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She was lying with her head on his chest and he was looking fascinated at the golden webs her hair created when he tangled it in his fingers. The delicate strands were hit by the rays of the afternoon sun gleaming through the window and sparkled in bright speckles of light when he wound them around his fingers.
The end of the semester and their fist summer month together had convinced him that she really might be the one: intelligent, outspoken, compelling… and more than just on an intellectual level.
Why would she still be with him was a mystery at this point, but he wanted to make sure he got the best shot at securing her affections for a while longer, so he needed to know her plans to prepare his own future strategy: she still had another year at Yale, he had two, but he didn't really know what she wanted to do afterwards. Yes, some kind of Civil Rights advocate work – she was interning at a left leaning law firm for the summer and he knew she had some ties to the Children Defense Fund - but he still wasn't clear on what was her main focus, how seriously, if at all, she wanted to pursue this avenue.
They had spent a lot of time discussing cases, philosophy, her life -already so compelling by the age of 21 when she had appeared in interviews for magazines because of her extraordinary speech at Wellesley- and his interest in politics. She had asked him in detail how it had felt meeting Kennedy, she had been fascinated by his personality too and she understood the impact that meeting had had on him.
He dropped his hand to caress her head absentmindedly and started to inquiry:
“Ok Hilly, you know I would like to get into politics, but I never got a straight answer from you: you told me you have interned for Congress, so do you want to become a politician too? Because baby, with your rigor in getting your research done and your clear view, I would never want to be against you in a race!”
She chuckled and kissed him on the nose – his words were awfully flattering, but she knew he truly meant every one of them.
“Oh, I don’t know… I guess I might do that if the opportunity arises, but sometimes I think it wouldn’t work for me: all that attention, all that partisan polarization… I like to maybe meddle a little but get things done than build myself a sacrificial pyre and set myself on fire just because I decided I couldn’t give an inch for partisan pride. No no, I want to do something that has a palpable impact on people too, but it’s on the field,not in a faraway city on the hill. I was actually eyeing the Yale Medical Research Center”
“The Clinic?”
“Yes, they specialize in child development and I’ve always been fascinated by the topic”
“Ok… sorry if I sound dim, but what does that have to do with law? Is it to research and set the age limits on the reliability of children’s testimonies etcetera?”
“Well, yes, that too, but I’m actually more intrigued by the way parenting and early childhood conditions affect the child afterwards, and especially I’m interested in cases of neglect. Like, you know, parents who leave their children alone for long periods, without stimuli and proper hygiene, maybe because they’re drug addicts and are passed out or…”
He started to breathe a little heavier. Passed out. An image of his stepfather floated by in his memory: his breath stinking of alcohol, slouched motionless in his armchair - his little stepbrother crying in a corner because he had been left without lunch. His mother was away and Roger couldn’t even reach the cupboard where the biscuits were because he was too little and he didn’t want to wake daddy up in case he got mad.
He was trying not to get too agitated, to swat those images away before they became too real, but between the whooshing sound of every heartbeat he heard dull in his ear, he could still catch her words as she continued to explain.
“…or, you know, parents who lock their children inside their rooms as a punishment, often for long periods of time…”
His heart was thumping louder now. He remembered the distinctive anguish he felt every time he locked his brother in their room, not as a punishment, but to protect him from their father’s fury when he would try to hit the little boy too. He was gulping down on nothing, trying to force down the invisible obstacle now lodgd in his throat.
“…you know, it doesn’t even have to be violence directly aimed towards the kid itself: children who “only” witness domestic violence are at risk too – it increases their chances of being violent in their life and their relationships, of having behavioral problems, like drug abuse or poor impulse control in general. It’s very damaging to a child, most of the people never fully recover without help”
“So you’re saying they’re damaged.” He added somber.
“No, I’m not-“
“Yes you did, you said they don’t recover”
His hand was slightly shaking now and he was fighting back the tears in his eyes, trying to breathe with his mouth to shoo away the constrictive feeling in his chest. He felt out of breath, but this was different from one of his asthma attacks.
He felt like the world had collapsed on him, first because he was thinking about his sweet little brother, who had to witness those same horrors he saw but at a very young age, secondly because he got an answer to his question.
He and Hillary could never be together. At one point she was bound to find out about his family history and she would never have wanted to marry someone that came with such high risks attached – violence, drugs, impulses… - he laughed bitterly in his mind.
He could already identify the “poor impulse control” trait - all his flings, all his girls, sometimes when he already was in a relationship with another one… he just couldn’t explain it to himself, he was perseverant in everything else: his friendships, his studies, he just couldn’t seem to commit to a relationship.
“Well, no wonder why” his brain supplied kindly “you haven’t really had the greatest example of a loving, sane, relationship to model yourself after during childhood now, have you?”.
He felt his stomach drop, thinking again about her words: “most of the people never fully recover without help”. He had never sought help. Most of his childhood friends didn’t even know about the violent climate of his family life. He was never going to be saved.
Feeling that even her slight weight on his chest was too much, that she was suffocating him, he nudged her back by his side abruptly. He felt tears sarting to stream down his face and he quickly sat on the edge of the bed to put his shirt and trousers back on, ready to bolt for the door. He was stopped by a pang in the middle of his chest.
