Good Guys
“So it’s hard to say if the hares picked Ethan or if Ethan picked the hares,” Dane said. “But rabbits were always special to him, and the Three Hares motif was an obsession.”
“I see,” Liko said. “They never found his mother?”
“No. Or father. His whole life, the only things Ethan ever knew for sure were he was named after a great-grandfather and the toy rabbits belonged to his mother. They were the one possession he guarded with his life. Anything else—clothes, books, music, the car keys, art supplies, the food on his plate… What was his was yours, but no one could touch or move or fiddle with those rabbits. They were his soul.”
“He picked the surname Hasen himself?”
“He took John as his middle name, and the Schoenfelds were German, so Hasen fulfilled all his familial and symbolic needs. He felt strongly it was meant to be his name.”
“Is your daughter called Hasen?”
“Hasen-Strong.”
“I have a rude question.”
Dane laughed. “She’s my biological daughter. Mine and Nomi’s.”
“But Nomi was married to Ethan.”
“Nomi was also a foundling who knew nothing about her parents. I had parents. One a monster, the other almost a complete unknown, but I had names. I had vital statistics. I had a sister. I could draw a family tree. I had medical history and strictly from that perspective, we felt we couldn’t saddle our own kid with a blank slate.
Especially after Nomi had breast cancer. ”
“No, no, that makes sense. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like I was judging her. Or any of you.”
“You’re good. I didn’t take it that way.”
A long silence.
“Tired?” Dane asked carefully.
“Yeah. I’m gonna try to sleep.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to you at some point.”
“’Night, man.”
Dane plugged the charger into the phone and clicked out the lamp. He lay on his side, drowsily stroking the pillow a little while before falling under. He slept dreamlessly, waking when Diane stirred behind his blue eye and asked, Is someone breathing on us?
He opened his eyes with a sharp inhale. Oscar stared back at him, the tips of their noses touching.
“Hey, kiddo,” Dane whispered.
“Where’s that dog?”
Dane patted the mattress behind him where Salma was sleeping. “Right here.”
“I want to come in with you, too.”
“Okay.”
Oscar looked around the dark bedroom. “We need a nightlight.”
“I’ll get yours. You need to pee first?”
“No.”
“I do. You should try, too.”
Dane got the nightlight from Oscar’s bedside table, then checked progress in the bathroom, praising the dry pull-up and the vigorous, fifteen-second pee. “Wow, you really did need to go.”
“I did a long one,” Oscar said.
“Great job.”
They settled back in bed, Dane switching sides so the nightlight wouldn’t shine in his eyes.
Which meant the light shone on him. He slept in just a pair of shorts, with all his tattoos, scars and piercings on full display.
Oscar reached toward Dane’s chest, but Dane gently stopped his hand.
“Good guys don’t touch without asking first. Right? ”
“Can I touch?”
“If I say no, what does it mean?”
“No, don’t touch.”
“Does it mean no, I don’t like you, Oscar?”
“No. You like me. You just don’t want touching.”
“I love you understand that. Ask me again.”
“Can I touch?”
“Yes. But don’t tickle me.”
Oscar drew one finger along the long scar running beneath Dane’s left pectoral muscle, then his right. “Did you hurt your chest?”
“Yes.”
“You had to get stitches?”
“Lots of them.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it just yet. One day I will.”
“Is it a secret?”
“It’s private. Like not wanting to be touched without asking.”
Oscar’s finger had been wandering toward the gold hoop in Dane’s right nipple. It stopped. “Can I touch this?”
“Yes, but don’t pull.”
“Why is it here?”
“I wanted it.”
Oscar examined the silver hoop in Dane’s left nipple without touching.
“Why are they different?”
“I like how it looks. They’re like my eyes.”
“Why are your eyes different?”
“That’s how I was born.”
Oscar turned over, putting his back to Dane. “Do scritches?”
Dane scratched his back until he nodded off. Then Dane lay awake, his fingers drawing along his scars. His hand spread wide across the plain of his left pectoral, remembering once upon a time when the plain was a hill, curving into his palm with a soft, warm weight.
I will not lie to anyone about my body or be bullied into telling lies. I was lied to all my life.
Huff said so.
“It matters,” Dr. Michael Hough Jensen said to an eighteen-year-old Dane.
“Things were done to you without your consent. You were abused by your father. In the clinic, you were medically and sexually assaulted. These things happened. They’re on the record and they matter.
You are allowed to feel any damn way you want about it. Starting with rage.”
Dane’s hands curved around something that wasn’t there anymore.
His fingers closed around a little hoop and pulled.
Twisted. Did all the things Oscar wasn’t allowed.
Nothing. No pain, no sensation. The reconstruction of his chest had been delayed far too long.
The nerves were gone and there was nothing for it.
The plastic surgeon did a phenomenal job and the NAC tattooist was a fucking genius.
Dane and Nomi used to stand in front of the bathroom mirror and either compete about who had the better set, or brag that they both had the best goddamn nipples on the planet.
