The Apology Read online

  You were my life force returned. You were the gift of passion made out of my own sperm and flesh. You were the calling, the invitation, the wild invocation of the sublime. I could and would not tell your mother anything of that. And so were planted the seeds of secrecy, the continuing manifestation of a dual life. I tried. I tried to stay away. In those early days, before I crossed the sea of the forbidden, I prayed to God to be relieved of this possession. My prayers were, in all honesty, half-hearted and insincere. Desire and destiny had already merged.

  Shadow Man had been catalyzed by your birth, his rapacious hunger charged with the fury of a thousand wild horses rushing the winds of their freedom. His beastly sense of entitlement catalyzed inside the erotic essence of your tenderness. Your existence was somehow proof of his; your purity, your aliveness were the food he craved in order to feel his own. And he waited, patiently, like a lion in the bush ready for the right moment to seize his prey.

  For your first years, I kept my distance. I hardly touched you, although at night I would often creep into your bedroom and stand by your crib as you slept. I would lean close and inhale the sweet scent of your baby breath. I would cover you in your little white blanket, and as I wrapped it around your tiny frame I would feel this sensation of falling, falling, tumbling into a milky universe that offered a safety and a delight I had never known. There in your crib-cum-altar, swaddled in white cotton, completely vulnerable and trusting, you were the radiant offering.

  Then you turned five. There was something about five. Your face forming as my face, your brown eyes more fully alive and inviting, your infant body suddenly female, your cleverness revealed in your naughty sense of humor. You played with me. You teased me. You seemed somehow to know me as others had never known me, to delight in my ways, to find utter comfort in my embrace, to seek me. Unlike my mother, you had no image of who I was supposed to be. You loved me as I was. And I was the object of your pure, unmitigated adoration, the axis on which your being turned. What a powerful intoxicant! How was I to know that every daughter felt this way for her father? How was I to know that this adoration was a necessary stage in the development of the child and not to be corrupted? Instead it reaffirmed my grandiosity. Or rather, I used it to do as much. It removed doubts of my fraudulence. It filled my emptiness. A child had been born who perceived my godliness, who adored me the way my mother and my sisters had adored me, who worshipped as others should and would worship.

  You were my treasure, my creation, now mirroring back my virtue and glory. And you were so much wiser than your few years. You seemed to intuit my needs and my moods. If I were in a melancholy state, which I often was, you would climb onto my lap and tap your little fingers on my cheek as if to distract me, as if to gently prod me out of my gloom. If I was angry, no one but you dared come near me. You would make faces at me, perform a clownish dance and make me laugh. You were the kindest little girl. Always helping others, overly sympathetic to those around you. There was never a time when someone cried that you didn’t cry. Your heart was an angel heart. And you were mine. Daddy’s little girl, my sweetie pie. That’s what I called you. I see how this now makes you recoil. It didn’t once. Sweetie pie. Sweetie pie. A tasty crust with delicious sweet warm fruit inside.

  I did my best to contain and disguise my infatuation, but that kind of passion is impossible to mask. Your mother would constantly joke about how Evie was “the apple of her father’s eye.” And in some way, I think she was relieved and encouraged this attachment, as I had not come near you in your earlier years and she was worried I would never connect with you. All forces conspired to push us closer.

  The tenderness. The tenderness shooting sweet sound waves over the border. Oh Jesus, such excruciating tenderness? It has been vanquished here in limbo. The empty nowhereness is most defined by the absence of beauty and kindheartedness.

  Both were strictly outlawed from my boy beginnings, mistaken for fragility and unmanliness. These are surely what are most missing among the living. Do we fear anything more than tenderness? No war, no hate, no cruelty could make us feel so defenseless. What to do with it? Devour it, own it, crush it? It never occurred to me just to be with it, to be with you, to simply feel, appreciate, and share the depth of my affection. Instead, this startling affection became affliction, a burning curse. I was so empty and unprepared. Oh, Evie, I was so fond of you.

