She says the real injury of rape is what the victim perceives, but in the law it’s the man’s perception of what the woman wants that determines whether she’s been forced to have sex or not.”
“So the law’s all wrong? Maybe we should have a system where a woman can claim rape even if she says beforehand she wants to have sex, acts like she wants to at the time, does have sex, but then feels guilty about it afterward. If that’s the standard for rape, we better start building a lot more prisons.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s what your feminist scholar said. It’s all about what the woman thinks.”
“It is her body.”
“It’s his body, too.”
“Hey, what’re you guys fighting about?”
Amy jumped up from the sofa. On the stairs, slouching over the railing, there was their son, in gym shorts and T-shirt, his sleeping gear. “Davey, I thought you were going to bed.”
“Casper threw up on my sheets again.”
Simon stood up. “If you gave her her medicine every day like you’re supposed to maybe she’d stop doing it.”
“That’s helpful,” Amy said, then turned to Davey. “Pull your sheets off and put them in the hallway. Then sleep in the guest room for tonight. The bed’s made up.”
“I can’t sleep in there. It’s like a girl’s room.”
“Then get new sheets from the linen closet and make your bed up yourself.”
“But—”
“Do as your mother says,” Simon said. “Sleep in the guest room or change your bed.”
“What if …”
“Do it!”
Davey trudged back up the stairs, looking over his shoulder. Simon waited until he heard footsteps overhead in the hall.
“So, what, you going to treat me now like David Rigero, the social outcast?”
Amy thought for a moment, her head down. Couldn’t she even look at him? Her eyes slowly raised themselves, fixed on him. “Why did you hide this from me?”
He held her gaze. “I didn’t hide anything. I told you, I haven’t thought about it for years.”
“So you’re hiding it from yourself, too?”
“Spare me the therapy, okay?”
“Maybe that’s what you need, because I see this all the time. People wall off an unwanted experience in their mind. It’s like an abscess that keeps growing until it bursts unless you deal with it.”
“I’m not walling off anything. I don’t need to dredge up something that happened in high school.”
“Something you did.”
“What?”
“The something didn’t just happen—you did it, active voice.”
“Fine, you want to parse words, here it is: I don’t need to dredge up an alleged rape that I didn’t do—active negative voice—a quarter century ago in order to make peace with myself or you or anyone else. Is that clear enough?”
Amy bit her lip, and it reminded him of where Davey picked up the habit. “My patient, he said you told Jean afterward that she better not spread it around that she slept with you.”
“And you believed him? You think I’d do that?”
She didn’t answer right away. Finally, “I want to believe you.”
“You shouldn’t have to want to.”
“Don’t try to make this about me, Simon. I just went through a scary session with an unstable guy who accused my husband of one of the worst acts I can think of. So I’d like to know, did you call the girl who was accusing you of rape and tell her not to talk?”
“I told you I called her because I was wondering what was going on. I finally got to talk to her for about one minute on her porch, and I tried to make her see that if this got out, everyone would know we had sex and that would be bad for both of us, maybe worse for her than me. I said I was sorry if she felt I forced her, because I honestly thought she wanted to do it.”
“Apparently she didn’t, because twenty-five years later she killed herself.”
“Killed herself?” Simon remembered the obit—unnatural causes. Why hadn’t he considered this before?
“That’s what her husband says. An overdose of barbiturates.”
“God, I thought we were just having sex, that she wanted to do it, too. I really did.”
“How could you make such a serious mistake?”
Simon remembered the sting of the vodka going down his throat and how intoxicating it was to lie out on the dock at nightfall with a pretty girl in a satiny dress, her shoulders smooth and bare. It was strange, the few things one could recall from any point in time, how they had to stand in for the whole event. “I didn’t want to graduate without ever having sex