saw his chance and he took it.”
“That sounds like him, all right.” The full horror of Max’s act is almost too much to grasp. Yet one obvious question has risen in my mind. Should I shove it down deep and never voice it? Maybe. But if I’m going to spend the rest of my life with this woman, I need to know the answer. “I get why you didn’t report it to the police,” I tell her. “And I agree that either Paul or Max would have killed the other over what happened. But . . . one thing about this doesn’t sound like you.”
Jet looks at me from the corner of her eye, mistrust plain in her face. “What?”
“Why didn’t you just leave? Take Kevin and run. Leave Mississippi. I realize it would have gotten difficult, but it’s hard to see how staying in that family would have been possible after what happened. I know you, Jet. I can’t see you staying after that.”
I expect her to say, Because of Kevin. He was just a baby. They would have come after me, brought me back. But she doesn’t. She doesn’t say anything.
“Because of Kevin?” I lead her.
She looks at me like she’s about to confirm that, but then she pulls back, like a parachutist hesitating in the open door of a plane.
“Where was Kevin when this happened?” I ask, sensing something even more frightening in the darkness of what remains unknown to me. “He was, what, two at the time? Was he home with Tallulah?”
She shakes her head.
“He was in the house?”
She hesitates, then nods.
“My God. Did he hear any of it?”
“No.”
“Well . . . that’s good. Jesus, I can’t believe Max was crazy enough to try this again now. And more than once? I mean, I do believe it. But he’s under indictment for murder! He really must have lost his mind.”
Jet shrugs, still not looking at me. “Yes and no. He’s the same man he always was, only worse.”
“How crazy do you have to be to rape your son’s wife? And especially you. Knowing you could have told Paul about it? I mean, screw the cops—Paul would have killed Max if you’d told him. I have zero doubt about that.”
“Maybe,” she says softly. “But that’s complicated, too. The physical tension between them. It’s always been an issue.”
“I know. But even if you told Paul this tonight, ten years after the fact, he’d strangle Max with his bare hands.”
She gives a halfhearted shrug. “You’re probably right.”
A fearful possibility hits me. “Have you ever thought about telling Paul? I mean . . . with intent?”
I see a new tension in her neck and face. My first read is that Jet has considered doing this, but something stopped her. “Hey?” I whisper.
“I can’t tell Paul,” she says. “And Max knows it.”
There’s something different in her voice. A new note of fear, even dread. “Why not?” I ask.
“Because Max has something on me.”
With that sentence, some of her dread passes into me. I turn in my seat and take her hands in mine. “What are you talking about? The video?”
“No. This is something he’s had for years.” Before I can speak again, she looks up with tears in her eyes. “Max knows I can’t tell anybody what happened. Ever.”
“Jet . . . what could be bad enough to keep you quiet about a rape?”
She shakes her head, tears pouring down her face.
“Did you have an affair with somebody? Something like that?”
A bark of hysterical laughter escapes her throat. “God, no.”
“Jet, there’s nothing you could have done that I can’t accept or forgive.” My mind is spinning out wild possibilities. “Did you hurt somebody? Like . . . run over somebody, and the Poker Club covered it up?”
She looks bereft. “No.”
“Then what?”
She wipes her face on her sleeve, then takes a deep breath, as though gathering herself before taking the jump I imagined before. Then she says, “Paul isn’t Kevin’s father.”
I stare back at her, uncomprehending. “But . . . you said you didn’t have an affair.”
“That’s right.”
A wave of nausea precedes the truth. But at last it hits me, like a dagger slipped between two ribs. “Are you saying Kevin is Max’s son? From the rape?”
“Now you’ve got it!” she says with false gaiety.
Sixty seconds ago I thought I knew what horror was. This is beyond anything I could have conceived. And yet . . . it follows from the preface as naturally as pregnancy follows sex.
“You’re not looking at me,” she says. “Can’t you stand to anymore?”
I snap out of my shock and look into her mascara-smeared eyes. “You said the rape happened ten years ago. Kevin is twelve.”