  How did it begin? I know this is of great interest to you. How does one slip over the boundaries of what is permissible? How does one tear through a taboo coded in the essence of our collective DNA? The answer is slowly, gradually. I remind you I prided myself on being a very moral man. I was diligent with truth telling. I made no more money than we needed. I believed in moderation above all things. I trained all of my children in the strictest manners so you would always be generous and respectful of others. I prized my integrity.

  Even in business, as the head of a corporation, I practiced fairness in all my interactions. I despised greed and waste and never cottoned to the nouveau riche who were vulgar and indulgent in their pursuit of wealth and possessions. You children had all you needed. Braces for your teeth, clothes and shoes. A yearly vacation, swimming and ballet lessons.

  Oh dear, where am I going with this? I fear I’m slipping back, trying to persuade you of my goodness, and that is certainly not what you need or want. It’s just to say that between who I became with you and who I thought myself to be—there was a great divide.

  It began simply, easily embedded in the ordinary. We had a game. I would close my eyes and ask, “Where has my Evie gone? Why did she run away, where is she hiding?”

  You would squeal with delight and shout, “I’m here, Daddy. I’m right here.” My eyes still closed, I’d say, “Oh where oh where has my sweetie pie gone? Why does she not love me anymore?” You would pull at the leg of my pants, shake my thigh. “I’m here, Daddy. I’m right here.” “Oh, I am so sad that she has run away. Why would she leave her daddy?” And you, shouting, would push at my arms and legs. “Open your eyes, Daddy. Open your eyes. I’m right here.” Then the panic would set in. “Open your eyes, Daddy.” You would climb onto my lap and your little fingers would do all they could to open my eyelids, but I would glue them shut. You would begin to cry, “Daddy, open your eyes. Open your eyes” and when I felt it had gone on too long, I would open my eyes with great surprise and delight. “Oh, there she is! There’s my sweetie pie. But I am not sure she still loves her daddy!” And you, holding on to my face, looking into my eyes, would kiss me over and over on my cheeks and forehead. “I love you, Daddy, I love you, Daddy.” “I don’t know, Evie, I am not sure.” And you would giggle and scream and punch me a little. “You are my daddy. All mine, Daddy.” “I don’t know. Are you sure, Evie?” And you would wrap your whole body around my body and rub your cheek against my cheek like some wild kitten in heat. I would hold you then and embrace you tight and lift you and spin you. “Yes, I think you do love your daddy. You do. You are your daddy’s precious little girl.” And you would laugh and shriek with relief and delight.

  But then one day, I went too far and waited too long before I opened my eyes (I wonder now if I was pushing you to break) and you became desperate. “Daddy, Daddy, open your eyes. I’m right here.” “I can’t find you, Evie.” You were screaming, crying, pulling back my eyelids with frantic fingers. “Open your eyes, Daddy, open your eyes! Look at me, look at me!” Then you began to plead and wail. “Daddy, open your eyes! Open your eyes!”

  And I finally did, but by then you were inconsolable. You wailed and wailed as if you were experiencing some ancient and primal loss, as if you had tapped into the far-reaching sorrows of the universe. I tried everything to calm you down. I held you. I kissed you. I was stern with you and told you to stop. But you would not, or perhaps you could not.

  And I don’t know why it happened then. Perhaps I was shaken by experiencing the extremity of your attachment, the depth of your need for me. No one had ever before wailed for my attention
. Perhaps it was your utter vulnerability and desperation that licensed him to finally take charge, but Shadow Man stepped in. And there and then he broke through the gate of sin. He began to pet your tiny body. First it was to calm. Or at least that’s what he told himself. Hands slowly and soothingly across your chest, across the slight delight of budding nipples. This seemed to comfort and relax you some. But more it was for him. He wanted this. Down your soft stomach where you were tickled. Then slowly more methodically down, down to your cotton underwear. I knew I should have stopped. I knew this was horribly wrong but I went on. I was a fifty-two-year-old man with a five-year-old child. My need, my desire more powerful than your comfort or sanity. Hand now touching but not touching the rising knob of your sweet spot. Imperceptible at first. Testing perhaps. I used your openness. I abused your trust. I told myself you wanted this. Your crying stopped. My touch was poisonous medicine.