They did look terrific. Too bad Dane’s didn’t feel like anything.
When he curled his mouth around Nomi’s nipples, she felt genuine pleasure.
Not as much as before the mastectomy, but something.
When she touched or licked or squeezed Dane’s, he felt nothing.
Sometimes he didn’t give it a thought. Other times it enraged him that he’d been so ruthlessly and cruelly robbed. Assaulted. Abused. Mutilated.
They cut me without my consent.
They carved me up and left nothing.
My own father did this to me. Then he dangled reconstruction like a fucking prize I had to earn.
He took a deep breath in. Let it out slow so as not to wake up Oscar. He tried some silver lining humor. “At least it wasn’t your dick,” he mouthed soundlessly.
“There’s no at least,” Dr. Jensen said. “Yeah, it could’ve been worse.
There’s always a worse. But so what? What happened to you was still terrible.
You don’t have to downplay it or be grateful it wasn’t worse.
You’re allowed to sit and acknowledge how bad it was until you’re ready to feel something else about it. ”
Dane’s pulling, twisting fingers went gentle, curved again around that remembered shape.
Maybe in the end I didn’t want them. But it should’ve been my choice to make. I should’ve been told what was wrong with me.
“Nothing is wrong with you,” Dr. Jensen said. He’d be Dr. Jensen until Dane graduated, at which time all Kingpoint alumni were invited to call him Huff.
“Nothing was ever wrong with you, Dane,” he said. “Nothing is wrong with you.” He leaned forward, finding Dane’s two different eyes and staring hard. “Nothing is wrong with you.”
Dane cried and cried. Behind his blue eye, Diane put arms around and rocked him, singing softly. I’m here, she said. I’m here, I’ll always be here. You survived and escaped. You kept me safe. They can never get to me here. I’m here. I’m always here.
“You’re safe here, Dane,” Dr. Jensen said, and Dane wanted to believe him so badly.
“I don’t know who I am,” he cried. “I don’t even know what words to use. I didn’t know words existed to describe someone like me.”
“You don’t have to identify today,” Jensen said.
“Or in a week. Or a year or decade. You can take all the time you need to explore all this information. Maybe you’ll eliminate some ideas straight off the bat and narrow it down.
Or not. You take your time. You were never given time and safety to learn who you were.
Now you have it. For as long as it takes. With whatever words you want.”
Dane cried harder, demolishing a box of tissues. It was profoundly cathartic, yet every sob was followed by a flinch, as if his skin were braced for the searing strikes of a weightlifting belt. His mouth poised around the obligatory words:
Thank you, Sir.
I’m sorry, Sir.
You’re right to correct me, Sir.
When Dane had quieted, Jensen spoke again. “I only have one rule in this office: truth or silence. If you’re not ready to speak the truth in your heart, you don’t have to speak at all. Do you understand?”
Dane could barely see through his soaked eyes but he nodded, his heart’s hands closing around the simple law and repeating it back to Jensen: “Truth or silence, Sir.”
It took months to stop calling Dr. Jenson Sir.
“Morning,” Huff said, when Dane shuffled into the kitchen. It was perfumed with bacon and coffee. Huff stood over the grill, studding pancakes with blueberries. Maple syrup simmered in a small pot on the stove with a scrap of orange peel.
“Sleep okay?” Huff asked.
“Eh.”
“Same. Coffee’s made, help yourself.”
Dane got a mug. “I can fall asleep but I can’t stay asleep. I’m always up before dawn, worrying about Saskia.”
“What kind of worry?”
“Like being useless at helping her plan a wedding. That’s a popular wake-up call.
I know it’s trivial and I know when the time comes, everything will be fine.
She has amazing friends, her wedding will be lit.
All I’ll have to do is show up. I know this, but I’m still awake at four in the morning, convinced I’m going to fail her. ”
“Are you still doing grief counseling?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Really it’s your only job right now. Although…”
Dane slid onto a stool with his coffee. “What?”
“It has to be hard living in that house.”
“I was just thinking about it the other night. The house is like a living entity to me. Nomi and Ethan are still everywhere and it’s just really hard to endure. Sometimes it feels like even the house is crying for them.”
“I’m sorry,” Huff said miserably.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Dane said.
Huff reached across the island and put the spatula under Dane’s chin.
“Look at me. You’re going to do the next thing.
Okay? Saskia’s wedding isn’t next. It’s not even a thing.
So it’s not for you to stress about. Your job is to just do the next thing.
Which, right now, is drinking your coffee.
Next I’ll put some breakfast in front of you and you will eat it. ”
“Okay.”
“That’s how you’re going to handle shit for the immediate future. You ask yourself, Is this a thing? And if it’s a thing, is it next? If it’s not a thing or the next thing, then let it go.” His penetrating gaze wobbled a little and he added hesitantly, “Okay?”
Dane would’ve hated the guy if he weren’t so lovable. “Okay.”