17.
As for my candid photo of Lindy, the explanation would have to wait.
A strange stretch of time arose between the day my mother discovered the box beneath my bed and the day it was all finally dealt with nearly a year later. And although I’d hinted to her of the dark room where the photo had come from, she did not immediately take this issue up with the Landrys. She instead grounded me indefinitely, told me to stay away from Jason, and grew preoccupied with the other disasters that came to define her.
The first one was subtle.
In the wake of her discovery, my mother had contacted Peggy Simpson, Lindy’s mom, and the two of them became close friends. I was so mortified by the idea that my mom would spill my secret fantasies to this woman that when she first invited her over, I did all I could to sabotage it. I greeted Mrs. Peggy at the door. I was extremely polite. I offered to pour her some coffee, fix her an iced tea. My mom knew what I was up to when I pulled up a chair beside them at the kitchen table. What child, she understood, would desire this type of company? She looked at my odd haircut, the ring in my left ear, my pale arms. She saw no child at all anymore, I suppose.
But my mother didn’t understand my keen love.
I’d confessed it to her, all right, when I first tearfully defended those items she found in my box. But how does one relay this giant emotion? I didn’t have the vocabulary then. When I told her, for instance, that “Lindy is all that I think about,” my mom said, “I can tell. You ought to be ashamed.” Or when I said, “No, Mom, I love her!” she said, “What I’ve got in my hands is not love, son. What I’ve got in my hands is obsession.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
Still, there must have been something in that initial conversation about love that gave my mother pause. I mean, I must have said something that stuck. I know this because when I stood in the living room eavesdropping on their conversation, thinking my chance of happiness with Lindy doomed, I heard Mrs. Peggy say, “He’s a good boy, Kathryn. You have to be so pleased,” and my mother took a long time to respond.
What must have gone through her mind at that moment? I wonder.
Surely she stood on a precipice.
Could she empty out my box for this woman, who had already suffered so much? Could she show her those school photos of her young daughter, prematurely pasted onto the adult world? More so, could my mother call her own parenting into such dubious question and risk whatever credibility she might have? Was there a part of her, in other words, that felt as if we had hidden evidence from the police? Did she feel some sort of guilt now, some sort of responsibility for the crime, just by giving birth to a boy who could have these thoughts and then so joyfully entertain them? It was more complicated than I understood at the time. Because she had to know that if I was truly innocent, if my raging obsession for a girl who’d recently been raped was mere circumstance, as she hoped it was, could she possibly say about her son what could not be unsaid?
I got my answer, I believe, when I heard my mother continue the conversation.
“Tell me, Peggy,” she said. “How’s Dan? How’s your husband?”
“He’s a goner,” Mrs. Peggy said. “He never sleeps. He blames himself. We all do.”
“I understand,” my mother said, and took a long and deep breath. “So, any leads?” she asked. “Any developments? Or would you rather not talk about it?”
“Nothing new,” Mrs. Peggy said. “Lindy remembers so little, and pressing her for details only makes it worse. She locks herself in her room. She barely speaks to us. I wish Dan could understand that, but you know how men are. He just wants to fix everything.”
“It’s strange, isn’t it?” my mom said. “I mean, about men. You’d think they’d realize they wouldn’t have to fix so much stuff if they didn’t go around breaking it in the first place.”
The two of them shared a knowing laugh about this and I could picture them each sipping their drinks and smiling, considering the ridiculous men in their lives, and wondering how we ever got along without them. Then, when this light mood passed over, Mrs. Peggy took a deep breath. I could hear it from around the corner.
“The police have basically stopped calling,” she said. “Part of me is thankful for that.”
“Thankful?” my mom asked.
“Is that horrible?” Mrs. Peggy said.
Her voice sounded suddenly small and fragile. “Am I horrible for just wanting it all to be over?” she asked.
I heard my mother moving around in there. I pictured her perhaps leaning forward to look Mrs. Peggy in the eye, to touch her knee. “No,” I heard her say. “No, you are not horrible. Let’s talk about something else, okay? Let’s talk about whatever you like.”
“Okay,” Mrs. Peggy said. “That sounds nice.” Then, after a while, she said, “But what do I like?”
I went to my room after I heard this. I felt somehow pardoned.
I felt protected.
Still, I consider this friendship a disaster because of the way it affected my mom. She gorged herself on empathy for the Simpson girls from that day forward. Whether this was out of some brand of guilt introduced to her by the contents of my box, or just a remarkable aspect of her character is beside the point. My mother spent countless days with Mrs. Simpson in the following months: shopping with her, drinking coffee on the front porch, talking on the phone late into the night, and even accompanying her to a therapy group for parents.
Each of these excursions left my mother exhausted with grief, as there was no end to Mrs. Simpson’s remorse. It even began to show on my mother’s face when she would return home to me in the late afternoon, where she would lie on the couch and stare at the ceiling. I’d watch her kick off her shoes, rub the palms of her hands against her cheeks.
“Mom?” I’d ask.
“She’s just such a nice person,” she’d say. “The poor, poor girl.”
I never asked to which Simpson she was referring.
Regardless, the second disaster was the reappearance of my bumbling father. Our unfortunate trip to Cocodrie and the ensuing discovery of my box had apparently struck some sort of paternal nerve in him, although it was obvious he didn’t know what to do with this emotion. So he began to stop by sometimes after he had showings in Baton Rouge, usually not for long, just to check on us and maybe fix a dripping faucet in the guest bathroom. He had only one “important” talk with me during this time, regarding my behavior, when he sat me down in my bedroom.
“Look, son,” he said, “I know this is uncomfortable, but you really freaked your mom out. She’s a little worried you were holding out on her when the police came over.”
“I know,” I told him. “She doesn’t trust me anymore. I can tell.”
“It’ll pass,” he said. “That’s the thing about women. Everything with women takes time.”
“I just wish I would have locked that stupid box,” I said. “I wish she wouldn’t have come in my room.”
“I told her that,” he said. “I told her every boy on this block probably has a stack of porn in their closet. That doesn’t mean anything. I’m not sure if women understand that. We’re wired a little differently, you know, men and women. A boy’s got to have privacy. If it wouldn’t have been the Simpson girl, it probably wouldn’t be so bad.”
“I never wanted to hurt her,” I said.
My father laughed.
“No man ever does,” he told me. “That’s why I’m not worried about you. That’s why I told your mom not to worry about you, too. Because the person who did that to your friend was not a man. He was an animal. You understand that? You are a man. That’s the difference.”
I thought about this for a long time. An enormous part of me wanted to believe him.
“What are you saying?” I asked. “A real man only hurts women by accident?”
“Bingo,” he said.
I felt some nameless air clear between us. But this was as far as we got.
His growing presence in our house did not seem to me the return of anything comfortable. I instead felt crowded out by the obvious playacting we all began doing. I was supposed to be happy he was back, I understood that, and I tried to be, though I felt a more pressing need to protect my mother, who took it all so seriously.
After he would leave in the evening, sometimes staying as long as supper, I’d often hear my mom analyzing his every gesture on the phone for Mrs. Peggy. His smile. The way he complimented her chicken. He remained with that Laura, she knew, but still.
“They always say that if you love something,” I’d hear my mother say, “set it free.”
She’d sip her wine and listen.
“That’s right,” she’d say. “If it’s truly meant to be.”
Nobody else saw it this way.