And there was no way that Dan and Jeff were not going to find out about this. That was one thing about which Margy was absolutely clear.
“The badass fact of the matter is that you’ve been outed by that schmuck Chuck Cann. As soon as you get off the phone, go to his website and read the article. And though we can come back with a counterpunch about you being misquoted and Judson totally fabricating stuff, there’s absolutely nothing, legally speaking, we can do. If this was England, where the libel laws lean heavily in favor of the victim, we could slap an injunction on Cann’s ass in a New York minute . . . and we could crucify Judson for defaming you, even though he used a pseudonym. But this is the good old USA, where, for better or worse, we believe that you can sling mud without cost . . . even if you’ve fabricated much of what you’ve said. So, we’ll just have to cope with the fallout.”
“What the hell am I going to tell Dan?”
“Tell him that most of it is a lie . . .”
“I did sleep with that guy, Margy. That is no lie.”
“Okay, but it happened thirty years ago. Surely that makes it way beyond the statute of limitations.”
“I just don’t know how he’ll take it.”
“He doesn’t want to lose you, hon. You’ve stuck it out. You’ve done okay together. You have no reason to split up. Especially since—dare I say it—you’re both in your fifties. Anyway, this fling was a onetime thing. No repeat business, right?”
“You know I’ve been completely faithful since then. I would have told you otherwise.”
“Then I honestly think that Dan—in his own phlegmatic way—will be philosophical about it.”
“Margy, don’t go Pollyanna on me here.”
“All right, he might be upset about Judson’s contention that you fell deeply in love with him, but once we come out with a contradicting statement, and once we attack Cann for invading your privacy . . .”
“Dan will still hate me.”
“Don’t go there just yet. He might just surprise you. He has a lot at stake here too—and he’ll have to back you up. More than that, he’ll want to back you up—show the world a united front.”
“How am I going to tell him?”
“That is a real tough one, sweetheart—and I don’t envy you the task for a minute. But you’re just going to have to get it over with tonight . . . because by tomorrow morning, this story will be everywhere. He has to hear it from you first. He must get your side of the story before he reads Cann’s trash, and before he gets his hands on that fucking book.”
After I hung up I lit up another cigarette. Fear is such a strange emotion. It’s all bound up in the terror of being found out, exposed, shown up for what you really are. I’ve lived so much of my life according to the edicts of fear. It kept me from going to France (fear of losing Dan). It kept me in the marriage (fear of being alone). It kept me from saying what I thought at work or in social situations (fear of being ostracized). It kept me from upsetting the steady equilibrium of my little life. And now . . .
Now I knew that everything was about to be upended. That was the worst sort of fear—the dread of loss . . . and entering a terra incognita where everything you hold dear is suddenly in jeopardy.
I finished my cigarette, shrugging off a nasty look from a woman who shook her head at me as she passed me by—like I was still a thirteen-year-old who was stupid enough to smoke in public. I went back into the hotel and asked the concierge if they had a place where guests could read their email. He directed me to their business center on the second floor. The woman behind the desk there powered up a computer in a small cubicle for me and asked if I’d like tea, coffee, or water. Neat vodka seemed more appropriate.
As soon as she left, I sat down and typed: www.canned-news.com.
I hit enter. Within seconds, I was connected with the website. Canned News: The Truth Behind the Lies. Under this banner was a quote from The New York Times: “Whether or not you like its extreme politics, the fact is: Chuck Cann’s website breaks more stories than any other news organization in the country and has become the site everyone in the media reads every day.” Great.
I moved on from this bit of self-advertisement to the index. After all the big news stories of the day, I saw the following headline:
CHICAGO TALK JOCK TELLS A MADAME BOVARY STORY FROM HIS REVOLUTIONARY PAST
I clicked on the story. I shut my eyes. I forced them open. I read:
Give the guy an A+ for ambition. Tobias Judson is doing his best to become the Rush Limbaugh of the Midwest.
Judson—who has been making an impact on WBDT in the Lake Michigan area—was a self-described “onetime Lefty Pinko” who even graced the FBI’s Wanted List when he harbored two of his Weatherman comrades after the fatal bombing of a Defense Department office in Chicago. Now a dyed-in-the-wool Republican and evangelical Christian, he has written a big tell-all book—I Ain’t A-Marching Anymore—detailing his mad, bad years in the Weather Underground. Though he isn’t exactly Hemingway—and his account of being born again as a solid, God-fearing family man is supersaccharine—there is enough down-and-dirty inside dope on the dangerous revolutionary games played by the Weathermen and other sixties purveyors of anti-Americanism to keep you turning the page.
But, without question, the most riveting chapter of the book is “Love on the Run,” which describes Judson’s brief, intense affair with the wife of a married doctor in a small New England town; a young woman frustrated by being a housewife and wanting to engage in the same left-wing politics practiced by her famous antiwar professor father.
