Our only form of communication was through notes. I began a note system when I needed money for sneakers. He wouldn’t leave the money, though, and when I asked my mother why, she said it was because I had left him a note with ragged edges, an action he considered disrespectful. So I rewrote the note on a carefully cut rectangle of notebook paper, and the next day, three crisp twenties sat on the kitchen counter. After that, he started to leave me leftovers from dinner in sealed Tupperware. There would be a note on the kitchen table for me in the morning that said, “Eat spaghetti” or “Stuffed peppers: right-hand side, behind milk.” Occasionally, he would even leave slices of cantaloupe, avocado, watermelon, or mango on a plate in the refrigerator.
I turned sixteen with my virginity intact. Following my wishes, Peter had made ten perfectly good attempts, but each time I involuntarily tightened my vaginal muscles and his penis hadn’t been able to go in. To relax, I took Lorazepam and Klonopin that Peter had gotten from the veterans’ hospital, and we played romantic music, lit candles. I tried thinking of a park ranger at Tallman Park I found sexy. The boy I’d talked to by the ocean who’d run away from me was still a sore spot even though it happened months before. Peter later insisted he’d wanted me to get the boy’s number; but why, then, did he keep walking toward us? He could have hidden under the boardwalk and waited the whole thing out. Well, it didn’t matter now. We would somehow get this goal accomplished and I’d get pregnant. I’d escape Union City forever. I’d be a different person once I was gone. I hadn’t even known how to talk to that boy; sometimes in my mind I repeated my stupid remark about the jellyfish’s mouth and his parting words that I really was a princess. It was like he was implying there was something wrong with me; that I was fragile, out of touch, a doll without a soul. He was a reminder of why I had to flee. I remembered learning in school that some emancipated slaves in the South couldn’t bring themselves to leave their owners. This proved to me that it was hard to leave what you were accustomed to, no matter how bad it was. But we couldn’t stay in Union City, my mother and I. Yet even as my mind knew what I had to do, my body wouldn’t cooperate.
After yet another failed try, Peter said, “I think we should just forget it. I don’t think you can get turned on by me. Look at me.”
The wrinkles in his face did seem deeper than a few years ago. In the past, they hadn’t affected his good looks, but now deep frown lines had forced his face into a perpetually morose expression and, perhaps because his cheeks were baggier, his once-f lips now seemed as thin as rubber bands and his chin was dwarfed. His whole face finally seemed to be collapsing under the weight of his difficult life. I didn’t dare tell him, but he looked older than most men of sixty.
“Peter, you’re a very handsome man,” I said.
“No, I’m not,” he said. “Not anymore.”
Around this time, someone called a social worker to investigate our relationship. “I won’t go back to jail. I can’t go back to jail. I’ll kill myself first,” Peter said as we packed our things into large black Glad bags while Paws stood by the door to his room watching us. All our notebooks were in one bag; our photo albums and the wooden box containing loose pictures were in another. The clothes I stored in his room were tossed into yet another trash bag, and our novels and the tapes we had made of our novels into still another. Love letters, trinkets, our laminated hair, videotapes, Peter’s porn movies, the wooden dollhouse, the gray felt mice, our young girl/older man fiction: anything and everything that could be considered incriminating went into the bags.
“You were in jail, Peter? When?” I couldn’t believe it. He was like a matryoshka doll, each secret clasped within the belly of another, an endless cornfield maze I’d been running through for seven years now.
“During those two years we were apart. It wasn’t my fault.” Peter angrily swiped his tears away. “Why can’t people just leave us in peace? No one has a right to look at our belongings. They’re private.”
“Well, won’t she need a warrant to search this place?”
“Well, yeah, to forcibly search. But she could ask nicely if she can look through my things.”
“And you can say no nicely. That’s your right.”
“Then I look guilty,” Peter said. “And it becomes a bigger case. It might even go to court. The town of Weehawken versus Peter Curran. The good, kind people versus the big, bad wolf. Because that’s all I’ll be to them. It doesn’t matter if we’re in love. That won’t hold up in a court of law. It isn’t admissible as evidence. The how and the why don’t ever count.”
