Chapter 27: Success and Failure

November 15, 1994, Greater Cincinnati, Ohio

“You can drop the smug look,” Joyce continued. “Because if you FINALLY recognized how poorly you’ve behaved, you owe me, and a host of other young women, sincere apologies!”

I sighed, “I thought we’d been through this.”

“I’m sure you did. I’m sure you hoped so. I suspect you might even have some regrets. I TRIED to tell you all of this nearly fifteen years ago! But would you listen? No! You stubbornly pressed forward with your menagerie of women, collecting them like little boys collect baseball cards. You even put them in the spokes of your bicycle tires!”

“You enjoyed every minute of what we did, ‘Bad Joyce’!” I protested.

I saw her center of gravity shift before she even moved her hand. I could easily have blocked what was coming, but I didn’t, accepting the hard, and well-deserved, slap across the face.

“You fucking ASSHOLE! Is that what I was? A toy to play with and so long as I had orgasms, everything was OK? You are NOT that clueless! Or, maybe, on second thought, you are! Do you have ANY idea what you did to some of us? A thought? Or was it just, ‘hey, I made them cum, everything is good!’?”

“Joyce, relax!”

“Don’t fucking tell me to relax or I’ll slap you again! You took PRIDE in banging everything in sight, and now, when it finally catches up to your pitiful excuse for a conscience, you’re like ‘O woe is me!’. Well, fuck you and the horse you rode in on! You’re a slut, Steve, and you can go on and on about consent, and how they wanted it, and how they left happy, and how you’re friends with all of them. But you HURT me. And others.”

“I know.”

“You know? You fucking know? Do you remember me asking you for a CHANCE? Just a fucking chance! But no, you got what you wanted and moved on. We could have had it all. A wonderful family. Your business. Grandfather’s business. Everything. But nope, I just wasn’t good enough for Steve Adams because I couldn’t fucking share. Well guess what, asshole, nobody, and I mean NOBODY can share.”

“Kara can.”

Joyce laughed derisively, “If you believe THAT you are more clueless than I ever could have imagined! I noticed you didn’t say Jessica. She shares because she cut a deal with you for her own purposes. Then she foolishly fell in love with you. As for Kara, she’s accepted your abuse from DAY ONE.”

“She’d disagree with you,” I said fiercely. “Of ALL the girls in my entire life who I am ABSOLUTELY sure about, it’s Kara. You want to argue about Jessica being trapped by a deal? Fine. Kara wasn’t trapped. She KNEW what I could provide and accepted it. Nobody forced her to come back. Nobody made her do what she did. Of all the people on the planet, she’s probably the only one who could have put a stop to it simply by asking. At any point. So, think what you want about ANY other relationship, but LAY OFF Kara! Got it?!”

“You’re a serial abuser, Steve. From the very beginning. Oh, you were a stickler about consent so nobody could lay that charge at your feet, but emotional abuse? Name ONE girl you didn’t emotionally abuse. Just one.”

“Mary Harrison. Shall I name another? Debbie Vaughn. How about a third? Kimmy Bradford. There were others who were just looking for some fun, but I picked ones I cared deeply for and who cared about me and still do, if I’m in contact with them. It’s not QUITE as stark as you make it out. And I do have one VERY important point to make. If I HAD behaved the way you wanted me to, we never would have had that first platonic dinner. Everything would have stopped with Becky.”

“Becky?!”

“Becky. That was my fault from start to finish, and it was MY emotional abuse of her that caused her to behave irrationally. It took me a long time to figure that out, and I needed a lot of help to do so, but had I treated her right, she and I would be married and have a pile of kids and you and I would barely know each other. So stick THAT in your holier-than-thou pipe and smoke it!

“Look, I KNOW I messed up. I KNOW I treated some, maybe most, of the girls badly in one way or another. I KNOW I was wrong. But YOU kept trying when it was a clearly hopeless cause. Why do that? Why keep on coming back to me? You knew this was going to be a problem more than anyone else. You figured out, way back when we were having those dinners, who and what I was.

“I’ll take the rap for the way I treated you, but you were never clueless, Joyce. At sixteen, you were WAY smarter than most of the girls later on, even the older ones. And WAY more mature. So, beat the crap out of me for Karin, for Sofia, for Penny, for whoever else you want, including your sister, but YOU have to take responsibility for your actions. I’m a cad. Fine. But you knew that and you still chased after me, to the point of asking me to father your children. And you question Kara’s actions? Give me a break!”

