play me. Isn’t that the point?”
“Sandra Bullock?”
“You just want to wear tights.”
“Tights?”
“Lois Lane, Superman, changing in phone booths. Maybe Kate Nelligan.”
“If you couldn’t be you?”
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t it sometimes feel like you’re watching yourself in a film, like someone else is calling the shots?”
“It’s called dissociation, Morgan. Or Calvinism. And who would be you? Gene Hackman, right? All men want to be Denzel Washington or Gene Hackman, no?”
“You might as well be someone you like.”
“Aren’t you already?” As soon as she spoke, she realized she was offside. As comfortable as he was with himself, that wasn’t who he wanted to be. No one really wanted to be himself, or herself, she thought.
She wheeled up in front of his house. There were still a few kids hanging out, playing hopscotch, two girls and a boy skipping rope. In the heart of the city and down-at-heels trendy, the Annex tried its best to be a neighbourhood. “Here we are, Morgan. Home is the hunter.”
“You want to come in?”
“Not on your life. No, I’ve got to check in on Jill. She’s too calm.”
“It’s her Eleanor Drummond side.”
“She’s pure Molly Bray.”
“I hope so for her sake.”
“Would you help me put the top up?”
He got out and undid the snaps on the tonneau cover, folded it, and tucked it behind the seats. The car looked black in this light. In the sunlight it was racing green. He hauled the top out of its well, and Miranda reached up and pulled it over and down, clinching it into place.
“Thanks, Morgan,” she said through the window. “I’ll call you in the morning.”
He surprised them both by getting back in the car.
“What is it?” she asked. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay. Are you?”
“I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”
He gazed at her in the ambient light of the city, in the glow of the instrument panel. Dark illuminated circles in the burled walnut exuded a faint violet that caught in the highlights of her eyes.
She reached over and touched his hand. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Miranda, the girl, Molly Bray, whatever she did, and you’re only guessing, she didn’t learn anything from you. And neither did Griffin.”
She looked startled, as if Morgan had exposed something she hadn’t yet confronted herself.
“Whatever happened between you and Griffin, you in no way, no way, empowered him to try it again.”
Miranda realized pattern formation was a way of taking the blame on herself, using her own sense of guilt to obscure Griffin’s depravity, which she felt was somehow her fault.
Morgan observed her watching him, the violet highlights in her eyes cryptic, as if she were waiting to hear him out before passing judgment, which could go several ways. She could be angry or hurt, or possibly relieved, or resentful for being exposed.
“Listen,” he said, “you had similar needs. That doesn’t mean you were the same.”
At first she thought he meant her and Griffin.
“You talked about the absence of parents catching up on her. Miranda, your father left you just when you hit puberty.”
“He died, for goodness’ sake.”
“At fourteen you held him responsible. No amount of love or anger could bring him back, no amount of crying or wishing changed anything. I know from how little you talk about it how much it hurt you, his leaving. Your mother and sister had each other. Your father left you alone.”
The violet in her eyes glistened.
“By the pond …” He hesitated.
“You didn’t know you were being watched until that summer when you were seventeen. You didn’t know if anyone was there for sure, but the possibility excited you. What was Celia’s reaction? She got married. Donny was her way of proving she was normal. Griffin scared her into doing what she was going to do, anyway.
“You went back there on your own. Why? It wasn’t about sex. For the first time since your father died your behaviour, Miranda, determined the quality of existence of someone else, an adult, a male. It was no more sexual at first than a teenage girl’s love for her father. Intimacy, without any threat of encroachment. You went back again and again. It gave you the sense you could make anything happen.
“Lying there butt-naked, bare-assed in the grass, you were celebrating being Miranda. You were cavorting, disporting, with fate. Robert Griffin was essential to the scene. That he was Robert Griffin was irrelevant, or maybe not. Maybe if you knew he was the mill owner, it was even better. It gave you more power. He was a grown-up, a man, at your mercy, and you were merciless. You were merciless that August challenging death.
“But you were also afraid you were being manipulated by your unseen observer, that it was his desire making you return to play out what must have seemed a charade in a foreign language, afraid that it was your desire to please him. You were merciless, Miranda, merciless in judging yourself, your brand-new sexuality.
“Through the next year you found your kissy-face boyfriend who didn’t like sex. Perfect. Daniel Webster kept you safe among words, gave you a context to let your confusion run free.
“And you got older, fall, winter, spring, and nothing was resolved. When you returned the next summer, it was a very deliberate act. You were eighteen, a young woman, you walked by the mill, you knew he would see you, you went back to prove once and for all you were responsible for your own fate. It wasn’t sexual that day. It was all about contesting the limits of power, maybe defining the limits of being.
“And he followed you. He was supposed to be your necessary witness. It wasn’t meant to be a trial by fire, nor law, but he became judge and executioner. He intruded in the negotiations with yourself. He violated your relationship with your father, what was left of him in your heart. And he brutalized your capacity for being open to love. He raped you, Miranda, and left you bleeding inside, with a great wound, a gap in your life that only began healing in the last few days since the predator died.”
“David.”
“Yes?”
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“G’night, Miranda.”
“G’night, David. See you tomorrow. It’s buck-naked, Morgan, not butt-naked.
