Page 4 of The Allure of Ruins

P oor Mr. Somerset, he looked terrible as he took a step back from me, but even that small amount of distance helped. Leaning over, hands on my thighs, I closed my eyes and counted.

“Please tell me what’s wrong,” he asked softly, concerned, maybe even a bit unsure, like I might barf on him or his polished hardwood floors. Both, seemingly, of equal concern. For all he knew, I wasn’t house-trained. “Maybe you should come sit down on the couch.”

Sitting was never good. Standing was always better. I’d learned that lesson young. If you were on your feet, you could run, and it was much easier to get away, even without shoes. Sitting was one step closer to being held down.

I was freaking him out, and it was both stupid and not.

I learned that in group therapy in my senior year of college.

I’d gone to a survivor meeting after watching a documentary in class about the foster care system.

Watching the kids and their terrified faces each and every time they were moved, all their worldly possessions in garbage bags…

it did something to me. Of course it had.

I remembered it all so vividly myself. Logically I understood that those experiences were over for me, and would not, could not, be repeated.

But still, seeing it, the helplessness, and hopefulness at times, was too much.

The shivering was followed fast by me scrambling out of my seat and making it outside the doorway in time to lose my lunch into a trash can.

My professor was kind and walked me first to the bathroom and then to her office.

I sat on her couch and sipped on a Sprite until the end of class.

Afterward, she invited me to a survivor meeting with her.

“Oh no, I’ll be fine,” I’d said weakly, lying through my teeth.

“No,” she’d replied, smiling kindly. “Not without talking.”

I went because she was my teacher and I wasn’t sure I was allowed to say no, and even if I could, should I?

I was technically a grown-up, all of twenty-two at the time, but socially inept, awkward, and jumping at my own shadow.

As her concern was palpable, I went with her willingly, walking arm in arm through the snow, off campus to the basement of St. Anne’s Catholic Church.

The room smelled musty, the chairs were the really uncomfortable metal folding kind that squeaked when you sat down, and the lighting made everyone look jaundiced. And yet…I felt safe.

My professor started the round-robin of why she was there with the declaration that she’d been raped fifteen years prior by a friend of her husband’s.

Most days—because of therapy and group, because of how much her husband supported her, because of her kids, her extended family, and wonderful friends—she was fine.

But sometimes for no reason, and other times because she had not recognized something as a trigger, she would unravel and need to spend a day at home in her safe space and regroup.

It was, she said to all the people in the room, perfectly okay.

“No one needs to be strong every single moment of every single day. We can give ourselves a break.”

I never did that. Weakness was not something I ever tolerated in myself.

Sitting in the small circle, I heard that there was a difference between self-pity and self-care. The designation had never been made clear to me before.

Later, as I went to more meetings and got my own therapist, the truth I’d always believed since childhood was finally, inexorably, destroyed.

No more hiding.

So many people had it worse than me. I heard them in group, and when it was my turn to share, to confess, I used to feel bad.

Like I was complaining. Like how dare you whine about being beat up, or going hungry, or trading in the poverty to become a scary man’s slave, when this woman lost her son that she loved?

I’d met women who were assaulted daily, people who sold their bodies for drugs and food, and who had children taken from them.

I’d met men who were violated by people who were supposed to love them, who were pimped out at five and six, and others who were abandoned in the streets.

There was always a more horrific tale than mine, and I’d gotten it into my head that I needed to man up.

Don’t cry. Don’t be a baby. But the truth was, pain, like most everything else, was relative.

I had been hurt when I was a child, and though it stopped when I ran away at sixteen, when I gave myself to another to come in from the cold, with what he did, and allowed others to do to me, those wounds were deep and jagged and still open and bleeding. Nothing had ever been stitched up.

It took me years to realize that the grief I carried around was first for the little boy I had been, and second for what I allowed when I was older.

In therapy people told me, no, you’re not being a baby; yes, of course it’s okay to cry.

And most importantly, that all my feelings, all of them, were valid because they happened to me.

I never knew I needed someone to simply tell me it was all right to feel broken at times. The stiff-upper-lip thing was hard to carry off on a constant basis.

