Gerald’s Game

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

When she looked up and saw her father standing in the bedroom doorway, her first, instinctive gesture had been to cross her arms over her breasts. Then she saw the sad and guilty look on his face and dropped them again, although she felt heat rising in her cheeks and knew that her own face was turning the unlovely, patchy red that was her version of a maidenly blush. She had nothing to show up there (well, almost nothing), but she still felt more naked than naked, and so embarrassed she could almost swear she felt her skin sizzling. She thought: Suppose the others come back early? Suppose she walked in right now and saw me like this, with my shirt off?

Embarrassment became shame, shame became terror, and still, as she shrugged into the blouse and began to button it, she felt another emotion underlying these. That feeling was anger, and it was not much different from the drilling anger she would feel years later when she realized that Gerald knew she meant what she was saying but was pretending he didn’t. She was angry because she didn’t deserve to feel ashamed and terrified. After all, he was the grownup, he was the one who had left that funny-smelling crud on the back of her underpants, he was the one who was supposed to be ashamed, and that wasn’t the way it was working. That wasn’t the way it was working at all.

By the time her blouse was buttoned and tucked into her shorts, the anger was gone, or-same difference-banished back to its cave. And what she kept seeing in her mind was her mother coming back early. It wouldn’t matter that she was fully dressed again. The fact that something bad had happened was on their faces, just hanging out there, big as life and twice as ugly. She could see it on his face and feel it on her own.

“Are you all right, Jessie?” he asked quietly. “Not feeling faint, or anything?”

“No.” She tried to smile, but this time she couldn’t quite manage it. She felt a tear slip down one cheek and wiped it away quickly, guiltily, with the heel of her hand.

“I’m sorry.” His voice was trembling, and she was horrified to see tears standing in his eyes-oh, this just got worse and worse and worse. “I’m so sorry.” He turned abruptly, ducked into the bathroom, grabbed a towel off the rack, and wiped his face with it. While he did this, Jessie thought fast and hard.

“Daddy?”

He looked at her over the towel. The tears in his eyes were gone. If she hadn’t known better, she would have sworn they had never been there at all.

The question almost stuck in her throat, but it had to be asked. Had to be.

“Do we… do we have to tell Mom about it?” He took a long, sighing, trembling breath. She waited, her heart in her mouth, and when he said “I think we have to, don’t you?” it sank all the way to her feet.

She crossed the room to him, staggering a little-her legs seemed to have no feeling in them at all-and wrapped her arms around him. “Please, Daddy. Don’t. Please don’t tell. Please don’t. Please… “Her voice blurred, collapsed into sobs, and she pressed her face against his bare chest.

After a moment he slipped his arms around her, this time in his old, fatherly way.

“I hate to,” he said, “because things have been pretty tense between the two of us just lately, hon. I’d be surprised if you didn’t know that, actually. A thing like this could make them a lot worse. She hasn’t been very… well, very affectionate lately, and that was most of the problem today. A man has… certain needs. You’ll understand about that somed -”

“But if she finds out, she’ll say it was my fault!”

“Oh, no-I don’t think so,” Tom said, but his tone was surprised, considering… and, to Jessie, as dreadful as a deathsentence. “No-ooo… I’m sure-well, fairly sure-that she… “She looked up at him, her eyes streaming and red. “Please don’t tell her, Daddy! Please don’t! Please don’t!”

He kissed her brow. “But Jessie… I have to. We have to.”

“Why? Why, Daddy?”

“Because-”