Deeper Illusions Read online

  I looked into the distance, and saw the figure of Jamie walking towards the stable. I looked at Polly. “Well, for now, Polly, we'll just leave it at that,” I said, waving to the lanky figure that was heading my way.

  We went through our first lesson with me and the horse. Jamie taught me first how to lead Polly, demonstrating, then letting me take the reins. I led her around the dirt road that was directly outside of the stable, Polly prancing behind me, whinnying and snorting the whole way. After I led her around for a little while, Jamie told me that it was time to put her back in her stable. Then she gave me a brush, and showed me how to groom her.

  “That's our lesson for the day,” Jamie said. “Tomorrow, you'll get to bridle her, and maybe ride her if you're up for it.”

  I nodded my head, looking forward to the next lesson already. Then the two of us headed back to the main facility.

  I decided to call Ryan and see if he would come and visit me.

  “Of course, beautiful, I can't wait to see you,” Ryan said, eagerness in his voice.

  He was over in record time. I imagined that he flew over here, like George Jetson. “I got lucky and didn't hit any red lights,” he said, as he met me at the receptionist's desk, slightly out of breath. He leaned down to hug me, and I could feel myself stiffening up. I immediately felt bad for my reaction to his touch.

  What was wrong with me?

  Ryan, for his part, appeared not be ruffled by my obvious rejection. Still, he looked uncomfortable and unsure of what to do. “What would you like to do, beautiful?” he asked.

  “Maybe walk on the grounds,” I said. “Wait here, I'll be back with my coat.” The sun was going down, so I knew that I would need some kind of warmth if we were going to be outside for a spell.

  I got back, and the two of us walked along the grounds, onto a little nature trail. He didn't try to hold my hand, and I really didn't want him to, so that was ok. “So, how are things going so far?” he asked.

  “Fine,” was all I said.

  We walked along in the uncomfortable silence. I knew that he was trying to open me up, but I wasn't ready. I was still struggling with my irrational feelings of loathing for this beautiful and kind man.

  But I couldn't tell him that.

  “Have you thought any more about us doing counseling together?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Maybe next week. I'm still trying to get adjusted here.”

  “Sure, beautiful. Anything you like. You're the boss.”

  “Yeah. I wish I was the boss when I told you I didn't want a bodyguard,” I blurted out.

  Ryan said nothing. I didn't look at him, but I could imagine that he looked stricken.

  We got to a little stream, and both of us sat on the ground on the banks. “I wish I knew what to say to you,” Ryan said. “I want to help you. How do I do that?”

  I just shook my head and said nothing. Then “We better go back. It's getting really dark.”

  Then we headed back in silence.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The days flew by. Make bed, eat breakfast, go to group therapy, see the shrink, then see Polly. I was starting to talk a little bit in group, but about nothing important. I only talked because the counselor was starting to get impatient about my passing every time. So, I made stuff up to satisfy them.

  “I'm really fucked up because I'm a part of the Phelps family. You know, God Hates Fags and all of that,” I said to the group one day.

  The rest of the group nodded, then some guy said “What a wack job, huh. Are you a grandkid to that Fred Phelps guy?”

  “Sure,” I said. “So, now I'm a fugitive from there.”

  “Bullshit,” said Candace, a recovering meth user. She was the one who was looking at me with a funny expression when I first got into the group. “I didn't want to say anything, but you're that girl who's married to that hot rich guy. The hot bisexual rich guy. Goddamn, if you don't want him, give him to me. I'll share him with my boyfriend anytime he wants.”

  “Candace,” the leader said. “That's against the rules, calling people out like that. We're supposed to remain anonymous in here.”

  “Sorry, but she can't go around saying that she's part of an anti-gay cult when she's married to a guy who swings both ways.”

  At that, the group started to getting into a heated argument about me, my life, and how much of my life was supposed to be brought up to the group. I really didn't care. Ironically, the argument took the focus off of me, as everybody was arguing about me, without paying much attention to any input that I wanted to add.

