Because she was warden, and because she trusted him, my mother told Father Breuninger that I'd been raped. He announced it to the church. He did not use the word raped but he said "assaulted brutally in a park near her campus. It was a robbery." Those words meant only one thing to any old-timer worth her salt. As the story made the rounds, they realized I had no broken bones, how brutal could it be? Oh… that…
Father Breuninger showed up at the house. I remember the pity in his eyes. Even then, I sensed he thought of his son in the same way he did me: as a child who, on the precipice of adulthood, had lost it all. I knew through my mother that Father Breuninger had trouble holding Paul accountable for the stabbing of Mrs. Mole. He blamed drugs, he blamed the twenty-two-year-old accomplice, he blamed himself. He could not blame Paul.
My family gathered in our living room, the least-used room of the house. We sat stiffly on the edges of the antique furniture. My mother got Fred-as the adults called Father Breuninger-something to drink, tea. There was small talk. I sat on the blue silk couch, my father's prized possession, from which all children and dogs were banned. (For Christmas one year I had coaxed a bassett onto the light blue silk by using a biscuit. I then snapped photos of her chowing down and had them framed, presenting them to my father as a gift.)
Father Breuninger had us stand and hold hands in a circle. He was wearing his black robes and white collar. The silk tassel, from the rope around his waist, swayed for a moment in the air, then stilled. "Let us pray," he said.
I was shocked. My family was a family of commentary and intellect and skepticism. This felt like hypocrisy to me. As he prayed, I looked up and around at Mary, my parents, and Father Breuninger. Their heads were bent; their eyes were closed. I refused to close my eyes. We were praying for my soul. I stared at Father Breuninger's crotch. Thought about what he was under all that black. He was a man. He had a dick like every man did. What right had he, I wondered, to pray for my soul?
I thought of something else: his son, Paul. As I stood there, I thought of Paul being arrested and Paul having to serve time. I thought of Paul being brought down low, and how good that must feel for Mrs. Mole. Paul was in the wrong. Father Breuninger, who had spent his life praising God, had lost his son, really lost him, more than I ever could be lost. I was in the right. I felt powerful, suddenly, and felt what my family was doing, this act of faith or belief or charity, was dumb. I was angry at them for seeing this charade through. For standing on the rug in the living room-room of special occasions, of holidays and celebrations-and praying for me to a God I wasn't sure they believed in.
Eventually Father Breuninger left. I had to hug him. He smelled of aftershave and the mothball smell of the closet at the church where he hung his vestments. He was a clean, well-meaning man. He was in his own crisis but there was no way then, via God, or otherwise, that I could be with him.
Then the old ladies came. The marvelous, loving, knowing old ladies.
As each old lady came, she was shuttled into the living room and seated in my parents' prized winged chair. This chair provided an unparalleled vantage point. From it, the seated person could see the rest of the living room (off to their right would be the blue couch) and into the dining room, where the silver tea set was placed on display. When these ladies visited, they were served tea in my parents' wedding china, and attended to by my mother as honored and unusual guests.
Betty Jeitles came first. Betty Jeitles had money. She lived in a beautiful house near Valley Forge, which my mother coveted and by which she drove very quickly, so as not to appear to be coveting it. Betty had a face full of deep Main Line wrinkles. She looked like an exotic breed of dog, sort of a cultivated sharpei, and she spoke with an aristocratic accent that my mother explained with the words "old money."
I wore a nightgown and robe for Mrs. Jeitles. Again, I sat on the blue couch. She gave me a book: Akienfield: Portrait of a Chinese Village. She had remembered that when I was little, I had told the ladies at coffee hour I wanted to be an archaeologist. We passed the brief time of her visit making small talk. My mother helped. She talked about the church and about Fred. Betty listened. Every few sentences she gave a nod or contributed a word or two. I remember her looking over at me on the couch while my mother was talking; how much she wanted to say something and how the word just wasn't one anyone could say.
Peggy O'Neil, whom my parents called an old maid, came next. Peggy was not Main Line money. Hers came from having taught school all her life and being scrupulous with her savings. She lived far off the road in a sweet house that my mother never lingered over. She dyed her hair the darkest black. She specialized, along with Myra, in having seasonal handbags. Bags made out of wicker with watermelons painted on them for spring, or bags made out of beads threaded with rawhide thongs for fall. Her clothes were workaday shifts-madras and seersucker. The materials seemed meant to distract the viewer from analyzing the shape of her body. Now that I've been a teacher, I recognize them as a teacher's clothes.
If Peggy brought me a gift, I don't remember it. But Peggy, who was less reserved than Mrs. Jeitles, didn't need a gift. I even had to remember to call her Miss O'Neil instead of Peggy. She cracked jokes and made me laugh. She talked about being afraid in her house. She told me it was dangerous to be a woman alone. She told me I was special and that I was strong and that I would get over this. She also told me, laughing, but in all seriousness, that it wasn't such a bad thing to grow up to be an old maid.
Myra came last.
I wish I remembered her visit. Or, I should say, I wish I could remember it in the detail of what she wore or how we sat or what she said. But what I remember is suddenly being in the presence of someone who "got it." Not just knew the facts, but-as near as she could-understood what I felt.
She sat in the winged chair. Her presence was comfort and succor to me. Ed had not fully recovered from the beating. He never would. He had taken too many blows to the head. He was addled now, confused a lot. Myra was like me: People expected her to be strong. Her outward traits and reputation led them to believe that if it had to happen to any of the old ladies at church, it had happened to the most resilient one. She told me about the three men. She laughed as she repeated how they hadn't known how feisty a woman her age could be. She was going to testify. They had arrested Joey based on her description. Still, her eyes clouded over when she talked about Ed.
My mother watched Myra to find evidence that I would recover. I watched Myra for proof that she understood. At one point, she said, "What happened to me is nothing like what happened to you. You're young and beautiful. No one's interested in me that way."
"I was raped," I said.
The room was still, my mother suddenly uncomfortable. The living room, where the antiques had been carefully arranged and polished, where my mother's needlepoint pillows decorated most of the chairs, where gloomy portraits of Spanish noblemen stared down from the walls, was changed now. I felt I had to say it. But I felt also that saying it was akin to an act of vandalism. As if I had thrown a bucket of blood out across the living room at the blue couch, Myra, the winged chair, my mother.
The three of us sat there and watched it drip.
"I know," Myra said.
"I needed to say the word," I said.
"It's a hard one."
"It's not 'the thing that happened to me,' or 'the assault,' or 'the beating,' or 'that'. I think it's important to call it what it is."
"It's rape," she said, "and it didn't happen to me."
We returned to forgettable conversation. A while later, she left. But I had made contact with a planet different from the one my parents or sister lived on. It was a planet where an act of violence changed your life.