No Sensible People Chapter Thirteen (part 2)

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I was shaking terribly. I picked up my glass and drank half of it in one swallow. Denny took it out of my hand and guided me back next to him on the couch. "You can stop now, Lucy," he told me. "You don't have to go on.
God, it's no wonder... that bastard. I'm so sorry Luce...."

I shook my head. "He kept pretending he was you. He took the awful handkerchief out of my mouth and gave it to my daddy to hold. He told me to be a good girl and play along. I'd worried everyone half to death, and the least I could do was give my daddy a good show. It didn't matter. I couldn't scream anymore. All I could do was lay there and sob and try to breathe, while he supposed every touch, every kiss you had given me that night, except he put
himself in your shoes, and did it all himself."

Neither one of us could stop crying. Denny brushed my hair out of my eyes and kissed my eyelids. "Shh" he said. "I'm sorry," he repeated. "I'm so sorry." I wiped the tears off his face with my fingers. "I should've known,"
he told me. "I'm so sorry, Lucy."

I grabbed onto the front of Denny's shirt and pulled him toward me. "Shh," I said and he kissed me. I let go and he caught me. I slipped my arms around his waist and started pulling up his shirt. He stopped me momentarily, to remind me that Jennie was in the next room, and I suggested that we go downstairs to the dance studio. He followed me, and I turned on the stereo while he put one of my mats on the floor so I would be more comfortable. But I would've made love to him on nails I wanted him so much. He held me, kissed me, and told me that everything was going to be all right. I looked over his shoulder, and for a split second, I noticed the large sketch of Baryshnikov
Frank had drawn for Stuart, and it stared at me like the billboard of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg from "The Great Gatsby." I closed my eyes and we went down.
****
We woke up on the edge of dawn, Christmas morning, and dressed in the clothes we had worn the night before. We went upstairs and Denny followed me into the kitchen as I went to make coffee.

"I'm really glad you know," I told him as I poured water into the machine. I'm a little surprised Molly never mentioned anything, though. I suppose she was too embarrassed."

"I suppose," Denny said. "I wish you would have told me at the time. Things would've been a lot different."

"But I couldn't, Den, not with Larry's position in Leifton. Both my parents warned me not to breathe a word. No one would listen to me anyway. No one would take the word of a fifteen year old wild farm girl over someone like Larry. My daddy reminded me that you were eighteen - legally responsible. He threatened to have you thrown in jail. The beating was too obvious to hide, but as far as the rest of it I'd better watch my mouth if I knew what was good for me."

I choked a little as I said it, and Denny kissed me. "Hey," he said.

"So Molly knew, do you think she ever said anything to Nate?"

"I don't think so. He was too close to you, it would've been too hard for him not to say anything. Besides Molly, no one ever knew except Susie, until I told Frank a couple years ago."

"Susie knew?" Denny said.

"Susie knew what Larry did, but not how he did it." I told him.

"Susie was a Godsend. She was a Science major, and she hooked me up with those med students who helped me out."

Denny took a step backward. "You were sick?"

"No, Denny, I wasn't sick."

I left the air vacant, but Denny didn't respond. He just stared at me as if I were some sort of monster.

"Come on," I said. "Don't look at me like that. I did what I had to do."

"My God, Lucy. What did you do?" he finally said.

I got defensive. "Molly gave me the pro-life speech ten years ago. I don't need it from you. Don't you understand? I couldn't bear the thought of carrying around a piece of that monster for nine months, and I sure as hell couldn't raise it."

"Did it ever occur to you that that baby could've been mine?"

"Sure, but not for long," I told him. "The whole thing with Larry took so long, and it was so fast with you...."

"You're not helping," Denny said.

"Helping?" I said. "I was raped, Denny! It's not supposed to help you! It's not a goddamn performance contest!"

"That's not what I mean and you know it."

"You told me everything would be okay. You told me you would stop before anything happened."

"For Christ sakes Lucy, I was eighteen years old! What the hell did I know?"

"A lot, as far as I knew," I told him. "There was a slight possibility the baby was yours, but I couldn't take the chance."

Denny didn't even look at me. He stood there, calculating in his mind.

"The baby was mine," he said.

"You can't know that," I said. "You're in shock, hearing all this for the first time. You need to process...."

"The baby was mine," he said a little louder.

"Denny, you're scaring me. Why are you so insistent?"

"Because, I know for a fact that Larry had a vasectomy twenty years ago, after his twins were born. Twenty, not ten. He's mentioned it several times, whenever guys come in and they've got four or five kids. He goes over it all the time, how there's too many people in this world, and once you have two you take yourself out of the mix. It's the responsible thing."

I realized Denny was right. It had to have been his child, and I began to mourn it in a way I never had. "I'm sorry," I said quietly. "I couldn't have known."

I had hoped, my tone would calm him down, but I could still sense his mind whirling from across the kitchen.

"Susie!" he exclaimed. "Susie helped you with everything. My own sister helped you kill my child!"

"God, Denny," I said. "Don't put it that way."

"Why not?"

"You're upset. You're not rational."

"You're damn right I'm not rational!" Denny's back was to the rest of the room but I could see Jennie coming around the edge of the hallway.

"Denny," I said calmly.

"What!" he snapped.

"Turn around, Denny."

He turned around and saw Jennie standing in the hallway. He turned back to me. "I can't deal with this," he told me. "I have to go."

He grabbed his coat out of the closet and put it on as fast as he could. Jennie was frozen in her tracks. He kissed the top of her head as he passed by her. "I'm sorry, Jennie," he told her, and then he left.

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