The Douglas Kennedy Collection #1

by Douglas Kennedy

  “Don’t sweat it.”

  “That means you thought I was a disaster.”

  “You looked frazzled and upset and pissed off at the press intrusion, but who gives a shit? Your child is missing—you have a right to feel and look disturbed.”

  I told her about my escape plan.

  “Good idea. I’ll call you in a couple of hours—to talk through some stuff. The phone’s been hopping at the office all day.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “This is the worst part of the ordeal. In a couple of days, attention will move away from you and Dan completely. Good luck with the getaway.”

  I checked my watch. It was five-thirty p.m. I turned off all the lights, except one in the bedroom, hoisted my two bags, and went downstairs to our basement. Beyond Dan’s playroom was a passage that led into an old apple cellar in the garden. We had renovated it, building a connecting passage from the house and installing lights so we could use it as a storage area. It was piled high with boxes and old bicycles—but it also contained the original doors that led out into the garden. When I reached it, I found the key for the inside lock on the shelf above the fuse box. The doors were directly overhead, and we kept a small stepladder handy for those rare occasions when we opened them. I climbed the ladder, undid the lock, and using all my weight, pushed open one of the doors. It landed with a thud on the outside ground. A blast of cold air hit me. I waited for a moment to see if the opened door attracted attention or if any of the journalists had been sleazy enough to stake out the garden. But as far as they were concerned, I was still upstairs in the lighted bedroom. So I climbed down off the ladder, turned off the storeroom lights, picked up my bags again, climbed back up the ladder, put them on the ground, then hoisted myself up. Once on terra firma, I shut the door, glancing around nervously to see if I could be spotted. I was in the clear. I lifted my bags and walked quickly into the trees at the rear of our acre of land. I threaded my way through this wooded outcropping, emerging at the back of a house owned by a couple named Bauer, with whom we had absolutely no contact, bar a Christmas card once a year. I was relieved to see that both cars were gone from their driveway and all lights in the home were off. I walked briskly past their outdoor swimming pool, negotiated the downhill curve of their lawn, and ended up in the cul-de-sac where they lived. Up ahead was the taxi. I walked over to it and knocked on the window. The driver got out, took my bags from me, and put them in the trunk. I climbed into the backseat. He slid behind the steering wheel, looked at me in the rearview mirror, and said, “Don’t you live over on Chamberlain Drive?”

  “I’m on the run.”

  “From all those television vans out in front of your place?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “What did you do, kill someone?”

  “No such luck,” I said, thinking of Mark McQueen.

  Twenty minutes later I was shown to my room at the Hilton Garden Inn. It was, as requested, of decent size, since I didn’t know how long we might be camped out here. After I unpacked, there was a knock at the door. It was Jeff. I hadn’t seen him in a few months, and tried to disguise my shock at his appearance. He’d struck me as a bit chunky over Christmas, but since then he’d piled on more weight and I couldn’t help but think that he was looking ten years older than he should. As always, he seemed tense. Even if this hadn’t been a desperately difficult time, Jeff would still have appeared stressed. Being under strain had become his natural state.

  “Mom,” he said quietly, kissing me on one cheek.

  “Did you check in?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, coming inside. “Where’s Dad?”

  “He’ll be here soon.”

  “I just got a call from Shannon. She said she saw you on Fox News. She’s pretty upset.”

  “Because her mother-in-law blew up at a reporter and used the f-word?”

  “She said you looked crazy.”

  “An accurate description of how I feel.”

  “I don’t know why you’ve allowed all this to escalate. And if you hadn’t made that comment about Lizzie’s termination . . .”

  Once again, I tried to stop myself from getting angry. This time I failed.

  “The only reason several television crews are parked outside my front door is because your poor sister has disappeared, and that creep of a minor celebrity doctor is under suspicion. For you to say that it’s all to do with my comments about abortion . . .”

  “All right, all right,” he said. “I’m just a little wound up about all this.”

  “Well, join the club.”

  “And Shannon’s gone ballistic since she read the Herald piece this afternoon. She’s really furious at you, Mom.”

  “That’s her prerogative.”

  “Yeah, but she’s furious at me at the same time.”

  “And that’s my fault?”

  “Look, you know our feelings about the right to life of an unborn child . . .”

  “I was asked a tricksy question by some hack journalist about whether I backed Lizzie’s decision to terminate her pregnancy—and all I said was, ‘If it was the right decision for her at the time—and if it was one she made free of outside pressure—then . . . yes, I approve.’ Now what is so damn fiendish about that? You know—and I know—how much Lizzie loves children. As I said before, I am absolutely certain that McQueen sweet-talked her into having the abortion by promising her they’d have a child after he left his wife. That’s what Lizzie told your grandfather.”

  “Why was she talking to him?”

  “Because they happen to be close . . . and what’s wrong with that?”

  “He’s not exactly the person I’d turn to for moral advice.”

  “And do you know what, sonny boy? You’re not the person I’d turn to for moral advice either. Nor would your sister—because we both know just how rigid and dogmatic and uncompassionate you’ve become.”

  “Don’t pass the buck to me for your slack parenting.”