  But, now that my cover was blown, I knew that I couldn't get away with anymore lies about my past. So, I just resorted to shutting up and not talking, much to my group leader's chagrin.

  Fuck him, he can't make me talk if I don't want to.

  I only looked forward to every evening, when I could see Polly. I was riding her now, and, every evening, Jamie and I took her out. I bridled her, led her, then rode her along with Jamie, out into the woods. I was very tentative at first, never having ridden a horse, with the exception of the very slow horse rides that were offered at Benjamin Stables in Kansas City. But I soon got used to her, and she to me, and we galloped for miles through the woods. One evening we ended up on one of the beaches, galloping through the sand and surf.

  I also visited her whenever I could, because she was the only company that I really wanted during this time. After the awkward evening with Ryan, where we walked along in silence, I started putting him off, and making excuses for why he couldn't come and visit me. I would tell him I was tired, or had a headache, or was nauseated.

  Actually, the nauseated excuses were often true. I was often extremely sick to my stomach, and found myself throwing up. I didn't tell anybody, though, because I didn't want to have to undergo any medical tests. I wasn't detoxing anymore, so I surmised that there was something wrong with me. And I had too many blows for there to be one more, so I kept quiet. I was in denial, I knew, but what else was new?

  But I was never too tired for Polly. I talked to her for hours.

  Then, one night, I finally let her in on my secret. The secret that I had been keeping for 22 years.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  It was an unseasonably warm evening, about three weeks after I arrived at this place, when I finally decided to let Polly in on what was going on with me. “Polly,” I began. “I told you when I first came here that I had a secret about what happened to me in the seventh grade. Well, now you deserve to know,” I said, as I brushed her, and stroked her ears. “There was a gym teacher. A very handsome gym teacher. The girls were googly-eyes about him, including me. I was 12. I had crushes on all types of boys, and men, too. He noticed me, Polly. He noticed me.”

  Then I looked at my hands on her neck and mane. They were shaking uncontrollably. “I miscarried his baby, Polly. He and I had sex behind the bushes in the fields behind the school. It was only the one time, but I know that I miscarried his baby. I passed clots, huge clots, when I got my period after we did it. I never told anybody about this.”

  It was then that I finally figured out the source of my self-loathing. The gym teacher, of course, kinda forgot about me after that incident in the bushes. There were rumors that he was doing the same thing to a lot of other girls. Then he was transferred out of the school for mysterious reasons, a few years after the incident between us.

  I put my head into Polly's neck and mane, and wept uncontrollably. I ended up spending the night in the stable with her, laying down in the hay, not caring that I was probably laying on horse pee. The horse poop was dug out of the stall, so that wasn't a problem.

  I couldn't move. I just lay down on the hay, and cried myself to sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  After I had my cathartic experience with Polly, I was finally ready to have Ryan come with me to some therapy sessions. Our first session was scheduled for that Monday, with Dr. Bryan, a forty-something woman with corkscrew blonde hair and thick blac
k Elvis Costello glasses.

  Ryan seemed more than eager for this session. I dreaded it, but I knew that it had to happen. I had to get past my animosity for Ryan. I had to know that we weren't broken, just bent, like the song said. The only way to do that would be through these therapy sessions.

  Ryan met me in Dr. Bryan’s office that Monday. My breath caught a little when he walked through the door. It was like I was seeing him for the first time. His dark, wavy hair. His perfectly chiseled face. His long, incredibly thick eyelashes, and his beautiful green eyes. His sensuous mouth, and perfect teeth. His rock-hard body.

  I sighed, feeling giddy, like a schoolgirl.

  Did this mean that I was falling in love with him all over again?

  I hoped so.

  He sat down next to me, and I took his hand. Those beautiful green eyes got huge at my gesture, then he broke into an enormous smile. Tentatively, he put his hand in my hair, gauging my reaction to his touch. I smiled big, then he stroked my cheek and kissed my forehead. The words were unspoken, but we both knew.

