“Worst part was, I think I probably kissed him back. More reflex than anything, I guess. It’s . . .” His voice trailed off, and something hard shone in his eyes then. “He pulled away, looking at me. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He put his hand on my cheek for a moment and then got up and walked out and closed the door behind him.” Fritz took a breath, exhaled. “You know the weirdest part? All I could think was that he would get in so much trouble if anyone found out. That was my biggest fear. Everyone loved Wat. I loved him. So I went to the bathroom and washed my face and then went downstairs and told my mother I was sorry, and she hugged me and cried and said she was sorry, too. And Wat sat in the corner behind his Shakespeare, smiling.”
The silence after Fritz stopped speaking was too horrible, so I rushed to fill it. “But you told someone, right? Tell me you told someone.”
Fritz shrugged, the movement a pitiful rising of his shoulders. “Who could I tell, Matthias?” he asked. “I was afraid. Not so much for me, but for Wat. I was afraid my father would kill him. And it didn’t feel like he was molesting me.”
“You were, what, twelve? He’s your uncle.”
“Thanks for clearing that up,” he said dryly.
“Jesus, Fritz!”
Fritz actually smiled a little, the old lopsided grin. “I don’t think Jesus had an awful lot to do with it.”
His calmness and that smile disarmed me so that I simply stood there. “So,” I said, my voice a bit strained, as if I were having to speak around something in my throat, “did this happen—I mean, was this a one-time event, or . . .” I didn’t know how to continue.
Fritz raised an eyebrow. “Have you ever known Wat to restrain himself?” he said.
I managed to sit down on a hay bale. If there hadn’t been a hay bale, I would have had to sit on the ground.
Fritz stood there, considering me. He sighed and then rubbed his face again. “This sounds bizarre, I know,” he said. “But it felt like . . . something special with him. A connection, something private. Everyone wanted a piece of Wat. Women especially, even my mother. Men wanted to be seen with him, shake his hand, get into conversations with him. And here he was paying all this attention to me.” I must have made a noise or grimace, because he raised a hand out to me, as if in supplication. “I know, it’s crazy. And sick. It’s sick, Matthias, I know that. I didn’t have sex with him. Not intercourse. God, what a horrible word.” He took a breath as if about to dive underwater. “When Wat moved back into his town house about a week afterward, he would invite me to visit. Wanted to show me Washington, he’d say to my parents. He’d invite Abby, too, but she had lessons and recitals all the time. Now I see he planned it that way. So I’d go visit for a night, and Wat would show me D.C.—the Washington Monument, the Mall, the Capitol building. He tried to get me into the White House once, but it didn’t happen. And then we’d go back to his town house and have dinner, maybe watch baseball. And maybe Wat’s hands would wander, or he’d kiss me again. He’d be sitting next to me on the couch, and it would just sort of . . . happen. Not every time I visited.” He peered down at the Saint Christopher medal in his hand. “My God, once when he just kissed the top of my head after dinner and went upstairs to bed, I was almost hurt.” He shook his head, bemused by his own reaction.
In a low voice, and making an effort to keep my voice from shaking, I said, “Is that why you ran away?”
Fritz put the medal in his pocket. “No,” he said. “Not entirely. I’d thought about it before—what kid doesn’t think of running away from home, right? I guess I had more reason to run than most. The whole thing with Wat was—confusing. Was he gay? Was I gay? Women loved Wat, so why was he doing the things he did with me?
“I’ve had a lot of time to think about this, obviously. And I think, sexually, he was immature. He loved women, but somehow they frightened him at the same time. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s never had sex with a woman. Or if he has, I’m positive it wasn’t a great experience. And it wasn’t like he was trolling school playgrounds, picking up kids from bus stops or anything. He knew me. I was family, which in a perverted kind of way makes sense. He could trust me. I wasn’t threatening.
“But that started changing. I’d see Wat maybe once a month, but then NorthPoint started making inroads with the government and the Pentagon, and both Wat and Father would be gone for weeks. The longer I was away from him, the more I could look at what he was doing—what we were doing—objectively. And by the time I was fourteen and about to head to Blackburne, I was beginning to freak out. Can you imagine what our classmates would have thought about what I’d been doing with my uncle?”
I shook my head in protest. “Look, there’s nothing wrong with you. You were the victim. Wat—”
“Wat is a pervert and a lech, but I was perfectly willing to let him be that,” Fritz said. “And you know I’m right. What would Diamond have said? Or Trip? Would you have roomed with me for three years, knowing what I’d done with Wat?” He appraised me for a few moments as I sat there on that pile of hay, shamefully unable to reply. “It’s okay,” he said. “I understand. Keeping that secret ate at me, though. You know when a battery is old and the acid leaks out, it gets all corroded? That’s what I felt like.
“I did some research, too. Looked up sexual abuse on the Internet, read articles about pedophiles. Something like half of all child molesters were molested themselves. I remember sitting in the library, staring at the computer screen after reading this, and thinking that I might grow up to be a child molester.”
Something cold and hard seized me, a half-acknowledged and dreadful thought. Unable to stop myself, I glanced past Fritz to the trailer door. Tommy was in there, playing alone. He wouldn’t do that, I thought. He wouldn’t. Then, horrified, I realized Fritz saw where I was looking. “No, Fritz,” I said, “I don’t—I’m not—” I felt my face flush and panic rise in my throat, threatening to squeeze it shut. I stood up, waving my hands as if to blot out what I had just done.
“I know,” he said, reassuringly, but I had seen the look of pain on his face when he had realized what I was thinking. “I fucking know. That’s why . . .” He closed his eyes and then seemed to force them open again. “I haven’t—talked about this, ever. Not to Shanna, not to anyone. It’s this thing, a—a shame . . .”
I shook my head vehemently. “You would never . . . I mean, come on, Fritz, you—you wouldn’t do that. Not to anyone.”
To my great relief, Fritz let out a long breath and smiled weakly. “I don’t think I would, either. But then, after everything that happened with Wat, all I saw was the possibility that I might end up doing that. I was fucking freaked out. Every time sex came up, I’d freak out. Fletcher Dupree or someone else would say, ‘Blow me,’ and I’d start sweating. I’d go to the A/V center on Saturdays, sit in the dark with everyone, and watch R-rated movies . . . Remember Dracula, the Coppola one with Keanu? That vampire chick rises up between his legs?”
“Monica Bellucci,” I said unsteadily. “Goren loved that flick, watched it every weekend.”
Fritz nodded. “I’d watch it, and I’d wonder if I was turned on enough. I couldn’t keep a girlfriend—”
“You always had a girlfriend.”
“Never kept the same one for long, though,” he said. “Sort of like running away, I guess. First sign of trouble or stress over sex, I’d dump her and move on.” He closed his eyes. “I almost killed Wat once.”