May 28, 1953
IN THE LATE AFTERNOON SUN, Will grunted and moved
in bed, his sleep disturbed. His head was damp, perspiring in the
midday heat. Claire clapped her hands, to see if she could rouse
him, but Will just shifted again, whimpered.
She looked at his face, damp with sweat, his mouth
moving almost imperceptibly in his sleep, and felt pity for him,
for the first time.
“TOUCH ME, ” she says. Her voice is desperate. “I
want to feel real again.”
He embraces her, holding her as tightly as he
can.
“You don’t know what he made me do,” she says,
muffled, into his shoulder. “You don’t know.”
“It’s all right,” he says. “Don’t worry.”
“It’s not all right!” she cries. “It’s not. You
don’t know. If you knew, you’d never want to see me again, never
touch me again. You could never look at me straight in the face.”
She draws back and looks at him, searches his face.
He is quiet. She winces.
“I knew it,” she says. “I knew it. What did I
expect?”
“I don’t know what you need from me,” he
says.
“This is why I loved you so much,” she says. “Not
only because you were so good and you didn’t need anyone and I
thought I might be able to make you need me, but because . . .” and
she’s crying, this Trudy he’s never seen, this Trudy who’s as
fragile as gossamer and doesn’t care who sees it. “Because no one
has ever loved me. They loved my money or the way I looked, or even
the way I talked, because it made them think I was a certain way.
Or my father, he loved me because he had to. My mother loved me but
then she left. No one loved me for me, or thought I was more than a
good distraction at a party. It’s the tritest thing in the world,
isn’t it? But you loved me. You liked the person I was. I really
felt that. And it was a revelation to me. But then, after Otsubo
and after I asked you to get me the information, I saw that you
changed. Or that your feelings changed. You didn’t love me in the
same way anymore. I was changed in your eyes. I wasn’t that person
you loved no matter what.” She wipes her eyes. They are red and
swollen.
“Oh, I must look like a troll,” she says suddenly,
the old Trudy surfacing for a moment. “So when that happened”—she
takes a deep breath—“when that happened, Will, it all snapped into
place.
“I had been playing at being this person I am when
I’m with you, and all it took was a few weeks’ separation from you
. . .”
“And a war,” he says. He doesn’t know where the
words are coming from, where this mechanically speaking person has
sprung from.
“Yes, a few weeks’ separation and a few
well-equipped, menacing Japanese, and poof, I was back to
being the old Trudy, who cared only about herself and her very
malleable morals. And it felt right. It felt awful, but it felt
right. I’m not who you think I am. I told you that before you left
to go to the parade ground, and I wanted you to understand what I
was saying. Did you? Did you?”
“I can’t be the one to absolve you, Trudy.”
She slaps him.
His hand goes up to his cheek, like a woman.
“I want to kill you, sometimes,” she says slowly.
“You and your so-called morals.”
She turns around and tries to leave. He catches
her elbow. “Even that,” she says, “is so false. It’s not worthy of
you. Be a man and show what you really feel for me.” She stares at
him. He cannot move. “I thought so.”
She turns back to the door.
“Thank you, Will,” she says quietly, with the back
of her head to him. “I know where I stand. Thank you for releasing
me.”
She has always been too strong for him.
The way we hurt the ones we love.