My first job wasn’t much, but the office was wonderful. It was dark-panelled, with a wall of windows and a door that opened onto a small, private walled garden. I would be helping to promote and track the sale of Ellen G. White and Uncle Arthur books—books I had never read and didn’t believe in. I turned out to be good at it, and eventually took over many of the department assistant director’s responsibilities when he left. “I know you deserve it,” my boss, the director, said, “but I can’t make you assistant director. The men wouldn’t stand for it.”
I might not have the title or the salary, but I had the office, and I had the private walled garden. When I moved in the sandblasters had been at work. Slag and gravel lay rippled over a war zone of torn plants. I set to work in odd moments, resurrecting what was there. The garden recovered. Eventually a bougainvillea, a small palm, roses and ferns half filled the space. I bought impatiens and violets, dug up the earth and created gentle slopes and hollows, then planted the flowers in clumps and rows to mass as they grew.
Every morning I stood on the step leading from my office into the garden and misted the flowers with a low-pressure garden hose. The garden bloomed in violet, burgundy, and red. Ferns arched under the bougainvillea and palm tree. The air was cool, moist, and sweet. A soft green light filled the shade inside the walls. I started thinking about investing in a park bench, and maybe a small birdbath or fountain.
I hung pictures in my office to match the garden—giant burgundy-veined white peonies and purple irises that I had painted and framed—and quilted green, burgundy, and cream satin into a throw for the nubby white couch. A brass lamp stood on my desk. It felt cool, peaceful, and safe.
I pleased my boss. My parents were elated. “He’s such a nice man,” they said. “He can’t do without you. You’ll always have a job there.”
That was a bit depressing, but at least I had a regular paycheck and, as Pam pointed out, I was gaining experience. Overall, I was happy. I pleased him. I had never pleased anyone before in my life, and I would have done anything to hold onto that. I looked for ways. They were easy to find. He liked pies? I baked pies. He needed presentations written? I wrote presentations. He needed a party for 100 organized? I organized the party. He needed accounts balanced? I balanced accounts. He was pleased. I was surprised.
The day he hugged me I got shaky. But then I remembered the old men who had hugged me before—I had gotten shaky then, too, but it had turned out to be my imagination. This must be the same.
When he hugged me again I felt nervous, but knew I was making too much of it. Normal people hugged all the time, didn’t they? Questioning it would make a friendly hug—probably an act of Christian charity—into something dirty. He was a nice man. If I said anything everyone would know that I had a filthy mind, and that I was vain. He was a preacher, and preachers didn’t do things like that, particularly with plain, doughy, stolid young women who were better with trucks than they were with people. I knew how the story went; I had lived it before.
“She must have misunderstood,” he would say. “I was just being fatherly.” And then he’d fire me, more in sorrow than in anger. My family would find out what I had said and, because of my past history, would know that it was all my imagination. They might even call and apologize to him for the damage I had done to his reputation. They would say nothing at all to me, but I would see the accusation in their eyes. Could I not see myself in the mirror? Why would such a good man do such a thing? I had misunderstood. If by chance it had actually happened, I must have led him on. He was a nice man.
I hung onto the fact that I pleased him. I refused to risk that. It was all my imagination. I had called “wolf” too often in the past to trust my instincts. When he asked me out for dinner I felt funny, but I wanted to get out of the house, I liked him, and after all, he was a preacher, and I was always blowing things out of proportion. Why would a man who had a beautiful wife, a health club membership, and a lovely home in the suburbs want me? I wasn’t really a woman at all.
He told me stories sometimes, about his wife’s uncontrollable rages. I thought of Mom and Sabbath dinners, and sympathized. Even though I was nervous, I felt safe in my story. I was ugly. I was not really a woman. No man could possibly see me as anything other than a good worker. That was my sole asset. Everything would be fine, as long as I didn’t let my sick, dirty mind make me look foolish again.
