This is what we do. We do not want to change. In our natural core, in our guts, we want to feel the way we did as children. More strands of spun sugar that need to be woven in.
But that night in the car, he didn’t make me feel better. He didn’t know what I needed. We talked about all those things, about the logistics. Maybe he told me he loved me, how relieved he was that Jenny was okay. I don’t even know. I had stopped listening to him as the seam kept pulling apart. I could feel it, you know? That thread just giving way, and then finally I just came undone. I know I started to cry and pull at him, at his coat and his shirt. I reached my hand between his thighs. I needed him to do something.… I didn’t even know what I wanted exactly.
“It sounds like you wanted to have some kind of sexual contact with him.”
Yes, maybe. Anything.
“So you could feel different from how you were feeling.”
Yes.
“Like a drug. You’ve said that before. That he was like a drug for you.”
Yes. I wanted him to change the way I felt inside. Like a drug. That’s right. But he just pushed my hand away and looked at me like I was some sort of deviant. Like I was depraved. “What are you doing?” he said. “We need to have some respect for the situation.” He went on and on. How could I want sex hours after what we had witnessed? I felt like this wall just slid down between us. Our connection was broken, and he was looking at me the way I saw myself when I thought about my past. It was humiliating.
This was tremendous progress. We went on to discuss this event in the car, and how Charlotte had been using Bob to feel better about her past, but then to feel worse again. An upper, then a downer—always leaving her in the same place. The upper lost its potency while the downer grew stronger. She started to need more of the upper, exchanging sex for his love, his acceptance. She would ask him about the things his wife wouldn’t do, or things he’d seen on the Internet. Bob had a large appetite. Charlotte did not climax with Bob, if you recall. Yet she was preoccupied with thoughts of having sex with him. The sex got her the words, that was the piece she didn’t understand until weeks into our work. Like Pavlov’s dogs salivating at the sound of a bell. They did not get any satisfaction from the bell. But the bell meant that there would be food. And they were very hungry for food.
But on that night, Bob did not have the right words. For the first time, the drug was totally impotent, and Charlotte went home soaked not only in her daughter’s blood but also in her own self-loathing and humiliation. It was here that we were interrupted by the arrival of the blue Civic.
I remember quite clearly the moment I learned that the blue Civic had resurfaced in Fairview and that an arrest had been made. I had spent the entire day in Somers and was driving home. I don’t enjoy music while I drive. I find it provokes emotional responses that then distract me from my thoughts, and driving is an excellent time to think deeply about things we often shortchange. Sporting events, fast-moving ones in particular—basketball, hockey—on the other hand, stimulate these thoughts. The action and chaos float in and out of my brain, mostly providing background noise that helps me focus.