I'm Not Sam

sunlight through the trees turns the film on the glass opaque.

I wonder how long it’s been sitting there. Usually a kid will want a glass of milk right before bedtime.

But last night I slept in our bed with Patrick, not here.

Connection: and this one hits me like a brick, complete with all its implications, implications I know suddenly that I’ve been avoiding ever since my talk with Doc this morning — I woke up in his bed, our bed, finally Sam again, with Patrick’s semen sliding out of me.

I was wrong. He was unfaithful to me. He slept with Lily.

An image scuttles through my mind like a spider in a web. I’m sitting in a dark movie theatre with my Uncle Bill, who I love beyond all logic for his crooked smile, his deep blue eyes and his curly red hair. I’m ten years old so logic’s not important. Love is.

Uncle Bill’s come to live with us in the spare room, and much later I find out why. He’s been under my dad’s supervision. My father has vouched for him with the local police, all of whom he knows, and most of whom are friends. Bill is a former postal worker who’s been caught stealing money and checks out of the mail. My father has made a deal to hush it up. It’s either live with Dad or go up on federal charges. Bill has wisely chosen the former.

But now in that movie theatre — lunch at Bonvini’s Pizzeria and a day at the Colony Theatre being Bill’s present to me for my tenth birthday — his hand has come to rest my bare left knee. To this day I can’t recall what the movie was, though I know that I very much wanted to see it at the time, because all I remember is the fear and embarrassment, the humiliation I felt as that hand moved under my skirt, up my leg, over my thigh and between my legs, stroking me.

About a year ago I performed an autopsy on a nine-year-old girl who had hung herself from a pipe in the basement of their home with her father’s belt. Suicides among children under twelve are rare, but not unheard of. This little girl carried visible signs of vaginal bruising and internal tearing. Her father had been fucking her with both his penis and, as it turned out, a hairbrush.

Suicide among children is rare, but we all know that child abuse is not.

I remember my rage that day. It wasn’t at all professional. I managed to hide the fact from my co-workers, but when I came home Patrick got the full brunt of it for what must have been an hour, and he agreed with me that there were people out there who were people in name only, who had only a cosmetic connection to the rest of the human race, who lived their lives without empathy or sense of justice.

And now I’m angry. Angry at myself for never telling on Uncle Bill all those years ago. Angry at Patrick for betraying me in this strange foreign way, and betraying his words to me that day.

I feel a slow burn building.

I know what Patrick’s hiding from. He’s hiding from the fact that last night, he was fucking a child. And he knew it.

I go to the bedroom. The bed’s empty. Patrick’s gone.

He’s not in the living room. He’s in the kitchen. He’s pouring himself a cup of coffee. He’s pulled on a pair of boxers and when he hears me behind him he turns around. He looks like hell.

“What did you do last night, Patrick?”

He stops mid-pour.

“I know all about Lily. I talked to Doc. I know everything. So I’m asking you to tell me about it. What did you do?”

He finishes pouring and slips the mug into the microwave.

“Do you hear me?”

He won’t look at me. He presses the keypads on the microwave and it begins its steady wind-tunnel hum.

“You know what this makes you, don’t you?”

I almost don’t hear his reply.

“You’re my wife, Sam,” he says.

“Yes. But I wasn’t your wife last night, was I? I was some little girl. According to Doc, six or seven years old. So how many times, Patrick? How many times did you fuck me? Did you fuck me every night for eighteen days? Did I put up a struggle or did I just let you?”

“NO! ONCE! I swear to you, once, only last night! Only last night! Never before that. And that was after days of you walking around half-naked, asking me to help you wash your hair in the bathtub, clip together your bathing suit, and seeing you in that wedding dress again — I thought it was you for a moment, Sam! I did! And when I called your name, when I tried to touch you, you just went berserk, you screamed at me I’m not Sam, you trashed the room! And then a little later you seemed to forgive me and you were out of the dress, the dress was on the floor, you were naked, and there was glass everywhere, and so I picked you up and carried you…”

“And you couldn’t help yourself, is that it?”

There’s no way I can keep the acid out of my voice. I can see he looks exhausted, defeated. To me that reads weak and at that moment I hate him for it.

“Why didn’t you get me help, Patrick?”

“I don’t know. I just wanted…”

“You just wanted. You selfish bastard!”

The microwave timer goes off and to me its routine everyday beep is suddenly as huge as a siren screaming, it angers me by its very normality, when absolutely nothing is normal anymore, and before I know it I’m standing in front of him pounding at his chest and swinging for his face so that he has to fend me off like a boxer and I’m screaming at him, you bully! you baby-fucker! you repulsive son of a bitch! and I realize my claws are out too, I’m going for his face while he’s yelling no no no no! and then suddenly I hear this other sound behind me riding high and stunning over all the sounds we’re making, shutting them down as abruptly as you turn off water from a tap.

It’s Zoey in the doorway, and her yowling is that familiar yowl we’ve heard so many times before, but there’s more to it now, it’s more complex, a kind of mournful savage screech, as though heartbreak and torment were one and the same, and as I turn to her I see why. She’s got her toy in front of her as always, her tiny counterpart, her tuxedo, but she’s tearing at it now, pulling it apart with claws and teeth and glaring at us as though daring us to stop her.

A cat can be a terror eye to eye when it seems as though she’s lost control as Zoey is now and a chill rockets up through my spine and I know my feet are immobile as solid stone, that I couldn’t budge them for a billion dollars.

But Patrick can move his.

“ZOEY!” he shouts and claps his hands. At the same time he moves on her, stomping hard, each footfall shaking the floorboards, and then for a moment there’s a standoff, Zoey’s eyes burning at him, glittering, and Patrick advancing until she suddenly drops the toy and turns and silently runs away.

Patrick stoops and picks it up. He cups it in his hand.

“She’s had this for how many years, now?” he says.

His voice is quiet and very sad.

“We scared her,” I tell him. “We never shout. We drove her mad.”

He nods. The microwave beeps again.

This time it’s only a beep, just an ordinary beep from an ordinary machine.

“Patrick? Give it to me.”

He places it in my hand. I study it for a moment. I’m studying it but I’m also far away, months and maybe years away. For his part Patrick seems to know that. He’s silent.

“I can fix this,” I tell him. “I can fix this, Patrick.”

I can.