“Pleasure.” He shook it, glanced down at himself. “Let me guess. You thought I was taller?”
She chuckled. “Come on in. Make yourself comfortable. Oh, wait a second.” She held up her hand, disappeared in her office and then returned, rolling out one of the cushioned guest chairs. Marjorie rose and took it, wheeling it into her work area. “I don’t want you to have to wedge yourself in here,” Dr. Taylor said.
When he came in and she closed the door behind them, she turned to face him. “I didn’t know you were in a wheelchair,” she said. “Some time ago, Elaine mentioned one of her sons having an accident, but I didn’t make the connection.”
“Daralyn must not talk about me much, then.”
“On the contrary. That’s why I was surprised. She talks about you all the time. Particularly recently. She’s never said a word about it.”
“Oh.” That was a hell of a realization. It called to mind what Will, one of his buddies in his adaptive challenge group, had told him.
They’d been on a bus, headed for Kitty Hawk and a day of hang gliding. Rory hadn’t yet been up for that, but he’d gone along to watch. Will’s able-bodied girlfriend Kate had been with them, and she and Will talked about how they met.
“I didn’t notice the chair all that much,” Kate said, in her broad Australian accent. “It was like noticing what kind of shirt or shoes he was wearing. His confidence and sense of humor made the biggest impression on me.”
Will ran his palm up her upper arm, giving her a squeeze and a smile. “If it’s not a problem that I let define me, then for the right girl, it’s not going to be a problem either.”
Rory was sure his face had reflected his yeah, right reaction, because Will had given him a knowing look. “If you want to get there bad enough, you’ll get there, man. You have to work on yourself, on your view of yourself, before you’re fit to be with anyone else. But that’s the same for anyone, disabled or not. Right?”
Coming back to the present, Rory parked himself in the spot the guest chair had occupied while Dr. Taylor took a seat on the sofa across from him. She gestured to a K-cup maker. “I have coffee and tea,” she said.
“No, thanks.” Before he asked any questions, he wanted to make sure. This wasn’t just about him, after all. “So on the phone, you said she was okay with this. If you don’t mind, can you tell me a little more about that? I don’t want to overstep.”
“I’m pleased you’re sensitive to her feelings. I’m clear on the parameters, so I’ll ensure we stay within them. However, I don’t mind explaining how it came about to reassure you of the same.”
Dr. Taylor sat back and crossed her legs. Professional but relaxed, looking ready to take any topic in stride. He could see why Daralyn felt comfortable around her. He thought anyone would.
“You’re aware that Daralyn never asks for anything for herself. Not for herself, not personally. Someone has to ask her first, and even then, what does she say, if someone asks if she needs more pie, more anything?"
"She says I'm fine, but thank you. Never outright no, but never a yes. Usually we read her cues and don’t ask. We just decide what we think she wants. Which sounds bad when I say it out loud.”
“It would, if the person listening didn’t know how much care and focused attention your family puts into figuring out her non-verbal cues,” Dr. Taylor reassured him. “So, you already know Daralyn didn’t say ‘Dr. Taylor, I want Rory to be able to talk to you about me, because it’s too difficult for me to explain some things to him.’ But I picked up that desire from her, and asked her the right questions to get to the same place.”
She met Rory’s gaze. “It’s tricky ground. It always has been. But it’s ground we all started walking a long time ago.”
“She’s made a lot of progress. You’ve been key to that.”
She inclined her head. “Thank you, but I’m not being modest when I say your family is primarily responsible. Every forward step she has made has been the result of your love for her, your willingness to develop a partnership with me that is open and honest, all of us aligned in her best interest while attempting to give her room for self-determination.”
She cocked her head. “That’s a tricky path as well, isn’t it? From what I’ve deduced, you are very protective of her. And now you are in a romantic relationship with her.”
Had those Dom/sub vibes come up in conversation? Or, if they had, had Daralyn framed them as a more traditional or old-fashioned male/female relationship? Had Dr. Taylor been told about the spanking?
Those kinds of concerns were about his comfort levels, so he pushed that aside and asked his most pressing question. “Has following my gut caused her any problems?”
She mulled that over, which closed a cold fist around his heart for several uncomfortable moments. “No more than any attempt to fit two lives together more intimately does,” she said at last. “It’s important that relationships evolve naturally with Daralyn. From what I can tell so far, your instincts and knowledge of her are serving you both well.”
“Okay.” He took a breath, let it out. Dr. Taylor clasped her hands loosely over one knee.
“She told me what happened when she became sexually aroused, how she initially responded to it, and how you handled it. How you asked her to talk to me about it.” Her expression tightened. “I thank you for that. Helping a person with such a prolonged history of abuse involves long term therapy for that very reason. The layers get peeled back over time, and when they do, they can reveal even more deeply buried things, things we cannot guess at, probably because so much of it is unimaginable. So, please, ask the question that you’re hesitating over. Your honesty can only help her.”
Fair enough. “I expected her to be afraid of sex. But she’s not. Only her own reactions to it. It’s made me wonder about how they… Doc, I can’t even begin to tell you how much I don’t want to think about it, see it in my head, talk about it. But I feel like I need to understand some of it.”
Dr. Taylor nodded. “A very reasonable and intelligent conclusion. You may already know some of this, but it should help fill in some gaps. They started sharing her around the time she was six years old. Her mother died when she was five, so I assume that was the trigger. One woman left the home, so Daralyn became her replacement. Which suggests to me her father and uncle also shared her mother. Unlike Daralyn, she was severely beaten, on a regular basis. Ended up in the hospital multiple times. Never filed one charge against them. Social workers couldn’t get her to even consider it.”
Dr. Taylor’s expression was grave. “I have that from police reports, not Daralyn herself. She has very little memory of her mother, except as a shadow who fed and bathed her for a short period of her life.”
The psychiatrist rose, started herself a cup of coffee. Rory shook his head when she offered him something again. He thought he might crush the cup in his hand. He didn’t want to hear this. But if Daralyn had had to live it, he could damn well handle hearing it.
“I believe Oscar and Burton Moorfield found the abuse distasteful,” Dr. Taylor said, taking in his expression. “Viewed it as ‘necessary’ only because Daralyn’s mother was too old to be properly trained to obey them without question, serving them however they demanded. So after she died, Daralyn was the perfect answer to that. She could be trained from the very first.”