Don't You Forget About Me by Suzanne Jenkins Page B

you can get your clothes. Go to your mother’s.” Anne went to the back of the house, where there was a small office. She closed and locked the door behind her. She had her cell phone all ready with 911 on speed dial. She wasn’t taking any chances.
    She heard Bill get up, the legs of the chair scraping on the wooden floor. He walked across the room, and then there was the sound of cutlery and china being placed in the sink. It amazed her, once again, that his wrath rarely came out against inanimate objects. He didn’t throw things. She remembered he may have thrown his keys at her once; she had a small cut under her left eye that had required stitches, but she wasn’t sure if it was the keys or his hand that had done the damage. Although she had never come right out and called the police on him, the neighbors had intervened enough times and the police had seen enough handprints on her flesh to know that she was being victimized. At least her hope was that they did.
    From where he stood at the end of the hallway, Bill saw the closed door of the office. He examined his choices at that point. He could give in to what he wanted to do, which was to fly down the hall, bash the door down, take Anne by her scrawny throat, and squeeze the life out of her, or go upstairs to their room and pack a bag to take to his mother’s. If he gave in to his first choice, he would end up in jail again. He thought of his father, which he didn’t do very often. He didn’t have to; Harold’s acts were emblazoned upon his brain. But, at this moment, he thought specifically of the devastation the man left in his wake. Do I want that same legacy for my boys? Walking into their living room and sitting down on the world’s most uncomfortable chair, Bill leaned over to pick up a portrait of his children. It was over a year old, and they had grown from babyhood to preschool in that time. He traced the lines of their faces with his finger. They were so innocent. Both of them were a perfect combination of he and Anne. Had his father ever looked at his sons the same way? Or had he planned on brutalizing them from the beginning?
    He wished Jack were still alive. Then he could finally talk to him about their childhood. He knew Jack had tried to protect him, that he had threatened Harold. The only time the two of them ever talked about what they experienced was when Jack got that lawyer to write up a false document charging Harold with sodomy and child rape. He only did it to threaten the old man. There were no legal grounds to charge him; the acts had taken place forty years before. Harold dropped dead of a heart attack shortly after receiving the document; Jack didn’t even have the luxury of seeing the man squirm. At the time, Bill was insuch denial that he was angry with Jack, accusing him of trying to humiliate the whole family, to ruin the business. Of course, it was already ruined.
    His father did not love him; it was impossible. A man cannot rape his son and love him at the same time. Bill had been able to separate what was happening to him, the reality of the act, the pain, from his conscious mind. He often had the sensation that he was leaving the room where his father was raping him. When he was thirteen, he had braces put on his teeth. His father held his hand across the boy’s mouth to keep him from screaming. The first time Harold raped Bill after the braces were put on, the entire interior of his mouth was lacerated, blood pouring from him like a faucet. He had no awareness of it. When Harold was finished with him, he threw a towel at him and told him to clean his mouth off. He went into his bathroom and turned the light on. When he saw himself, saw the blood all over his face and the stream of blood coming from his lip, he gave an ear-splitting scream. But then something awful happened. He continued to scream and was either unable to stop or had no awareness that he could. What was supposed to be one burst of fear turned into a long,