The Axeman's Jazz

and I’m worthwhile. Now I know that isn’t true. I know that I won’t find myself, that really what’ll happen is I’ll lose myself. Just like it’s always been. Intellectually I know that, but I still feel that way, do you understand?
    “Listen to me asking for your approval. What’s wrong with me? I’m sorry. I want to talk. I want to say that when I heard the subject was betrayal, I knew my higher power was working because that’s what I need to talk about and what I would have talked about tonight even if the subject had been Good Things About Childhood.”
    Skip looked at Sonny. His eyes were on her, seeming to say, “Go, Missy!” She hoped Missy was watching, knew she had such a staunch supporter.
    “Well, there were a lot of good things about my childhood. We had money and my dad was prominent in the town we lived in and I was always popular in school, always the kid chosen to be the lead in the school play and later the homecoming queen. And why shouldn’t I have been? I worked so hard to please everybody.
    “Because I knew that what I was doing with my dad was bad; really, really, really bad. And I knew he wouldn’t do it if I weren’t the kind of girl who was bad.”
    She looked at her hands in her lap, tossed her head like a coltish teenager, started again. “I don’t know when it started. I can’t ever remember a Sunday when he didn’t say, ‘You look so pretty in your little dress. Climb up here and give me some sugar, Missy.’ And he’d pat his lap and I’d climb up.”
    Skip could see perspiration on her upper lip, more starting at her hairline.
    “And he’d put his hand up my dress.” She said it so quietly they’d all have missed it, except that everyone in the room knew by now what was coming. Skip looked around the room. O’Rourke’s eyes seemed to have sunk about three inches into his head, his body to have withdrawn itself into the tiny curve of the narrow chair. He looked half his usual size, and still shrinking. For once Skip suspected the man of having a human feeling deep in his toe or somewhere. Hodges held his head in his hands, clearly willing the thing to go away, just go away.
    Abasolo was cool. He’d been going to AA for years—there was probably nothing he hadn’t heard.
    “My mother’d be in the kitchen. He’d say it was our secret. The books say they all say that, but they don’t have to. I don’t know why they bother. No one would tell. No one would tell anyone, even her mother. It makes you feel so shamed. So humiliated. So small. You think the only way you can possibly function in the world is to make sure no one knows, no one ever finds out.”
    She stopped, apparently remembering she was telling her own story and she was supposed to say “I”; the books said so. “At least that’s how I felt. Telling it is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. My therapist knows. My boyfriend knows. My incest group knows. And I’m not dead and I’m still functioning in the world.” It took her a while to get control of her face. “And now you know.”
    A weird thing happened. Skip had been to certain meetings in which, if someone said he’d done something appropriate to the program—an overeater who’d “been abstinent for twenty-three days,” say—everyone applauded. She hadn’t been to this meeting enough to know if there was such a custom here, but nonetheless the whole group broke spontaneously into applause, including O’Rourke and Abasolo. Everyone seemed to need the release.
    It was a hard act to follow, but these people weren’t into one-upping. None of them seemed to have a problem so trivial it couldn’t be aired. Everyone, it seemed, had been betrayed by their parents, either by abuse or neglect, and had gone on to repeat the cycle, finding new betrayers in adulthood.
    Alex’s problem was just huge. “I didn’t get what I wanted today. My mother left my father when I was very young, and I guess I’m really afraid of women leaving me. It’s a funny thing—my father and I never got along that well, but I guess I was used to him. Being without him was like being without one of my toes or something. He might be an asshole, but he’s my asshole if you know what I mean.”
    Nervous laughter fluttered through the room.
    “I thought that once you made a commitment to someone, you stuck with them. But she didn’t and I guess I can’t really forgive her for that. I guess I thought I could make him like me if I could spend more