Beneath the Weight of Sadness

by Gerald L. Dodge

  And they were a bunch of religious zealots to boot—and as with all zealotry, the patriarchal system was firmly in place. Look at Islamic zealots: the women wearing the khimar with the hijab scarf to hide themselves from the lustful gazes of men. The Beck woman was the same, I was sure. I could see the way she acceded to everything he said. Was he flirting with me when he insisted he bring me another glass of wine? Ethan was sure he was.

  No one compares to you in the looks department, Baby Amy.

  So I’d concluded it was Rich Beck or his son. What I didn’t know was how to approach the situation. Should I contact that policeman? Parachuk? Or should I find out where this Rich Beck worked and contact him at his office? In the end, I looked up their name in the phonebook and dialed their home. I did it during the day so I would be sure to reach her, and also so Ethan would be out of the house.

  She answered on the third ring. Did the fact that she would pick up so quickly not even knowing the number mean she was desperate to talk to someone?

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Mrs. Beck?” I said. “Is this Mrs. Beck?”

  “May I ask who’s calling?”

  “Yes, you may,” I said. “This is Amy Engroff. I’m Truman’s mother.”

  There was a long silence on her end of the phone. What did that indicate? Had she already come to the same conclusion I had?

  Finally she said, “I can’t tell you how sorry we are…I mean…I don’t really know what to say, Mrs. Engroff.”

  “Amy,” I said. “Please call me Amy.”

  I waited for her to respond and it took considerable time. There was a long sigh before she said, “The whole town is feeling the tragedy. No one can believe this would happen in Persia, of all places.”

  Her voice gave out at the end as if she were one of those winding phonographs.

  “Really?” I said. “I can’t believe it didn’t happen before this.”

  Again, there was a long silence from her end. I waited. She cleared her throat.

  “Is there something I can help you with? I’d be glad to do anything…I can’t imagine how you must feel.”

  “There is something you can do for me.”

  Again there was a silence. While I waited for her response I took a large swallow of my wine. I wondered if she heard. I wondered if she drank during the day in order to stave off thoughts of her Neanderthal husband coming home to claim his connubial reward. Didn’t they have two children? Were they, too, indoctrinated into the sexual indenture that was part of Rich Beck’s entitlement as the soul leader of the family unit?

  “I’m sure there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you Mrs.…Amy. I can’t imagine what it would be, though.” I heard the stirrings of a nervous laugh and that was a good sign, I thought. “I think we’ve only met once or twice.”

  I knew she was alarmed, and wondering what I could possibly need from her. I allowed her to fret.

  “How you can help me is by telling me where your husband and or your son were on the 28th of this past March at approximately three a.m.”

  This time there was no silent moment. There was nervous laughter, however.

  “I don’t understand the question, I’m afraid.”

  “It’s not a difficult one. You only need to go into your memory and tell me where your two MEN were on that particular date and at that particular time. You needn’t be nervous about answering me, Mrs. Beck. I’m on your side to a slight degree…of course I didn’t marry one and raise the other, but everyone is entitled to mistakes during the course of a lifetime.”

  “Debra,” she said.

  I was nonplussed for a moment. “What?”

  “My name is Debra, Amy.”

  I hadn’t expected that response and for a moment I wasn’t sure how to continue. Then I remembered Carly had forsaken Truman for the Beck boy, and I recalled the sound of Mr. Beck’s booming voice and obnoxious laughter and my purpose came roaring back.

  “Tell me where they were, Debra.”

  “I can’t for the life of me imagine why you’re asking such a question.”

  I thought she could, but I gave her credit for more than I’d expected from her.

  “My son, Truman, was murdered on that night, Debra. I’ve given it an enormous amount of thought and only one possibility has arisen in my brain. One or both of the two men in your household were responsible for the death of my son.”

  She began to say something but I stopped her.

  “Hush!” I shouted.

  She squeaked in surprise.

  “Just hush,” I said more calmly. “Now, one could argue it was someone from outside of the town of Persia…I hear you wanting to interrupt, Debra! Don’t. I’ll be done in a jiffy. Someone outside the town of Persia is not a possibility. The police came to our home with Truman’s wallet, all the money intact. No, this was a hate crime…a slovenly act by someone who is absolutely barbaric in both his thinking and in his behavior.

  “‘Who could that be?’ I kept asking myself. Ten days and nothing else has plagued me like this question…”

  “I have to go!” she blurted out.

  “Don’t you dare!” I screamed. I waited to hear the click, the dead line, but it didn’t come. I wasn’t sure but I thought I heard her breathing softly on the other end, as if she’d been pacified by my shouting. Probably something she was used to, I thought.

  “Of course my mind is mostly full of Truman, of floating away from him, but between those mournful thoughts has been the question of WHO. And then, Debra, I remembered the few times Ethan and I had been to parties that you and…Rich? had also attended. I remembered his boorish behavior and his treatment of you…you laughing at his infantile jokes and disregarding his flirtatious manner with other women, how he leered at me and other women even in your presence.”

  “I won’t listen to this anymore!” she shouted.