When he asked me to join him for breakfast, when he hugged me, when he asked me not to tell anyone about the time we spent together, when he looked at me with a strange light in his eyes, I told myself firmly not to let my imagination run away with me. I understood what it felt like to be trapped, and my sympathy grew. We had formed a friendship; surely that was all he wanted from me. This man didn’t want my body; he was only being nice. I had finally found someone who was satisfied with me, who took pleasure in my company, who felt I was valuable. I didn’t want to lose it.
The day he backed me up against the office refrigerator, kissed me and said he thought he loved me I was frightened, but also relieved. I wasn’t crazy, or dirty-minded. This man wasn’t “just being nice;” he actually professed to find me physically attractive, desirable. I didn’t believe it for a minute, but I did believe that, for some unfathomable reason, he wanted me to believe that he believed it.
I wish I had said, “No,” even once. But I didn’t. It wasn’t allowed. Besides, to acknowledge what was happening was to acknowledge something unspeakable. I had suddenly become part of his story—and his wife’s story—in a shameful, humiliating way. I had become The Other Woman, the Home Wrecker, the Wicked Woman, the Slut, the Whore. There were all kinds of words for a woman like me. He has a wife, my mind screamed. But does he really? another part of my mind argued. He told me their relationship was over; he just hasn’t been able to find a way to leave without losing his job. Adventist preachers may not divorce for reasons other than adultery. If their marriage is over and they both want out but are just trapped by church rules, does it count? Are they married in the eyes of God?
The kiss felt odd. I supposed it improved with practice. I hoped so. I was twenty-seven years old, and had kissed two people other than family in my entire life. When he touched me, kissed me, I thought I would throw up, but that couldn’t be right. He was a nice man. Normal women didn’t throw up when nice men kissed them. I wanted more than anything to be normal. Besides, the idea that someone who didn’t have to wanted to be with me was a drug. It was beyond my power to deny him anything.
My body nearly defeated him that first night. By the time it was all over I was exhausted, light-headed, and nauseated. I limped into the bathroom to wash, hoping I wouldn’t throw up or faint. I wanted the unfamiliar, sticky residue off me, but felt so faint, sick and shaky I hoped to get away with a sponge bath. When I saw the blood running down my legs and splashing on the white tile floor between my feet I was afraid. Was that normal? Would I die, here in a sordid hotel that stank of urine, disinfectant and stale cigarettes? I sat down on the toilet, leaned my arms on the sink and my head on my arms, and waited for the dizziness to subside. The bleeding didn’t stop. I was afraid I would faint if I got into the shower. Finally I gave up, wadded up some toilet paper, tucked it between my legs, and pulled my panties on.
Then I limped back to bed. He, accustomed to sharing a bed, was already snoring. I lay beside him alone, shaking, my belly cramping and aching, icy tears slipping down my cheeks, hating what I had become, knowing that somehow, in spite of my best efforts, my one chance at love had twisted into something awful. I had slept with someone’s husband.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Lovers held each other, looked at each other, satisfied each other. They didn’t cheat on wives. They didn’t lie side by side a million miles apart. It didn’t hurt like this. There wasn’t so much blood, and above all it didn’t happen in cheap hotels with brown and orange sunflowered bedspreads and nameless bridges painted in dried blood and mustard on black velvet. I had been stupid, stupid, stupid. And if he asked, I would do it again, because I wanted to please him, and it was better than nothing. And if I didn’t, I would lose my job.
“I can’t stand working with you and not touching you,” he said the few times I hesitantly broached the idea. A part of me felt flattered. This person actually thought I was desirable, worth pursuing. Another part felt sick, guilty, and terrified. If the affair became public knowledge I knew exactly what would happen. A friend had told me long ago. “When they discover an affair between a minister and a secretary the minister gets transferred and the secretary loses her job.”
“But what if it’s a case of sexual harassment?”
“Same thing.”
“Can’t the secretary sue?”
“She can—but she’ll still lose her job, and her church membership. You can’t sue the church. The men just won’t stand for that. Look what happened to Merikay.” Merikay was a writer who worked for the church in the seventies. Her books were enormously popular. She asked for a raise, one that would have put her salary on an equal footing with the similarly qualified men in the office. She was turned down. She sued for sexual discrimination and won her case—and lost her job, her church membership, and her publisher. Merikay proved a powerful example to us all.