“Why were you in jail, Peter?”
“Well, I had these two foster kids, Renee and Jenny. It was just for a couple of months. Remember I put Renee on the phone with you? Well, Jenny, the younger sister, walked in on me and saw me naked once. When she was returned to her family, she told them. I happened to have the door unlocked and she just walked right in. It teaches a person to keep their door locked, that’s for sure.”
“So that was why you never got foster kids again?”
“It wasn’t my choice. Even though the charges were dropped, I wasn’t allowed any more foster kids.”
I couldn’t help but remember him saying he wouldn’t get more foster kids because it was too sad to see them go.
“Peter, you didn’t do anything, then? With Jenny or Renee?”
“No! Margaux, I tell you everything! Why would I keep that one thing secret and tell you everything else! My whole life story; I gave it to you. I let you be my judge, my jury, even my executioner if you’d chosen it.”
“What about Karen?” My heart was pounding and I felt like I couldn’t breathe whenever I thought about Karen.
“No, Margaux! Come on! I’m not in the mood for this. I was found innocent. I was only in jail for a couple of nights, but during that time I saw this horrible thing happen. Some inmates beat up this guy real bad and he was lying on the floor, bleeding, and then they pissed on him. I got some death threats myself. I think if I were ever sent back, the inmates would rip me apart limb from limb.”
That night, thoughts of Karen haunted me. Was she safe? Happy? I could only hope her life was turning out better than mine. If he’d taken me to the basement, why not her? So a couple of days later, I asked him again and he repeated that he’d never touched her. He kept saying he’d had me, his true love, so why would he need anybody else? Still, I couldn’t deal with these questions now. I had to mentally prepare for the social worker’s scheduled visit to my house. She would come armed with whatever tactics these people used in order to get confessions. Peter said that she would try to paint him as a villain: she would use words like “rape.” Once she had the necessary information, she’d convict Peter and he’d probably be beaten to death in jail. Also, thinking about Poppa knowing made my heart race. Everyone would laugh behind Poppa’s back that he was stupid for letting me hang around with an older man. I couldn’t forget Poppa’s words, that a raped woman was better off dead.
The social worker was a no-nonsense woman in her sixties. She came to our house at around eleven in the morning on a Thursday. My father was at work and my mother was in the hospital again. This social worker had a yellow legal pad and a newly sharpened pencil. She wore pumps and khaki dress pants, and her navy blouse was long-sleeved. Almost immediately, she began a nonstop stream of questions without answering my question about who had called her. Every time I answered a question, she briskly wrote down my response. She wanted to know if Peter had ever touched me; she asked that question several times in several different ways, and kept saying, “Are you sure?” after I kept saying no.
What exactly was the nature of the relationship? What did we talk about? What did we do each day? She stared into my eyes as she spoke. She started to say things like, “It’s up to you to protect other girls,” which was such a joke. I
already was
protecting other girls. I gave him what he wanted in fantasy. He didn’t have to hurt real little girls. I was a big girl and I could handle it. When Peter was sick, I was his medicine.
“There’s something you’re not telling me,” she said.
Who had betrayed us? A random gossip? Was it Richard? Or Jessenia, bitter because their rent had been raised six months ago? Or Linda, vengeful toward Inès, knowing she would go down with us? Or maybe my mother had called. Maybe during one of her crazy, deluded states she had called someone. Or was it my father? Or someone who had lived in the attic and moved out, but had always suspected something? Peter insisted it must be Ricky’s girlfriend, Gretchen. He said she had once made a weird comment to him, but he couldn’t remember what it was; he had blocked it out. He said if it was the wig witch, he wished her dead. He then wished he could kill her with his bare hands. But for all I knew, it could have been my own mother.
The more questions I was asked, the more evasions I offered, until the social worker was forced to give up.
She had already been to Peter’s house and seen all the pictures of little girls on the walls and all the girl figurines that in his frenzy he’d not thought to remove. He told me what was said, and I kept reconstructing the conversation between him and her in my head:
Why are there no boys on the wall? No pictures of your stepsons or male
figurines?
