Geno spent winter break with Vern. His house in Berkeley Heights was large and comfortable, Geno could come and go as he pleased. Mostly he stayed put. Vern wasn’t married—his acute workaholism had resulted in two ex-wives—but he had a longtime companion named Marsha who came around and cooked. And ostensibly, slept over, but that was none of Geno’s business.
Zoe came over one day to handle a difficult task Geno had been dreading. Together they went through their father’s clothes, and with Marsha’s advice and Vern’s input, they put aside suits, ties and shoes. Things Geno wanted to keep. Things Zoe insisted he keep.
“This is a wool-cashmere overcoat,” she said. “It will last forever. And when I say forever, I mean you’ll give it to your son with plenty of wear left. Keep it or I will kill you.”
She held a black, V-neck cashmere sweater against Geno’s chest and insisted he acquire it as well. “As Nina Garcia says, I recommend getting the black cashmere version of anything that comes in a black cashmere version.”
The sweater was folded and laid aside, along with the coat, a Harris tweed jacket and Nathan’s tallis—the prayer shawl he’d worn at his bar mitzvah. In a small box in Nathan’s valet, Geno found a handsome gold chain with a star of David. He’d never seen Nathan wear it. He put it around his neck, feeling he had no right to. But Zoe smiled and said it looked good on him. It felt good. Cool on his skin at first, but then warming up, leaving only the sensation of weight. It grounded him. He never wanted to take it off.
Cufflinks and tie clips. A battered pair of moccasin slippers. Nathan’s leather shaving bag. His heavy wristwatch and his favorite fountain pen.
“You don’t have to decide on everything today,” Vern said. “Do a little at a time. However much time it takes.”
Zoe came back to Vern’s on another day, this time with an appraiser, to go through Analisa’s jewelry. Her engagement diamond, gold wedding band and Nathan’s wedding band were unquestionably for keeps. But Analisa had a few other pieces that made Allen Goldschmidt smile below the loupe crammed in one eye.
“These are lovely,” he said over a pair of diamond earrings. “Two carats each, perfectly matched. Beautiful.” His one free eye looked at Geno. “Keep them.”
“For your fiancée,” Zoe said. “Or a daughter, if you have one someday.”
Allen admired a sapphire necklace. Praised the craftsmanship of a brooch shaped like a peacock with emeralds studding its tail. He spent a long time squinting at a gold chain bracelet with a pendant.
“I think you’ll want to show this to a numismatic,” he said.
“A what?” Geno said.
“Someone who appraises currency,” Zoe said, eyes wide and bright.
“The chain alone is high quality,” Allen said. “But the pendant appears to be a Mexican coin. An extremely old one.” He straightened up and took the loupe out of his eye. “Hold onto it. Get it appraised by a professional. You might have yourself a little treasure there, my friend.”
After he left, Geno and Zoe sat in the kitchen, eating ice cream.
“Is there anything of Dad’s you’re keeping?” he asked. “Or want to keep? Not that I’m the one to give permission. I mean, he’s your father, too.”
Zoe smiled around her spoon. “When Matthew has his bar mitzvah, I may want the tallis.”
“Take it now,” Geno said. “I want him to have it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“All right.” She pulled figure eights with her spoon through the melting ice cream, her eyes blinking rapidly. “I feel bad I didn’t know you all that well,” she said. “That it took this to make me… I mean, let me get to know you.”
“Same. I sometimes wonder why we didn’t see you that much. I thought maybe because of my mom.”
Now Zoe’s expression turned puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you know. That she was the other woman.”
“The other woman?” Zoe’s laughter filled up the kitchen. “Are you serious?”
“Wasn’t she?”
She laughed harder. “You dope. My mother left Nathan.”
“She did?”
“My stepfather is the other man.” Consumed with giggles, Zoe pressed a napkin into her streaming eyes. “Oh my God, where did you get that idea your mother was a home-wrecker? Don’t tell me that’s the story you were told.”
“Nobody told me anything, I just thought that’s what it was.” Shaking his head, Geno pushed his bowl away, feeling both dumb and strangely happy.
His sister planted her hand in his shoulder and gave him a shove. “You funny thing.”
“Why didn’t we see you more?”
“You saw me a lot, Geno,” she said. “I just don’t think you saw me.” The laughter had drained out of her face, leaving a wistfulness. “Then again, for a lot of years, I went out of my way not to be seen.”
“Tell me about it,” Geno said, staring. Because right at that moment, in that light, from that angle, Zoe looked so much like Nathan, it was as if Nathan were using her as a channel. Borrowing her body to sit with Geno in the kitchen for a minute. Just for one precious minute to look at his son.
