“Why would you say that?” he said, and in truth I did not know. What had I hoped to accomplish, or provoke? Certainly not an admission—after what had just happened, that seemed impossible. Perhaps retribution. Or maybe, finally, I wanted to drive a wedge between them. To devastate their “we.” As if I had that power. Again I thought about Olivia, her luscious windpipe. Was Olivia my way of convincing myself that I wasn’t as left out as I’d always felt, that I wasn’t quite as alone? Or was there something real there, some truth? I’d thought of my parents’ bond as unbreakable, but had I ever seen them kiss? Had I seen them hold hands? I couldn’t remember. I’d decided they were in love. I had decided that—me. They were a team, a pair, an exclusive club—but were they in love? Wasn’t it odd that I’d never caught them fucking, or even suspected I’d walked in on something, not even once? Hadn’t all my childhood classmates, at one time or another, caught their parents doing something they wished they could unsee? Were my parents just—what—colleagues? Was it simply a business arrangement? And what did that make me? If my father could love Olivia, if he could love Client Z, that would mean he could love me…

What else did you imagine was being withheld from you? Freud would say. What else did you imagine your father was hiding?

And what did I imagine? That he was having an affair?—or that he was gay?

The moment I thought it, I went rigid and cold. I saw his face warped into a grimace, the way he flinched when he was touched—We can’t know, Freud would tell me, the most devastating truth of all. We can’t know.

And did it matter? Did it matter, after all? There was repression, that I could know: repression of desire, repression that manifested in rage. Was my father closeted, or was he a repressed straight man? When I touched him, did he feel a desire that terrified him so much he was violent? To banish me, so he wouldn’t have to deal with what I brought up in him?

It didn’t matter. It was possible. It was all possible. The only known thing was that I craved more than he could give. And that since then, I’d internalized what he had done. I’d been banishing myself.