  “And so the answer to who was there, was right before me,” I said this in a rush, because I could tell she was about to hang up. “It was either your husband or his well-trained son. Carly Rodenbaugh seems to have been mesmerized into finding your son, Tommy? Richey? appealing somehow, and so out of jealousy or…”

  Then I heard the dead line on the other end. I listened for a moment, and considered calling her back, but there was no point. I’d said what I had to say. I’d planted the seed. It was only a matter of time before Debra realized she had been under the thumb of a murderer or, best-case scenario, the progenitor of a murderer. I downed the rest of my wine, went into the dayroom and sat on the chaise lounge, saying to Truman, I will find who did this to you, Tru! You mustn’t worry. No one will get away with this! And, when I do, you may come back safely to your home and your room and your private and lovely world.

  Carly

  Seven months before Truman’s death

  Logan Marsh was the richest kid in our school—and there were a lot of rich kids, which was unusual for a public school. But our high school was ranked one of the best in the state and, because this is New Jersey, in the nation. Truman might’ve been the second richest, but Logan was definitely the richest. My father, who’d known Logan’s dad for a long time, told me Logan’s dad had inherited money from a number of different relatives. You couldn’t even count the number of businesses they owned, including, oddly enough, Jack Frost Sugar. Anyway, the parents spent a lot of time in Europe when they weren’t in the house on the Upper East Side. But Logan’s a good kid—or at least I thought he was before the time he and Truman and I smoked together one afternoon at his parents’ house.

  Logan was just about to head to Columbia for his first week of classes and he’d invited Truman over to swim. It just so happened that Truman had come over to my place when he got the call on his cell from Logan and so he asked me if I’d like to go.

  “I don’t know, Truman,” I said.

  I actually just wanted to stay home and do some reading, maybe spend some time with my mom, which I normally never did.

  Truman put
his hand in his jeans pocket and came out with a baggie full of grass.

  “Are you sure?” he said smiling.

  He knew I loved smoking weed with him, even when other people were around. It was one of the few things we still shared together.

  “Who else is there?” I said.

  “No one,” he said. “You can drive me over, and after we’ll go swimming. Logan hates to swim so it’ll just be the two of us.”

  Even with the prospect of getting high with Truman I was reluctant to go—I really did miss my mom—but the idea of swimming alone with Truman erased everything else. I wondered if he just wanted a ride from me but then I realized he had come to say hello in the first place, and in the second place Truman wasn’t like that. He didn’t use people, ever. I think that was part of the reason he hated Tommy. In fact, I know it was.

  Logan’s house is unbelievable. I think it has like ten bedrooms, and they have a full-time maid and a full-time chef who travels with them when they’re in Paris or in the city. They have a lot of property because Logan’s mother has dressage horses—one of which was in the Beijing Olympics, I think. I know Logan took riding lessons when he was a kid, but he’d told Truman and me this really funny story about getting thrown from a horse and never getting back on one again.

  He had galloped the horse to a small fence his instructor insisted they jump, and just before the horse was to go over it stopped dead in its tracks. Logan had been leaning forward and he went headfirst into the air and landed on his shoulder joint. He said since then he didn’t even like entering the barn.

  “I shit myself and no fucking horse is ever going to make me do that again.”

  Logan’s mother wanted him to go to Phillips Exeter in New Hampshire for high school, but he’d refused and his father had backed him on his decision. I think that’s what I liked about Logan most. He was always saying these really self-effacing things and didn’t care who the listener was. I have a feeling that comes along with being really wealthy. I guess when you’re that rich anyone who might judge you doesn’t matter. You can always go back to your money and your houses and your servants.

  Truman was that way too, only with Truman he didn’t care what people thought because, well, he didn’t care. Logan envied him and liked him at the same time. They had some things in common: They were both very smart, they both came from money, they were both private and they were both gay. I’d never considered Logan’s homosexuality until that day, never thought of him except as this really rich kid that Truman sometimes hung with. Never until then.

  The few times I’d been with Truman and Logan at Logan’s house and we’d smoked, we’d always smoked in the pool house. House is appropriate in this case. It was like a house, with a kitchen and a living room, some guest rooms and of course changing rooms with tons of towels and robes and whatever else you could need. There was also a sauna, a steam room and a billiards room equipped with a bar. Logan always said it was a perfect place to smoke because there was only one entrance: French doors with plenty of windows leading out to the pool and beyond to the main house.

  I could tell when we got there that Logan was not happy to see me. I mean, he wasn’t rude or anything, but I could see by his expression he didn’t want me there. Truman had the weed though, and I guess that kept him from being blatant, which I’d seen him be with other people.

  Truman liked to buy cheap cigars and role the tobacco out of them so he could make a really fat blunt. Like everything in Truman’s life, smoking weed was done in a complicated manner. Truman would buy a Dutch Master cigar, then wet the outside leaf, which wrapped around another, harder shell. He’d unwrap the leaf, take a razor and evenly make a slit down the center of the next layer, remove the cigar tobacco and replace it with grass, and then carefully rewrap the blunt with the original damp leaf. I loved watching him do this, partly because it was a nice anticipation to a high, and partly because Truman had such beautiful hands and he could use them to do such precise things, including, at times, touching me.

