She laid the palm of her hand gently against Hobie’s back. “You might want to cut yourself a little slack here, too. How old did you say you were when your dad died?”
“Thirteen.”
“Geez, Hobie, you were still a kid. Look, it may not help, but it’s natural that you felt the way you did, so quit beating yourself up.”
“Thanks.” Hobie smiled and looked relieved. “It does help. Why are you being so nice to me?”
“I could argue with you if it’d make you feel better. The truth is, I knew how mad you’d be if I laid out the truth to your mom. It’s just that...I had to.”
BJ ran her fingers through her hair, leaving her bangs spiked. “Why did you feel you had to?”
BJ paused before speaking. She temporarily lost her train of thought as she breathed in Hobie’s perfume. It was a spicy scent that she couldn’t place, but it somehow smelled familiar. She wasn’t sure what it reminded her of, only that it was a good memory.
“Everything I told your mother was true.” BJ’s expression grew somber. “My mother went through the same thing. I just wish someone had come along to talk to her, to tell her the truth. I didn’t see what was happening to her until it was too late. I was so caught up in my own feelings surrounding my father’s death that I couldn’t see that my mother wasn’t getting any better. I was so angry with my father for dying before I had the chance to really tell him how I felt about him. I guess the truth is that I was angry at my mother for thinking he was her whole world.”
“Did she eventually come to grips with it?”
BJ shook her head and looked out toward the water. “No, she didn’t...ever. One day, she decided to take a bottle of pills and go to bed. She never woke up.”
“Oh, Baylor, I’m so sorry. To lose your mother and father. You must miss them terribly.”
BJ shrugged. “My mother...I mostly miss the idea of my mother. There were some times, though...” She turned so she could see Hobie and reclined against the side of the porch swing. “We weren’t a very close family. When she was available to me, it was good, but most of the time, my father’s needs consumed her whole life. The best thing my mom ever did was to convince my dad that it was okay for me to spend time with Tanti. My old man, though...I hope that son of a bitch is burning in hell.”
Hobie didn’t reply immediately. “I know it’s none of my business, but that seems a little harsh, even from you.”
BJ gave her a bitter smile. “So it might seem from the outside looking in.”
“Sometimes it helps to work through things by saying them out loud. Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” BJ shook her head. She paused and couldn’t help the tears that filled her eyes. “Yes,” she whispered.
It had been a long time since BJ had cried over her past. She had vowed never to fall into the self-pity trap, no matter how tempting the prospect. It was impossible to prevent the tears this time, even though Hobie was the last person BJ wanted to break down in front of.
She wiped her eyes and gave a short, ironic laugh. “I don’t do well with feelings, as you can see.”
“Are you kidding? You’re an expert, and I should know. Seems to me that you’ve spent a lifetime holding them in.”
“Maybe, but it’s what gets me by.”
“Baylor...your father. Did he do something to you?”
“Yeah, he did all right, but it wasn’t what you’re thinking.” BJ wiped her eyes again and brushed her hand through her hair. She pinched the bridge of her nose and wondered once more why she was doing this, why she was opening up to this woman.
“It may not have been sexual, but it was still abuse. My father was an overbearing, controlling madman, to put it succinctly. He made it a habit of telling me, pretty much from the day I was born, what a disappointment I was. I think one day I just decided to live up to his warped expectations of me. I figured if he thought I was out drinking and fooling around, that’s exactly what I’d do. When I was fourteen, I got caught in bed with one of our housekeepers.” BJ raised her head and smiled sheepishly. “Okay, so I got a little wild, I’ll admit.”
Hobie smiled back and reached out to squeeze her hand.
BJ wondered if Hobie could imagine her as an unruly and rebellious teen.
“Caught by your father, I presume?”
“Of course,” BJ said. “Is there any other way for shit to happen other than in great big piles?” She cleared her throat and grew serious. “To say that my father freaked would be a major understatement. He lost it. Full-on completely lost it. He wasn’t the only one. I pretty much snapped, too. To this day, I don’t even remember what we screamed at each other. I took off in his BMW. He had me arrested and charged with stealing his car.”
“Your own father had you arrested?”
BJ let out a short bark of laughter. “That’s not the half of it. When I went to court, no one listened to me about dear old Dad. It was the seventies. Remember? Kids didn’t have things like rights then. My father used his lawyer and the services of a judge that his money elected. The old man brought up every mistake and stupid thing I ever did, like he’d recorded them in a notebook my whole life for just that purpose. They gave me two choices. One, I could do three to five in a juvenile lockup for grand theft auto.
Two, I could spend a short amount of time in a rehab facility.” “Which one did you go for?” Hobie asked when BJ paused. “I figured time in rehab wouldn’t be near as bad as prison. I mean, I heard all the stories from other kids. Juvenile detention was prison, plain and simple. I still couldn’t believe it was happening to me, ya know? It’s like it wasn’t real, like it was happening to someone else. So I took rehab.” She shook her head. “Turns out my old man wasn’t sending me to a traditional rehab center for drug or alcohol detox. I was there for a behavior adjustment. I ended up in a place that was determined to cure me of all my social ills, including homosexuality.”
“Oh, God.”
“God definitely wasn’t in this place. It was the Griffin-Ward Institute.”
BJ paused and Hobie frowned. “In Wisconsin?” “You’ve heard of it?”
Hobie nodded. “In med school. Griffin-Ward was a textbook case of the damage that power, money, and the misguided notions of some fanatical therapists could do to teenagers. Every resident who did a psych rotation heard about the Institute.”
“Whatever you heard or read wasn’t the half of it. I got beaten on a daily basis as a form of aversion therapy. There were kids, boys and girls, who were raped, shot up with drugs, even lobotomized. You name it and they tested the treatment out on us. The rich parents got their kids back just the way they wanted them. They were afraid of their own shadows, but hey, at least they didn’t party anymore. The nuts that ran the joint called it ‘alternative treatment.’Any prisoner of war would tell you it was ordinary torture.”
Tears fell from BJ’s eyes, but she was barely aware of them. She’d learned to block the emotions out, to think of that time as though it had happened to one of the characters in her novels. She never personalized it anymore. She was afraid of what would happen if she did.
“I guess I was one of the lucky ones. I bribed one of the orderlies and he mailed a letter to my grandmother for me. I’ll never forget the day Tanti broke into the place.” She laughed, and this time, the laughter was easier, less bitter. “She and Aimee brought along some reporters, and to this day, I have no ideawhere she got those big thugs with baseball bats that came in with her.”
“How long had you been there when Evelyn came?” “Six months.”
“I applaud you, Baylor.” BJ looked up in surprise.
“Really,” Hobie continued. “I don’t know if I could have even held it together, let alone turn out to be a normal functioning member of society after an experience like that.”