Four Friends

by Robyn Carr

  “No. Nothing suspicious. That’s why I didn’t call the police.”

  “If she’d been raped, you’d have a strong suspicion. Probably they just got her drunk, got her to say and do some things she ordinarily wouldn’t. But we should follow up.”

  “We?” Gerri asked with a sarcastic laugh.

  “I’d be happy to take her,” Phil said a little impatiently. “Don’t you want to be the one to go? Wouldn’t it be less humiliating for Jessie to go with her mother?”

  She sighed and nodded. “What’s Jed got to say?”

  “Oh, it’s my fault he got caught smoking a joint,” Phil said. “I didn’t push him too hard. We’ll talk again tomorrow morning.”

  Gerri shook her head and let go with a little humorless laugh. She punched the bed. “All this, just so you could get laid.”

  “I don’t feel like going a round with you, Gerri. My kids are hurting.”

  “Your kids?”

  “They are still mine, aren’t they?”

  “Oh, yeah, but I’m living here with them. And with all the hurt in this house.”

  “That’s your choice. You want the key to my place in the city? It’s up to you. And for your information, I wasn’t just looking to get laid. I was looking for a lot more than that, but I knew the whole time I wasn’t going to find it.”

  “You did love her,” she said, keeping her voice down.

  “I loved you! But we weren’t firing on all cylinders! It was probably more my fault than yours—we aren’t ever going to know. Now I just want to get my kids through this, because I know for goddamn sure it isn’t their fault! I’ll be on the couch!”

  “I didn’t invite you to have the couch!”

  “I didn’t ask your permission!” he shot back. Then he pulled the door closed as he left.

  Gerri sat. Of course, Phil deserved every nasty insult she could hurl at him because he’d had the affair. She’d been over all of this with her counselor, twice a week. It was impossible to reconcile in her mind because she’d been okay with their marriage and he had not, and she’d had absolutely no idea. If you don’t know something’s wrong, something’s missing, just what the hell were you supposed to do about it? It was like having some vital nutrient missing from your diet and not being aware until you’re in kidney failure.

  She was equally responsible for their marriage, she knew that.

  When she called, he came. Then and now. It was because he was committed and she understood that. If only he hadn’t reached beyond their boundaries to quench his thirst—anything else would have been easy to forgive.

  She wanted to find a way to forgive him, but it just didn’t seem to be in her. She was still so confused, so angry. And she hated the way she felt.

  Gerri had never had an easy time with sleep, even when there wasn’t a huge crisis. She drifted off only when bone tired, but even exhausted, she couldn’t relax if something major had her mind whirring. Her thoughts drifted between what might’ve happened to Jessie, what Jed was going through, scary images of thirteen-year-old Matt running wild and unattended on the mean streets of Mill Valley.... But there were no mean streets in Mill Valley—it was an upper-class suburb. So of course, she had to revisit the image she had of her husband boinking some twenty-five-year-old buxom blonde because his ratty, tired, menopausal old wife didn’t have the energy or enthusiasm to get all frisky three times a week.

  But when she called, he came. Even though he’d have to suffer through her verbal barbs and spikes.

  It was almost three in the morning when, frustrated, she got out of bed and crept into the family room. The TV was still on, though the volume was turned down. Phil was snoring and he was curled up as much as possible on the sofa. He usually just sprawled, spread eagle in their bed. His arms were wrapped tightly around himself; it was a chilly April night, typical in the valley at this time of year. The Pacific night breezes were cold straight through May.

  She looked down at him and the one thing that struck her was that she missed him so much it hurt. She had relied on him so heavily through all the years of their marriage and needed him. Tonight was a real wake-up. Any other Saturday night in history, they’d each have known exactly where the other was when Jed wandered in from the park, when Jessie came crashing in the front door.

  But tonight Phil was living somewhere else when she needed him.

