And later that night, while Julie and I lay in bed and I put my hands on her belly to feel our unborn child do its little knee-and-elbow dance, I began to experience a guilt so tremendous that I knew I would eventually tell you this story, or that I would at least tell someone. It just seemed so strange to me, all of a sudden, that I could still have secrets in the world like the ones I had in regard to the rape of Lindy Simpson.
After all, with Julie, I felt I had no secrets. Anything she had asked me, I told her. Even after we had parted for college and dated other people and then reunited for graduate school (she’s a literature professor now, by the way, a smart cookie), I’d told her the truth about all of my feelings. But then, after I saw Lindy again, the legitimate joy I’d experienced at learning she was happy and healthy slowly faded into self-loathing. It was like I was back in high school, shaving the sides of my head, trying so hard to impress her. This made me think of my uncle Barry, and what he’d said to me about love always being the same. It began to make a certain sense to me. I felt antsy and nerve-wracked. I felt full of a tremendous vulnerability. And although there didn’t seem to be any similarities between Lindy and Julie, I understood that they were connected by the pain I felt when I was keeping secrets from them. Or, to put it another way, that they were connected by the tremendous potential for love I imagined if they knew the whole truth about me.
So, “Jewels,” I said, “I need to tell you something.”
Julie rolled over on her side to face me. At seven months, this took some doing, but she didn’t seem to mind. She held a pillow between her legs and wore an oversized T-shirt with a cartoon Tyrannosaurus rex on the front of it. The dinosaur was lying facedown, its mouth and feet on the ground, while its short arms flailed around uselessly. The caption read “I hate doing push-ups!”
She smiled.
“Are you going to tell me that you used to be madly in love with Lindy Simpson?” she said. “Because I already knew that.”
“No,” I said. “That’s not what I was going to say.”
“It was nice to see her, wasn’t it?” Julie said. “She looks good, don’t you think?”
“She does look good,” I said. “I mean, you know what I mean. She looks happy.”
Julie smirked. “What else could you mean, young squire?”
She gave me a playful little pinch under the sheets, and I pulled the covers up to my shoulders. I closed my eyes.
“Do you remember what happened to her?” I asked.
“Of course,” Julie said. “She was like Little Red Riding Hood in my house. She was my cautionary tale. It was how my parents told me to be careful, you know, even in our neighborhood.”
The idea of this bothered me.
“But Lindy was careful, wasn’t she?” I said. “And our neighborhood was safe, wasn’t it?”
“Who knows,” Julie said. “I’m sure my parents just used her as an example because she was the only one they knew about. Who knows how many others there were.”
“Other what?” I asked. “You mean victims? In our neighborhood?”
“Sure,” Julie said. “In our neighborhood, or anywhere. Who knows how many more there are out there. That’s just not the type of thing women go around talking about.”
I thought about this. It seemed to me a horrible version of the world I love.
“I would die if that ever happened to you,” I told her.
“Who’s to say it hasn’t?” she said.
I sat up in bed and looked at Julie. My heart started pounding. I felt frantic.
“You would tell me,” I said. “Wouldn’t you?”
“I guess I would if I wanted to,” she said. “But that would really be up to me.”
Then, after a while, she touched my arm.
“Relax, Lancelot,” she said. “We’re just talking.”
I lay down again and looked at the ceiling. I had this painful lump in my throat and was so afraid, already, of becoming a parent.
“If you were Lindy,” I said, “do you think you’d want to know who did that to you? Whether you found out now or back then, do you think that would change things for you? Would it make it better, if you had someone to blame?”
“I think a lot of women know who did it,” Julie said. “I think they might rather not. Still, it’s not like either one is a good option.”
I kept staring at the ceiling as Julie watched me. She saw that I was close to crying. I know she did.
“They never arrested anybody, did they?” she asked me.
“No,” I said. “But they should have.”
She took a moment. I could feel her still watching me.
“You’re the one who told everybody at school, aren’t you,” she said.
“I was,” I said. “I am.”
I then turned to look Julie in the eye and beneath the covers she took my hand and placed it again on her belly. “Hey,” she said. “Before you tell me that thing you were going to tell me, will you do me a favor? Will you think about whether or not it will help us? Will it help the baby? I mean, even in the long term. I know how you are. Even if you’re thinking about big-picture stuff like honesty and trust, will you also think about how good things seem for Lindy now? And think about how good they are for us? And think about whether or not what you say will help that goodness continue?”
I didn’t understand what she was getting at.
“Are you suggesting that the point of the truth is to help people?” I asked her. “Isn’t it more complicated than that?”
“Just think about it, okay?” Julie said.
So, I did think about it.