  I held you in my lap and all the boundaries melted away. Beyond taboo, beyond the law there was a galaxy of bliss, up and down, up and down. All of heaven seemed to cry out. Go on. Do not go on. Go on. This is against. This is your right. This is a crime. This is too much. Oh, Evie, I must stop.

  I’ve gotten here too fast. It comes upon me now as it did then. I am sure it feels more like a reviving than a reckoning.

  That day, Shadow Man crossed over and ended my life as I knew it. And yours. I traveled into a realm guided by nothing rational or familiar. I severed from the ship the mooring that defined me as a moral being and I was permanently cast out on a reckless, unforgiving sea. I can see this now, but back then the force that possessed me was so powerful and complete it overrode rational discernment.

  You were an angel descended to save my soul and I yearned for salvation. You were the gift that would bring me to my heart when I hungered above all things to be human. In my distorted mind we married then, not as man and wife but deeper still, a covenant our bodies made with God and each other. You were mine, Evie. All mine. The special one. The one who had, through her beauty, innocence, and wits, moved me out of myself, taken me to heights I’d never known, broken through the constraints and made me a willing outlaw forever.

  As Shadow Man saw it, the clandestine nature of our relationship deepened our connection, its preciousness and intimacy. Secrecy is a kind of drug, suffused with Eros, danger, and shared risk. It was our secret. No one could touch it or know it. It was our bond and promise. Shadow Man took full advantage. Our secret was a gilded box he could keep you in. Why would you tell? Why would you forfeit paradise?

  You knew at five that you had won my heart, that I was yours, that there was no one else but you. A heady thing for any child, giving you an extraordinary and, I imagine, much distorted sense of power. You had only to bat your pretty eyes or gently lift and tease me with your sparkling crinoline petticoat and I was a goner. You taunted and flattered me, and then, when I was hooked, you would withdraw your attention, throwing me into a free-falling frenzy. I wouldn’t be honest with you if I didn’t tell you I relished it. Until that point no one had ever had this kind of power over me. No one had ever engaged with me, played with me, punctured the veneer. “Do with me, Evie, do with me as you will.” And so it began—the days of ecstasy.

  I would find myself in your room at some twilight hour. I only felt alive between the daylight and darkness in that crepuscular realm where dream and memory are indecipherable. That’s how I controlled you. Those aphotic hours where others in the house were lost in sleep and you were in a trance, separated from your body. I would find myself sitting on your bed, somehow carried there by Shadow Man. You would pretend to be asleep. As if what was happening was not happening. You desperately wanted it and me to go away. I didn’t go away. I never spoke, never uttered a sound. The silence was my power. Words would break the spell, make it real and ugly and what it was.

  My hands, not hands, reaching up under your soft nightie and skin. You, Evie, your legs stretched out beneath the sheets were often stiff. I gently pulled your panties down. I would hold them to my face, inhale your life, inhale your damp. And you, your eyes still closed, praying it would stop. I would pry your legs apart for inspection, for me, your doctor. Your dirty doctor. First just exploring with my fingers to see what was needed. Gently investigating. Touching here touching there, touching light, touching more, to find the place that needed attention, that needed deepening.

  I told myself this aroused you even though you were hardly breathing. I was your doctor and I was healing you. Of course you wanted me. Touch it here. Touch it now, Daddy. Make it better, here. I told myself I was doing this for you you you, for little Evie, slow and very light at first, almost not all, just grazing there, and I would touch it then and press and rub and move, move, then veer off slightly, the need to press and press and I would rub you then rub you back and forth and back and forth, rub and rub, your spot, our spot, rub, Doctor, stay with it, stay with it, do not stop, do your job, fix me there, bring it to life. Life, life. Oh God, Evie, you were life. Exploding there, small earthquake in my hand, shuddering ripping through the landscape. Oh Jesus. I feel ill and I am dead. How does a dead person vomit without a body?

  I feel your revulsion and disgust. I see how this overstimulation flooded your five-year-old body with agitation, dread and inexplicable grief. Pleasure became self-annihilation, sex became mourning. I did this.

