Chapter Twenty-Four

Wade’s mother held the teeth in her hand. His daughter was gone, and Jessa had no intention of coming back. His lover had become his victim. He knew what it was to murder someone, even if he hadn’t actually done that. He knew he was capable of it. Wade knew he deserved to suffer for what he’d done. He knew his life was over, that all was lost. He wanted to die. He’d rather die. He didn’t want his mom to hate him. Mary was looking at him, then looking at the teeth. She was confused and angry.

Still, she’d gone right to the cabinet. She hadn’t hesitated. He saw her. She knew to look for something. She knew where he hid things. She looked at him like she knew everything, even though she couldn’t possibly know, short of Dr. Emmett waking up and telling her about it. He knew instinctively that wasn’t the case. But Wade didn’t know what the case was.

Wade didn’t want his mom to hate him. He wanted her to know his secrets and not hate him. He couldn’t read her face completely. He couldn’t figure out how to even start talking.

He looked up at her, awkwardly contorted over the refrigerator, and he said, “Mom—,” before he had any clue how to fill out the rest of the sentence.

She turned to him and just said, “Yes,” like there wasn’t a chasm of emotion separating them. She held the jaw, her fingers ran along the braces, and Wade started to stammer to her, hoping that somehow the words would make better sense once they left him and entered the air between them.

“Mom, I just—”

“What, Wade?”

Her voice was as cold as he imagined February was supposed to be. He shivered.

“I just wanted to—”

“You need to say a lot of things, Wade,” she said to her son. “It’s better if you don’t hesitate.”

“But, Mommy, I—”

“‘Mommy’? Don’t.”

“Mom, what?”

“You aren’t a baby, Wade. Don’t ‘Mommy’ me. Just say what you want me to hear.”

“I don’t know what you want to hear.”

“Just start somewhere.”

Mary maneuvered herself to her knees to put the jaw on the counter, then she scooched herself back on to the ground. She was older now, it wasn’t graceful. He remembered when she was young, how smoothly she used to move. He believed his parents could do anything when he was a kid. His mom and dad were such heroes. No one could defeat them. Wade didn’t want his mom to hate him. He wanted to die.

“Just start somewhere because I don’t know what I want to hear, either,” Mary said.

“Did Dr. Emmett wake up?” Wade asked.

“No.”

“Is he dead?”

“Not so far.”

“Cool,” Wade said for some idiotic reason that made him hate himself.

“Tell me how you know him.”

“He’s my dentist.”

Her eyes bugged out. “Wade, I swear to God—”

“OK, he’s my friend.”

“What kind of friend, Wade? Talking to you is like pulling teeth.”

She probably said it unintentionally. Wade glanced at the jaw. She kept her eyes laser-focused on his. His stomach tightened. He wanted to disintegrate.

“Just say it, Wade.”

“How do you know?”

“Say it, Wade.”

“I don’t want to tell you.”

“Are you in love with him, Wade?”

A beat.

“No.”

His mother lifted an eyebrow, then muttered, “Good. At least there’s that.” She said it like she hated him.

“Mom, I’m sorry,” Wade said.

“For what, exactly? Use sentences.”

“Please don’t be mean,” he said.

“You’re not a toddler, Wade. You made choices not to tell me things. I don’t know what the hell this—what is it?—mouth is, and I’m freaking out because I’m going crazy trying to figure out an explanation for any of this. I don’t know why you didn’t tell me that your dentist was chit-chatting with you every night at work. I’m not mean. I want to know what you have been doing. I want to know what you were doing with my patient today. I want to know what you were doing every night while I watched your baby and put up with your girlfriend’s crap. I want to know right now.”

His face turned white. Then, he recovered his gumption.

“You don’t need to worry about the girlfriend anymore. She’s gone.”

“Don’t change the subject, Wade. Tell me everything about Dr. Emmett.”

“How do you know about this stuff if he didn’t wake up?”

“Now, damn it!” she shouted. “Don’t stall. Don’t ask questions. Your dentist has been fucking you. Don’t make me guess anymore.”

