Her mother continued the conversation.
I saw the cutest dress at Taggert’s today! Maybe Saturday we can go and look at it? Unless you have plans with a friend? Any plans, sweetie?
Jenny believed, and I think she was mostly accurate, that her mother had moved on quite nicely. Though her frustration with the tension that Jenny and her father created could be deciphered by the slightly higher pitch her voice took on in moments like this one, she was living her life as she had before. Busy, social, upbeat. Yoga classes, luncheons, volunteer work at the school. She never noticed Jenny rubbing the scar, and even after it was finally discussed in the open, she claimed that she could not recall the behavior.
Jenny was not consciously aware of this behavior either, though Violet had asked her about it several times. It seemed to be akin to nail biting, or thumb sucking in small children. Something in her subconscious sent a signal to her hand to reach back for that place where she had been carved. I believed this to be the first indication that the treatment had not been as successful as the professionals believed.
The story of what happened that night in the woods had been carefully crafted, and the carving had not been one of the chapters. Everyone knew Jenny had been raped. No one knew for how long, or in what manner. Her memory loss was ascribed to shock and emotional trauma. This is the story Charlotte told. Tom said nothing to anyone, which he could get away with, being a man. And Jenny had no story to tell at all, except that she had received a treatment to make her forget. She had been uniformly diligent in keeping this to herself.
As tidy as everything had become, a different kind of monster had entered Jenny’s mind and body, stealing everything good and putting in its place a gnawing anxiety that had become quite severe.
Sweetie? What do you say?
Her mother wanted to shop for a pretty dress. Her father glared at her mother. No one spoke of that night; but from how Jenny described things, it seemed as though that night could be heard on every breath that left their bodies. Her father, she knew, regretted what they had done to her—making her forget. He wanted revenge, justice, something more than what they had, which was, even after all this time, nothing. But her mother never looked back. To use the analogy I gave earlier, the house had been repaired, and that was that. Given the choice between the tension that stayed within the walls of their fixed-up house and Jenny remembering that night, Charlotte was happy to take the former.
Jenny had heard their fights from her room at night—fights that would leave her father in tears and her mother sounding “disgusted” and calling him “weak.” She felt that all of this was her doing, from her inability to exorcise the monster and go shopping for dresses. She felt destroyed inside. And she felt she was destroying her family. Jenny had not noticed the fault lines that were there all along. Children never do.
She answered her mother. Sure, Mom. That sounds good. Maybe we can get lunch first. She forced another bite of food into her mouth.
Charlotte smiled. Great! Then she looked at Tom with smug satisfaction that things were all better.
When Jenny had eaten enough to convince them, she excused herself from the table. She took her plate to the sink and made a comment about needing to get online to chat with her friends.
She went to her room.
I think I’ve described Jenny in some detail. What have I left out so you can picture her? Long blond hair. Blue eyes. Slender and athletic. Her face was somewhere between youth and maturity—the cheekbones had started to protrude more visibly; her nose was becoming more angular. She had freckles and one small dimple on the right side of her mouth. She spoke eloquently, without the usual “um’s” and “uh’s” that teenagers use. And she was very natural in her use of eye contact, which is a skill that must be learned. Some people look too long before breaking away to look elsewhere. Others don’t look long enough. She had it just right, which is something we grown-ups take for granted, as we have all—most of us, anyway—mastered this social acclimation.