Broken (14 page)

Chapter 27

So, I found myself in my Jag making my way through heavy New York traffic. As if there was any other kind. I never have had patience for the traffic, but, as I made my way to her apartment uptown, the logjam seemed interminable. I cursed every red light. After all, the longer it took me to get to her, the more likely it would be that she wouldn’t be in her apartment anymore. If she was like most New Yorkers, she probably would be doing something on a Sunday afternoon, even if it was freezing outside. Brunch with girlfriends. Shopping. Catching a movie. Hell, she might even make her way to the Columbia library and study, if she was particularly industrious. The point was, I had to catch her before she made her way to do anything else.

But, I finally made it. I was able to actually park the car within five blocks of her place, which seemed a miracle to me. I walked along the sidewalk to her building, feeling apprehensive and nervous. How would she be? What would she say? How would I convince her that I was willing to change for her? Could I convince her?

One thing was for sure, though. I felt that the time had come to be completely honest with her about my past. I mean, no way would I give her numbers. For one thing, I had lost count a long, long, long time ago. For another, I didn’t want to send her running for the hills when she learned that I was well in the triple digits. And I didn’t think that she was quite ready to hear that I was bisexual. That would really freak her out.
But, then again, it’s going to come out sooner or later. Better just lay all your cards on the table right now.
And, just the thought of laying myself bare like that, and not knowing how it would be received, was terrifying. Terrifying, and absolutely necessary. Ryan opened the door for having a conversation like this, so maybe it was all for the better.

These were all my thoughts as I made my way to her building. My heart was pounding out of my chest, my knees felt like they were going to buckle, and I was shaking as I pushed the buzzer for her apartment.
Please, Scotty, be there. Please be there.

Then her voice. “Hello? May I help you?”

She’s there!
But I lost my voice momentarily. Then, I got up the courage to address her through her buzzer. “Hi, Scotty. This is Nick.”

Silence. The pause seemed to last a lifetime as I stood outside in the freezing cold, hoping and praying that she would give me the
time of day. Then – “Uh, hi, Nick. I can’t let you come up right now. I’m getting ready to leave.”

Okay, now, O’Hara, it’s time to use whatever you have learned about finesse. You can’t go in there like your usual bull in a china shop.
Oh, but, how I wanted to. I wanted to demand that she let me up and talk to me. That was my usual way of getting things done.

Of course, things had to be done differently here. “Scotty, please, I need to talk to you. I understand if you don’t want to see me, but it’s really important.”

Silence again, but the door buzzed, to my profound relief, and I was able to get in. I dashed up the four flights of stairs, not wanting to wait for the elevator, and knocked on her door.

She opened it, and it was obvious that she had been crying. My heart melted upon seeing her, with her tear-stained face, and hair that was loosely flowing for once. I had never seen her with her hair down, and I felt even more captivated, if that was possible. She was still in her pajamas, which meant, of course, that she was lying when she said that she was about to go somewhere. I was charmed to see that the pajamas that she wore were Winnie the Pooh bottoms with a matching top in blue. I also noticed that, on her coffee table, there was not only a box of tissues, but also about fifteen crumpled up Kleenexes.

She said nothing, but just turned her back and walked back into the apartment. I followed her, and sat down with her on the couch.

I put my arm around her, and felt her stiffen up upon doing so. I felt daunted, but I had to comfort her. I knew that she was crying because of me, and that just broke my heart. As the British would say, I was gutted at that moment.

How do I bring this up?
I sat there with my arm around her, ignoring her obvious body language about my touching her, trying to decide what to say to her. It was so not like me, not knowing what to say. Not knowing how to address something. But I found myself absolutely tongue-tied, perhaps for the first time in my life.

I finally just decided that I needed to confront the situation head-on, which was how I usually confronted every situation. “Scotty, uh, I know that you talked to Ryan.”

She nodded her head. “Yes. And, I’ve spent the last couple of hours just thinking about things.” She paused for a few minutes. “Nick, uh, I think that I need to get this out of the way. I’m in love with you.”

My heart skipped about a hundred beats upon hearing that. She did feel the same way about me as I did about her! I put my hand her hair, and nuzzled her neck. But she gently pushed me off of her. “I don’t think that you understand. I can’t get involved with you any further. I can’t risk it. I can’t risk being vulnerable with somebody, only to have that somebody move on to a newer and shinier object.”

At those words, my heart sank. My own words came back to haunt me – that, one of these days, my lifestyle would catch up to me. And, lo and behold, this moment proved it.

My lifestyle had officially caught up with me.

“Scotty,” I began. “I know what you’re thinking. And, you are right to be thinking that. Absolutely right. I have had my share of random hookups. More than my share. But I want you to know that you are truly, truly, truly special to me. More than anybody has ever been. I’ve thought of little else but you these past few weeks, and I can say, without any reservations whatsoever, that I am madly in love with you.”

I saw a flicker in those green eyes that gave me hope.

But it was a false hope. She shook her head. “No, Nick. I’m sorry. I can’t get involved with somebody who sees sex as something that isn’t special.” Then she took a deep breath. “Perhaps if I tell you what happened to me, you will know why.”

I held my breath.
Was she going to tell me about the abuse?

She was shaking again, and she reached for another Kleenex. I continued to have my arm around her, and I also continued to stroke her hair. Every tear that she shed was tearing me apart. I felt her despair all the way to my core, and all that I wanted to do was to erase all of her sadness.

Just erase it.

If only I could.

