The woman introduced herself with a firm handshake and a warm smile. She waved him to the sofa and knelt on a pair of orange floor cushions. She said she hated chairs.
There was no objection when he took out his tape recorder. He accepted an offer of iced tea. She poured black coffee for herself and lit a cigarette , with little reservation in her manner. Having interviewed countless incest families , he knew the reservation was there , a gulf between them that would only be bridged with caution. He kept his observations as oblique as possible, intent on giving her the measure of privacy that most incest victims seemed to need.
She was blond and slender , but big boned and moderately tall , her body well muscled , her movements fluid. Her cheek bones were high , and her eyes , which were partially obscured by bangs , had an oriental slant. Composed and in charge , she asked about his backgrounds and qualifications. He told her.
"Thank God," she said. "At least you know what you're doing , which is more than I can say for myself"
"Do I detect an accent, where were you born?"
"Upper New York State ,in a very large city. But I grew up in nearby towns"
She told him what she wanted : therapy with fast results so that she could get on with her business and personal life. She expressed anger over her situation in a no-nonsense , businesslike fashion.
She passed him several pages of yellow legal paper that showed erasures , one after the other. The final, inked version came out of her pocket , in hands that shook.
"It's yours", she said. "When I was born , how old I was when I left the farm where I grew up , when I got married, when my daughter Page was born. She fourteen now, and lives with her father. These dates, I have trouble with dates, I told Mrs. Greenwood the same thing. Every calculation on those pages was an effort. Wait. That's a lie . My mother said I lied a lot. When I was making those calculations , some of them just popped into my head. From somewhere. If they're wrong__". Her hands were shaking harder.
"Please don't worry. Dates aren't important". He had to put her at ease.
"You don't want me to be precise? Shouldn't I go back and differentiate between what I calculated and what popped into my head? I will if you want me to."
"My mother thought precision was in general very important." She held up the index finger of her left hand and pointed to a black mark just under the skin surface. "During math homework one night, she jabbed me with a lead pencil".
"How do you feel about that?"
"Nothing. I felt nothing"
He wrote on his clipboard: ' Distanced. Removed." All victims, to one degree or another , distanced themselves from their feelings.
"Maybe," she said, "we'd better clarify one thing right now. If there's . . . fondling, I guess you call it, from your step father, is that incest?"
"In my book, yes. A stepfather is a close, adult authority figure; someone you should be able to trust"
The woman on the orange floor cushions, cigarette burning unnoticed between her fingers, hugged herself and bent from the waist until her forehead touched the floor.
"So many people," she said, "saying so many things. Nobody agrees on anything. How do you know when you're right or wrong, if you hurt or you don't? People say that it's only incest if it's your own father, your own flesh and blood__"
"For one thing ," he said, "there is no harmless sexual trespasses against a child, no matter what it's called. And I'm not concerned about what 'people' said, this is about you".
He saw the first tears.
Maybe it wasn't incest in the beginning. My mother lived with him long before they got married."