“My sister,” Joyce sneered. “That was just because you could, and for no other reason. And look what THAT brought about. I bet she wasn’t any good!”

I bit off my response which would have only made things worse.

“You know I’m not going to take that bait,” I said. “About anyone. I never have. There is exactly one person on this planet who can ask that question at any time about any person and get a truthful answer. And she’s also the last one who will ask.”

“Kara?”

“Kara. Look, our trio is working, now, finally, after nine years of insane struggle. We’ve found a working equilibrium. Whatever I might have messed up there in the past is irrelevant. What matters now is the present and the future. Going back and apologizing to most of those girls would only rip open the wounds you believe I’ve made. I probably agree with you on quite a few, including you. The ones I hurt the worst, I’ve apologized to, INCLUDING you. Short of throwing myself off the outdoor observation deck of the World Trade Center in New York, I’m not sure what I could do. And even THAT would hurt all those girls. Joyce, what is it you WANT from me?”

“This can never, ever be repeated. Do you hear me?”

“If you can’t trust ME to keep «omertà», I’m not sure who you can trust.”

Joyce smiled, a real smile, for the first time since we’d started talking, “True. If I could do anything, it would be to rewind the clock to mid-June of 1977.”

“The day we met right outside? By the pool?”

“You remember?”

“Of course I do! You were fifteen, I was fourteen. Birgit had just gone home to Sweden. Why then?”

“Because that was before Melanie got her hooks into you. I imagine asking you to get together, giving you my virginity in exchange for being exclusive, and the two of us living happily ever after.”

“That ‘What if?’ stuff only seems possible with perfect knowledge of what happened in our actual lives. You have no clue what would have happened with Birgit’s death, with me going to Sweden, or anything else. Heck, change THAT, and maybe Birgit and Jonas become lovers and don’t go sailing and I never go to Sweden. I’d be a completely different person. That’s why I don’t play those silly games.”

“I know, but it was meant to convey how I felt about you; how I feel about you. What might have been if you hadn’t been such a shithead,” she sighed, with a wan smile.

“I wondered when you’d remember that word.”

“Oh, I’ve never forgotten how much of a shithead you were and are. Do you realize that when, in that Board meeting, you listed the women at NIKA you’d been with, after oh so piously telling me about your so-called rules, each name was another dagger stabbed into my heart?”

“I know. I can’t undo any of it. Look, I accept you reaming me for the way I treated you and other girls. But I can’t wave a magic wand and make the past disappear. If I could, that’s not even the first thing I’d fix. You know damned well what THAT is.”

She nodded, “I know.”

“So, let me work with Doctor Mercer and start getting my shit together, and you help me get Anthony and Connie off my back once and for all.”

“I’m sorry I slapped you.”

“Don’t be. I deserved it as much from you as I did from Stephanie when I cheated on Kara with Becky, and from Karin when she took me to task for being a self-centered asshole.”

“I shouldn’t have done it. But it was either that or...”

“Don’t say it out loud, please! We both know just what a disaster that would be afterwards.”

Joyce sighed, “Sorry. You’re right. What about Peter Scuderi?”

“I guess we have to wait to see what he does. I obtained a pistol permit with the help of a few political connections, and it includes, miracle of miracles, concealed carry. Pete and Clayton are going to turn me into an ‘Expert’ with my 9mm.”

“Dangerous.”

“I need something as a backup to my black belt. And Joyce, if he comes after my family, I’ll put him in the ground so fast he won’t realize it’s happened. All that training? I laugh. You know me.”

She nodded, “Perhaps the gentlest, kindest, most pacifistic man I know who will also kill mercilessly in a split second if his friends or family are truly threatened. That actually might be more dangerous than the pathological killer.”

“Exactly,” I agreed. “Now, help me get ‘Little Tony’ and his wife off my back, short of putting bullets in their heads.”

“Let me think about it some more. What are you doing while you’re here?”

“Being depressed. I’m seeing Doctor Mercer, and that’s it. Not even my dad.”

“Cold and calculating.”

“Very true, but I really do need Doctor Mercer’s help to keep from actually getting as depressed as I thought I might be on Sunday.”

“So it’s not completely an act?”

“No. It was really a close thing on Sunday. I was right on the edge of losing it.”

“If you’re OK with it, I’m going to head to the office. The kids are off to school, so it’ll be quiet here until then.”

