Maybe I should call him or run back by his apartment. Not to make him open up if he doesn’t want to, just to be there with him.
Yet that feels like . . . too much. Like acknowledging his pain would be too intimate. How can we be this close and yet this distant? I want to bridge the gulf between us, but maybe that’s impossible.
The entire day, I wait for him to call. I don’t expect Jonah to vent about his family’s sorrows, but he might turn to me for companionship. For understanding.
He doesn’t phone that day. Or the next. No e-mail either.
Whatever hell Jonah is going through, he seems determined to go through it alone.
Twenty-seven
On Thursday, Jonah finally calls while I’m shopping at the supermarket.
Even after five days, I don’t get a hello. Instead he says, “Sorry I’ve been—off the radar.”
“That’s okay. Sometimes we all need some space.” That’s my invitation to him to tell me why he wanted his solitude.
The invitation is declined. He says only, “I had an idea.”
“Yeah?”
“For our next game.”
I’m standing in the produce aisle between the cucumbers and the persimmons, but just hearing his low, rough voice talk about our games makes my body respond instantly. Fire kindles deep inside, and I cradle the phone closer to my face so no one will overhear. “Tell me.”
“When I have you, I want to own you.”
“You always do,” I whisper.
“Not completely,” he says. “Until now.”
? ? ?
Doreen’s hair seems to have gone gray at the temples in the past couple of months. I wonder how much of that is due to me.
“You and Jonah haven’t spoken about his family issues at all,” Doreen says. “Even with their goings-on splashed on every website and newspaper in the country.”
“He doesn’t want to talk about it.” I shrug. “Sometimes I don’t want to talk about things either. So we respect each other’s privacy. Isn’t there a quote about that? About how the best love is two solitudes that border, protect, and greet one another?”
“We’ll discuss Rilke some other time.” Doreen’s dark eyes never leave my face. “You say Jonah never mentioned his mother’s arrest. Instead he called and asked you to ‘play’ again.”
“That’s right.”
“You realize he may be compensating for feelings of powerlessness.”
At that I have to laugh. “You don’t need a psychology degree to figure that out.”
“What do you think you’re compensating for?”
“I’m punishing myself by indulging myself. When I indulge my rape fantasy—when I surrender to that fear and helplessness—I’m punishing myself for wanting it. Don’t you see?”
“I doubt it’s as simple as that.”
Is she kidding? “Nothing about this is simple.”
Doreen leans forward, and when she speaks to me, genuine emotion comes through in every word. “There is no reason for you to punish yourself for this fantasy.”
“I want to relive the worst thing that ever happened to me? What Anthony did to me? It’s sick.”
“Again, many women have rape fantasies. Some men do too. It’s not always a response to trauma. Most of the time, I don’t even think there is a specific reason.”
A thousand times, Doreen has said this. But what she says next explodes in my mind like she’d thrown a hand grenade:
“You might have had this fantasy even if Anthony had never raped you.”
“No.” I shake my head. “He did this to me. You know he did.”
“Anthony raped you,” she says. “The fantasy comes from that, and from a culture that eroticizes violence against women, and leftover puritanical guilt about sex that tells us we’re not allowed to choose it and want it for ourselves, and from God only knows where else.”
I’m furious with her. I want to cry. My cheeks are flushed with shame. Every emotion I’ve ever felt about this is bubbling up at once. “But it’s the only thing that gets me off. I can’t come any other way! Does that sound normal to you?”
Doreen looks at me steadily. “Exactly. The fantasy isn’t your problem; it’s the extremity of your fixation on it. Who is it who won’t let you find sexual satisfaction any other way?”
Me. She means me.
And only at this moment do I realize Doreen has been building to this moment for a very long time.
I grab my purse. “This is over.”
“This session, or our counseling relationship?”
She said this knowing I might break from her permanently. Right now I want to. But I’ve found too much solace here in the past to let Doreen go that easily.
“For now,” I say. “But I’ll be back.”
I go out the door without waiting to hear her reply.
As I walk to my car, trembling, I think of what I meant to talk with Doreen about. We weren’t supposed to unearth the roots of my fantasy today. We were supposed to talk about this weekend. What Jonah wants from me. How much further we’re going than ever before.
It doesn’t matter. No matter what Doreen said today, it wouldn’t have stopped me.
What Jonah asks of me, I’m going to give.