  The comment caught me like a slap to the face . . . even though part of me was expecting him to drop it.

  “I won’t accept that from you,” I said.

  “Too bad.”

  “What the hell is wrong with you, Jeff? When did you become so mean? And why?”

  He flinched—like someone caught by a counterpunch. But before he could reply, there was a knock on the door. Jeff opened it. Dan walked in. He proffered his hand to Jeff, who also clasped his shoulder and gave him a conciliatory nod. Then he turned to me.

  “I don’t see why we have to hide out here,” he said.

  “Because I was under siege there. And because Margy suggested—”

  “Since when is Margy running the show?” Dan asked.

  “Since she offered to this afternoon.”

  “You could have consulted me,” he said.

  “You were otherwise engaged in the operating theater at the time—and since we are suddenly the object of major media attention, I was more than happy to let her assume the role of spokesperson and media flak-taker for us . . . she is one of New York’s leading PRs.”

  “She might not be the right person to handle this,” Jeff said.

  “And why is that?”

  “Because what I think is needed now is someone who can deal with the likes of Fox News.”

  “Margy is perfectly capable of—”

  “Issuing a statement rescinding your comments on abortion?”

  I turned away for a moment, my fists clenched. Then I faced my son again and said, “If I wanted to rescind that comment, Margy would issue a statement to that effect. She would not—as I think you’re implying—oppose it on political grounds.”

  “Margy’s a deep-dyed New York liberal.”

  “She’s also Jewish.”

  “That has nothing to do with . . .”

  “Yeah, right. Anyway, the thing is: I don’t want to rescind that statement, because (a) it would be disloyal to my daughter, and (b) I stand by what I s
aid . . . even if—”

  “I know, I know,” Jeff said, “you were completely misinterpreted by that hack. Well, a statement from you will end the misinterpretation.”

  “You didn’t hear what I just said: I am not rescinding it.”

  “What do you think of that, Dad?” Jeff said.

  “What Dad thinks about it,” I said angrily, “doesn’t matter—because it’s my statement, my daughter . . .”

  “Lizzie is my daughter too,” Dan said, “and I agree with Jeff—but perhaps for different reasons. A comment like that plays right into the hands of the media moralizers who just love to trample on a liberal Easterner who thinks it’s okay that her daughter—”

  “To hell with what they think. I’m not rescinding it.”

  “Will you please think about Lizzie here?” Dan said.

  “What do you think I have been doing every damn moment of every day? Anyway, my opinions about her abortion aren’t exactly going to impede the police’s effort to find Lizzie. But I do think that, if she sees that I have rescinded the statement, it might push her further away from us . . . and I’m sure Detective Leary would agree with me. Did you see him today?”

  Jeff nodded.

  “He’s good news, I think,” I said.

  “He’s not getting results,” Jeff said.

  “He’s doing everything he can,” I said.

  “I want to hire a private investigator,” Jeff said.

  “That’s unnecessary—and it could impinge on Leary’s investigation.”

  “We use several investigators in the firm who are superprofessional and don’t tread on the toes of the cops.”

  “We have Leary on our side,” I said.

  “Big deal.”

  “Let me ask you something: if Leary was a ‘committed Christian,’ would you feel differently?”

  “Hannah, that’s not necessary,” Dan said.

  “Yeah, but it’s totally predictable,” Jeff said. “You always have to get the little dig in, always have to make the nasty little atheistic point . . .”

  “The one and only reason why I make this point is that you choose to wear your Christianity like protective armor and act like you have all of life’s answers . . . which, in fact, you don’t.”

  “All right, Hannah,” Dan said, “that’s enough.”

  “No, it isn’t enough—because, once again, instead of trying to bind together as a family, we’re at each other’s throats. And it’s your insane piety that’s—”

  “I’m not listening to this,” Jeff said. “Because you have completely messed up this situation with your inappropriate comments, to the point where Shannon told me today that if you don’t rescind what you say, you can forget about seeing your grandchildren in the near future.”

  I looked at him in shock.

  “You wouldn’t do that.”

  “Yes, I would.”

  “You’d keep your parents away from their grandchildren because you disagree with a statement about abortion?”

  “I’m not talking about keeping Dad away from them,” Jeff said.

  I looked at him with a mixture of disbelief and contempt, then asked, “Did you hear what you just said, Jeff?”

  “Shannon thinks you’re a bad influence.”

  “On a two- and a four-year-old? As if I would even dream of saying anything about that to my grandchildren . . .”

  “The choice is yours,” Jeff said.

  “No, Jeff,” I said, “the choice is actually yours.”

  My cell phone rang. It was Margy.

  “Is this a bad moment?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Are you with Dan and—?”

  “Jeff,” I said.

  “Who is that?” Jeff asked.

  “Margy.”

  “Tell her I’d like to see the family statement she’s preparing,” he said.

  “Did you hear that?” I asked Margy.

  “Indeed I did. And you can tell your charming son that it’s been emailed to your computer. But listen . . . I need to speak with you in private for a moment. Can you invent some excuse and call me back, but away from them?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I hung up.

