Sympathy for the Devil

This past week, at Dr. Lavender's. I like his quote-unquote-office. It's very 80s, but updated. Scandinavian tables, bookcases and a desk, but the sofa and chairs are new and sleek. I also like that it's kind of like a reading room I would want in Ma Maisonette. Windows on three sides, from waist-high, up, looking out over the Imperial Whatsit Hotel grounds.

I'm sitting across from him. I also like that he's always wearing a jacket and tie. I am wearing jeans. What a hypocrite.

He puts his elbow on the chair arm, leans the side of his face into his palm.

"I don't get it," he says.

"Don't get what?"

"Aren't you going to tell me?"

"Tell you what?" Seriously, I don't know. Work with me here.

"Well. Here you are. You are a mature woman who pays her bills, has a job she likes, takes care of herself and generally seems to be doing all right now. This is not a woman planning to kill herself. What's changed?"

I say that for one thing, I am very grateful for the longer days. He suggests one of those light board things and I agree. I will be purchasing one.

"But what else? Why do you keep coming to see me?"

"Because I like it here."

And before I know it, I'm slowly and carefully spilling my guts about my grandfather, the child molester. I tell him everything I know, everything I've been able to figure out over the years about who he molested in my family and among my friends, how my mother protected me by making me sleep not just in the same room with her, but in the same bed and taking the spot on the bed closest to the door.

He listens.

I tell him about the lies my grandfather told about me. He would take elaborate pastries to work and tell people that I had made them. When I was about six, he made me copy one of my favorite books and then took it around to people to show them what I wrote. There was a kid's show called "Sailor Bob" that showed Popeye cartoons and then Sailor Bob would show drawings sent in by kids. My grandfather sent in two that he had drawn and then made me sign my name to them. He walked me through every step of producing photographs so I could win a photography award at the Richmond Art Show.

I say that I couldn't let my grandfather be a liar. So somehow, I had to be able to bake those nice cakes, draw those drawings, write those novels and take those photographs.

I say, "If I hadn't been living in that house, those girls would never have been there."

Dr. L pauses. He says, "You are under no obligation at all to support another person's lies about you. It's good only in that you happen to have talent as a writer and a photographer, but you see that you no longer have to support what he said about you all those years ago. And as far as those girls go, I am increasingly shocked at the amount of sexual abuse that goes on and has gone on for years."

Hand to palm again. He thinks. "What he did was horrible. There is no excuse for it. There is nothing that can make it right. His life must have been torture. His life must have been hell. Trying to live up to standards he could never attain, depriving his family to feed his own ego, and to add on top of it, a sexual addiction he could not control."

This is the first time I've ever seen a glimmer of my grandfather's side of it. For a fraction of a second, I see what a horror it must have been. It is as if a door was opened a crack then I slammed it back shut.

Still, I say to Dr. L, "Every year around this time, I usually go to Richmond where my mother and grandparents are buried."

Dr. L looks at me with some interest.

"I put flowers on my mother's and grandmother's grave. I put them on my grandfather's side only for my grandmother's sake. Because honestly - " Why is this so hard to admit? "I spit on his grave."

Dr. L leans forward. "The instant you said you go to Richmond, I said to myself 'and spit on my grandfather's grave.'"

We agree to see each other again in a couple of weeks. Dr. Lavender says he gets it now.

I wish he would explain it to me.