We are estranged. As you can see, I don’t have pictures up of my daughters,
either. It makes me too sad to look at their pictures and realize what I’ve lost.
I’ve talked to them. One of your daughters insinuated that you had sexually
molested her. She wasn’t very clear, but that was the insinuation.
They were angry about the divorce. That’s not my fault.
I would like you to answer the question: Why are there no boys on the wall
of your room?
Isn’t it my constitutional right to decorate my room any way I want? Does
the law acknowledge my individual freedom?
You’re not answering the question. In this room you have countless pictures
and figurines of little girls. Only little girls, no boys and no adults.
I have a right to decorate in any way I please. I’ll answer other questions,
but my decorating tastes are my own business. And I don’t think it’s relevant.
Now, if I had a dungeon back here filled with whips and chains and a collection
of little girls’ panties, that would be another story.
Why do you have a Ouija board?
That’s Margaux’s.
Why does Margaux keep a personal belonging in your room?
Her father didn’t want it in his house. He is very superstitious and has a
fear of ghosts.
What does the sign hanging over your door mean: Slave Quarters? What
does it refer to?
It’s a joke. It refers to me. I’m a retiree but I do a lot around here. It’s my
second job.
And is your main job entertaining Margaux? What does she offer in return?
Companionship. We enjoy each other’s company. We’re best friends.
Most sixty-year-old
men do not have a sixteen-year-old
best friend.
I think you’re confusing the unlikely with the criminal.
And I think you are sexually abusing that girl.
Margaux. Call her Margaux. Her name is Margaux.
I think Margaux is one of your victims. You’re a smooth operator. You’ve
been doing it for a long time. You’ve removed questionable items from this room.
According to Peter, the social worker had gotten downright bitchy at the end, knowing she had lost the battle. She asked him if he was at all familiar with the Patty Hearst case; if he had ever heard of the term “Stockholm syndrome.” He said no. Then she had said, “Well, I feel sorry for you the day that girl wakes up.”
That night, after I got out of the shower, I saw my father standing by the kitchen stove light, smoking a cigarette. He looked at me and then stubbed out the cigarette in his ashtray.
“Come over here,” he said in a low voice. “I have to talk to you.”
“I’m tired. Tomorrow . . .”
“I have to talk to you!”
“Okay. What is it? Is it about my mother? When is she coming home?”
“Listen to me. You know what this is about. That woman, that social worker, she was hounding me. She was trying to break me down with questions! She wanted to know about the relationship between you and that man. I protected your honor. I said you were innocent. I insisted you were a good girl. Now I want to know the truth. Did that old man ever lay a finger on you? Did that old man touch you?”
“I’m going to bed,” I said, turning away, but he came at me quickly and seized my shoulders.
“I protected you!” he screamed. “I preserved your good name! Should I have done it? Are you worth anything? Tell me the truth!”
“Let go of me!”
“That ugly woman said she had talked to the daughter of that man. He raped his own daughter; that was the gist of it! His own daughter!”
“It’s not true—”
“What is not true? The thing about his daughter or what was said about you? Because I will tell you something: I do not care what that man did to his daughter, do you hear me? I do not give a shit about his daughter! That is not my business! I do not care if he raped all his daughters, you hear me! I only care about what went on between you and him.”
“Let go of me. Let go of my shoulders. You think you can push me around. You think I’m weak like my mother.”
“Stop the double-talk!” He started shaking me. “Stop it, do you hear me! You can go to hell and take your bad attitude with you! See where it gets you there. You and that old man: what is the relationship? You and that old, pathetic, weak, wrinkled, toothless old man. Did you allow that man to touch you? You better answer straight because I am willing to stand here all night. You look me in my face, goddamn you! I want the truth! Even if it means you are no longer worthy of my money or the home I provide for you! Believe me, I can cut you out without an ounce of remorse. You can live with the old man then. Become a woman of the streets for all I care and support that sicko. Because if you are not a nice girl, I will forget the day you were born! I will black out your birth date from my calendar!”