In the book, Judson tactfully uses pseudonyms for the woman and her lefty dad—calling the prof James Windsor Longley and his daughter, Alison. He also renames the town in which they conducted their steamy affair—calling it Croydon, Maine. But as Judson assures us in the introduction to this book, everything he describes happened—including “Alison” declaring her love for Judson after a torrid two-day sexual romp and driving him to Canada to escape apprehension by the federal authorities.
Now, after a bit of investigative legwork, Canned News can reveal the identities of the major players in this little drama. The radical professor was none other than the University of Vermont historian John Winthrop Latham, now retired, but back in his Summer of Love heyday a hard-line antiwar activist, even though his family background is as American aristocratic as they come. A little checking around also revealed that Winthrop’s daughter, Hannah, was indeed living with her doctor husband, Daniel Buchan, in a small Maine town—Pelham—back in ’73 when Judson came breezing through town.
Hannah Buchan is now a schoolteacher in Portland, Maine, where her husband is head of orthopedics at Maine Medical Center. Could Mrs. Buchan now be liable for prosecution under federal law for aiding and abetting a wanted man? Watch this space.
The strangest thing about reading this was the fact that I didn’t go into extended shock or rage. I was simply numb.
I printed the article, folded it up, and put it in my bag. I logged off, went downstairs again, stepped outside, lit up my seventh cigarette of the day, called Margy, and told her my side of the story from beginning to end, refuting point by point every lie in Judson’s book. She said she’d spend the next hour writing up a release and would email it to me so I could show it to Dan later—after I broke the news to him.
Then I went upstairs and found Dan and Jeff deep in conversation. Dan gave me one of his low-key guilty looks when I came into the room, which indicated that they had been talking about me.
“Where have you been?” he asked.
“Took a walk,” I said. “I needed the air.”
Jeff made a sniffing sound with his nose.
“How many cigarettes, Mom?”
Ten minutes later, we were in a nearby restaurant and I was going through that awful guilt fugue, exacerbated by Jeff catching my eye, then turning away in distaste. Dan and Jeff talked among themselves while I picked at a shrimp salad and worked my way through three glasses of sauvignon bla
nc. Jeff did speak with me when I ordered the third glass.
“You’re hitting it hard tonight, Mom,” he said.
“Three glasses of wine doesn’t exactly qualify me for a twelve-step program, Jeff.”
He put his hands up.
“Hey, it was just a comment.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Look, if you want to give yourself liver damage by the time you’re sixty . . .”
“I am having three glasses of wine in an attempt to dampen the despair I’m feeling right now about your sister. And if you start lecturing me about using booze as a crutch . . .”
“I don’t have to lecture you, Mom, since you’re clearly already aware of the way alcohol deadens feeling . . .”
“You know what?” I said, standing up. “I’m going outside to have a cigarette.” Then, turning back to Dan, I told him I’d see him back in the room.
I walked down to the docks and sat on a bench and smoked, and felt terrible about smoking, and looked at the waters of Casco Bay, and tried to concentrate on the gentle undulation of the surf but simply found myself too deeply under mental siege to find that “little moment of calm” that all those self-help books talk about. I stamped out the cigarette and headed back to the hotel, dreading what was about to unfold . . . yet determined to get it over with.
When I came into the room, Dan was sitting in the armchair, staring out the window. He looked up at me as I entered, then turned his gaze back outside.
“Why did you have to cause a scene?” he asked quietly.
“I didn’t cause a scene,” I said, my voice also temperate. “I just left.”
“You pick a fight with Jeff every time you see him.”
“Bizarrely, I thought it was the other way around.”
“You are so damn intolerant.”
“Me intolerant? Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed the fact that our son has turned into what could be politely described as a Christian bigot.”
“You’ve just proved my point.”
“I’d rather we get off this subject.”
“Why? Because you don’t want to admit that I’m right?”
“No, because it’s pointless arguing about this. And because—”
“You’d rather dodge the issue.”
“Dan, please . . .”
“Fine. Dodge the issue.”
“I have to talk to you . . .” I said.
“I don’t really feel like talking right now. It’s been a long, unnerving day.”
“I am aware of that, but . . .”
“And the house is still surrounded by reporters.”
“How do you know that?”
“Called a neighbor,” he said, glancing out the window again.
“Who?”
“The Colemans,” he said, mentioning a couple who lived down the road from us, and with whom we had little contact.
“Really?”
“Why do you sound surprised?”
“Because we hardly talk to the Colemans.”
“They were the only people nearby I could get hold of.”
“You tried everyone on the street?”
“The Bremmers, the McCluskeys, the Monroes,” he said, mentioning our nearest neighbors. “No answer.”
“Well, it is ten at night. The Colemans didn’t mind you calling so late?”
“They were okay about it. But they did say that we were still under siege.”
“I’ll get Alice to run by tomorrow, if she’s free, and give us an update.”
“Isn’t she kind of under pressure right now with the new show?”
“How did you know that?”
“You mentioned it to me.”
“Did I?” I asked, sounding confused myself.
“Yeah, last week. You reminded me that her show would be opening next month on the twenty-second . . .”
