Gerald's Game

On July 19, 1963, the day before the eclipse, Jessie arranges to spend the next day with her father by convincing her mother to let the two of them stay behind while the family goes to Mount Washington to view the eclipse. Jessie really wants to spend the day with Tom, noting how he likes her lipstick and speaks to her in French. Tom requests that Jessie wear her new sundress, which she says is too tight because she is growing faster than expected at age 10.

Tom suggests the plan to Sally while Jessie is sitting outside within earshot. Despite initially arguing, Sally eventually concedes to the plan, but she is upset that Tom acts like a lawyer during their arguments and comments that Tom does not really see who Jessie is. She tells Tom that he treats Jessie more like a girlfriend than a daughter. This offends Tom, and Jessie is disturbed to hear hate in her mother’s voice when she talks about Jessie. Sally apologizes and leaves, and Tom comes out to tell Jessie that they will be spending the next day together. When Jessie hugs him, his hands linger for a moment on her breasts.

On July 20, 1963, the day of the eclipse, Jessie puts on makeup and styles her hair. She wonders about the feeling she got when her father touched her breasts, but she does not pursue the thought further. She finds Tom making smoked glass for viewing the eclipse, and he tells Jessie that the eclipse can burn their eyes even if they don’t realize it at the time. Jessie notices the sweat on Tom’s stomach and the bright grey color of his eyes, and these thoughts linger as she walks away. The voice that would later become Ruth Neary’s tells her not to worry about those thoughts. The two eat burgers, and Jessie comments that Sally did not want them to stay behind, but Tom says he is glad they are together. He suggests that she wear the sundress that is too tight.

Jessie is scared by the eclipse, and Tom suggests that she sit on his lap. Jessie falls asleep for a moment, but she wakes up as the eclipse is about to start. Tom’s hand is on Jessie’s thigh, higher than it was when she fell asleep. Jessie can feel that Tom is aroused, but she does not understand it. As the eclipse begins, the lighting around them becomes more muted, and Marvin Gaye’s “Can I Get a Witness” comes on the radio. Tom tells Jessie to look through the smoked glass until he tells her to stop. Jessie thinks that Tom’s heavy breathing means he is scared, and she raises the smoked glass to look at the eclipse.

In the present, Jessie realizes that she is dreaming of the eclipse day, and she tries to wake up. Part of her is afraid that what is waiting in the room in the present day might be more horrible than what happened with Tom in 1963, and another part wants to resolve the issue of the eclipse day in her own mind. She resolves to face the dream and falls back into a deeper sleep.

Jessie’s dream continues. As young Jessie looks through the smoked glass, Tom asks if she loves him, and she says yes. He touches her chest and legs, telling her not to look around. She hears the elastic of the waistband on his shorts as he puts a hand between her legs, and Jessie half-realizes what Tom is doing. The Goodwife voice tells Jessie that Tom is only goosing her, but the future Ruth Neary voice disagrees, saying that Tom is trying to have sex with Jessie. Jessie is confused as Tom continues to touch her, and he eventually seems to climax, which worries Jessie as she tries to figure out what has made her dress wet. Tom gets up and tells Jessie to change her clothes, and Jessie is afraid that Tom does not love her anymore.

Jessie thinks the abuse was her fault, and she is concerned that Tom is going to tell Sally what happened. Tom assures her that nothing is wrong, and Jessie goes upstairs, but her mother’s criticisms of her are running through her mind. She notes that everything seems wrong. Jessie investigates her underwear, trying to convince herself that they are wet with lake water. She notes the mineral smell that she detects in the lake and tap water, but the future Ruth voice tells her that it is semen, and Jessie vomits. She washes her underwear, then washes a pair of shorts and a shirt to make it seem like she swam in the lake in case her mother does laundry.

The young Jessie hears a new voice in her head telling her that a woman smelled the same smell from a well and claiming that the woman pushed a man down the well. Jessie hallucinates a woman in a forest. The woman kneels by a well with a slip dress bundled on the ground next to her. The vision disturbs her, and Goody’s voice tells her that she is going crazy because of the bad thing she did, but the future Ruth voice comforts her. She takes off the robe that she is wearing and grabs fresh clothes, but she notices that her father is in the doorway watching her.

In the present day, Jessie wakes up, still thinking about the woman by the well, and she realizes that she can hear flies swarming around Gerald’s body. She tries to move her arms and realizes that she cannot move them at all. In a panic, Jessie thinks about all the people she has seen die in videos or heard about in news reports, noting that she and Gerald will likely be on the news in a few days when their bodies are found. She makes a half-hearted prayer to God, but it does not bring her any strength. Ruth’s voice reminds her to focus on the present, and Jessie starts pedaling her legs to restore her circulation. As she pedals, she starts getting cramps in her arms and shoulders, causing her to shout in pain. She clenches her fists tightly, disconnecting a couple of her fingernails, but she continues to pedal and scream.

