Looking for Trauma

       As they sat on his stiff suede couch, a Survivor rerun he’d never intended to watch droning on his sixty-inch plasma screen TV, Anthony tried to slide an arm around her shoulders, but she flinched away—an act, by now, all too familiar to both of them. It reared its ugly head whenever he tried to do this, or embrace her, or kiss her, or put a hand on hers or caress her cheek or slide a palm up her thigh. She didn’t want to react this way—in fact, she’d tried very hard not to and felt horrible for showing Anthony rudeness that he didn’t deserve. But she couldn’t help it; each time intimacy approached, fear snapped its talons around her, sending her sprinting in the other direction. She’d known this day would come, because no man could tolerate this forever, but she’d hoped that it wouldn’t come so soon.

           He squinted at her, a vein twitching in his neck. “You know, I can’t help feeling maybe this is more than just whatever happened to you when you were a kid.”

           “What’re you talking about?”

She knew that “whatever happened to you when you were a kid” referred to the incident that they theorized had caused the peculiarity at hand—an incident that she didn’t remember. They guessed had happened in her first few years of life, before her mother had finally gathered the courage to leave her father, the probable instigator. But what more he thought had come into play, she didn’t know until he said, “There’s someone else, isn’t there?”

           “No. Of course not,” she said, feeling stupid because she should have found his meaning obvious. After all, he required that answer whenever she had to change plans with him; whenever, passing her street, he saw cars he didn’t recognize; whenever, on dates, she chatted with their waiter or cashier or the man behind the ticket counter at the movies. She had only herself to blame; a person could take only so much rebuffing before they started to spin out.

           He shook his head. “Well, anyway, you know what you have to do.”  

           She had to attack the root of the problem—a prospect so frightening that, despite knowing that she’d need to do it, she’d spent all ten years of her adult life putting it off. Anthony had proclaimed what made it so scary the unknown. Once she learned its identity, he said, she’d realize that she could conquer it. She begged to differ. Something that could have this great and long-lasting an effect must, in and of itself, be every bit as horrifying as the wondering her procrastination had wrought. He didn’t understand; he had a father who loved him and would never intentionally hurt him. He didn’t know how it felt to live in the glare of a specter in a hideous mask hiding an even more hideous face. He knew almost everything he’d experienced and had the luxury of trusting that the rest, too, was innocuous. She couldn’t fault him for that, though, and wouldn’t have wished the alternative on him, or anyone else, for that matter, in a million years.

           He didn’t deserve to have to deal with her baggage, either. If a better woman, she would have sacrificed her happiness, letting him go in order to spare him that pain. Instead, she’d clung to him, selfishly, punishing him for offenses he had not committed. He was right; she couldn’t keep doing this to him.

“I know,” she said. “I have to remember. I have an idea…but I’ll do it tomorrow—I’ve got that thing with my friends tonight.”

           He sighed. “How many times have I told you, Kat?—Those girls aren’t good for you.”

           She bit her lip.

           “Tell ‘em you’re busy. Do whatever you have to do. Then, call me, and I’ll find you somebody to talk to. Okay?”

           She hugged herself, swaying from side to side, stomach knotting.

           “Okay,” she muttered.

*         *         *

           At home, she took a breath, trying to prepare for the blow but also, all the while, asking herself whether she really should provoke it. Her mother, at least, must have thought it better that she stay in the dark. On the few occasions on which she’d spoken of her father, she’d said only that he’d hurt her, and they would fare better without him. She’d never even shown Katharina a picture of him, and Katharina had never had any desire to see one. She still didn’t.

           But she couldn’t imagine losing Anthony.

           She trooped upstairs, to the attic. She tugged the rusty chain hanging from the rafters; the naked bulb flickered on, revealing dust-frosted boxes containing things that she didn’t need but couldn’t part with. She passed a stack holding crop tops and skirts that Anthony thought “too revealing,” and approached one that contained what little her mother had had to leave her after her death three years ago. She dug through midi skirts, blouses, cardigans, loafers, dog-eared Jane Austen paperbacks, fake roses from Dollar Tree, and a cedar jewelry box before finding what she sought: a placemat-sized, cracked brown leather photo album. She paused, asking herself one last time whether she had to do this. Once again, she reached the same answer.