“I don’t remember saying that at all.”
“Well, you did.”
“If you say so . . .”
“So what did you want to talk to me about?” he asked.
“We could do this tomorrow,” I said, all nerves.
“Do it now,” he said. “I’m wide awake.”
“I’m kind of tired now . . .”
“If you said it was that important . . .”
I fumbled in my bag and pulled out my pack of cigarettes.
“This is a nonsmoking room on a nonsmoking floor,” Dan said.
“I’ll open a window . . .”
“Hannah . . .”
I walked over to behind where Dan was sitting and flipped the latch on the window and opened it, then sat down in the opposite armchair and lit up.
“I can’t do this without cigarettes,” I said.
“Can’t do what?” he asked, looking directly at me.
“I have something difficult to tell you.”
“Something about Lizzie?”
“Dan . . .”
“Did you just get a call from Leary?”
“There’s no news about Lizzie.”
“Then what is it?”
I took a long drag on my cigarette.
“Do you remember somebody named Tobias Judson?”
“Tobias who?”
“Judson,” I said. “Years ago—1973—when your dad was dying—he was the friend of my father’s who stayed with me while you were out of town. Remember?”
“Vaguely. So?”
Another deep drag on the cigarette.
“I had a two-day affair with him.”
Long silence. Dan’s face registered a moment of shock, then slipped back into his usual impassive mask, though I could tell he was working hard not to appear agitated, not to show any emotion.
“Why are you telling me this now?” he asked quietly.
“I need to first tell you about what happened and why,” I said.
Then, with great care, I narrated what had happened on those two days all those years ago: how it was at a juncture of my then very young life where I was feeling trapped and limited; how Judson flirted with me and made me feel interesting and desirable; how we had too much to drink; and how we fell into bed with each other.
“I should have stopped it there and then, but these things have a strange momentum, and I wanted to keep it going for as long as he was there. It was dangerous and exciting and I was drunk on it—intoxicated by this risky game we were playing. But then Judson got a call out of nowhere . . .”
I took him point by point through what happened next, how he explained he was on the run, how he insisted I drive him to Canada, how I refused and he threatened me with exposure if I didn’t do what he demanded, and how I had no choice but to load Jeff and myself in the car and drive him north.
Dan interrupted me.
“You brought Jeff into this?” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
“I couldn’t leave him there. Like I said, Judson was putting me under the worst sort of pressure—blackmailing me—and I had to think fast.”
“So you drove him to Canada?”
I nodded.
“With our son in the backseat?”
“He was only six months old.”
“I remember how young he was at the time. His crib was in our bedroom. Was he in the same room with you while you and that guy . . . ?”
I nodded again.
“You fucked him in our bed?”
I nodded again.
Long silence. I stubbed out my cigarette in the pack top I was using as an ashtray and lit up another one. Then I said, “I brought him to the place in Quebec where he asked to be dropped. I turned the car around. I returned home. And I vowed never to be unfaithful to you again. And I haven’t been. Ever.”
“Congratulations,” he said quietly.
“I’m certain this will sound lame,” I said, “but not a day has gone by since then when I haven’t felt some stab of guilt.”
“And that makes it all right?”
“No, it doesn’t. I made a very wrong call. But i
t did happen three decades ago.”
“You suddenly felt the urge to finally get it off your chest, to suddenly dump on me all the guilt you’ve felt for the past thirty years. Is it that?”
“I would never, ever, have told you if I hadn’t learned that . . .”
“Learned what?”
“That Judson has just published a book about his radical years. And in it, there’s a chapter about . . .”
Dan put his face in his hand.
“Oh, don’t tell me that . . .”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m afraid so.”
Now I had the pleasant task of detailing, point by point, how Judson had embellished the story and spun fabrications about what I’d said, especially as regarded Dan . . . and how there was absolutely no truth to his assertion that I fell madly in love with him.
“He turns the whole thing into this cheap, florid romance. It’s complete and utter bullshit, especially the stuff about me feeling thwarted and having a dull husband.”
“But you just told me that you did feel thwarted at the time.”
“All right, that’s true. But I didn’t come out and say that to him.”
“Oh please, if you felt it, you must have communicated something to him. Just as you must have said that you were married to a bore.”
“I never said that.”
“No, that was just another of his embellishments, right? What else did he embellish? The sex? Don’t tell me you didn’t have sex with him, even though he’s written that you did.”
“No, we did have sex together.”
“Was it good?”
“Dan . . .”
“Was it good?”
“Yes, it was good.”
“And in this book of his, he writes about how good it was?”
I nodded again.
“And does he mention me by name in this book as well?”
“No, he’s made up names for all of us—except Jeff. And he calls Pelham something else.”
“Well, that’s something, I guess.”
“I wish it was,” I said, and then explained about the Chuck Cann column. This time, Dan blanched.
“You’re not serious,” he said.
I opened my bag and handed him the article I’d printed out downstairs.
“This is why I was late coming back from my walk,” I said.
The Douglas Kennedy Collection #1 Page 152