“Mom—”

“I know you don’t want to tell me, that much is abundantly clear, but, Wade, the only way you and I get through this situation is straight through it.”

With that, Wade sat down at the kitchen table, opened the door to the story and promised to tell his mother the truth. Though he didn’t like her touching it, Mary carried the tooth model to the table and sat it on the Formica between them.

Δ

“Dr. Emmett would show up when I was restocking the cereal aisle around 11. He must’ve asked someone for my schedule, I don’t know. At first, I thought it was just a coincidence, that he just really, really ate a lot of fiber or something. It didn’t occur to me that he was coming to see me.”

“When was this?” Mary asked him.

“Just a week or so after I had that wisdom tooth removed.”

“That didn’t seem weird to you?”

“It’s a small town, Mom. I don’t know. I see teachers at the store all the time. I don’t think they come in to see me.”

“But he talked to you every night? For how long, Wade?”

“It was a couple weeks, I think,” he said. “I wasn’t really getting any sleep then. It was a blur. You remember?”

“I remember thinking you hated the baby,” Mary admitted. “Or that you were the slowest damn stock boy in the world.”

Wade chuckled. But she wasn’t having it. There was no calming down, no joking anymore. He thought she hated him. He wanted to die.

“Tell me about the dentist.”

“What about him?”

“Tell me who he is.”

“Huh?”

“You’re not this dumb, Wade. Stop acting like you don’t know what I mean. Tell me about this man. Tell me about your friendship.”

“I get that,” Wade said to his mother. “It’s just not easy.”

“It won’t get any easier. Tell me.”

“Dr. Emmett said he got lonely at home by himself, that he got bored watching TV. He said he missed living in a city, like the ones in the wallpaper on his office. He said he was a night-owl, and he liked talking to people like me.”

“People like you?”

“Dr. Emmett said bartenders and waitresses and bagboys had the best stories. He said they saw all kinds of people, usually at their worst. He said he liked how colorful people can be when they’re doing boring, mundane shit. He asked me if I paid attention to people.”

“And do you?”

“I don’t know. I guess. Like, he asked me if anybody ever hummed to themselves, not noticing or ignoring that I was in the aisle.”

“Why would he ask that?”

“Not just about that, but, like, anything,” Wade said. “That first night, I told him that people sometimes would dance around to the Muzak. And that couples would just argue sometimes, right there in the freezer section, over ice cream.”

“Like, you mean, what flavor?”

“No, there was a legit fight about whether a guy’s suggestion of ice cream was a passive-aggressive dig at his girlfriend.”

Mary snickered.

“Dr. Emmett just seemed nice, Mom,” Wade said. “He asked about the baby and Jessa and my tooth. He asked me about Christmas and stuff.”

“And what did you say to him?”

“That the baby was new and scared the hell out of me. And that I was tired all the time.”

“And about Jessa?”

“I said that, since we had Lydie around, Jessa didn’t care whether I existed. And he—”

“What?”

“He told me that I did exist, that he saw me,” Wade said. “People shopping for egg nog and Christmas cookies might ignore me. The girl in my basement might not acknowledge me. You might be too mad to look at me. But Dr. Emmett said he saw me.”

“When was I too mad to look at you?” Mary asked.

“Oh, come on, Mom, you can’t stand me,” Wade said. “I disappoint you all the time. I disappointed you in May when I didn’t tell you Jessa was pregnant. I annoyed you to death when the baby was born. You acted like I didn’t know how to do anything.”

“Well, you didn’t,” she said.

“So? You didn’t have to be so mean about it,” Wade said. “You probably didn’t know how to handle a baby ’til you had me.”

“You need a thicker skin if that got to you,” she said. “Jesus, I thought you were tougher than that.”

“You treat me like I’m an idiot,” Wade said.

“Well, sometimes you’re an idiot, damn it.”

Wade shook his head.

