Chapter 27
Will
It was twenty to midnight by Will’s watch when Bennett and Phelps disappeared into the Dog House with Doug sagging between
them. Will followed them with his eyes. Should he join them? Was this his chance? Ever since his moment with Bennett, earlier
in the night, when he said, She took my phone, the pressure inside him had been building and building.
He’d come to grips with the fact that no one could save him. On the other hand, the release of just being able to say the
words my wife hits me . . . To have his friends look him in the eye and believe him . . .
A hand clutched at his arm. Bunny’s. “I’m going to talk to Jenn,” came her whispery voice. She was so close he could smell
her perfume.
With the excitement of Doug’s injury, it took Will a second to reorient. Right. The inheritance. The leak about Bunny’s abortion.
Ted’s easy accusation, right on the heels of the whole arson thing: “It was Jenn.”
Of course, there was no point in Bunny talking to Jenn.
What was done was done. It was too late for Bunny to get her inheritance back.
Maybe it was too late for Will too. He’d never win custody.
Jenn’s game was too good, her persona too perfect.
His best hope was to apologize to her for even thinking about it .
. . play nice, like he’d done at the store with the wannabe bike thief.
His life would be spent paying the backbreaking cost of the choice to stay, but he couldn’t abandon his girls.
“I’m going to confront her,” Bunny was saying in a rushed, quiet voice. “I’m going to demand the truth, just like I did with
you . . .”
Will looked at Jenn, standing fifty or so feet away. Their gazes met, her eyes piercing through him. He had no doubt she’d
told on Bunny. That was what his wife did: take the most vulnerable thing you’d done and weaponize it.
“We need to clean up,” Hellie was announcing as she picked her way toward the mess of broken plates. “We can’t just leave
this in the yard. One of Phelps’s kids could get hurt . . . Will, you and I could make quick work of this.” There was a tinkling
sound as her shoes crunched against the ceramic.
“I can help too,” said Olivia.
Yes, he could clean up the broken plates . . . Jenn might go back to the house . . . then he could slip into the Dog House
without her knowing, say his piece . . .
“No, it’s too dark,” said Jenn in a bossy voice. “We can do it in the morning.”
“Hey, it’s almost midnight,” said Allie. “We only have fifteen minutes to pour the champagne.”
“Let’s turn on the Chicago countdown,” said Ted, just as a loud yelp came from the shed. “And let’s give those guys some privacy,
eh?”
Will gave a final helpless glance toward the Dog House as Bunny grabbed his arm hard and the whole group headed back to the
house. She kept talking, but he couldn’t quite focus.
“. . . and if she admits it, I really do think I have legal recourse . . . though God, Will, I wouldn’t want to hurt you . . .”
Emotion swirled through Will. But it was pointless emotion.
He was a merry-go-round, as indecisive and lost as he’d been fifteen years ago.
Going nowhere. Bashing his head against the same immutable problem.
Jenn. Familiar images flashed through his brain like a slideshow.
Strangling her. Smothering her. Or a little shove down the basement stairs . . .
His stomach turned. No. This was Jenn’s work too. She liked to poke the monster in him. If he let it loose, he was just letting
her win in a different way.
“. . . so I think maybe HIPAA laws might protect me? Anyway, there’s a lawyer I know in Nashville, a friend, well, more like
an acquaintance, he does pro bono women’s rights work—I think this counts as a women’s rights issue, doesn’t it? Reproductive
rights and stuff? And—”
He shook himself mentally. Yes—it was too easy to imagine how Jenn would have betrayed Bunny. It would have started, like
Ted suggested, with Jenn overhearing a conversation between Will and Bunny. Jenn feeling some kind of righteous fury. Then,
calling her old Sunday school teacher and mentor, Mr. Max. Mr. Max, your granddaughter Bunny needs your prayers . . . It would be a prayer request, wouldn’t it? That’s how she would have shared it.
Just like she’d shared Will’s stuff.
Will and I need your prayers . . .
She hadn’t even told Will they were meeting their church’s elder board, a little over a year ago. He’d thought they were going
to an evening prayer meeting about funding for the new church annex. “Where is everyone?” Will said, confused, as Jenn led
him down the hall and into a meeting room, where eight men at a table turned to watch them walk in. The smell of drip decaf
was in the air.
“What’s going on?” said Will.
“I’m sorry, Will, but I don’t feel like I can carry this alone anymore,” Jenn said, gripping his arm tight, as if she thought
he might run. “We need help. You need help.”