  We were going to be ok.

  I was finally ready to open up.

  Dr. Brown observed us for a few minutes then addressed me “Mrs. Gallagher. Can I call you Iris?”

  I nodded, smiling.

  “Iris. I notice that the two of you seem to have come to some new kind of understanding of each other just now. It seems like there was a degree of tension when Mr. Gallagher came into the room, now that tension seems to have passed. Could you tell me what you are feeling right now?”

  “I love my husband. I really, really, love my husband.”

  “Ok,” she said. “And, is that different than the feelings you felt before?”

  I hesitated, looking at Ryan. He was still watching me, those beautiful green eyes full of passion and love. Then I looked back at Dr. Brown. “Yes. I have felt....contempt, and irrational hatred for him.”

  “I see,” she said. “Mr. Gallagher, do you know why your wife would have felt this way about you?”

  He nodded.

  “Why, Mr. Gallagher, do you feel that your wife hated you?”

  “Please, call me Ryan,” he said, then squeezed my hand. Then he hesitated for a few minutes, looking at me, then said, quietly, with his head down “It was my fault that she was raped.”

  “Why do you feel that way, Ryan?” asked Dr. Brown.

  “I was trying to protect her. I was going away on a business trip, and, even while I was in town, I was going to be working long hours in the office. I'm a bank president, and I had taken an extended leave of absence that was ending. And Iris was being threatened by a woman from my past. So I wanted to protect her while I was gone.” Then he broke down a little. “I wanted to protect her. Instead, she was raped. If I didn't hire that guy, she wouldn't have been raped.”

  “Is that true?” Dr. Brown asked me.

  “Yes, that's true,” I said. “I've been journaling about it since I've been here, and I have this horse that has really helped me. I wasn't ready to face my rage about what happened to me. I wasn't ready to admit it to myself that such a thing even happened at all. So, I think that I channeled my rage at Ryan, instead of where it should be.”

  “Have you talked about this to Dr. Knight?”

  “No. I just kinda had an epiphany last night when I talked to my horse. I've been punishing Ryan not only for Andrew, but also Rochelle, and...Mr. Green.” I changed the name of the gym teacher. I was still afraid of getting him into trouble.

  “Who is Rochelle, and who is Mr. Green?”

  At that, I told her about Rochelle's attack. “Rochelle is a woman from Ryan’s past. She kidnapped me from my office a little under a year ago. Then she tortured me and shot me up with black tar heroin, enough to kill me. I was in a coma for about two months because of it.”

  Dr. Brown nodded, scribbling notes in her pad.

  Then it was time to talk about Mr. Green.

  I saw Ryan looking at me with a very interested and worried expression.

  I took a deep breath and said “Mr. Green was my first, uh, sexual experience. When I was 12. He was a very handsome and flirtatious gym teacher. He used to come up to me when I was standing on my head, and rub his hands up and down my leg. I had to admit that I had quite the crush.”

  “Ok,” said Dr. Brown. “So, he touched you inappropriately while you were in class.”

  “Yeah. You know, we used to have to do headstands and that, and he would rub the back of my legs while I was standing on my head. And I used to fantasize about him. Everybody did.”

  “You said that he was your first sexual experience. Tell me about that.”

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I have to use your bathroom.” At that, I ran into her bathroom, and hurled.

  Ryan was immediately by my side, rubbing my back. He helped me up, and gently ran some water, and got a cool rag to put on my face. “Sorry about that,” I said to Ryan. “Guess this story is making me really anxious.”

  I didn't want to tell him that my puking was still a daily event, sometimes an hourly one.

  I came back out. “Yes. Uh, he used to ask me to stay late after school. To help him put stuff away – jump ropes, balls, hula hoops, that sort of thing. I told my mother that I was at band practice, because I knew that she would never let me stay after school if I she knew that I was helping a man all alone,” I said, shaking my head ruefully. “Mothers always do know best after all.”

