Part V
Chapter 41
"Harry, I don't know how you feel about me now, but I feel like we've got to clear the air."
His stateroom was tiny, had but a single chair to go with the tiny sofa that seemed designed to hold two small children, and as she had taken the sofa he opted to sit on the edge of the bed.
"Clear the air?" he asked. "What isn't clear?"
"Why you're so angry with me."
"Really? Well, I thought we had something good going, but I was wrong. Seems to me that was the end of the story."
"You know that's not true."
"Oh? Do I?"
"You knew the situation, you understood the position I was in. What would you have done?"
"Are you saying you think trying to reconcile with a known abuser is somehow justified?"
"No. But I took an oath, Harry, I made a promise, and I felt obligated to..."
"Evelyn, let's be clear; when you attempted to reconcile what you expressed was your love for your husband, despite everything that had happened. I get the oath thing, the desire to uphold a promise you made, but in light of your actions with me you violated everything to do with that oath. You walked away from one promise, but you did so for a very good reason, then you made another you chose not to keep. You know, I've been to more family disturbances than you could imagine, and I've talked to literally hundreds of women who've been battered by really awful human beings, yet there's one big thing that's always bothered me about those conversations."
"What's that?"
"Many, if not most of those women, the women who chose to stay in those relationships, did so not because of some obscure obligation to a promise made, but because they thought, on some level, that they deserved the abuse. Maybe they..."
"Oh, come off it, Harry..."
"No, really. I think many of these women stay because they are conditioned as children to think that way. I think these women, maybe on some kind of subconscious level, end up choosing men that are like their fathers. Being abused reinforces some kind of terrible need for validation of the idea that they need to be punished by their fathers..."
"And you think that's what this was all about? That I was affirming a need to be abused when I tried to reconcile my differences with him... Really? Do you have any idea how monstrous that sounds, Harry?"
"I'm telling you what I've experienced..."
"But that pseudo-Freudian psychobabble? Where the hell did you pick that up?"
"In academy. We had a week-long module on..."
"Jesus, Harry. What you're saying is you got a day or two of instruction on the psychology of abuse victims, and that's what formed your understanding of domestic abuse? Do you really not see how dangerous that is?"
"No. Cops aren't social workers. And the reasons why women are abused isn't really why we're there. Domestic physical violence is against the law, and if a woman is battered that is a clear violation of that law. As cops, that's all we're there for. We're not there to act as marriage counselors or group therapists; we're there simply to observe the situation, report on what we find, and arrest anyone that has broken that law. Period. And Evelyn, I can't tell you how many of these women refuse to press charges..."
"The reasons can be complicated, Harry. My guess is the most obvious reason comes down to money. What woman wants to end up pushed out onto the street in the middle of the night, and maybe bringing along two or three kids in the process. What kind of choice is that? Are you putting the blame on that woman because she doesn't want to..."
"False choice. In those situations, the guy gets hauled off to jail..."
"Really? From what I hear, the good ole boy network usually kicks in and the guy blames everything on the woman, and the cop buys into that because, well, you guys have to stand together, right?"
"Maybe it was like that twenty years ago, but there've been major changes to domestic violence laws. That stuff doesn't happen anymore..."
"Right. Because now your mind has been pumped full of Freudian nonsense. Now you can blame it all on some unconscious need to..."
Callahan held up his hands, shook his head. "You know what? I'm not sure I want to continue this conversation, because I really don't see any purpose. Do you?"
She shook her head. "No, I don't." And she quietly left Callahan's little stateroom, leaving him to pick up his book and sit down in a little pool of light.
He was upset, of course, without really knowing the reason why. Maybe because, he thought, on some level he'd still wanted to get back together with her. 'So maybe,' he thought, 'on some level I spewed out all that psychobabble to push her away, to keep that from happening.'
But why?
'Do I really just want to be alone? Is that it? Have I become so set in my ways, my thinking so fixed and rigid that I don't want to be with someone who can get really close, someone who is going to challenge me all the time? Someone who will look down on my experiences as a cop, who will question what I did out there all the time?'
He picked up Shōgun and resumed reading, but his mind kept drifting back to Evelyn and he found he missed the idea of her being a part of his life.
But maybe, he thought, he just missed the idea of being with her.
'Reality is a little messier, isn't it?'
He drifted between the experiences of the characters in the novel and his own, those times with June and An Linh and Sara, even that high maintenance reporter, and the sensation was strange. Maybe because the pain of their memory blotted out all the good times they'd shared.
'No,' he mumbled, 'all in all, I think I'd really rather be alone. I don't need any more pain.'
He read through the night again, finishing the book just as the sun came up.
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The ship docked in Honolulu for an overnight stay, and while almost everyone jumped at the chance to spend a few hours ashore, Harry decided to spend some time with his father.
Lloyd had seemed a little distant since their 'big' conversation, yet Harry wanted there to be no ambiguity between them from now on. With that decided, spending all the free time he could with Lloyd became his shipboard goal, calling him 'Dad' and 'father' whether alone or with his friends was the best affirmation he could think of -- but today, Lloyd had several hours in the middle of the day to himself, so Harry had asked if they could spend that time together.
"Why don't you spend time with that young filly."
"I don't think that's going to work out, Dad."
"Really? The way she was looking at you the other night, I'd have thought that was a slam-dunk."
"Doesn't matter. Besides, I'd rather spend the time with you."
"Well Harry, that's just plain nuts. Girl like that? Hell son, if I was your age I'd be on her like stink on shit."
Harry shook his head. "The buffet is open. Why don't we get up there before the crowd hits?"
"Won't be any crowds today, Harry. Tell you what? Let's go over to the Royal Hawaiian. Best lunch in town, and I'm buyin'!"
They ran into Frank and Cathy at the gangplank; it was decided they'd all go to the famed hotel together. They had a big lunch -- the boys got sloshed on mai-tais -- then Frank and Cathy took off in search of souvenirs...leaving the Callahans to talk.
"You won't remember it, but we came here when you were four years old."
"The three of us?"
Lloyd pointed at the beach beyond the swimming pool. "I've got pictures of you and your mother standing knee-deep in the water, just there. What a fantastic day! Building sandcastles and going for a ride in one of those outrigger canoes."
"I think I remember the picture. Never knew it came from here."
"Spent a week here. Kind of a big deal those days. I'd just been promoted and I thought your mother could use a change of scenery. Teaching was difficult for her then; she was still having trouble with English...and I think some of the kids made fun of her."
"You were doing the San Francisco to Honolulu run, weren't you?"
"Yes. We didn't start passenger service to Hong Kong and Japan until the late fifties."
"I remember that. You were on the first trip to Hong Kong."
Lloyd nodded. "So many firsts. Things were so bad back in '39 some of us were sent from school on the first convoy to the U.S. Made one round trip then back to school. I was assigned to my first ship after school and we were on the initial Lend-Lease convoy, then the first Murmansk run. After I made First Officer our ship was the first into Copenhagen. That's when I met your mother, by the way."