“Are you all right?” Nathan asked in Zoe’s voice.
Geno’s heart tore down the middle. He wanted so much to say no, he wasn’t all right. He wanted his father to be at peace and not worry. He drew a long breath through his nose, trying to find something honest that wouldn’t kill Nathan one more time.
“Getting there,” he said.
Zoe leaned and pressed her lips against his temple, and her hand ran soft over the cropped hair. Geno hesitated, then let his head fall on her shoulder.
Another soul memory, haunting and intense. When he was thirteen and too old to cry, his frustrations and fears either erupted in anger or festered inside. But sometimes things built up, didn’t go his way, didn’t make sense. It got to be too much. Those times, when Analisa hugged him, he didn’t shy away. He didn’t fall on her, bawling, either. He just leaned on her. Leaning was acceptable. Staying in her arms a minute and letting the tears quietly dissolve out of him was okay. Letting her presence soothe him was permitted.
Geno didn’t cry now. But he exhaled, leaned and let Zoe be both sister and mother.
Just for a minute.
Geno burned a lot of midnight oil in Vern’s study. In the moony light of the computer monitor, he surfed the internet like a legal clerk, looking at laws about sexual assault. Searching for sites that could put the wordy, circular and frustrating language into terms he could understand.
He spent a long time reading article 213 of the Model Penal Code. Developed by the American Law Institute in 1962, the code wasn’t law in any jurisdiction in the United States, but it played a significant role in codifying and standardizing the country’s penal laws.
Section 1 of Article 213 defined “rape” as a male who had forceful sexual intercourse with a female not his wife.
With a female, Geno thought. Because men don’t get raped.
Rape was a second-degree felony. According to the next clause, certain circumstances made a man who had forceful sexual intercourse with a female not his wife guilty of “gross sexual imposition,” a third-degree felony.
Again, a male with a female.
Because you can’t rape the willing.
Sexual imposition. It sounded more like a nuisance than a crime.
I beg your pardon, I didn’t mean to rape you. Sorry for the imposition.
Gross sexual imposition sounded like a social blunder made by an up-talking surfer.
Like, gross, I tripped and had forceful sex with you? Like, sorry?
Geno rubbed his eyes, then let the words on the screen come into focus again.
Section 2 was harder to grasp. His tired, sandy eyes kept coming back to the phrase “deviate sexual intercourse.” Forceful sexual intercourse between human beings who weren’t husband and wife.
“Meaning male and female,” Geno said, eyebrows pulling low. “Everything else is…”
Deviate sexual intercourse.
He rubbed his face. “That can’t be right.”
The code shrugged back at him and pointed to the words that insisted, in black and white, what happened to Geno wasn’t rape, but deviate sexual intercourse.
Geno sat back, mouth slightly agape, not sure what to make of this. The open-mouthed bewilderment followed him back to school, where his already hyper-situational awareness started noticing things. Like flyers for women’s self-defense courses, one of them hosted at the Flatbush Y by none other than that prick Wayne.
Geno made a point of tearing the flyer off the bulletin board. He stuffed it in his backpack and strode off, muttering under his breath. He went from one end of the campus to the other, but found no such invitations for men to learn to defend themselves. He did find a flyer announcing a coffee hour at the campus center, to discuss date rape in the digital age. Geno parked himself on a couch near the conference room where the meeting was to take place, surreptitiously noting who walked in.
No males attended.
He called a rape crisis hotline, pretending to be a sociology major doing a research paper on rape. Could he ask a few questions, get a few statistics? He was put through to a supervisor who handled the call center data. After a few obvious questions he’d prepared ahead of time, Geno casually asked, “How many calls do you get from men?”
The silence that followed was so familiar.
“I…don’t know,” the woman said. “Um…”
“If you did get a call from a man, would your staff have the means to help?”
“Well, I’m sure we… Although it might require additional training… It’s unusual to the degree that… I’m sorry, I just had someone walk into my office with an emergency, could we continue this another time?”
Geno hung up, already having the answers he sought. He held them in his lap as he stared out at nothing and felt less than nothing. Just as he did on the long-ago day at Zoe’s house, when the phone was slammed down on him and his experience,
Nobody knows what to do with you.
What happened has no place in this world.
Which is why we don’t talk about it.
From his backpack pocket he drew the crumpled-up flyer for Wayne’s self-defense course at the Y. He ought to write on the back, Men get raped too, and mail it to Wayne anonymously.
Fat lot of good that would do.
Nobody can help because there’s nothing to help.
He wasn’t female. So it wasn’t rape.
He refused to be the deviant.
So all of this was just a gross imposition.
Like, sorry…