Was that what a panic attack felt like? He had never experienced one, at least he thought so...
With his shirt still in his hand he placed his hands on his knees and bent his head between them.
He tried to inhale deeply without giving too many external clues as to his state, but he could only exhale in ragged breaths and after a couple of those in big sobs.
He heard a soft rustling behind him. He could tell Hillary was trying to assess the situation and understand what went wrong – why had he been so shaken by the thought of the legal profession she wanted to embark into.
He felt her warmth behind him, he could sense her even if she hadn’t touched him yet. Then a small hand, a little point of light spreading soothing warmth in circles across his wide back, while the other was rubbing up and down the path from his shoulder to his bicep.
“Shhh… Billy, it’s ok… everything will be fine. Shhh. Shhh. Don’t worry, ok? You can tell me everything that’s wrong and everything will be fine. Please, don’t cry…” she was speaking in a soothing tone, laced with tenderness and he felt like a fool for doubtng her.
Sweet sweet Hillary. She wanted to help the world, she wasn’t going to let him run away without trying to help him too.
His breath was still somehow labored, but her calming efforts were having an effect on him. She moved her hand from his back to caress his neck, a favorite spot of his, he always melted when she massaged him there, but this touch wasn’t trying to arouse him. It was familiar.
She was revisiting the spots she had discovered, to reconnect him to the “right here right now”: she was right here, she wasn’t going away, and right now she was showing him how much she cared. Touching the nape of his neck was a signal: she had come this far, she had learned some things about him and now it was time to learn some more. He couldn’t run away before he even tried to tell her, just because he assumed she would reject him.
Hillary was still whispering sweet words and now she had reached with her arms around him, to embrace him and plant little kisses between his shoulder blades and on the side of his neck.
When she saw he had calmed down a little she cocked her head to look at his profile and when she noticed the traces left by his tears she placed a long, soft, kiss on his cheek and then she wiped them away with her thumb.
He turned his head to face her and gave her a sad smile, while cupping her cheek - it was some sort of wistful dejection she had never seen in him, always the positive one, always the one with the glass half full.
She felt a grip on her heart and she kissed him, still softly at first, but then with a desperation she didn’t even know why she was harboring. They came up from their kiss, breaths heavy and foreheads connecting, like they didn’t want to sever their link in case something would break the spell that brought them to their tenuous momentary balance.
But when she caught his eyes and he answered her earnest piercing blue with a softening of his own gaze, she knew that was the moment to ask. That was her chance, and if she lost that moment they would be lost forever.
With a sweet tender smile, she asked him in a caressing tone “Bill – Billy, why don’t you lay back again and tell me. Tell me everything you want, sweetie. I promise I won’t judge you.”
It was the beginning of his absolution. She wasn’t going to judge him. She wasn’t going to be horrified at him telling her how he locked Roger up for his own safety. How he wasn’t able, time and time again to convince his mother not to welcome daddy back after she had thrown him out. How he hadn’t seen the gun when he was five, or the knife when he was eighteen and he should have learned from the previous experience to keep any weapon locked away from his father.
She wouldn’t judge him for changing his surname to Clinton at fourteen, when he already knew what kind of a man his stepdad was, but Roger was still too little to understand why his big brother didn’t have the same surname he had.
She wouldn’t laugh at him when he told her he sometimes still got scared at unexpected loud noises, why he tried to avoid the draft for the Vietnam war with all the tricks he could come up with because he was still scared as hell of weapons after his father had tried to shot his mother and missed when he was only five.
She wouldn’t find him disgusting for the glee he had felt at the prospect of going away to Europe for those two years before Yale, where he could be a different person for a while…
He knew it was a big weight he was placing on her, but he was also taking a huge risk: there was no going back from that. She would have tons of leverage on him after their conversation. She would know things he only knew, things that paced in their cage in his head, thumping down on his temples when they became too agitated and too loud. He was going to let out his demons.
And.. and if after all that she still liked him, well – he truly would have found the love and light of his life.
He let his shirt fall softly back to the ground and rearranged the pillows against the headboard to form a soft heap on which he could lie half-seated. He gestured to Hillary to scoot closer to him and he encased her protectively under his arm, her presence there both an anchor for him and a reassurance she wasn’t going to run away.
With her cheek on his shoulder, she could look at his face and occasionally gaze in the distance, absorbing every word of his tale.
“There’s not an easy way to say it, so I’ll be direct: my stepdad was a violent man. When my father died three months before I was born…”
***
Nobody in any interview had ever asked him outright when he knew for sure Hillary was the one, when he realised she was that person he couldn’t live without. The way they told the story of their first encounter made people assume he knew right then and there (“Well, I couldn’t remember my name!”), or even before that (“If I touched her I would set something in motion…”), but although he had sensed something special about her from the start, he still hadn’t been sure. Not until that day. Not until the moment when she had embraced him, when she had accepted the flaws he had never shown anyone - when she had listened to everything he had kept pressed down deep inside him.
That was one anniversary they celebrated privately, one nobody knew about – not even Chelsea.
The day he and she became them.