Hidden Valley Road - Inside the Mind of an American Family - Robert Kolker Page 0,78

than ever, Mary’s Saturdays and Sundays with Jim and Kathy became something her parents counted on. “There would be a crisis,” she said, “and Mom would call Jim and Kathy to come and get me.”

Kathy became like Mary’s surrogate mother. That made Jim, in this scenario, the father.

Jim had been coming to her at night when she visited his house ever since Margaret left, when Mary was about ten. He penetrated her with his fingers and forced her into oral sex, and she tolerated him partly out of denial, and partly out of confusion. She remained passive based on the same calculus her sister had used: because she loved Kathy; because anything was better than being at home; because some part of her grew accustomed to not resisting, to interpreting the acts as affection.

Things changed as Mary entered adolescence. Jim had never stopped hitting Kathy, but now Mary would see it in a way she hadn’t when she was younger. There was no way for her to rationalize that as anything other than what it was—ugly and frightening and wrong. But she could not abandon Kathy, and so even then, she kept coming back. She continued to endure Jim for the same reason.

Some part of her understood it had to end. She knew that her body was changing, just like her sister’s had. She sensed Jim escalating with her, working his way toward something. She thought about what it might mean if Jim tried to go all the way with her—if that meant she could have a baby.

She tried her best not to think about that. But that information sat there. She could ignore it, but not forever.

DON

MIMI

DONALD

JIM

JOHN

MICHAEL

RICHARD

JOE

MARK

MATT

PETER

MARGARET

MARY

CHAPTER 20

There was a gardener who clipped the hedges, and a lady who did all the laundry, and a German chef to prepare steak and potatoes for dinner. There were seven people on staff, all told, not counting pilots for the plane and instructors for the private ski lessons.

The Gary family lived in Cherry Hills, a secluded neighborhood in the southern reaches of Denver, a world away from the bustling downtown. Outside their home was a full-scale ranch with horses. Their driveway had a Porsche and a Mercedes, and their backyard had a tremendous trampoline. Inside, to the right of the entryway, chlorine and humidity radiated from a turquoise swimming pool with a tornado slide and a bubble roof. The walls of all the hallways were lined with paintings: a Modigliani, a de Kooning, a Chagall, a Picasso. In the playroom was a giant swing and a life-sized dollhouse with bunk beds for sleepovers. Margaret’s room had a waterbed. That astounded her until she tried to sleep in it. It took a few nights before she gathered enough courage to ask for a regular bed. They got her one.

Margaret got to know Trudy the housekeeper, a second mother to all the Gary children and their friends, and Katie the laundress, who returned her clothes, clean and folded, to her room every single weekday. And she got to know the Garys’ eight children, making friends with Suzy, who was a few years younger than she was and a bit of a troublemaker, and Tina, who was a few years older and a bit of a goody-goody. Margaret accompanied the family on trips to the Florida Keys and Vail, where they had a condo on the main drag and she could walk into any store and buy whatever she needed: ski clothes, new Olin Mark IV skis, lift tickets, even snacks from the candy shop when skiing was over. Nancy Gary never went shopping; the shops came to her. Soon, Margaret was wearing the same Lacoste shirts and rugby jerseys as the other children.

Most weekends, the entire family would fly to their house in Montana, a modernist showpiece with one wall made entirely of glass, offering a brilliant view across Flathead Lake to the