  Evie, what am I composed of now? What am I wrapped with beyond matter? Not skin as much as filaments of shame, not flesh as much as fibrous malintention. It will take time to unmask myself. Each layer gives way to another and each then seems most true. I hope you will be patient with me as I exhume these decomposing truths. I am terribly aware of the pain this is causing you. You have called for an autopsy of consciousness and it is slow going, chipping away at this psychic rigor mortis.

  Let me continue this reckoning. There will be time to go back, time to filter it through another prism. For now, I will continue to share it the way I experienced it then, propelled without self-awareness, by an all-consuming selfishness and desire. And although I realize describing it as such may appear to get me off the hook or make you ill, this is how I experienced it then. I was not separate and aware of Shadow Man as I am now. I was inside him. My obsession with you erased all else. Everyone became invisible in your presence, everyone felt left out. Like trees planted in shadow, the family grew twisted and malformed in their hungry attempt to reach even a little bit of light. And their desperate reaching became an irritating burden.

  Of course, somewhere I must have known my behavior was monstrous and revolting. But Shadow Man’s righteous hunger overrode my guilt. He turned the tables and blamed the family for being needy and pathetic. He pushed them away as though they were clawing vermin. There was only one for him and that was you, Evie. And he had no willingness or ability to conceal it. The family grew to despise you for it. In that sense I set you up to be hated. And that would come to be part of what destroyed you. They couldn’t blame me. I was the husband. I was the father. They needed me. So they blamed you. You were the reason they were deprived. You were the reason I was angry. You were the reason it all went wrong. You stole my heart. You banished them to darkness. Your name was Eve and you brought the fall onto the family. You were five.

  And how could you ever feel right with yourself? You were a betrayer, a thief, selfish, too sexual, too strong, too all-consuming, stigmatized and condemned, cast forever out of their gloomy garden. Our gloaming nights continued. But Shadow Man was deeply wounded and voracious. With every transgression another hunger door opened inside him. With every unpunished trespass his boldness was empowered.

  We lived in two worlds, you and I, Evie. The daytime and the night. But after time the line between them grew indistinguishable. My longing for you, my adoration, my obsession was too powerful and began to bleed over.

  You had brought me back from the dead once before, awakened my heart and set my flesh on fire. Your sweet smell and touch and childlike energy pulsed th
rough me like new blood. And like a vampire, I now needed it to live. I needed more. I needed to consume every inch of you, and this became violence.

  Much to my chagrin, your mother arranged a vacation for her and me. I suspect she did this to get me out of the house away from you. It was an agonizing holiday on one of those dreary islands and I drank way too much. I couldn’t bear that I had left you. I was unpleasant and unbearable.

  When we returned, I opened the door and waited for you to run to me and rush into my arms as you always did. You were nowhere around. I found you upstairs playing with your brother. I entered the room. You hardly looked up. It was as if you didn’t recognize me or had forgotten who I was. Your mother had to say, “Evie, don’t you want to greet your father?” You walked over in a perfunctory way, sighed as if annoyed by the obligation to perform this rite, and barely kissed my cheek. Then you turned and without even the slightest smile or glance you went back to your game. My heart sank. This isn’t my girl. What has happened to make you like this?

  “Evie, you can do better than that for your daddy,” I said trying to playfully engage you and conceal my panic and devastation.

  “I’m busy now, Daddy.”

  Slap in face. Door shut. Heart ripped apart.

  You are now competing with your mother. And how could you not? What a triangle I had created. What a psychic muddle. Your mother has become your adversary instead of your ally. I took my other wife away and you were heartbroken and abandoned. And instead of seeing how this might be an impossible thing to assimilate in your nine-year-old brain, I was beside myself, enraged by the rejection. How dare you withdraw your love from me when I am wholly devoted? How dare you think you have the power to cut me off when I am your father?

  I never consider the pain you are in or how it must feel that I’ve left you for days to be with another. I never pause to think how utterly wrenching it must be that I made you believe you are the one, but only in secret and nobody knows. It was disgusting what I did. How tortured you must be, how agonizingly jealous. And years later, when you have compulsive serial affairs with married men, I know it is here that that pattern was imprinted. Here, where you came to see yourself as second, always and only number two. Never first to be married or taken. Never good enough to win the sole attention of any person’s love. Only the whore they visited after dark.