  The grass was powerful and it only took me a few hits to go where I wanted to go. Logan, when it was his turn to take a hit, kept nudging me hard in the ribs to offer me my turn. Each time I shook my head and he passed it back to Truman. I have a really potent ability to sense emotion when I’m high, and I could tell that Logan’s insistence with his elbow was a way of telling me I wasn’t wanted. He completely concentrated on Truman, on his words and moments of giggling, and only noticed me when he gave me a prod in the gut. Truman didn’t seem to notice this subtle harassment, but then Truman was very stoned.

  But finally, after about the fourth hard strike, I said, “What the fuck, Logan? I don’t want anymore and quit hurting me.”

  Logan shrugged his shoulders, took another long hit and handed it back to Truman, but Truman was looking at me.

  “What?” he said.

  “Nothing, Truman, I just don’t want any more grass.”

  “What about hurting?” he asked, his eyes completely red and glazed over.

  I knew Logan would leave it at that. He’d made his point clear, and I didn’t want to go through a long explanation with Truman. I was pretty high and at that moment I didn’t much care.

  “She’s just being a bitch,” Logan said, blowing laugh and smoke out of his nose.

  “Fuck you, Logan,” I said.

  I was the one facing the glass doors leading out to the pool, but I was too much in a cloud to have noticed someone coming down the walk, so when this guy opened the door and entered I nearly jumped out of my chair.

  “Logan,” the guy said, his voice impatient. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  He was wearing a bathing suit and no shirt. He had long stringy brown hair and black horn-rimmed glasses. I could see he was trying to grow a beard, but it only grew in spots and even there it was too fair to really look serious. He had big ears, but he also had full lips and a nice chin. He was tall and thin and stood straight. He had a nice presence. Logan didn’t turn at first, and then the kid looked beyond him and saw Truman. His face opened up with a really nice, broad smile. Sometimes when people smile when I’m stoned they take on a sinister expression—some paranoid shit I guess—but the smile on this kid was sweet.

  “Truman!” he said, nearly shouting the word. The kid looked back at Logan. “You didn’t tell me Truman was coming.”

  Truman looked up and smiled back at him. It was the kind of smile that for a moment sent a jealous nerve through my body.

  There are some kids you can tell, even if they aren’t very attractive, come from money. I could tell this kid did. Maybe it was his perfect teeth or the way he smiled or stood or the way he spoke to Logan or maybe it was all of those things, but I could tell this kid was rich.

  Truman tried to get up out of his chair, but the kid put his hand out.

  “Chill,” he said. He looked at me and smiled. “I’m Rog.”

  I could stand, as stoned as I was, and I did.

  “Carly,” I said. I put out my hand and he came to me and took mine in his. It was soft and very warm.

  “Wow,” he said. He turned to Truman. “You are fucking right, Tru. Model material.”

  I heard Logan smirk.

  “Jesus,” he said. “Spare me.”

  I looked over and saw Truman had stood and was walking toward Rog. He put his arms out and they hugged. Truman kissed him on the cheek.

  “Jesus,” Logan said again, now standing. He had the blunt in his hand and offered it to Rog, who was now facing me again.

  Rog shook his head. “No.”

  He looked at me again and smiled, this time squinting his eyes as if he were about to paint me. “My God, you are beautiful, girl. Where have you been all my life?”

  I was so stoned and so relieved to finally feel the warmth from this guy I could’ve fallen into his arms, but I also knew, immediately, that he was gay.

  Truman put his arm around Rog’s shoulder and looked at me.

  “Didn’t I tell you?
She’s my best friend, and she’s beautiful.”

  “Yeah, okay, Truman,” Logan sneered. “Have some more weed.”

  Rog ducked out from under Truman’s arm and stepped back from him.

  “Wait a minute,” Truman said. “Wait just one fucking minute.”

  Truman looked at me as if he were making some assessment…or it could have been he was just so fucking stoned. I couldn’t really tell. Finally he shrugged and moved over to me, turning so he was standing alongside me. He put his arm around my waist.

  “So you’re the famous Carly,” Rog said. “You’re all Truman talks about. I should be jealous.”

  “Oh, my God!” Logan shouted. We all turned toward him. He was holding the blunt in his hand and was staring angrily at Rog. “Does anyone want any more of this, because if you don’t, I’m for chucking it.”

  Truman took his arm from around my waist, walked over to Logan and took the weed out of his hand. He went to the glass coffee table, stubbed it out in an ashtray, blew on it to make sure it was cool enough and then put it in his jeans pocket. He looked at Logan.

  “No one wants any. I thought you knew that.”

  “How the fuck would I know anything?” He nodded toward me. “I mean, talk about acting like two sick dudes. What the fuck?”

  Rog ignored them and walked over to me. He leaned into my face and whispered, “Don’t mind him. He’s in love with Tru and he knows that you and I are further up on the pecking order.”

  I laughed, again with a kind of relief. I could tell Logan was very angry and most of it was directed toward me, or at least that’s what I thought.

  “I’m Roger Claus,” Rog said, still whispering. “I think Truman loves you.”

  “Please don’t say that,” I said, not knowing what else to say.