made me so sleepy that I fought hard to stay awake in the daytime and was even more nervous and restless when it was time to go to bed.
I drank excessively too.
“I love you so much, darling,” I told Kathy at the airport as she was about to go through the gate to her plane. “Please be a real good girl. You're such a fine looking girl. I want you to always remember how much I love you-”
I would almost choke on my words. I felt like bursting into tears one minute, and getting angry the next. My head was dizzy, and for some strange and inexplicable reason, I was terribly afraid to kiss my own daughter goodbye. Finally, I could contain myself no longer as I realized she was going and that I wouldn't see her again for nine months-if ever.
“You've got to tell me, Kathy!” I blurted out too loud, at least glad that Bob had been unable to come along with us. “This has been torturing me for three weeks. I–I've worried about the times you were alone with Bob so much. I–I love him, of course. But you are such a-an attractive girl-and the way you dress. And that night he was with you-all night. I want to know-what happened-”
“I hate to hurt you, mother dear,” Kathy told me with a flip, smarty attitude, gesturing provocatively and thrusting out her breasts. “But I suppose it's for the best since all this seems to be bugging you so. Bob's been screwing me the whole time! And he's very good at it. One hell of a lot better than Chillie, and so much cooler than those silly kids back home. Goodbye, Mother-”
I couldn't believe that I had heard correctly. I stood there in a trance watching her run out to the plane, her lovely legs attracting so much attention in the little short skirt she was wearing. Somehow, I managed to find my way to the bar and order a large double of scotch.
Chapter Four
I don't know how I got home that afternoon. It was a good thing Bob had the car that day because I would certainly have killed myself if I was driving, and probably others too. That was the first time in my life I had ever felt like I might commit suicide.
I remember that, as I was sipping my scotch in the bar, the idea occurred of walking over to the airport drugstore and getting a bottle of iodine to pour in my drink. And on the taxi ride back home when we were doing 60 on the freeway and the traffic was still passing us in the left lane, I thought of opening the door and forcing myself out.
When I arrived home, I poured myself a whole glass of scotch and literally fled from the kitchen and the sight of the knife rack on the wall. There was a. 32 pistol in the bedroom upstairs, and there was also Bob's spare. 45 too. So, I sat curled up in a chair in the den, afraid to move.
I have no way of knowing how long I sat there like that. Kathy's plane had departed at three, and it was long, long after dark when I heard my car enter the driveway and then Bob coming through the front door and into the den.
“I knew you'd be upset about Kathy's leaving,” he remarked with his usual air of complete self confidence and superiority. “But I see no reason for you to collapse into a blue funk like this.”
He calmly mixed himself a drink and then sat down on the bed-sofa across from me, his eyes searching me out, feeling me out. I wanted to scream and I wanted to cry. I wanted to go crazy and throw a fit. This was the man who had carried me to the heights of lovemaking I had never dreamed of, who had made me his virtual slave, tormented me with his teasing, and made me lead a life that kept me at home and away from other men and women for the first time in years.
And he was also the man who had violated my own daughter.
“You-and Kathy,” was all that I was capable of saying at first, and that only by forcing the words out one by one. “You've been deceiving me-all summer. Was that-why you couldn't make love to me when I wanted you-?”
“I was afraid she might make up some lie like that,” Bob reacted with complete equanimity, standing up and walking over to the window. “The girl is highly neurotic. She needs professional care. All summer long she tried to devise a way to seduce me, or make it appear that we had been intimate. I was afraid she might use that instance when I tried to help her and be a father to her, to claim that we had been intimate.”
“You're the liar, Bob!” I found sudden strength and lashed out at him, shaking as I stood up to face him for the first time. “You've done an excellent job of brainwashing! That's your specialty, isn't it? Brainwashing people and practicing your psychological warfare on the side like this for personal kicks! Haven't you done enough overseas? How many people have you driven insane over there?”
As I continued to lash out at him, Bob casually walked into the kitchen and poured me another drink. I watched his slow, even pace, his calm gestures, as if he were in complete control of himself. There was no indication that the man was capable of a human emotion himself, only of evoking these emotions from others to the point of madness.
“I should feel very hurt-and I do,” he said with a tone of resignation after I had exhausted myself with my verbal blasts at him. “I have wasted my whole summer trying to make a normal woman of you. I have taken you away from the depraved life of the wife-swap and swinging crowd, the promiscuous debauchery of gang-bangs and Lesbian love. I have tried to help your emotionally unstable daughter by providing her with a proper authoritarian father image, by listening to her problems. Denise, I have given you everything of me this summer. I have devoted almost three months to helping you, to loving you. And what have you done? You have accused me of one of the most terrible things you can imagine-of having sexual relations with your 14-year-old daughter! You are sick, Denise! You are morbidly sick!”
“No-no!” I screamed at him, grabbing at my hair and wanting to tear it out. “You-I mean, I can't-I don't know what to believe. I feel like I'm going mad or something. Oh, Bob, you've got to help me-”
“Yes, that's what I intend to do,” he said, nodding his head as he headed toward the stairway. “It's obvious that my presence upsets you, that you are using me as a whipping boy, a place to put the blame for your own insane suspicions and perverted desires. I'm leaving, Denise. I'm packing now and leaving. I have some business in Hong Kong I can attend to-”
I followed him upstairs and helped him pack, crying and trying to keep from saying anything. I knew that if I begged and pleaded it would only make matters worse. I think I knew then, even in that upset and irrational state, that Bob had planned all along to leave me then. He had been out that very day finalizing some kind of “deal.” I even had imagined that it had something to do with Kathy's leaving, that I was no longer of use to him without Kathy. I, the beautiful mother, was only useful and attractive so long as I could provide an entree to me even more beautiful and far younger daughter.
“You're in no condition to drive,” Bob began his last words to me, “I'll park your car in the lot at the airport and you can pick it up. Goodbye, Denise. I hope you'll see a good doctor…”
My doctor continued to lead me with tranquilizers and fatherly advice, urging that I let him refer me to a psychiatrist. This, I absolutely refused to do because of my teaching job. Regular visits to a psychiatrist are hard to hide from colleagues and the people on the board and administration. I had known of more than one teacher who had gone to a psychiatrist, become suspect, and eventually been eased out or forced to resign.
They say that mental illness should cause no more of a stigma than a physical illness or disability. Perhaps it should not, but it does. I was determined to have nothing to do with a psychiatrist.
With the help of the tranquilizers and loading myself up with new projects at school, I managed to get by the next few weeks. But I was a woman alone. All of my former contacts were afraid of me, I found out, because whenever they had called during the summer, Bob had threatened them, warned them never to call me again.
Most of the men I had known as clients were married and I had no way to get in touch with them. One of the couples I called hung up in my face after saying they did not want any trouble. That left only Bill Britten, and I did not want to see him. I needed a man to love me, to do something to me, not just to sit down and look up my dress
