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He was like curling up on the couch with a blanket and stepping into my favorite book.
It was awful and I would never admit it to anyone else, but I wanted Noah to have been sexually abused. It would’ve provided a reason for him doing what he’d done and made sense of something so senseless.
We blamed parents for children’s mistakes. It was that simple.
“Noah has made a great client. You know that. We talk about it all the time, but there haven’t been any battles. None. It’s almost been too easy. I’m wondering if we missed something.”
He was better. He had to be.
It made his release feel ominous and dreary rather than light and hopeful like I wanted it to be.
And once you were dirty, you couldn’t get clean again.
I was unbelievably lonely but rarely allowed myself to admit it. There were times when the debilitating aloneness threatened to swallow me like a black hole and today was one of those days, but I’d gotten used to breaking up my days into manageable moments to get through them.
Time had dragged. Nobody told me time slowed down with tragedy and how each minute became excruciating when it was painful to merely exist.
I hate days like this when the darkness overtakes me. It’s so heavy. I try to think about something happy, but all my memories are tainted now. Nothing is pure. Everything is as dirty as I am.
“He hurt those little girls. He touched them on their private parts. I don’t care if he touches me on my private parts.”
I froze. Still as a statue. We’d never told her he touched the girls on their private parts.
I needed someone to hate, or I might fall apart.
“You want to know how I know?” He leaned into me, his face inches from mine. “Because I’m a man, and men aren’t supposed to have thoughts or fantasies about touching little girls. It’s sick and disgusting.”
I couldn’t shake the feeling that Lucas held the key. My love for him wasn’t enough. He needed his dad.
“A true pedophile in an adolescent is unusual. It means they have an attraction to children. Most juvenile offenders don’t have an attraction to children. The predatory ones are doing it to inflict pain, and children are an easy target because they’re vulnerable. There are others who are social misfits and want to have a girlfriend who is their age, but they don’t know how or have the skills to do it. So, instead, they experiment with children. Then, there are those who act out because they’re under the influence of chemicals or are mentally ill, so they don’t know what they’re doing. But
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“I wish I knew or had answers to give you, but nobody knows what to do about pedophiles.”
“Then, it started to get sexual. Not bad, though, Mom. I swear I never actually wanted to hurt a kid. I just wanted to hug and cuddle with her. But thinking about touching her aroused me. That’s when I knew something was seriously wrong with me. Before it seemed really weird, but once it crossed over that line, I knew it was sick—that I was sick. I’m still sick. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“We’re not saying he’s ready, but he’s taking steps in the right direction. We can’t keep people in the hospital who are no longer a threat to themselves.” “But he is! Even if he says he isn’t, he is!” I could no longer keep the hysteria out of my voice. “Have you thought about getting some help for yourself? Someone you can talk to about your fears?” “They’re not fears.” I bit my cheek to keep from crying.
“You’re right. I’ve got something worse. At least when you have cancer people still love you.”
He was my son, and he was also a pedophile. I accepted his truth, but just because I accepted it didn’t mean he needed to die because of it.
It was at that moment that I decided I would.
I had expected morose songs filled with despair and angst, but as I listened I realized it wasn’t a playlist for him. It was for me.
I welcomed him into the world in a room filled with love and light and I could give him the same gift as I walked him home.
And then, he was gone. There was finally no more air.
Being with Noah was like looking in a mirror and having everything I hated about myself stare back at me. He became the part of me that was vile and repulsive. Visiting him at Marsh brought up all the memories of being at Reuters—the electric shock therapy, the boys assaulted in the locker room during showers, the never-ending terror I lived with every day. It was too much. I couldn’t go back there.
It didn’t help to remind myself I’d survived them before and would survive them again because, in the moment, I was sure it was the one that would kill me.
But I had to go on for Katie, because being a mother means you live your life as a living sacrifice.
My biggest fear was that I’d forget parts of him, and he’d be taken from me piece by piece until I was left with nothing except an empty ache where he used to be. It terrified me to lose anything about him and not remember every detail. His smile. His eyes. The smell of his hair. The way he looked at Katie. How he sounded when he called me Mom.
There had to be a God, because there had to be a heaven. A time when I got to see him again, and he was the one to walk me home.
