Drawn Into Darkness(14)

“You got that right. Even though I knew all the things he’d keep on doing to me, I still begged him to let me live. I promised I’d never call the cops or contact my parents or run away. I promised I would take his name and be his family, and I told him he could—he could do whatever and I’d never tell. He took a big risk, believing me and letting me live. I’m grateful for that.”

But the words sounded flat, and Justin still didn’t face me.

“I can understand,” I said, and at the moment it was true. I knew how grateful I was going to be if I got out of this mess alive. “But what about your parents?”

He shifted his gaze downward, plucking invisible bits of lint from the edge of the mattress. “They don’t want me.”

“You could have fooled me.” I kept my voice as neutral as I possibly could; I mustn’t argue with him. “It costs big money to advertise on TV—”

He interrupted with some force. “They want their sweet little boy back. They don’t want me.”

“I think you’re sweet,” I responded impulsively and quite truthfully. This was the boy who had risked a beating to come feed me Frosted Flakes in the middle of the night.

“You’re crazy!” Deep and sudden anger blasted him up off the bed and out of the room, leaving me blinking.

• • •

Part of the reason I make stupid blunders in my personal life is that I use my mind to block my emotions. Most of the time when I was a kid and especially when I was a teenager, my parents didn’t want any trouble out of me, trouble meaning door slamming, back talk, or blubbering. My father was an English teacher and an Anglophile; he wore brown tweeds and worshipped Kipling. Stiff upper lip, white man’s burden, a rag and a bone and a hank of hair, the whole repressed, bigoted, misogynist charisma, and he never saw anything funny in my favorite joke: “Do you like Kipling? I don’t know; I’ve never kippled.” Father kippled constantly.

Mother, who was also a teacher—kindergarten—escaped being woman as enemy, a rag and a bone and a hank of hair, simply by externalizing her inner child of the past. Her existence was a strong argument for Descartes’ essential self that does not change over time. Hers was the happy child of the ever and always. Her version of the stiff upper lip curved in a perpetual smile. Pollyanna, move over. There was no situation to which Mother couldn’t find a bright side. Or, to put it another way, no dark sides were allowed, which made me yearn to go Goth. But as different as Mom and Dad seemed, they were essentially the same. Neither of them particularly approved of PMS or any other mood swings or fashion or mascara or hair.

So acting like a teenager was counterproductive and I didn’t try, for the simple reason that I was chickenshit when it came to confronting my parents. On a conscious level I perceived myself as way smarter than other kids butting heads with their families because of their snits and crushes and fads. I detested girlish giggling and painted toenails. I cherished my high SAT score, my National Merit Scholar status. I eyed the dark side of existence, contemplating life on a distant and cosmic level. Rather than plan my own insignificant role in the great unknown, I let myself get drawn into a conventional marriage with a man who, I realized too late, might as well have been my mother with a penis. Rather than face the desolation and humiliation of the divorce, I moved away. Rather than embrace my loneliness, I went knocking at a peacock blue cottage, and now, shackled to a bare bed with a gag in my mouth, I did not want to feel panic anymore and I did not want to cry and above all I did not want to accept that I was probably going to die.

So I concentrated on remembering my college psychology courses, searching my mind for any insight into pedophilia. I found none. I did recall, however, something about laboratory rats and random reinforcement. Performing their task, sometimes they received a treat and sometimes an electric shock, but they kept at it, pathetic, subservient little beasts. Justin was experiencing random reinforcement, and Stoat had Justin right where he wanted him, scared stupid and eager to please.

I also remembered something-or-other syndrome, hostages bonding with their captors, although the only example I could call to mind was Jaycee Dugard, kept for years in her captors’ backyard. Why hadn’t she escaped? Too scared. And if the person who had the power of life and death over you was occasionally nice, wouldn’t you want to make nice too? Become friends, stay alive? If Stoat offered me a deal, however sick, cleaning the toilet while dancing naked or whatever, wouldn’t I go for it?

Yes and no. I’d agree, but every minute I’d be looking for a way to escape, even if I knew he would kill me in some very unpleasant manner if he caught me—