The Institute, Daddy Issues(40)

“I don’t need any­one to ‘take care’ of me,” I said stub­bornly, lift­ing my chin. “I can take care of my­self.”

“Again, spoken like a true adult. All right, why don’t you tell me what age you are? I don’t mean your bio­lo­gical age,” she con­tin­ued when I star­ted to open my mouth. “What age are you sup­posed to be play­ing?”

“Well…” I looked down at the candy-pink roses on my dress and the little gold san­dals on my feet. “I guess…nine or ten,” I said at last. “Prob­ably nine.”

“Mm-hmm. And what happened to you when nine was your bio­lo­gical age?” she asked. “Any­thing trau­matic? For­give me for cut­ting to the chase but I feel like we have a lot of ground to cover here and not much time to do it.”

“What happened?” My heart star­ted pound­ing. “Noth­ing happened. I mean, not that I can re­mem­ber…”

“Is not nine the age you told me you were when your father left?” Salt asked in a low voice.

“You—” I looked at my part­ner, feel­ing be­trayed. How dare he give me up to the en­emy like that?

He shrugged and there was an apo­lo­getic look in his eyes.

“For­give me, mishka—I had to say it.”

“And is this true?” Dr. Lucy asked, look­ing back at me. “Your father aban­doned you when you were nine years old?”

“Aban­doned? God, there’s a dra­matic word. Even bet­ter than ‘trau­mat­ized,’” I said an­grily. “But yeah, sure—why not? He aban­doned me and I never saw him again.” I poin­ted a fin­ger at Salt. “But at least he never beat me.”

I wanted to call the words back as soon as they left my mouth but it was too late—the dam­age was done and I could see the hurt in my part­ner’s eyes.

“I’m sorry—” I began but he shook his head.

“No, is all right. I de­served.”

“No you didn’t,” I said miser­ably. “I was just feel­ing…I don’t know.”

“De­fens­ive, maybe,” Dr. Lucy sug­ges­ted. “Angry be­cause you felt be­trayed.”

“Well, yeah—a little, I guess.” I shrugged.

She looked at Salt. “So this is true, Mr. Saltanov? Your father was phys­ic­ally ab­us­ive?”

“Yes,” Salt said shortly.

“Well, we seem to have a very in­ter­est­ing dy­namic go­ing on here.” Dr. Lucy tapped her stylus against her tab­let for a mo­ment, clearly deep in thought. She looked at me again. “Why are you here? Is it only to please your Daddy?”

“Don’t call him that,” I said ir­rit­ably. “That’s what I called my real father be­fore the son-of-a-bitch aban­doned me.”

“Mishka and I have agreed that she will call me ‘Papa’ in­stead,” Salt told her.

“I see.” She made an­other note and looked up at me. “So we come back to this again…the idea of sexu­al­iz­ing your play or call­ing your…part­ner for want of a bet­ter word—Daddy—makes you feel dis­gust?”

“Well, yes if I’m play­ing this age.” I nod­ded down at the pretty lace and rose­bud dress again. “That’s just…dis­gust­ing. Who would want to do that?”

“Many of our play­ers at the In­sti­tute choose to do so,” Dr. Lucy said blandly. “Of­ten they are ab­use sur­viv­ors. It can be help­ful and em­power­ing to re­gress to the bio­lo­gical age when the ab­use took place and re­play it, know­ing that you are in con­trol this time. Or, in the case of a Little, that you can give con­trol to a Big you can trust—someone who’s not go­ing to hurt you like you were hurt be­fore at that young, vul­ner­able age.” She leaned for­ward and looked at me in­tently. “Tell me if you can, mishka, be­fore your father left you, did he ini­ti­ate any kind of in­ap­pro­pri­ate sexual con­tact?”

“No!” I said quickly. “No, noth­ing like that. He just aban­doned me. Isn’t that enough?”

She stared at me for a long mo­ment and I got the feel­ing she was de­cid­ing if she be­lieved me or not. At last she nod­ded.

“Well, if that’s the case, it’s one less is­sue to work through.”