When Jeff Comes Home (22 page)

"Sometimes when I can't sleep, I stand outside your room. Doing that usually makes me feel safer." I looked down, my face burning.

Dad went right past that. "Why couldn't you sleep? Why tonight, in particular? Something must have happened at school."

"It wasn't that. At least . . . that wasn't the only reason."

Dad nodded, waiting.

"I was remembering stuff. Usually I can push it away. Tonight I couldn't."

"What stuff? Can you tell me? Please."

My courage deserted me. "No. Sorry."

Dad sighed, looking down at his hands, then at me. "Okay. What happened at school today? Why don't you want to go back?"

I shrugged, half angry he had not pushed me more. "Nothing that different from what I thought would happen. I just didn't know how bad it would feel."

"Kids gave you a hard time." It was not a question.

"Yeah. And I'm not going back. I don't care what you say. I'm not ready for them, and they're sure not ready for me."

"Jeff..."

I held up a hand to stop him. "Don't tell me to 'hang tough' or anything like that. I'm not going back. They act like I did something wrong, that I
am
wrong. It's not fair."

"No," he agreed softly, clasping his hands together and staring at them. I had expected a fight from him, and my adrenaline was up to fight him back.
Don't give up on me, Dad. Don't agree with me that I'm hopeless.

"Vin too, I suppose?"

"He was with them at first, with the worst of them. Then he switched sides. Now he says he wants to help me."

"That's not so bad," Dad said carefully. "He's a kid. Like you."

"Not like me," I mumbled. "No one's like me." A shudder ran through me as I realized how alone I was. Trapped in my own head with Ray, and no way out.

"Jeff," Dad called sharply, not for the first time, I realized. "What I've been doing with you isn't working. I've backed off, I've tried to let you handle this your way. But it's not working."

I watched him fearfully. "What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to tell me about Slaight. I want you to tell me what he did to you. You're making yourself sick holding this stuff in. If you never testify against him, Dave won't be happy, but I can live with that. I want you to talk to me."

Mingled with my horror and embarrassment, I felt something like hope.

"You say that, Dad, but you don't really want to know."

"I do."

"You don't want to know—you can't—what it was like, living with him every day."

"Jeff," Dad said, "please tell me. I'm ready to listen."

Confused, I looked away from him, shaking my head.

"All right." Dad's voice was calm, his tone measured. "So you never talk about Slaight. You live with it by yourself. You don't go to school—"

"Fuck school!"

He nodded. "Okay. Fuck school. We'll just keep tiptoeing around you, pretending nothing is wrong. Hell, we might as well invite Slaight to move in with us. He's here anyway."

"Don't say that." I was trembling. "Don't ever say that." Dad did not apologize, just watched me, no expression on his face.

"You want to know why I came back so thin?" I said suddenly.

"Yes."

"He hardly fed me. Ray. He would just laugh when I asked him. I had to beg him for food."

Dad watched me steadily, unblinking.

"Sometimes I had to do stuff for him—sexual stuff—if I wanted to eat."

"All right," Dad said, after a moment.

"All right," I repeated, laughing in disbelief.

"What would you like me to say?"

"Say the truth! Tell me I'm disgusting."

Dad looked down. When he looked at me again, his eyes were moist. "I'm not disgusted, Jeff."

"He taught me to ... " Even now, I could not tell Dad the specifics. "He taught me to have sex with him the way he wanted it. That's what I learned, Dad. That was my education."

A beat. Then Dad nodded. "Yes."

I glared at him. "Do you even hear what I'm saying?"

"Yes. I hear what you're saying."

"I gave in to him. I did what he wanted. Not once. Hundreds of times."

"You had no choice," Dad said fiercely. I stared at him, surprised by the sudden emotion in his voice. "No choice at all."

I waited a long moment. Then I shrugged, watching him. "Upstairs, you know. Before. I was remembering the first time with Ray. The first time he had sex with me."

Dad nodded. "I'd like you to tell me about that."

“What?” I laughed in anger and disbelief. He had no right. "Oh, Dad, come on."

"You lived through it," he said. "I should be able to hear about it."

Suddenly I was furious with him. "It's not that easy. You think listening to me talk about this shit changes any of it? It doesn't. It won't."

"I know that. But don't you see, if I know everything you went through, I can help you more, and together we can—"

"Where were you?" I asked, more to stop his words than anything else.

Dad froze. "Where was I when?" He knew.

I closed my eyes as I said the words I had so often thought. "Where were you when I was in that room? Where were you when I was alone with him? I waited for you. I counted on you. You never came."

When I could not stand the silence any longer, I looked at him. Dad's head was lowered, his fists clenched on his thighs. My instinct was to comfort him, to retreat. I ignored the impulse, watching him calmly. Finally he looked up.

"I tried to find you. I tried every way I knew how. I stayed in Fresno for weeks after you disappeared, searching for you personally. I made the rounds of the law enforcement agencies every day. I screamed until they brought the FBI in.

"We contacted schools across the country," Dad continued, talking fast. "Twice a year, every semester, right up until last fall. Connie typed the letters, I made the calls, the kids stuffed envelopes. ..."

"You thought I was going to school somewhere?" I bit back the urge to laugh.

Dad looked at me sharply. "I had no idea where you were.
I didn't know.
That was the hell of it. I never knew if I was an inch away from finding you, or if I was running like hell in the opposite direction."

He was grim-faced after that, silent for so long I felt I had to say something. "I'm sorry. ..."