  She’d give anything to go back—not seven years but just seven weeks. She had no idea what going back seven years could do to change things but if she could just go back seven weeks, she’d somehow manage to miss that elevator ride with Kelly, and they’d be as they were. Firing on enough cylinders for her peace of mind, at least.

  She couldn’t forgive him. Not yet. But she did cover him with an afghan before turning off the TV and going back to bed.

  six

  WHEN GERRI OPENED her eyes on Sunday morning, for just a split second everything was right with the world. She could smell coffee; Phil was up, moving around in the kitchen, like any Sunday morning. Then it all came crashing back to her—he’d slept on the sofa, Jessie was passed out in her bed. The night before was a wide-awake nightmare.

  She dragged herself out of bed, splashed water on her face, brushed her teeth and headed up the stairs to her daughter’s room. The clock on the bedside table said it was just after 7:00 a.m. Gerri sat on the edge of the bed and reminded herself she’d conducted hundreds of interviews. She knew how to read eyes, facial expressions, body language, knew the weight of words. That this situation was personally traumatic might compromise her judgment slightly, but it didn’t even touch some of the horrific family problems she’d been required to assess in her job.

  She jostled Jessie. “Come on, honey. Wake up for me.”

  “Umph,” Jessie grunted. “Can’t I sleep? Please?”

  “Sure you can. After you talk to me. Come on, it’s important.”

  “What?” she whined, trying to pull the covers over her head.

  Gerri pulled the covers back and Jessie pinched her eyes closed in agony. “Open your eyes. We have to talk.”

  Jessie opened one eye. “I’m sorry, okay? I won’t do it again....” She tried pulling the covers again, but Gerri held them. “What?” Jessie demanded.

  “I’ll let you go back to sleep after you tell me what happened last night. Right now I’m too worried to wait.”

  “I drank some beer,” she said. “I told you I won’t do it again.”

  “It wasn’t some beer,” Gerri said. “It was enough beer to make you pass out, you were very sick and your clothes were on funny when you came in.”

  Jessie’s eyes opened and stayed open. She was still for a moment, then scooted up in the bed. “What do you mean my clothes were on funny?”

  “Your blouse was buttoned weird, like maybe it had been unbuttoned, then buttoned up by someone else. Someone who was dressing you.”

  Jessie’s gaze instantly dropped.

  Gerri put a finger under her chin and lifted it. “Were you sexually assaulted last night? After you’d had too much beer?”

  “What?” Jessie asked, aghast, her eyes open wide.

  “Did those boys take advantage of you? Hurt you?”

  “Oh, God,” Jessie said, running a hand through her hair, her eyes tearing up. “Oh, God, please just leave me alone....”

  “I have two choices, Jessica. I can get some answers or we can take you to the hospital, make sure you’re not hurt. Make sure you haven’t been raped. Were you molested? Anything?” Jessie just stared at her. “You were dropped off by four boys who ran after they dumped you in the house, passed out. You—”

  “They ran?”

  “As fast as they could. I got to the front door in time to see them getting into the car. I checked you over as well as I could, but I have to hear something from you. What do you remember?”

  “Ohh,” she moaned. “Oh, no...”

  “Did someone undress you?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head,
looking down. “I undressed myself. On a dare.”

  “Start at the beginning. You were going out on a date with Drew.”

  “We were out and we ran into a couple of his friends who had a case of beer in the trunk. We drove out by the vineyards, parked, drank some beer and I got...I got stupid. I guess I had too much. Someone said if I took my shirt off, I could have another beer. I didn’t feel like I was going to pass out, get sick. I felt fine. Silly, but fine.”

  “What happened next?” Gerri asked.

  “Nothing, really. Someone said something about my father and someone else made me put my shirt back on and they said they were taking me home. I don’t remember anything after getting back in the car.”

  “Are you sure nothing happened in the car? After that?”

  Jessie’s eyes narrowed. “One of them said, ‘You know who her father is? Get her out of here.’”