“Thanks; yes, I’m OK. I’m going to read, relax, and write in my journal before I go see Doctor Mercer. I do have one important thing to tell you.”

“Which is?”

“I love you. I always have and I always will.”

Joyce smiled, “I know.”

We hugged, exchanged a very chaste kiss, and she left for work. I went back to the guest house to read until lunch. After lunch, I drove to Milford to meet with Doctor Mercer.

“How are you today?” she asked.

“OK. The severe bout of depression from Sunday isn’t quite as severe as I thought it was, but I still need your help. What Bethany said is still true - I broke something inside myself and I’ll need your help to put it back together.”

“I spent last night reading your file.”

“I’m not sure if I’d be more worried if it put you to sleep or if it gave you nightmares!”

“Neither, thankfully. I have an idea of where to start.”

“I’m putty in your hands,” I said. “Remake me.”

“Only you can do that, Steve. You’ve known that since we first started meeting.”

“And yet, gentle nudges and suggestions are like control rockets for making course corrections on spacecraft.”

Doctor Mercer laughed, “Do you do stuff like this with your family counselor?”

“Doctor Green? Yep. He asked why I need him and I said to be a referee or umpire. Jess, Kara, and I have to work it out. His job is to make sure we’re all staying within the boundaries of the field and following the ground rules we’ve established.”

“Sometimes, you’re too smart for your own good.”

“I know,” I sighed. “So where should we start?”

“Your greatest success and your greatest failure.”

“Kara,” I said.

“And your failure?”

“She’s both. Joyce made me realize that this morning.”

She scribbled in her notebook.

“How about we take that later, please? Except for your wives and your sister.”

I smiled, “You knew what my second choice would be, and it could have been my first as well. I’d say the biggest failure, within the limitations you set, had to be Becky. As for the greatest success? It has to be Jennifer.”

“Two girls who figure prominently in my notes. Pick one and tell me about her.”

“Believe it or not, Becky is simple. I approached her with the express purpose of having sex with her so my friends and I could laugh about it. Then, to compound that, I fell in love with her and when she reciprocated, I broke up with her. Oh sure, she was picking out china patterns and such, but that wasn’t the real reason I broke things off with her.”

“And that was?” Doctor Mercer prompted when I paused.

“The real reason I broke things off with her is because I wanted the freedom to have sex with anyone I wanted and she wouldn’t let me do that. I took her virginity, stole it, in fact, under false pretenses. Ones I let her believe until I got what I wanted. And then, when she wanted to be exclusive, I simply threw her away like a used tissue. A girl who, all things being equal, loved me at least as much as anyone except maybe Kara. And whom I also loved.

“I had a habit and a pattern of doing that, which lasted until Sunday. Oh sure, there were girls with whom I had sex where there was no pretense. But, there were others where there clearly WAS a pretense, and those are the girls I robbed of something I had no business taking from them. I thought, until Sunday, that it was theirs to give and do with what they want, but I’m a manipulative bastard and I tricked them into doing it.”

Doctor Mercer put her pencil down on her desk and took off her glasses. She rubbed the bridge of her nose and put her glasses back on.

“I see why Bethany thought you broke something. That is such a radical departure from what you’ve believed your whole life that I’m concerned you had a psychic break.”

I shook my head, “No, I didn’t. I’m sure of that.”

“It’s a pretty radical change.”

“You see, though, it WAS theirs to give. Just not to me. I manipulated them. I didn’t suddenly decide they had no right to have sex if they chose to. I said they shouldn’t have had sex with ME because I’m a manipulative bastard. And that’s why I said Kara is both my greatest failure and greatest success. But as you say, we’ll get to that. Back to Becky, then. I manipulated her from start to finish. Hell, I manipulated her when I slept with her six years ago when Jessica left me.”

“Is there anyone you don’t think you manipulated?”

“Stephie Grant.”

“Only her?”

“There were girls who were, well, I guess the term would be ‘friends with benefits’ who never, ever felt used or abused, and who I don’t feel I abused. The list I gave you about not feeling guilty was too long, really. I think we can shorten it significantly if we include manipulation. That list would include Mary, Debbie V, Donna W, Tina Hoff, Anala, Katy, Aimee, Kimmy, Jacquelyn, Abbie, and Sakurako. Even that list might be a bit long. And I’m not quite sure how to classify Tatyana and a few other girls.