She was still so shocked.
It was just so very, very . . . surprising.
She’d tried so hard to convey the depth of her shock to Susi, but something told her that all of Susi’s clients felt the same way. (“But no, you see, for us, it’s really surprising!” she wanted to say.)
“More tea?”
Perry stood at the bedroom door. He was still in his work clothes, but he’d taken off his jacket and tie and rolled the sleeves of his shirt up above his elbows. “I have to go into the office this afternoon, but I’ll work from home this morning to make sure you’re OK,” he’d said after he’d helped her off the hallway floor, as if she’d slipped and hurt herself, or been suddenly overcome by a dizzy spell. He’d called Madeline, without asking Celeste, and asked if she would mind picking the boys up from school today. “Celeste is sick,” she’d heard him say, and the concern and compassion in his voice were so real, so genuine, it was as though he really did believe that she’d suddenly been felled by a mysterious illness. Maybe he did believe it.
“No thanks,” she said.
She looked at his handsome, caring face, blinked and saw his face up close to hers, jeering, “Not good enough,” before he slammed her head against the wall.
So surprising.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Which one was the baddie? She didn’t know. She closed her eyes. The ice pack had helped, but the pain had settled at a certain level and stayed that way, as if it were always going to be there: a tender, throbbing circle. When she put her fingertips to it, she expected it to feel like a pulpy tomato.
“OK, well. Sing out if you need anything.”
She almost laughed.
“I will,” she said.
He left, and she closed her eyes. She’d embarrassed him. Would he feel embarrassed if she really did leave? Would he feel humiliated if the world knew that his Facebook posts didn’t tell the whole story?
“You need to take precautions. The most dangerous time for a battered woman is after she ends the relationship,” Susi had told Celeste more than once at their last session, as though she were looking for a response that Celeste wasn’t giving her.
Celeste had never taken that seriously. For her it was always about making the decision to leave, to stay or to go, as though going would be the end of her story.
She was delusional. She was a fool.
If his anger had burned just a notch higher today, then he would have hit her head once more against the wall. He would have hit harder. He could have killed her, and then he would have sunk to his knees and cradled her body, keening and shouting and feeling really very upset and sorry for himself—but so what? She’d be dead. He could never make it up to her. Her boys would have no mother, and Perry was a wonderful father, but he didn’t give them enough fruit and he always forgot to clean their teeth and she wanted to see them grown up.
If she left he would probably kill her.
If she stayed, and they remained on this trajectory together, he would probably, eventually, find something to be angry enough about that he would kill her.
There was no way out. An apartment with neatly made beds was no escape plan. It was a joke.
It was just so very surprising that the good-looking, worried man who had just offered her a cup of tea, and was right now working at his computer down the hallway, and who would come running if she called him, and who loved her with all of his strange heart, would in all probability one day kill her.
57.
Abigail has built a website,” said Nathan.
“OK,” said Madeline. She had stood up from her desk, as if she had to leave for somewhere, right now. The school? The hospital? Jail? What could be so momentous about a website?
“It’s to raise funds for Amnesty International,” said Nathan. “It’s very professionally put together. I’ve been helping her with this Web design course she’s doing at school, but obviously, I didn’t . . . um . . . yes, well I didn’t foresee this.”
“I don’t get it. What’s the problem?” said Madeline sharply. It wasn’t like Nathan to see a problem when there wasn’t one. He was more likely to miss a problem that was staring him in the face.
Nathan cleared his throat. He spoke in a strangled voice. “It’s not the end of the world, but it’s certainly not ideal.”
“Nathan!” Madeline stamped her foot in frustration.
“Fine,” said Nathan. He spoke in a rush: “Abigail is auctioning off her virginity to the highest bidder as a way of raising awareness for child marriage and sex slavery. She says, um, ‘If the world stands by while a seven-year-old is sold for sex, then the world shouldn’t blink an eye if a privileged white fourteen-year-old girl sells herself for sex.’ All the money raised will go to Amnesty International. She can’t spell ‘privileged.’”
Madeline sank back down in her chair. Oh, calamity.
“Give me the address,” said Madeline. “Is the site live? Are you telling me the site is actually live right now?”
“Yes,” said Nathan. “I think it went up yesterday morning. Don’t look at it. Please don’t look at it. The problem is that she hasn’t set it up so she can moderate comments, and naturally, the Internet trolls are in a feeding frenzy.”
“Give me the address right now.”
“No.”
“Nathan, you give me the address right now!” She stomped her foot again, almost in tears of frustration.
“It’s www.buymyvirginitytostopchildmarriageandsexslavery.com.”
“Fabulous,” said Madeline as she typed in the address with shaky hands. “That’s going to attract a wonderful class of charitable person. Our daughter is an idiot. We raised an idiot. Oh, wait, you didn’t raise her. I raised her. I’ve raised an idiot.” She paused. “Oh God.”
“You’re looking at it?” said Nathan.
“Yes,” said Madeline. It was a professional-looking website, which made it worse for some reason, more real, more official, as if the right for some stranger to purchase Abigail’s virginity had been officially endorsed. The home page featured the photo of Abigail doing her yoga pose that Madeline had seen on her Facebook page. Viewed in the context of “buy my virginity,” the photo took on a sinister sexuality: the hair falling over her shoulder, the long, skinny limbs, the small, perfect br**sts. Men were looking at her daughter’s photo on their computer screens and thinking about having sex with her.