Jonah takes a deep breath. “The first time—the first time, it was late at night, and I heard my mother crying. I’d heard that before, after my father died. Sometimes it helped her if I came to her, gave her a hug, something like that. So I went to her bedroom. And Carter was . . .”
“They were having sex?” I say. That would freak out almost any kid, but surely even the archetypal Freudian event wouldn’t leave Jonah so deeply scarred.
He says, “Carter was raping my mother.”
“Oh, my God.” I can’t imagine seeing that, ever, much less as a small child.
“I didn’t understand.” Jonah’s voice breaks. “I had some idea of what they were doing, but my mother was crying. Bleeding. And then Carter saw me, and he was so angry. I thought he would beat me, but he did worse than that.”
“What?”
“He made me watch.”
Bile churns in my gut, and I think I might actually vomit. Who the hell does that to a child? Whose mind works that way? A monster. Only a monster. All these years I thought Anthony Whedon was the worst thing that could ever happen to me, but Carter Hale is another level of evil altogether.
“Carter took his time. I think I was in there an hour before he was done with her. He told me that—that this was what it meant to be a man. That this was what women wanted. What they deserved.”
All this time, I thought I was working out my darkest demons while Jonah just played our games for fun. Never did I dream what secret burden he might be carrying.
But even if I’d spent hours psychoanalyzing him, guessing what might underlie his own desires, I would never have guessed this.
“I didn’t believe him,” Jonah says. “I knew it couldn’t be right, the way he’d hurt my mother. But the next day, when I was alone with her, I asked her if we would run away. Mom said—she said it was just that way between men and women sometimes. She pretended everything was all right. I told myself that must be true.”
By now I remember how this story began. “Jonah, you said—you said, ‘The first time.’”
Jonah’s smile is sharper than any blade I’ve ever seen, maybe as sharp as the blade Jonah wishes he could hold to his stepfather’s throat. “Maybe it turned Carter on. He likes humiliating my mother, and what could be more humiliating than bringing her child in the room to watch? So he started coming into my bedroom when I was trying to sleep. He’d carry me into their room and wouldn’t let me leave. He made me say out loud all the things ‘Daddy’ was doing to her.”
I picture a small boy in his PJs, maybe with rocket ships printed on the cotton, having to speak those words. It’s as if the pain from that moment leaps through the distance and the years to pierce my own heart. “Oh, God, Jonah, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
He doesn’t seem to hear me. Now that this terrible story has begun, he can’t stop until he’s gotten it all out. “At first Carter made me watch from the corner. After a while, he started making me sit on the foot of the bed. And a couple of times—he—Vivienne, Carter made me ride on his back.”
Jesus Christ. I’ve gone from feeling nauseated to feeling faint. If it’s this terrible for me to hear this, what must it have been like for Jonah to grow up this way?
“Eventually he made Elise watch too,” Jonah says. “We were able to keep him from ever starting in on Rebecca and Maddox, though. We protected them. Sometimes I think that’s the only truly good thing I’ve ever done, protecting them. So they get to be the normal ones.” He runs one hand through his hair. “If you think I’m screwed up, you should meet Elise.”
I imagine little Jonah and Elise suffering to keep the two babies safe, and their bravery tears through my heart. “When did he stop?”
“When did Carter stop raping my mother? Never, as far as I know. But when Elise and I got close to puberty, he stopped wanting us in the room while he did it. Maybe he had a touch of pedophilia mixed in with all his other psychoses. Or he thought we might finally be big enough to challenge him. At the time, I didn’t analyze the reasons why. I was just glad it was over.”
“And your mother never left him?” Of course not. They’re living on different floors of Redgrave House. I remember the news stories now—Jonah’s mother’s insanity, her violence.
No wonder the children haven’t turned on her. They know she’s mad because Carter Hale drove her mad.
“I used to ask her why she didn’t go,” Jonah says. “When I was little. I said she shouldn’t let Carter hurt her. But she told me—over and over, she told me, that’s how things are between men and women. She pretended nothing was wrong. And so in my head, that kind of violence, that kind of humiliation—to me, that was what sex was.”