Minna poured out more whiskey and was surprised to see they were already halfway through the bottle. She wanted to forget Mr. Hansley. She tried to press him back into the soft darkness of her mind, as she had tried then to ignore what was happening, to deny it—but he stayed, and his hardness stayed, resolute and undeniable, like an accusatory finger pointing at her, marking her.
Her father should have known. He should have protected her.
She had never once, in all her life, allowed herself to think the words—but they were there, suddenly, and she knew she was going to cry.
Caroline was still talking. “He called me every week, just to see how you were doing. You and Trenton. Sometimes he called every day.”
“Why didn’t he call me, then?” Minna turned to the window, too, fighting the squeeze in her throat, the sharp sudden pain behind her eyes. She took another long sip of whiskey. It didn’t taste so bad anymore. It eased the tightness in her throat, too.
“He probably knew you wouldn’t pick up,” Caroline said. “You’re busy. He knew that.”
The window showed an indistinct reflection of the lamp and Minna’s face, her eyes carved into black hollows. Outside, beyond the screen, she could hear the low song of crickets in the grass. What the hell did they sing for, she wondered? Probably something to do with mating. But it sounded like mourning to her.
“I got fired, Mom,” Minna blurted out. She didn’t turn to look at her mom’s face. She couldn’t stand it. She closed her eyes quickly and listened to the cricket song, constant as a tide, in and out, rising up to meet the darkness; bringing darkness down into the song. “I was screwing the accounts manager. My boss found out. Against company policy.”
“Minna . . . ” Caroline started to say.
But Minna found she couldn’t stop, now that she had started to speak. The words, too, were like a tide, long suppressed, suddenly rolling out of her. “Remember when I worked at SKP? There it was the mail guy. And one of the interns.”
“Minna, you really don’t need to—”
“You want to know why Trenton hates me?” Minna turned, finally, to her mom. Caroline was framed perfectly by the lamplight, stiff-white, horrified, like an actress in a play. “Family weekend. Remember family weekend? I told you I ran into an old friend so you put Amy to bed. But I didn’t. I didn’t run into anybody. I—I went back to the dorms with one of the seniors. Conrad. He was only eighteen.” She looked down at her hands. Her cheeks were burning, but she was surprised when she saw tears appear suddenly on her palms. She didn’t know when she had started to cry.
“Trenton doesn’t hate you,” Caroline said.
Still the words were coming. And the tears, too. Minna couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried. It must have been years. But it was like all that frozen stuff had finally cracked open, and now everything was running, pouring, bleeding out, like the ground during the first big thaw of the year. “I slept with Danny’s best friend at prom. In the bathroom. I slept with a taxi driver once, in college. He was taking me to a friend’s house for Christmas Eve, over break.” The crickets were still singing; the note was swelling higher, louder, like a wave about to break. Like the high notes at the end of Bach’s Solo for Cello in G Major: one of her favorite pieces of music. “And I hated piano. I hated Mr. Hansley. He used to—rub against me when I played. He made me put my hands on him. He made me put my hands all over him.”
There. It was done. The cello hit the D note; the crickets stopped singing. Now that she’d said it, Minna felt suddenly empty. There was a long stretch of silence. She was afraid to look at her mom.
“Minna,” Caroline said finally, in a voice that sounded very young. But she said nothing else. Minna knew she should be relieved or furious or disappointed—she should be something—but the tears had dried up as suddenly as they’d come, and she couldn’t muster up the energy to feel anything.
Caroline picked up the pack of cigarettes, offered one to Minna, and took one for herself. The smoke burned her throat—a good, cleansing burn.
They sat, and they smoked. All around them, the house was silent. Gradually, the crickets began to sing again.