  “Are you sore anywhere? Could you have been hurt? Raped?”

  “I didn’t have sex,” she said. “I would know.”

  “And how would you know, exactly?”

  “Because I know when I’ve had sex,” she said.

  Gerri felt her stomach knot, but she was a trained professional. Her expression remained passive. “Are you sexually active? On the pill or anything?”

  “It only happened a couple of times. A while ago. I wasn’t planning on it happening with Drew. I don’t like him that much. In case you were too busy to notice, I don’t exactly have a boyfriend right now.”

  “You’re sure about last night?” Gerri asked. “Because if anything bad happened we can still get help.”

  “Nothing worse than this,” she said. “You checked me over? While I was asleep?”

  “Oh, yes, absolutely,” Gerri said with a nod. “I would have called the police if I’d seen one suspicious mark on you. You were incapacitated, not able to make a decision, to consent to anything for yourself.”

  “God, please just let me die right now. First you throw Daddy out, then you examine me while I’m asleep....”

  “Passed out,” Gerri corrected. She wanted to talk about the suggestion that she threw Phil out, but this morning was not about that. They could revisit that later—she’d explain that she asked him to leave while they went to counseling and he agreed to go. It was the best she could do.

  “They ran because I was totally drunk and it was their beer,” she said wearily. “I hate them. They’re a bunch of losers.”

  “But you went with them,” Gerri said.

  “I didn’t have anything better to do,” she said with a shrug. “I don’t feel so good.”

  “I can imagine,” Gerri said, standing up from the bed and getting out of the way.

  Jessie swallowed a couple of times, went pale, charged out of bed and made a beeline to the bathroom.

  Gerri left her daughter’s bedroom and went downstairs to the kitchen. Phil was sitting at the table with his laptop open and the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle spread out in front of him. Except for the fact that he was wearing last night’s clothes, it was almost as if their lives weren’t inside out. It was how Sunday mornings had looked for years. They were a couple of hardworking public servants with never enough time and both of them took advantage of Sunday mornings to catch up on news, get a little work done while the house was quiet. Often they’d sit at opposite ends of their long kitchen table, individual laptops purring, maybe some conversation about the news, a case, a project, the kids, the week’s schedule. It was one of the things she had loved about them, that they were so alike, so in tune. And it had all been a trick—everything was all wrong when it had looked so right.

  What she missed most wasn’t the deep conversations, not the warm reassuring hugs, but the times they were simply together, quiet, like this. Just being in the same room with someone you depended on, working or reading or watching TV, knowing you could speak if you had something to say, but there was no pressure.

  She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat across from him. “I woke Jessie and made her talk to me.”

  “How is she?” he asked, closing the lid on the laptop.

  “I’m convinced she just got drunk and made a giant fool of herself with a bunch of idiots. We’re lucky they’re just a bunch of idiots. She could have been in serious danger.”

  He hung his head and shook it briefly.

  “Listen,” she said. “I’m really not emotionally ready to think about reconciling, but I need a better plan. I can’t keep track of these hoodlums alone.”

  “I have a line on a place in town,” Phil said. “A guesthouse. It’s expensive, but close. Available in a couple of weeks. I was hoping by then...” He didn’t finish.

  She ignored that. “How often are you seeing the counselor?”

  “Once a week. Twice a week would cost me a spleen.”

  “What are you working on?”

  “Working on?”

  “You know. Are you getting anywhere? Discussing anything that might help me...understand?”

  “We’re looking at my feminine side.”

  “What?” she asked with a sudden burst of laughter.

  “I don’t want to have a feminine side, but this is what we’re talking about. Apparently I have an overdeveloped masculine side, which I took as a compliment but the counselor didn’t. I make too many assumptions. I compartmentalize. I can put problems from work in one corner while I deal with problems at home and vice versa. I’m not sensitive unless my own little male feelings are at stake.” He sipped his coffee. “Can’t you just torture me for a decade or so? I’m in such agony. He’s a weird little prick and I think he hates me. I thought, being a guy...”