“Yeah, but I can’t be doing everything wrong all the time, right?” Wade asked. “Why do you all act like I can’t do anything right ever? It irritates the fuck out of me. You think I’m a jerk. Jessa thinks I ignore her. I can’t do anything right with the baby. I am always in trouble at work. But I can’t figure out how to fix it. Like, was I always a loser? Is everything my fault? How is that even possible?”

Wade was red in the face. Mary’s eyes widened.

“Um, don’t be ridiculous. Let’s get back to talking about the dentist.”

“No, you need to listen to me first. Why am I a worthless piece of shit all the time?”

“When have I ever called you that or treated you like that? I never use that kind of language, first of all.”

Wade rolled his eyes at that one.

“Please, Mom,” he scoffed. “I live here. I know you.”

“I don’t treat you like that,” she affirmed.

“You might not think you do, but that’s how I feel all the time.”

“Don’t be melodramatic, Wade.”

“All. The. Time. I feel like that all the time. Listen to me.” Mary paused.

Wade looked her in the eye, holding her attention.

“I need you to hear me. I’ve been going over how all this happened in my head.”

“How you were molested by some 35-year-old predator who groomed you?” she asked. “Is that what you mean ‘happened’? Because, Wade, that’s what happened.”

“That isn’t what it seemed like, Mom,” he said.

“Wade, he tracked you down.”

“To be nice to me.”

“And then, let me guess, he kept coming back.”

“Yeah, I guess, but—”

“And the conversations got so long and so deep that he suggested y’all talk after your shift.”

“Yeah.”

“And he bought you beer or wine or something, and he asked you to share it,” she continued.

“Who told you this?”

“And you felt light-headed, and he started to touch you. And then things were weird.”

“Mom, I wasn’t powerless.”

“You were a child, Wade,” she said. “You were a child that he drugged and touched.”

“It wasn’t like that! I was talking to him, and he was nice to me, and it just happened,” Wade said with a raised voice. “And I can make my own choices.”

“This isn’t your fault, Wade,” she said.

“He didn’t make me—”

“Did you start it? Did you suggest it?”

“I told him that he was hot, I said it over and over.”

“When you were sedated,” Mary clarified.

“How do you know about this?”

“Did you initiate sex with your dentist?”

“Well, no, but—” Wade stammered, feeling out of control.

“Because he molested you.”

“I don’t know,” Wade said. “I feel like this is all my fault.”

“So, do lots of people who are molested, son,” she said. “When they’re vulnerable, someone takes advantage of them, then initiates them into keeping a secret. And you feel out of control. And lost. And angry at yourself. I’m sorry that this happened to you.”

He felt like she didn’t get it.

“It wasn’t like that—”

“It was, Wade. Dr. Emmett’s not a good guy.”

“But, Mom, he was nice—”

“Nice and good aren’t the same.”

“I don’t think I’m some victim.”

“I understand how that can happen, son.”

“I told him to do it,” Wade said. “I pushed his head down.”

“His head was already on the way, probably.”

“Well, we went away—”

“And you were too young.”

“Mom, stop it,” Wade said, for she couldn’t be right about this. He wasn’t a child. He wasn’t attacked. Those things look different than what happened to him, and he couldn’t figure out how to make her see what he chose to happen.

“You were too young to choose anything,” she said, as though finishing his thought.

His mind was racing, confused. Her version of events wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t how he wanted to see himself. It wasn’t right. He didn’t want to be powerless in every aspect of his life. He didn’t want to be someone everyone decided things for. Wade didn’t want to be a victim. She kept acting like they were in this together, like he needed help. She acted like none of the mistakes were his, that none of the choices were his. Wade didn’t feel innocent.

He didn’t want to be used. He was angry. And his mommy was coming in like she was going to save him from a predator. But he’d already saved himself.

Mary just kept telling him it wasn’t his doing.

“I hit him, Mom!” Wade shouted angrily, his eyes moving from that damned mouth to her. He pushed his chair back, lifted the Formica table off the floor and then slammed it on the ground. The teeth slid toward him, and he stared at them, continuing to rant at his mother.

“Since you think you know everything about what happened with Dr. Emmett! Do you know that much, huh? Do you know that I hit him in the head?!”