She took a deep breath. “I’m only going to tell you this because I want you to understand where I am coming from. I don’t want you to think that I feel that you’re a bad person, or morally damaged or anything like that. I don’t want you to feel that I am judging you. But I do need you to understand me, and why being with you is so terrifying for me. Like standing on the edge of a cliff, and the slightest wind might come along and knock me over.”

I just sat there, not saying a word for once in my life. “Go on,” I said

Another deep breath, and she looked at her Kleenex in her hands. “Uh, okay,” she began. “My mother, as you probably know, is a little unstable.”

She got up and got a glass of water for myself and her, and sat back down. I just took the water, and continued to say nothing. But I hoped that I was silently encouraging her to confide in me.

“Go on,” I said.

“Well, ok. She was unstable, and she couldn’t care for me. At all. She left me alone in the apartment almost all the time, even when I was very small. She didn’t work, but had a hellacious alcohol habit to finance, so she turned tricks. Growing up, when she was not leaving me completely alone in the apartment, she was there with some random guy, hooking up so that she could get enough money to buy her booze. And that was literally where all her money went. Because she certainly wasn’t spending the money on food or clothing, for either her or me. If it weren’t for food stamps and the church pantry, we both would have starved to death. I had about one pair of jeans growing up, and one top. To say that I was embarrassed when I started school was an understatement.”

Okay. So, maybe there wasn’t sexual abuse. Perhaps she has a problem with casual sex because her mother and her tricks.

But, no, there was more.

She took another deep breath. “Well, somebody reported her, and I was removed from the home. I went through one foster home after another, and I also was reunited with my mother periodically, because sometimes she got her act together long enough to convince the court to give her custody of me again. But, she would always go right back to what she was doing, so, eventually, her parental rights were severed.”

I could feel my heart breaking, absolutely breaking, for this beautiful woman. All that she had to endure was simultaneously breaking my heart and making me feel even more in love with her by the second. Her combination of vulnerability and strength were absolutely intoxicating.

She shook her head. “I was eligible to be adopted at the age of 9. And that was what I wanted. I mean, I really wanted to be with my mother, because I loved her, no matter how awful of a parent she was. But if I couldn’t be with her, then I wanted to be with a family that would love me and would treat me like one of their own. I craved that sense of permanence and unconditional love that most everybody else takes for granted.”

“Of course,” I said softly. “And you deserved that.”

She nodded her head. “I know that I did. But I couldn’t find it. I went through four different families, all of whom promised me that they would adopt me, and all of whom gave me back after a short time. I have no idea why, to this day.”

I was incredulous. This sweet, beautiful girl, and these families didn’t want to keep her? Especially after telling her that they would? What the hell was wrong with these people???

Another deep breath, and she continued on with her story. “Well, when I was 11, I finally settled in with a family that I hoped to call my own. They were a wealthy family who lived in a lavish apartment on the Upper West Side. The mother was a K-Street lobbyist who commuted between Washington and here, and the father was a Wall Street trader.”

It sounded like this was a good thing, this family, but Scotty’s body language told me otherwise. She started shaking uncontrollably, and I knew that this story held the key to Scotty’s fears. Somehow, this family was pivotal to who she was, and I was grateful that I was going to be privy to it. Because it could give me a road map on how to help her heal.

“Go on, Scotty. I’m listening.”

She nodded her head again. “Well, uh, things were great for awhile. They didn’t have any children, so I was like their only child, and they really tried to make me feel welcome and at home. I really loved Elle, the mother. She was very sweet, even if she was completely driven in her day job. She was a lobbyist, as I said, but her lobbying was for things that helped the world. She lobbied for environmental and human rights causes. So, I looked up to her.”

I braced myself for the bombshell to come. Because I could sense that it was right around the corner.

“The father, uh, his name is, well I’ll give him a different name. Let’s say his name is Sam Johnson. Sam was 33 and very successful, and very handsome to boot. The two of them really made a beautiful couple, and they were socialites. Everybody who was anybody knew both of them. They really were the center of a lot of New York scenes.”

Scotty now had body language that showed how anxious she was. She took one of the pillows on her couch, and was hugging it tightly as she shook.

She didn’t look me in the eye when she told me what happened next. “Well, uh, when I was 13, I started to look more like a woman.
I got my, uh, my breasts that year. And I started to feel uncomfortable sometimes around the house. Paul, I mean Sam, started staring at me like he had never stared at me before. And Elle wasn’t always around, because, you know, she stayed in DC a lot.”

I suddenly knew where this was going, and I suddenly had the violent urge to find this Sam Johnson and rip his lungs out. Flay him alive, inch by inch.

But I let her continue with her story.

She started crying again as she continued on with her story. “Sam, uh, came into my bedroom one night a few months after I had my 13
th
birthday. He crawled into bed with me, and kissed me and felt me up. He told me that I was beautiful and that he could see that I wanted him.”

At this point, I bit my lip, hard, to keep myself from completely losing control. I was going to kill this man, and I was going to do it slowly…

She shook her head. “I didn’t want him. I mean, I was interested in boys, like anybody my age would be. I really didn’t want him at all. But he persisted. Every night, he would come into my room and fondle me.”

Her breathing started coming harder and harder, and the tears were coming faster as well. “This went on for a few months, him fondling and kissing me. Then, one night, he, uh, he, uh….”

Calm down, Nick. Calm down. You need to be there for her, so calm down.
But I felt my own heart racing and realized that I, too, was crying. Which was something that I never did.

“He, uh, he, uh…he-he-he-he r-r-raped me. He promised me that it wouldn’t hurt, but it was excruciating. And, even after he did it to me that first night, and I had never felt pain like that before, he did it to me again that same night.”