  “You thought he’d understand you.”

  “I hoped, since I don’t understand me.”

  “Couple of weeks until the guesthouse is ready, huh?”

  “She wants it painted. The landlady.”

  “Can you tell her that’s not necessary? Because really, I have to have some help around here.”

  “It’s a little old lady. She likes me. I could try.”

  “Please. Try. I’m going to take Jessie to the doctor, anyway, and I’m going to ground her. Will you stick by me on that? It’s the only way I know to keep her safe until I figure her out. If I clip her wings, she can’t end up in a car that has a case of beer in the trunk.”

  “I’m with you. Can we ground her till she’s twenty-six?”

  Gerri smiled at him.

  “She’s so beautiful. So brilliant. Such a dimwit,” Phil said.

  “Sixteen,” Gerri said. “It’s half grown-up, half too stupid for words.”

  “Do you remember being like that? Because I was never like that.”

  “Were you like Jed?” she asked.

  Phil instantly hung his head. “Oh, yeah. I was probably two of Jed. The dumbass. He was sitting in the park smoking dope with Noel—I guess he really thought that one through. He knows there are park police all over the neighborhood, just looking for dipshits like him.”

  “I need you around more. I just can’t do it alone.”

  “I know, Gerri,” he said. “No one could.”

  “Women do it all the time,” she said. “But I can’t. They’re independent kids, we made them independent but they’re used to having two of us to ride herd on them. No matter how long it takes for us to come to a decision about where we’re going, we have to figure out how to help each other get them through these years. Last night was too close. Jed could’ve been using something worse. Jessie could have been hurt.”

  “You’re the only one making a decision about where we’re going, Gerri.”

  “Okay, let me put it this way—while we’re separated, we still have to work together until they’re out of the woods. Really, I’d like to just shove you in a hole right now, but I won’t sacrifice my kids because I’m hurt and angry. Help me with them, Phil.”

  He took a breath. “You’re calling the shots. Tell me what you need, that’s all you have to do.” />
  “I need you five minutes away when you’re not in the city working. I need you to help me parent more.”

  “Done,” he said. “I’ll talk to the woman with the guesthouse today.”

  She just shook her head. “I’ve walked at least a hundred women through separation and divorce and suddenly I don’t know how it’s done.”

  “Wait,” he said. “Divorce? You’re not thinking that way already.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “What if we can’t put things back together? It’s been weeks and I’m still...” She bit her lip. “I just don’t feel married anymore, Phil. At least I know I don’t have the marriage I once had.”

  “Don’t go there, Gerri. That’s a whole different subject. I’m real clear on the anger, on your need for space and time to work through this, but I’m not ready to have a discussion about divorce.”

  “Maybe we should talk about it,” she said. “I can’t reassure you that it won’t come to that. Maybe we should know where we both stand.”

  He picked up his coffee cup and took a slow sip. “I don’t recommend it,” he said. “It puts a final stamp on things. If you start thinking that way, you’re not really giving me—us—a chance. I’m willing to do anything, whatever you need, but when you bring divorce into the dialogue, I’m not letting you call the shots anymore.”

  She stiffened. “Just what are you saying?”

  “I hate this, Gerri. I don’t think living apart is getting us anywhere. I think we should be here together, talking rather than fighting, eating at the same table, sleeping in the same bed—believe me, I know how to do that without touching you. I think we should be trying—both of us. I should be trying to do whatever I can to reassure you I can be trusted again, but you should be trying to get past the rage because we’re not going to know if we can make it until that’s not part of the landscape anymore.”

  “I just can’t live with you,” she said.

  “Fine, if that’s what you need. But I think of this as a temporary separation while we work on our problems. I don’t see it as a separation preceding divorce. When you start talking divorce, you put me in a whole different place.”