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 or watch me masturbate.
Not that I didn't do plenty of that myself. I tried to make it a purely mechanical thing, denying fantasies and performing on a rigid schedule only as a way to keep from thinking about sex. When I arose in the morning with the slightest feeling of passion or thoughts of lovemaking, I quickly masturbated while still in bed until I had several orgasms.
Often at night, it was the same thing. And it seemed to work for a while until I realized that I could not suppress the fantasies. They loomed so vividly during the times I would lie in bed or sit in the bathroom manipulating myself, that they would then linger. I found that I was more and more prone to admire myself in the mirror as I masturbated, awkwardly sucking my own nipples and nibbling on them until they turned a fiery red.
I remembered hearing about things women used as penis substitutes. I tried a carrot, a smoked sausage, a cucumber, a candle, and even a flashlight. For the most part, they were crude and uncomfortable. I wished that I could find one of the dildoes like I had seen at a party and in the sex movies. I wanted a vibrator with a penis attachment. But I had no idea where to get one.
It was during one of my weekend masturbatory orgies in front of my dresser mirror that I thought of Cindy. Strange I had not thought about her before in my lonely time of need. Obviously, I had rejected the idea for some reason. Lesbian relations had been pounded into me so much as being abnormal during Bob's visit that I had tried to direct all of my fantasy interest toward men.
But when I finally extended my area of fantasy, undoubtedly as a result of a narcissistic interest in myself from enjoying looking at my own body while I masturbated, I became suddenly filled with a very warm and glorious feeling. Cindy, the gorgeous young blonde who led a double life as a very high-priced call girl, was the one person to whom I could turn for both sex and affection.
Cindy had befriended me before when I was in need of help and companionship. She probably understood me more than anyone else. At least she could sympathize with my plight.
Unfortunately, Cindy was only at her downtown apartment where she entertained men at certain hours during the day. I did not have her home number, as she kept her life with her two small children completely separate and distinct from her business and even from most of her other sexual activity. So I had to wait until Monday afternoon when I arrived home from school to call her.
I was the most excited and happiest I had been in months. Perhaps I expected too much. After all, it had been a long time since I had seen Cindy. Many things could have happened. Her feelings toward me could have been only temporary and transient. She could have moved. Maybe she had married.
My fingers were trembling when I dialed her number and waited through three interminable rings before her soft and mellow voice with that indescribable quality of deep emotion and passion greeted me.
“Hel-lo…Cindy filled the phone with her warmth.
“Cindy… this is Denise,” I said falteringly, “I… I've got to see you… talk to you.”
“Oh?” she said with a question mark, and my heart almost fell, “I understood that your… boyfriend… objected to your former acquaintances.”
“That's over… oh, it's all over Cindy,” I told her in rapid-fire speech, so afraid that all hopes were lost, “He's in Hong Kong or somewhere. He's a… a beast… a maniac. He's just about ruined my whole life, Cindy. I don't know what to do. I need…
“Darling,” she interrupted me, her beautifully soft voice even lower now.
“Yes?”
“I have company at this moment,” she informed me quietly, but with a new intimacy. “Why don't you drive on down? He'll be gone by the time you get here. I'd love to see you again, Denise… I've wanted to see you again… darling.”
She hung up quickly after that. It didn't matter. I could tell by her voice that I was welcome and that my siege of loneliness was on the way to being in the past tense.