I was a statistic, and I knew it. According to a survey, 70 percent of all married men claim to have had an affair. The survey people figured that about ten percent were lying, one way or the other. Of the men who admitted affairs, most considered it “playing house,” quite apart from their “real” life. I knew I wasn’t part of my boss’ real world. I tried to tell him. “I’m under a lot of pressure,” he said. “Please, wait for me.”
I clung to the peace in the garden behind my office, and agreed. For three years, I agreed. And then his wife called me. “He’s a good man,” she said. “But he’s weak. Just leave him alone.” She had been crying. I had no words. When she hung up the guilt, shame, and fear swelled into something bigger than I was. I sat, shaking. He had lied to me. Their marriage wasn’t over if his wife would call me to beg for it. What I was doing was indefensible. It didn’t occur to me then that she was blaming me for something he had instigated and perpetuated; in the end, it really didn’t matter. Nobody held a gun to my head in those cheap hotel rooms.
I walked into his office. “Your wife called,” I said.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I hoped it wouldn’t come to this.” He sighed, shook his head, and said, “I know what we’re doing is wrong, but I love you, and I just can’t help myself. I feel so bad about what I’m doing to her. Please, just give me a little more time to work this out.”
I looked at him, and for the first time it occurred to me that he had never said he was sorry for what he was doing to me. I thought about that, and felt the falseness of regret. I watched dust motes dance in the sunlight slanting through the blinds and listened to him explain for the hundredth time about the pressure he was under. For the first time I saw there was a simple solution—he could just leave, walk out, and take the consequences—and I didn’t want him to do it. I had lost all respect, affection, even liking for the man. I could never trust him. If he cheated on his wife now, he would cheat on me later. What we were doing was wrong not because it was breaking nonsensical rules, but because people were being hurt. I also realized that none of those things mattered to him, just as it never really mattered to him how I felt when we were together. He simply assumed that once he was satisfied, I was, too. As long as I pleased him, that was enough. It had been for me, too, in the beginning, but staring at those dust motes, I realized that while I pleased him, he didn’t please me. And that it mattered a lot.
Somewhere deep inside the dark place in my soul, a heavy, smoldering anger was born. I wish I could say I ended things then, but I didn’t. I didn’t know how. I didn’t even really know how to be angry. Every time he used my body, my mind, my skills; every time he asked me to be patient, every time he talked about everything he would be giving up to be with me and expected me to be grateful, every time he talked about his family obligations, about how it hurt him to deceive his wife, every time he complained that he had called and I hadn’t been home, every time he made promises that I knew he would never keep, the anger grew. He never noticed, and that made it grow even more. Still I didn’t leave. I would never find another job. Who would hire me?
And then one night as I lay with my legs spread on my office floor, cement chill seeping through the cheap diamond patterned indoor-outdoor carpeting and into my buttocks, heels, and shoulder blades in rhythmic surges, the sordidness of what I was doing overwhelmed me. Vomit and fury rose in my throat. And he never noticed. I gulped and followed the foul mixture deep inside myself. There, in the dark, the cold was less, the hard thumps hurt less, the shame was less. I was safe. I was not there.
Afterward I yanked up my flowered, tucked jumpsuit—they were fashionable, just then—buttoned every button, tied my shoelaces firmly in double knots, braced myself for one more hug I didn’t want, one more protestation of love I neither wanted nor believed, and let myself out while the man I had just decided was my ex-lover smiled roguishly from the bathroom door in his underwear. I still didn’t have a job or a place to go, but that didn’t matter anymore. I was leaving anyway.
I ran home through the warm, smoggy night, but didn’t go inside. Instead, I slammed into my car and drove straight to the mall, stomped through the muggy parking garage and into the chilly twinkling promenade, turned left, and strode straight to Crabtree and Evelyn’s, weaving through the crowds, dodging strollers. The store smelled of herbs and roses, clean and sweet. I strode to the toiletries shelf and opened one of the cool, delicate bottles. It smelled clear, tart, and fresh. I filled my arms with loofah, soap, shampoo, cream rinse, bath beads, potpourri, and cologne.
