“The grief I’m going through is connected to abuse,” I say. “Or things that other people consider abusive. I don’t think it was abuse. I just want to make sure you won’t tell anyone if I don’t want you to.”
“Are we talking about abuse that happened to you?”
I nod, my eyes fixed on the window over her shoulder.
“I can’t share anything you tell me without your explicit permission,” she says.
“What if it happened when I was underage?”
Her eyes flutter, a few rapid blinks. “Doesn’t matter. You’re an adult now.”
I take my phone out of my bag and hand it over, the article about Strane’s suicide already loaded. Ruby’s face darkens as she scrolls. “This is connected to you?”
“That was the teacher, the one who . . .” I falter, wanting to explain, but the words aren’t there. They don’t exist. “I mentioned him once. I don’t know if you remember.”
It was months ago, when she and I were still getting to know each other. Back then, at the end of sessions, she would ask me casual questions, like a cooldown lap after a long workout—where did I grow up, what do I do for fun—normal boring stuff. One week, she asked me about writing, about studying it in college, what age I really got into it. She asked, “Were you encouraged by any specific teachers?” It was an innocuous question, but it broke my face apart. Not from crying but giddiness—gasping, teenage giggling. I hid behind my hands and peeked out through my fingers while Ruby looked on, stunned.
Eventually, I managed to say, “There was one teacher who was very encouraging, but it was complicated.” And when I said that, a heavier gravity settled into the office. It was as though Strane had used my body to reveal himself.
“There’s a story there, then,” Ruby said.
Still squirming, I nodded.
Then, very quietly, she asked, “Did you fall in love with him?” I don’t know how I answered. I must have said yes one way or another, and then we moved on, talked about something else, but I was struck by that question. I still am. The implied agency—did I fall in love with him? I don’t think anyone I’ve confided in has ever asked me that. Only if I slept with him, how it started, or how it ended, never if I loved him. After that session ended, we didn’t talk about it again.
Across from me, Ruby’s mouth falls open. “This was him?”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I know this is a big thing to spring on you.”
“Don’t apologize.” She reads for a moment longer, then sets the phone facedown on the little table between us and looks me in the eye. Asks me where I want to start.
She’s patient as the words drip out of me. I do my best to give a brief synopsis—how it started, how it continued. I don’t talk about feelings, about what it did to me, but the facts are enough to horrify her. Though I’m not sure I’d recognize the horror if I weren’t so good at reading her. She keeps it contained to her eyes.
At the end of the hour, she calls me brave—for confiding, for trusting. “I’m honored,” she says, “that you chose to share this with me.”
Leaving her office, I wonder when I made the decision, if I arrived with the resolve to tell somewhere in my mind, if it was within my control at all.
On the walk home, I’m propelled by the mania of confession, the sudden lightness that follows an unburdening. I sidestep a cluster of tourists, one saying to another, “I’ve never seen so many cigarette butts. I thought this place was supposed to be beautiful.” I think of how, throughout the whole session, Ruby treated me like a skittish animal ready to bolt, her carefulness an echo of Strane’s slow approach. How cautious he was, first angling his knee against my thigh, such a small thing that could have been an accident, then his hand on my knee, a little pat, a friendly thing people do to each other. Pat-pat-pat. I’d seen teachers give students hugs before, no big deal. It only accelerated after that, once he knew I was ok with it—and isn’t that what consent is, always being asked what you want? Did I want him to kiss me? Did I want him to touch me? Did I want him to fuck me? Slowly guided into the fire—why is everyone so scared to admit how good that can feel? To be groomed is to be loved and handled like a precious, delicate thing.
Once I’m in the stale air of my apartment, the mania levels out and then drops as I take in the mundane mess of my unmade bed and kitchen counters covered in food wrappers, the calendar on my refrigerator that Ruby had me make months ago, each day taken up by some embarrassingly basic chore—do laundry, take out the trash, buy groceries, pay rent—things that probably come naturally to most people. If it weren’t for seeing these tasks written out plainly before me, I’d walk around in dirty clothes, live on potato chips from the corner store.
The line of Polaroids stretches across my living room, the strawberry pajamas draped over the radiator. I wonder what level of crazy I’ve reached and how much further I could go, how many more steps until I become a woman who boards up the windows to live uninterrupted in the filth of her past. I told Ruby I’d already imagined this—him dying, how it might happen, how it would feel. He was twenty-seven years older; I was prepared. But I pictured him withered and helpless, gazing up at me from a deathbed. He’d leave me something real: his house, his car, or just money. Like Humbert at the very end, giving Lo that envelope stuffed with cash, a tangible payment for all he’d put her through.
At one point during the session, Ruby said it seemed like I had so much built up inside me, I was ready to burst. She called my mind on fire from wanting to talk.
“We’ll have to be careful,” she said, “and not do too much too soon.”
But standing in my living room, I imagine what it might feel like to be reckless. My breath catches at the thought of what would happen if I spilled a line of gasoline over all this evidence, from thirty-two all the way back to fifteen. The wreckage I’d cause if I dropped a match and let it burn.
2001
It’s early June, the first sunny day after two weeks of rain. The blackflies are gone, but the mosquitoes are thick, swarming around us as we drag the swimming float across the yard into the lake. Dad and I sit on opposite sides, each with a paddle, guiding it past the boulders into deep water, where Dad attaches it to the anchor, takes off the buoy. We sit for a while on the float, Dad with one foot dangling in the water, me with my knees pulled up to my chest, shielding my old saggy bathing suit, its elastic rotted, the stretched-out straps knotted to keep them from falling down my arms. Onshore, Babe paces and pants, her leash tethered to the trunk of a pine tree. Neither of us is eager to swim back home. There haven’t been enough hot days; the water’s still cold.
Staring across the lake, sunlight streaming in rays straight to the bottom, I can see the sunken logs left from a hundred years ago, back when the lake and the woods surrounding it were owned by a lumber mill. Closer to shore, sunfish guard their egg nests, perfect circles of sand laboriously cleared with their tail fins. Damselflies dart over the water, their long bodies fused, looking for a safe place to mate. Two of them land on my forearm, electric blue bodies, transparent wings.