  Dr. Brown nodded. “Go on.”

  “Well, he and I were in the closet one day, the apparatus closet, where they keep all the gym stuff. And he kissed me. The next day, in the same closet, he kissed me again, and he unzipped his pants and made me give him oral. Pretty soon, this was a daily event. I started to think that he loved me, and that we would end up getting married after I became an adult.”

  Now Ryan was looking at me with his best poker face. I could tell that he was covering up what he was really feeling as I told this story.

  I went on. “We had intercourse one day after school. He asked me to meet him in this clearing behind the school, so I did. Then he had sex with me behind the bushes.”

  Ryan was trying to cover up shock and rage, but he was having a hard time of it. I saw him clench his fist, then pound it on the arm of the chair.

  I continued. “After that, he never asked me to help him after school again. He never paid any attention to me at all. I was crushed – I thought that he was going to be my husband one day. I kept asking him if I could help out after school, but he always said no after that. He started having a different girl help him out after school. I was so jealous of her, I couldn't stand it.”

  Dr. Brown was noticing Ryan's reaction to my story. “Ryan, I see your face. Tell me what is going through your mind.”

  He shook his head. “You don't want to know,” was all he said. His fists were still balled up tight, then one of his hands involuntarily went through his hair. Then he hung his head, both of his hands on his neck. “Finish your story, beautiful,” he said.

  “Well, I think I had a miscarriage that year. I had just started my period, and it was always super-light. Kinda like it is now. But, one month, it was super, super heavy. And clotty. I've never had a period like that before or since.”

  Ryan couldn’t hide his reaction to this particular revelation. He just looked stunned, and I saw, in the depths of those eyes, rage. Not at me, of course, but at Mr. Green. Ryan was still so protective of me, which is one of the reasons why I loved him so.

  I took a deep breath and continued. “Uh, what happened with Andrew made me realize that what happened to me with that gym teacher was also a rape. I never thought of it that way. I always thought that it was some kind of love affair gone bad. Now, I realize that I was violated then. So, the Andrew thing is cumulative on top of that, and on top of what happened with Rochelle last year.” I looked at Ryan, who had a stress ball in his hand, and was squeezing the life out of it. “I've come to realize that I don't have Mr. Green
, Andrew or Rochelle handy to take out my rage, so I took it out on my husband.”

  Dr. Brown looked at Ryan. “What would you like to say to this?” he asked.

  Ryan took a few minutes to compose himself, then took my hand, and rubbed it thoughtfully. Looking me in the eye, he said “I want to apologize, from the deepest part of me, about Andrew. I feel totally responsible for what happened. But, at the same time, I can't apologize for wanting to make sure that you're safe. You're my world, beautiful. That's why I forced you to have a bodyguard. So, I have mixed emotions about it.”

  I nodded. “I know. You couldn't have known what was going to happen with Andrew. I've come to terms with that. And I love you more than I ever thought I could love anybody. You're my world, too.”

  That night, Ryan came and spent the night with me. We didn't make love. He knew that I wasn't ready for that. But he held me close, both of us under the covers, fully clothed in our pajamas, ready for bed. Then he said “we missed Christmas together.”

  I didn't realize that Christmas had come and gone. How I managed to miss Christmas altogether, I didn’t know. Christmas was always a very special time for me – not because of the gifts, but, rather, because of the gaiety of the season. The childhood memories for me were always very strong around this season, whether it was my delight in discovering Rudolph, the anticipation of presents, or the memories of family gatherings. Yet, this year, I managed to avoid it altogether.

  “Anyhow,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about it. I know how much you are in love with Polly, your horse. And, you know how I was thinking about buying some land and creating an animal sanctuary?”

  I nodded eagerly, knowing where this was going.

  “I’ve made arrangements to buy Polly when we get our sanctuary open. That way, you can see her whenever you want. I feel like that would be the best present for you that I could give.”