Back home, I let myself into the house and stripped on the way to the bathroom, wadding up my clothes and thrusting them deep into the bathroom wastebasket. I cleared the bathroom counter with one sweep of my arm, heaping the wastebasket with the exotic toiletries he had preferred.
I poured the new, sharp herbal bubble bath under the steaming water streaming from the tap, then, sitting on the toilet, I took wads of toilet paper and scrubbed between my legs until nothing was left but a slight stickiness, a slight soreness. I stepped into the burning hot water, steam rising in clouds around me, eased myself down, and scrubbed with the new harsh loofah. I shampooed my hair over and over until the bottle was empty. When the water cooled I refilled the tub straight from the hot tap. My skin glowed angry red; my fingers and toes wrinkled into deep creases before I stood on shaky legs. I dried with a new towel, then dropped it into the laundry.
On the way to the bedroom I pulled clean sheets from the hall linen closet, pulled a new cotton nightgown from my drawer, yanked off the tags, stripped the bed, sprinkled new cologne on the mattress, and remade it with clean sheets and fresh blankets.
Then I climbed in, curled my knees to my chest, hugged my aching stomach, and shook. I didn’t cry. If I cried, I would be given something to cry about. The night was endless.
The phone rang. It was Marie. She was angry again. “You remember when Uncle Mac lived with us?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“He molested me.”
“What?” Her words barely registered.
“He molested me.”
“But you’ve never said anything before.”
“I didn’t remember.”
“But you do now?”
“It’s a recovered memory. I’ve been going to some therapy sessions with Andy.” Andy was her son. “And I dreamed about him, and then I remembered.”
“When?”
“When he was sleeping in our bedroom,” she said angrily.
Until then it had never struck me as odd that a grown man would share a room with four little girls.
“Are you going to tell Mom and Dad?”
“No, Dad’d kill Mac,” she said. I didn’t doubt her; this was part of our family wisdom. Our father would kill anyone who hurt us, would lay down his life for our safety and happiness.
“Oh, Marie, I’m sorry,” I said, hoping it was the right thing. I never knew with her. A part of me doubted her; Marie was adept at creating stories with just enough truth to them to be convincing.
“Did you know?”
“No…”
“You never saw anything?” Don’t ask me this now, I thought. I had to answer, or she would know. “Maybe once,” I said slowly, carefully. I had to be exact, precise, because whatever I said would be repeated, used as vindication for a position. I didn’t want Marie twisting my words. “I came running into the bedroom once and saw you on the bed, and he was sitting below you and your dress was up…”
“Yes,” she said.
“You can’t keep something like this a secret. You have to tell.”
“No I don’t. I don’t want anyone to know. You can’t tell, either. If you do I’ll deny it.”
“All right,” I said, exhausted.
“What’s wrong with you?” she snapped.
“Nothing,” I lied. “Everything’s fine. Are you going to be okay?”
She laughed bitterly. “Yeah, I’ll be just dandy.” She hung up.
I curled around my belly in the blackness.
The phone rang again. It was Pam. I did not tell her, either. Pam was good, clean, and holy. She had never done a despicable thing in her life. Besides, he was a nice man, a good man; she had told me so. He would never do something like this unless I had somehow led him on. I curled tighter into myself, forced a lilt into my voice, and tried to keep my shaking from rattling the bed. Finally Pam hung up. I had no idea what we had talked about. I turned my face into the pillow and just breathed slowly, evenly, like I was all right, like I was normal.
What made that the last time? That night, as we lay as close as people can be, as I slid away from him, down into the dark place where nothing and no one could reach me, as I huddled there feeling proud and a bit foolish for not remembering such an obvious thing before, I thought, “This is the key to surviving sex. I can just go away inside, and he can’t get to me. It’s not so bad. It’s only my body. He doesn’t have me. It’ll be over soon.” I was a bit surprised, because the knowledge felt familiar, like something I had learned long ago. But I couldn’t remember when, and it terrified me.