  “I’ve got to go downstairs and collect a fax.”

  “Couldn’t the concierge bring it up?”

  “I feel in need of a cigarette,” I said.

  “I can’t believe you still use that drug,” Jeff said.

  “It’s very occasional usage,” I said, “and it’s a very good friend.”

  Then I grabbed my coat and said I’d be back in around ten minutes.

  Once downstairs, I stopped at the front desk and asked for the hotel’s general fax number. Stepping outside, I lit up, dragging down a lungful of smoke before calling Margy. She answered immediately.

  “Are you still at home?” I asked.

  “Yeah, my bedroom’s been general command center all day.”

  “Any chance you have a fax there?”

  “Of course I have a fax. Why?”

  “I need you to fax over that family statement I approved today—it was the excuse I used to come downstairs.”

  “No problem. But look, hon, the family statement is pretty small potatoes right now.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Ever heard of someone named Chuck Cann?”

  “Isn’t he that right-wing guy who runs a news website?”

  “Bull’s-eye. Chuck Cann’s Canned News. The biggest disseminator of mud-slinging conservative propaganda going—and, believe me, he’s got a lot of competition in that field right now. Remember how he went after Clinton? The guy’s another reformed revolutionary who now hates anything and everything to do with the sixties. And the third-lead story he’s posting tomorrow on his website is about Tobias Judson’s book—which, no doubt, some publicist like me got into his nasty little ultra-Republican hands.

  “And, hon, it’s not easy to tell you this, but I’m afraid that Cann or one of his henchmen did a little research, and he found out . . .”

  I pulled the phone away from my ear. Because I knew what was coming next.

  SIXTEEN

  IT’S A STRANGE sensation, sitting on a time bomb. I’ve always wondered what goes through the mind of one of those kamikazes who board a bus in Tel Aviv or Baghdad with a jacket full of explosives and a detonator within easy reach. Does he look at his fellow passengers, going about their day-to-day business, with the cool, ruthless objectivity of a fanatic—someone who is so convinced of the justness of his cause and his heavenly destiny that he doesn’t consider for a moment the lives he is about to destroy? Or is there a terrible instant of psychic horror when he realizes the evil insanity of the deed he is about to perpetrate? Does he think, The only thing about going through with this is that I won’t be around afterward to see the horror of what I’ve done?

  That evening, over dinner in a restaurant near the hotel, there was a moment when I couldn’t help but think: Our lives are about to detonate. And it’s all my fault. One long-ago transgression suddenly gets excavated and is about to be made public. And as our lives are already public news because of poor Lizzie’s disappearance, the interest in this dirty little tidbit from the past will be, as Margy explained to me, multiplied by the power of ten.

  “The only good thing about something like this,” Margy said when she broke the news on the phone, “is that the public attention span is very short. There will be a flash of interest, which we will do our best to control, and then it will die away. And I’m saying this now, hon, because when you’re in the thick of it, you have to keep remembering that it will not be a permanent state . . . that, like all nightmares, you will eventually wake up out of it.”

  “In other words,” I said, “I am about to walk into a nightmare.”

  A pause. Then, “I’m not going to lie to you, hon. From where I sit, this all looks pretty bad. There’s a lot I can do to limit the damage, but the big problem really is . . .”

  The
man sitting opposite me now at dinner. My husband for the past thirty years. The guy with whom I decided to spend my life. And now, tucked inside the bag underneath this restaurant seat, was a printed copy of a news story that would be posted online tomorrow morning and would demand, at minimum, some serious explanation. But that was a “best case” scenario. The other problem was the second man sitting opposite me: my hard-nosed son who now viewed the world in strictly black-and-white terms. It’s a terrible feeling, realizing that you and the child you raised—and for whom you’ve only ever wanted the best—no longer get along. How does such a close, lifelong relationship unravel . . . especially when there’s never been a single defining, deal-breaking incident to cause such disaffection between you?

  That’s what so astonished me about the current state of play between myself and Jeff. Nowadays, after less than a half hour in each other’s presence, we couldn’t help but argue.

  I glanced over at my son, in mid-conversation with his father. They were talking about Portland property prices and whether Jeff should invest in a chunk of land north of Damariscotta. Jeff caught my eye for a moment, then quickly turned away, his lips tight with distaste. I had to fight hard to keep from bursting into tears. It wasn’t just my daughter who had vanished, it was also my son, who was now threatening to bar me from seeing my grandchildren because of an out-of-context opinion. But even if I could somehow now bring him around—and create some sort of rapprochement between us—all that would evaporate in an instant once he learned of Tobias Judson’s book. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how he would react to his mom playing Madame Bovary and Emma Goldman to a onetime radical . . . not to mention bringing “Baby Jeff” along while happily transporting the alleged “love of my life” to political exile in Canada . . . and breaking about five federal laws in the process.

  Then there was Dan. How would he react to the news that I had betrayed him all those years ago—sleeping with another man while he was out of town with his dying father? If that wasn’t enough of a betrayal, then how would he take Judson’s lies that I fell madly in love with this dashing young Jacobin, while complaining bitterly about being trapped with a stiff of a husband?