“Why don’t the two of you take a seat,” said Pastor Graham.
Will hadn’t discovered he liked to wear dresses until a year or so before that.
He put on the dress as a joke, thinking he could have a tea party with one of the girls and they could have a good laugh.
The frisson of excitement up his legs, up his spine, as he looked at himself in the mirror and swished the skirt back and
forth was a surprise. A welcome surprise too, because he’d been having trouble. It’s parenting, it wears me out, he explained to an unhappy Jenn, whose sex drive was as strong as ever. But it wasn’t parenting, or tiredness. It was having
to perform for Jenn, who liked him to be wild over her. Tough. Masculine, or at least her version of it, which for so long he had accepted as the exclusive version. And . . . that just wasn’t Will.
“I need you to pursue me,” she’d said tearfully over the years, more times than he could count. “The man is supposed to pursue
the woman.” She read him Bible verses. She went on about his lack of leadership. And . . . this killed him to remember . . .
he’d agreed with her. He was defective. Weak. Not the man God intended him to be. He’d prayed for so long, Just change me, God, make me into the man I’m supposed to be for my wife . . .
The afternoon he tried on that dress, he’d thought, foolishly, it might be the answer to his prayers. He put on the dress
again later that night. Sat on the edge of the bed when Jenn came in. Said in a shy voice, “I thought we could try something
new.”
That’s when his marriage went from challenging to full-on nightmare.
It had started with a slap in the face.
But instead of crumbling, defeated, a monster rose up in Will. He grabbed Jenn’s arm and flung her back onto the bed. Then,
she ripped off her T-shirt, tore the front of Will’s dress, and he did her as rough and hard as he could.
When it was over and he was in the bathroom washing up, his cheek still stinging from her slap, his body still thrumming, he hated himself. That wasn’t him, that violent man. He didn’t want it to be him.
When he came out of the bathroom, he meant to apologize, say, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what just happened,” but Jenn was singing.
She kissed him on the cheek. “That was incredible,” she said. “Thanks.”
He never wore a dress in front of her again, but she did keep slapping him. If it had been too long since they last had sex,
if he claimed he was too tired, if he was acting too passive—she’d just hit him. “This is the only way I can get your attention,”
she’d say with angry tears in her eyes. For a while it would still end in sex, which made Will feel so dirty.
He’d only stopped rising to the occasion in the past few months. She’d slap him, again and again, on the face, on the chest,
on the arms, and he’d just stand there, letting his mind slip away, out of the moment, into the waiting series of images that
had become so familiar, his safety place: a pillow over Jenn’s face . . . a knife in his hand . . .
The whole thing was so horribly twisted. What he liked and what he hated . . . the delicious surprise of discovering his kink,
and the nasty surprise of Jenn’s violent response to it . . . the cruel way Jenn would hurt him when he didn’t give her what
she wanted . . .
What was most horrifying was discovering the existence of this second William. Not the dress-kink William, he was alright—but
this shadow William who liked to be violent. Who liked to be scary. Who wanted to destroy things. This was the William Jenn
wanted—this was the William Jenn loved.
His therapist called it toxic masculinity. Jenn called it male leadership. The elder board said he needed to honor his wife.
And Will . . . what did Will think? His head seemed to break every time he tried to fit it all together.
Much like Oscar’s head probably broke.
When Oscar kissed Will in the pantry during the very first New Year’s party, Will was completely flabbergasted. Too surprised
to turn his face away. Too surprised to move. “I . . . like girls,” Will whispered apologetically when Oscar pulled away,
his lips moist from the kiss. And, in the ensuing moments, Oscar assured Will that he did too. Oh, my gosh, I don’t know why I did that . . . I think I’m not used to the alcohol . . . I’m totally committed to Jenn . . .
I really am attracted to her . . . Please don’t tell her . . .
Will hadn’t told Oscar’s secret, though he did worry they’d been spotted. Hadn’t he heard retreating steps right beyond the
pantry door, which had been ajar? Then, in January when they returned to campus after the winter break, things in Compass
had gotten weird. Oscar was suddenly gone. Leadership told them Oscar had “stepped down to figure some things out.” Will kept
leaving Oscar voicemails on his dorm phone, emailing him—that was before everyone had cell phones—but Oscar didn’t respond.
When Oscar killed himself, Will always wondered if it had somehow started with that kiss. Maybe Oscar came out as gay and