“Pax?” Winston Somerset’s voice broke me out of my past and brought me into the present. “I really think?—”

“Pardon me,” I said quickly, trying to smile. “Sometimes I get caught up thinking about something for a second.”

He squinted at me, the concern there in those furrowed brows and dark eyes. “You?—”

“Your daughter and I were talking, and she told me she was going to the movies or something with her friends, and I said that was great, but that she should rethink her outfit.”

“Oh? And why is that?”

“The weather,” I rushed out. “I assured her that it was much too cold for that dress.”

“It’s too everything for that dress,” he asserted with a scowl before taking a step closer and bending so that his mouth was near my ear. “She wasn’t taking one step outside this house in it. I’m better at my job than that.”

“Of course you are,” I replied, stepping sideways, smiling at him. His proximity had made my stomach clench painfully. “I didn’t mean to imply that?—”

“Calm down,” he said off-handedly, and instead of bristling like I normally did—not being a fan of any of those words that belittled someone else’s feelings, calm down , take it easy , chill out —I took it how he probably meant it.

I was apologizing, and he was saying it wasn’t necessary.

“All I meant to convey was that I appreciated you looking out for her.”

I took a breath so my voice stayed level. “It was my pleasure, sir.”

He walked away then as the newest socialite he was escorting around town was signaling for him, and when I turned for the kitchen, Dumont was there barring my path.

“What the fuck were you doing?” he blasted me, irritated—and slightly buzzed, given the whisper of slur in his voice as well as the sharpness of his tone.

And I would have responded, but Janelle appeared on the opposite side of the room, in leggings tucked into white Ugg boots, an oversize angora sweater, a chunky infinity scarf, and a beanie.

All she needed was a parka and she’d be ready to scale Everest. But she looked good for winter in Chicago too.

“Well?” he growled at me.

I tipped my head, and when he glanced over to where I directed him, he did a double take. The way the color drained from his face was fun to see. If the scene were in a movie, people would have jeered at the screen.

“Oh shit,” choked out his friend, whom I didn’t know—he didn’t work at the firm—as he joined us, hand on Dumont’s shoulder. “The hell, man, how old is that girl?”

“Seventeen,” I offered, staring at them.

“Sonofabitch,” the friend croaked, sounding scared. He gave me a quick clap on the bicep. “Thanks, man, you’re a fuckin’ lifesaver. That was good lookin’ out.”

As though I’d saved him and not her. “Maybe ask for ID next time,” I replied snidely.

He coughed, turned on his heel, and darted over to a group of women who were definitely in his age bracket.

“Fuck,” Dumont groaned.

I moved to leave him.

“Wait.” He stepped in front of me. “You have to believe me. If I’d known that girl was underage, I would have never bothered her.

” If he wasn’t actually horrified, his acting was damn impressive.

His coloring alone—that had changed from gray to a pale, sickly green—told the tale.

The man had definitely thought she was over the age of consent.

“I have a niece who’s seventeen,” he almost whimpered.

I had a stray thought about what Janelle said—I would have to tell her that the girl in her class was Dumont’s niece, not his daughter.

“Oh God, I’m gonna be sick.”

“Don’t throw up on the hardwood,” I cautioned. “I think Mr. Somerset, and definitely the heiress he’s dating at the moment, are worried that some of us aren’t house-trained.”

He nodded.

“Have you noticed that some people look older than they really are, and some younger,” I said innocently as the front door opened and Janelle’s high school friends spilled in.

Four girls and two boys, all of them dressed for arctic exploration, all looking so very, very young.

“Maybe, like your buddy, you should check ID going forward,” I suggested helpfully.

When Janelle waved at me, I smiled back, and then, to poor Dumont’s horror, she gestured her friends close.

It wasn’t even necessary to hear the conversation in the small huddle, as all eyes were on him as she related her tale.

There were squeals of revulsion, faces scrunched up in disgust, and a resounding gross .

One girl even mouthed the words but he’s so old!

As a man in his prime, on the prowl, the blow to his ego had to be devastating.

“It could be worse,” I placated him as he closed his eyes and leaned his forehead into his hand. “You could have given her a drink or suggested that she go home with you.”