She opened the book. She found the pages yellowed at the edges and so brittle that, each time she turned one, she feared that it would shatter. The first showed her mother cradling her, a baby, before an open gate leading to a backyard that she couldn’t remember having had, expression teeming with affection and adoration. Tears built in her eyes, but she swallowed them and moved on.

           On the next page, she found a photo of a man who appeared in his mid- to late thirties, wearing jeans and a t-shirt with a boomerang printed on it, standing on the other side of the gate shown in the previous photo. It punched her gut. She stared at him, pulse racing, sweat tickling the nape of her neck. Her grip on the book tightened. Her mind throbbed.

           She remembered.

           She looked up at him from behind her playpen in a living room she hadn’t previously recalled, her mother in the doorway, tears streaking her face.

           “I’m telling you, I’d never do that.”

           “Of course you would. He’s a hot little number, and—“

           “I’m not attracted to him. I swear.” She hitched her chin out to project firmness that, even at her young age, Katharina recognized as a front.

           Her father strode forward, grabbed her mother by the shoulders.

“Devin, not in front of—“

           “You don’t tell me what to do.” He slapped her. The snap sent bile into Katharina’s throat. Her mother staggered backward, clutching her cheek.

           “Maybe next time you’ll think before you go sleeping around.”

           The book trembled in her hands. Goose bumps snaked up her spine.

           Same living room. Different day. She sat on her rocking horse but didn’t move. Her parents, again, faced off, her father shooting her mother a glare that could have halved a coconut.

           “Where’d you learn to dress like that?”he demanded, gesturing toward her mother’s outfit— a perfectly modest scoop neck blouse and calf-length skirt.

           “I thought it looked nice.”

           “Yeah. Nice for the guys who want a piece of you.”

           Red blotches climbed her mother’s cheeks. “I don’t think it’s—“

           “And in front of our daughter? Teach her to dress like a—“

           “I’ll change,” she said, whipping around and making a beeline for the hallway. Her footfalls clunked in Katharina’s stomach.

           She’d had enough. She commanded her arms to close the book, but they refused.

           She sat in a high chair in the kitchen, playing with her meatloaf; her parents, at the table, their meals untouched on china plates before them. Her father glared at her mother as one would at someone who’d murdered their best friend.

           “What about ‘Get the car washed today,’ don’t you understand?”

           “I had to go to the store, and I’m going out with my friends tomorrow, anyway…”

           His eyes narrowed even further. Though they didn’t aim at her, Katharina shuddered. “And what’d I tell you about those morons? The last thing you need is more motivation to do stupid things.”

           Her mother’s face flushed. “They’re my friends, Devin.”

           “Well, they shouldn’t be.” He stabbed his meatloaf so hard that its dish shattered. “See? Look what you made me do.”

           Her mother didn’t reply. Instead, she rose, fetched a dustpan and brush from the cabinet, and headed his way. As soon as she came within his reach, her father walloped the back of her head.  

           “Stupid,” he muttered.

           Her mother bent, lower lip trembling, and began sweeping up the china shards.

           Tears streamed down Katharina’s cheeks. Fists clenched around her lungs. She didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to make the connections her brain insisted upon making, because they were obvious. They should’ve been obvious from the start.

With that came the prospect of an act she had to ponder, even though she didn’t want to do it, even though it would hurt, even though it would mean ending up alone, because, as, if mature enough at the time, she would’ve told her mother, no woman deserved this.

           Hands trembling, she placed the album back on the pile from which it had come. She’d pick it up another day.

She rose, strode to the stack of her own clothing, picked up a skirt and crop top, and made a beeline for the hatch. She’d change in her room and head out.

           If she hurried, she could still make it to meet her friends.