Lena looked at his face, wondering if he could hear any of this.
She said, "I wanted to let you know that I understand. I mean, I understand as much as I can." She shook her head. "I mean…" she began, then stopped again. "I know what it took, Mark. I know what it took for you to tell me your secret." She paused, trying to remember to breathe. "You were right when you said I'd been through the same thing, that I knew what you were talking about."
She looked at him again, and still he was mute. His chest rose and fell with the pump that forced him to breathe. The heart monitor beeped with his heart.
"I didn't think this would be so hard," she whispered. "I thought I was being strong…" She stopped again. "You were right, though. I was a coward, lama coward."
Lena took a deep breath, holding it in until she thought her lungs might burst. She felt the room closing in on her, and suddenly, she was back in that dark place, splayed to the floor, with him somewhere in the house, ignoring her. The worst part was when the drugs started to wear off, and she realized where she was and what was being done to her, and that she was powerless. She would feel a pressure in her chest, as if someone had carved her out and filled her with a liquid-black loneliness. When she got to this place, this stripped-down, empty place, the light under the door became her salvation, and she would find herself wanting to see him, wanting to hear his voice, no matter what the cost.
"I was so scared," she told Mark. "I didn't know where I was, or how much time had passed, or what was going on."
She felt her throat tighten as the memory overwhelmed her. "He nailed me down to the floor," she told him, though surely Mark knew this. "He nailed me down, and I couldn't move away. I didn't have a choice. There was nothing I could do except wait, and let him do to me what he did."
Lena 's breath came in pants, and she could feel herself going back to that room again, feeling trapped and helpless. "The drugs…" she said, then stopped herself. Mark had obviously used drugs to dull his pain, too. Only, Lena had not been given a choice about what she would take, or when.
"He gave me these drugs," she said. "They made me feel…" She tried to find words. "Free," she said. "Like I was floating, like I was above everything. And Greg, my boyfriend-ex-boyfriend-was there." She stopped again, thinking about the Greg from her drugged dreams, not the Greg she had actually known. In her dreams, Greg was much more sure of himself, more in control of their love-making. He pushed her in her dreams, pushed her to the edge where she did not know the difference between pain and pleasure, and did not want to know. All she wanted when she was in this state was to have him inside of her, to have him touching her, and filling her up from the inside, pushing deeper into her, until she thought she might explode. Then, when he took her to this point, the release was almost ethereal. She had never known such pleasure in her life as her body opened up to him completely.
She told Mark, "Greg was never like that. I knew that. I knew that in my mind." She squeezed Mark's hand. "I knew it somewhere, and I didn't care. I just wanted to be with him. I wanted to feel him."
She put her hand to her mouth, but there was no turning back now. "Then, the drugs would wear off," she said, feeling like she was describing something that had happened to someone else. "And I would start to feel things. I would start to realize what was going on, who I really was." She swallowed hard. "What I had done with him." Lena felt her stomach turn in disgust. "The noises I had made," she whispered, remembering them now, how she had talked back to him, how she had pleaded with him the way she would plead with a lover.
Her hand dropped to her chest, and she could feel her heart pounding. "And then I would cry," she said, tears streaming down her face. "I would cry, because I was so disgusted with myself, and then I would cry because I felt so alone." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "I would cry because I didn't want to be alone, didn't want to know what had happened."
"And when he came to me…" she whispered. "When he came back into the room, and I wasn't alone anymore…"
Lena had to stop, because she was going to hyperventilate if she did not get her breathing under control. She looked at Mark's hand, rubbing her fingers across the tattoo.
Mark's confession came back to Lena in a flood, and she could hear now what she could not let herself hear in that trailer. He had talked about the crime against him like a lover recalling a particularly passionate moment. As Lena played his words in her head over and over again, she finally knew why he had branded himself with the tattoo. She knew the guilt Mark carried around with him like an anvil tied to his heart. Part of him would always be his mother's son. Part of him would always be back in that trailer, listening to a CD, when his mother came into his room and raped him. Part of him would always remember how good it felt, if only for the moment, to be inside of her, to fuck her. No matter where he went or what he did, Mark would carry that brand inside of him. The tattoo only made it so that other people could see. The tattoo was Mark's way of telling people that he did not belong to them, that he would always belong to his mother. What she had done had marked him inside the way no needle and ink could ever mark his skin.
For the rest of his life, maybe even right now, trapped in his body as he was, Mark would carry with him the knowledge that he had enjoyed it. Just for that moment in time, he had been his mother's favorite, he had experienced what he thought of as love for maybe the first time in his life. In her sick, twisted way, Grace Patterson had made her son feel wanted, and he had loved her back for it, even as he had hated her for doing something so wrong.
The room was silent but for the machines and the blood pounding in Lena 's ears. She heard a high-pitched whining noise, but knew it was only in her head. She wanted to stand up, to let go of Mark, to leave him in this bed to die because he would do that with or without her.
Still, she had come this far. There was no one stopping her, no one questioning the insanity of her revelations. There was just Lena in the room, and if Mark was there, if he was really there with her, hearing what she was saying, then he was probably the only other person in the world who could understand what she was saying.
"I was so lonely when he left me there," Lena began, her voice a hoarse whisper as she made herself go back to that horrible place. She clenched her teeth, not sure she could go on. It was this part that killed her every time, the reason she would never go into therapy or tell anyone what had really happened in that room four months ago.
"When he came back-back into the room-and I wasn't alone anymore…" Lena stopped, choking on a sob. She could not say this. She could not make herself admit this to anyone, not even Mark, not even this lifeless shell who wasn't even Mark anymore. She was not strong enough. She could not overcome this.
"Shit," Lena cried, trying to keep herself from breaking down. Her body shook, and soon she was wracked with sobbing. If Mark could still feel things, he would be able to feel her hands shaking, sense the fear that held her body like a steel trap. He would understand the pain that touched her deep inside the way no one ever would be able to again. No pills would take this away. Even a bullet passing through her brain would not push out the knowledge, and Lena knew that even if she did manage to do it, to pull that trigger or take all of those pills, her last thoughts would still be of him.
"No," Lena said, shaking her head violently side to side. "No, no, no," she insisted, thinking about what Nan had said, knowing what Sibyl would say if she were here.
"Be strong," Lena said, speaking for Sibyl. "Be stronger than this."