"Don't be sorry. Just listen. After you had been gone a few months, the FBI lost interest. Dave never gave up, and I'll always be grateful to him for that, but he was one person, and yours wasn't the only case he was working. I set up a toll-free number for people to call with tips about you, and I followed up on them myself. I traveled to Houston, Kansas City, New Orleans, New York, Los Angeles three times looking for you. I'd plaster the town with posters, appear on whatever media would have me, haunt the police stations . . . anything I could think of to get the word out."

"Dad..."

"I visited coroners' offices, Jeff," he said deliberately. " All across the country. About every six months I'd get the call, they'd found some body, some poor kid who half-resembled you. I went every time. Not because I believed any of those boys could be you. But I knew if I didn't see them with my own eyes, I wouldn't have been able to live with myself."

I squirmed, uncomfortable. "Okay, Dad."

"I hired a private detective out of L.A. He heard a rumor you might be involved in kiddy porn and he started sending me boxes of the stuff to scour for pictures of you." I looked at him quickly, and he nodded. "Oh yes, I did that too, until Brian got into it one day when I wasn't home and Connie got hysterical. So we stopped that and then I tortured myself with the idea that maybe you would have been in the next magazine—"

"Dad, you made your point."

"For the better part of two years," he said, talking over me, "I did almost nothing else but try to find you. I came damn close to bankruptcy, to losing this house, my job—everything we still had. The only reason I pulled out of it, actually, was to preserve the family for you. I knew you would come home one day, and when you did, you would need that structure."

I sat dumbly on the couch, staring down at my hands.

"I'm not looking for your sympathy. I know none of that was enough. I didn't find you, and that's the bottom line. You had to save yourself."

I looked up at him, wondering if I'd heard correctly. "What?"

"I couldn't do it for you," Dad said, "so you saved yourself."

The idea was so radical I could only stare at him.
"Save
myself? What ... I didn't save myself. I'm screwed up, Dad. Screwed up and screwed over," I added deliberately.

He didn't flinch. "You're alive. You convinced Slaight to bring you home. You won."

"You know how I convinced him, don't you? You've known it all along." I looked away. "I don't see how you can know that and not hate me for it, even a little."

"Jeff." He waited until I met his eyes. "The things Slaight did to you, the fact that he used you sexually"— Dad hit the words hard—"I hate him for it, of course. Not you. Never you."

"But I was there too, Dad." I took a deep breath. "Anyway, it wasn't just the sex. Ray . . . loved me, I think. He told me so and I built on that. He was kinder to me then, so I... that's how I fought him. I convinced Ray that I loved him. I kissed him back, Dad. Do you get it?
I kissed him back.”

"I get it," Dad said roughly. "And I'm telling you, good. If that worked, good."

"You don't know the details. You don't know how I was with him. You don't know everything I did."

Dad shook his head slightly. "There is nothing you can tell me, nothing I can find out, that will ever make me turn away from you."

"Is that true?" I asked after a moment.

"Yes," he said simply.

I closed my eyes, trying to absorb what he was offering: unconditional love. Unconditional acceptance. I felt lighter, the pressure I had come to accept as normal lifting away from my chest. I took a deep breath, letting it out as a memory hit me like a fist in the stomach.

"When I told you about my back, you stopped touching me."

"Yes," Dad said. My stomach turned over. I hadn't expected him to agree with me. "I thought that was what you wanted."

I stared at him. He was right. Yet... "Dad, it wasn't just that you didn't touch me anymore. You could barely stand to look at me after that."

Dad lowered his head. "Spare a thought for me in all this. How do you think I felt when you told me about your back? I wanted to kill Slaight, but I knew whatever I did to him wouldn't help you now. I felt so guilty, so . . . helpless, I had a hard time facing myself, much less you."

I had to know for sure. "You didn't stop touching me because ... because you thought I was disgusting?"

He shook his head slowly. "No" was all he said. It was all he needed to say.

We sat quietly for a moment.

"He scarred you," Dad said. I gasped, sitting back in the chair. "Not just physically. I know he's living in your head now. Maybe you feel he's still with you ..."

"He is."

"You can heal, Jeff," Dad said intensely. "You will."

"Scars don't heal," I told him with a short laugh. "That's why they're scars."

"Tell me what you see when you look at your back," Dad said.

"I don't look."

"Then what do you imagine?"

"Cords," I said immediately. "That's what they feel like. The scars. Sometimes I think of them as worms. Thick white worms gliding across my back ..." Tears slipped down my cheeks. I stopped talking before my voice veered out of control.

"Let me see."

I waited for a feeling of outrage, or panic, to give me the energy I needed to turn Dad down, turn him down in such language he would never ask me again.

It didn't come. Instead I felt tired, and weak, only a small spark of fear making me hesitate. Who cared anymore?

I stood up slowly, moving over to where he sat. I turned around, pulling my T-shirt halfway up, keeping it in place with my arms tight by my sides.

Dad stood behind me, pressing one hand lightly against my neck to move me forward. I took two steps and listened to his breathing.

"It's not so bad, Jeff," he said after a while, his voice thick. "May I touch your back?"

"Okay," I said, working to keep my voice casual. I felt like running when I felt Dad's cool fingers on me, but I stayed where I was.

He pushed his hand up under my shirt, rubbing my upper back gently. I shivered suddenly as gooseflesh covered my arms. Dad worked his way down, his hand moving from one side of my back to the other, his fingers now barely grazing the skin. Each mark tingled as he hit it, until I imagined the stripes illuminating, one after the other, on the canvas of my back.

Dad took his hand away and, so gently it brought fresh tears to my eyes, pushed my arms up from my sides and pulled the T-shirt back down around me. I kept my eyes down as he turned me around to face him.