Jessie gets an endorphin rush from pedaling and manages to grab the water glass easily. The dried paper roll works more efficiently than before, and Jessie sips the last drops before placing the glass back on the shelf. This action reminds her of her mother, whom Jessie remembers with sadness and irritation, as her mother consistently became crueler and more unpredictable as her marriage to Tom deteriorated. Jessie notes that her mother now acts as though the past never happened, and she wonders if her mother would have believed Jessie if she told her mother what Tom did during the eclipse. Jessie feels that she has resolved some of her trauma relating to the abuse, and she realizes that Tom knew that Jessie could never tell anyone. She wonders how many decisions in her life were unwittingly influenced by the abuse, but a voice in her head says that it is ridiculous to think about the effects of the abuse. The voice minimizes the abuse, refusing to call it “rape,” and Jessie notes that what Tom did after the assault was worse than the assault itself.

When Jessie finds Tom standing in the doorway on the day of the eclipse, she is embarrassed to be naked and thinks about how her mother would react if she were to walk in at that moment. She slips on some clothes, and Tom apologizes to her. Jessie asks him if they must tell Sally, and Tom says they do. Jessie does not want him to tell Sally because she thinks that Sally will blame her, and Tom says that he and Sally have not been intimate much lately, which is likely the reason why he assaulted Jessie.

Tom tells Jessie that the later the secret comes out, the worse the outcome will be. He tells her that the best course of action is to tell Sally soon in order to minimize the damage. This reasoning causes Jessie to assert that she can keep the secret forever, and Tom doubts her assertion. In the present, Jessie realizes that Tom was manipulating the situation, making it seem like Jessie’s idea to keep the assault a secret. In the memory, Tom turns away from Jessie as he apologizes to her. Jessie asks if she might be pregnant, and Tom suppresses the urge to laugh, telling her that the assault was not something that could result in pregnancy. The two agree to pretend that nothing happened, and Jessie suggests that Tom only goosed her, which Tom accepts. In the present, Jessie recalls that from that moment on, Tom always hugged her with his lower body held back in order to avoid any inappropriate contact.

In the present, Jessie feels bad for Tom and calls the assault a “sexual accident” as she struggles to improve the circulation in her arms. Ruth’s voice chimes in to criticize Jessie for making excuses for Tom, going as far as to say that Tom planned the assault by asking her to wear the dress, arguing with Sally, and wearing nothing but gym shorts that day. The voice of Nora Callighan asks Jessie if, when she kicked Gerald the day before, she might have been kicking her father instead. Jessie realizes that Gerald got some spit on Jessie’s stomach, which she instinctively thought was semen. This thought spurred the kicks that killed Gerald, and Jessie realizes that she was flashing back to Tom’s assault.

Jessie thinks about how crucifixion kills people through the days of strain it puts on their bodies, just as Jessie is experiencing now in her bed. She realizes that she cannot access either of the keys to the handcuffs, and, even if she could, she would not be able to use them with her hands tied. She decides to try pushing the bed toward the phone in the room and slides halfway off the bed on one side. She immediately realizes that she has no leverage in that position. She manages to push herself back onto the bed, eliminating another avenue of escape. Jessie considers a complex maneuver that she calls “skinning the cat” (272). The maneuver would involve flipping over herself to plant her feet on the wall behind the bed, but it would likely break her arms. A voice like her own tells her that she is stuck in the bed for now, and she feels hopeless, noting that she feels just like she did after Tom left her room on the day of the eclipse.

Jessie thinks about the man she saw in the corner of the room and imagines that he is Death. She calls him a “stranger” and a “space cowboy,” phrases taken from the song “The Joker” by the Steve Miller Band. She thinks that she might have been awake when she saw him, which terrifies her, and she thinks he will come back that night to kill her. A voice in Jessie’s head pulls her through the process of being found dead and then shipped to a coroner; the voice comments that they will all see that she died “hard,” meaning brutally. Suddenly, Jessie sees a piece of jewelry on the ground next to Gerald, and she thinks it came from the stranger’s bag of bones and gold. Next to the earring, closer to the door, Jessie spots a muddy footprint that could not have been there prior to her and Gerald’s arrival the day before. She screams, and Prince, who is out on the back porch, can still smell the stranger’s scent lingering on Jessie in the bedroom. The dog notes that it smells like death.