Reunion at Red Paint Bay

by George Harrar

  Simon grabbed Paul’s arms. “Stop saying that! I didn’t do that.”

  “That?”

  There was no communicating with this man, no use trying to reason with him. The only thing to do was get away from him as quickly as possible. “Look,” Simon said, “did you bring me out here just to make a point, or do you intend to do something?”

  “What I’ll do I’ll do,” Paul said. “You’ll know then. And so will I.”

  “That sounds like a threat. There are laws against threatening people.”

  “There are laws against a lot of things. That doesn’t stop them from happening, does it?”

  Simon couldn’t disagree. “What do you want me to say, that I’m sorry what happened upset her? I am sorry. Okay?” He listened to his words, an apology on the fly, and knew it wouldn’t be enough.

  “Upset her?” Paul said. “You think being raped upset her?”

  Simon looked out over the water for a moment, as if they were having a casual conversation and he could be distracted. “Substitute whatever word you want—devastated, shattered her. Teenagers have sex all the time and it doesn’t ruin their lives.”

  When he looked back Paul was still staring, his eyes fixed on him. “Jean didn’t have sex all the time. She was a virgin.”

  “I knew that,” Simon said. “She told me when we were talking about doing it.”

  “You talked to her about raping her?”

  “We talked about having sex, Paulie. It was my first time, too.”

  “But you got the chance to decide when to do it. She didn’t. She was a sixteen-year-old virgin.”

  The number jumped out at Simon—sixteen? That couldn’t be right. “No, she was just a year behind me, so she had to be at least—”

  “Just turned sixteen,” Paul said firmly. “She skipped a grade before she moved to Red Paint. She was a barely sixteen-year-old junior who thought it was wonderful to be asked out by a senior, the captain of the wrestling team, from one of the best families in town.”

  “I thought she was seventeen.”

  “So seventeen, you wouldn’t have raped her?”

  “Shut the hell up!” Simon felt the anger coursing through his veins, massing for some action.

  “There are laws against an eighteen-year-old having sex with a sixteen-year-old,” Paul said. “It’s called statutory rape. So that means it was one kind of rape or another. And you got away with both. That’s a neat trick.”

  Rape. Statutory rape. One or the other. “It wasn’t any trick,” Simon said. “I told you, she never went to the police. She didn’t even tell her cousin anything had happened.”

  “Jean kept quiet because you threatened her. She was scared.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I didn’t threaten her.”

  “You kept calling her.”

  “She was my date for graduation. I liked her. I called to find out why she wouldn’t see me. When she told me I apologized—”

  “You apologized for raping her?”

  “Stop saying that—I didn’t rape her.”

  “What do you call having sex with a person who doesn’t want it?”

  Simon threw up his hands, unable to fathom what else to say. “What do you want from me, that I go to jail for something that happened twenty-five years ago? You think you can start this whole thing up again and testify for her in court?”

  “There’s only one kind of justice I’m interested in—for you to tell the truth.”

  Simon felt better—Paul wasn’t trying to get him arrested. All he wanted was the truth. That sounded simple enough. “I already told you what happened. We had sex, that’s all.”

  “You were drunk, and you still think you know exactly what you did?”

  “I know what I thought I was doing.”

  “That’s not the same, is it?”

  “You’re talking as if this happened last week. I don’t remember every little detail of what happened.”

  “Jean did, the liquor on your tongue when you kissed her. The sweat on your face. She remembered how heavy you were on her, how she couldn’t open her mouth to take a breath. You smothered the words in her.”

  Simon remembered the way she wriggled and bucked under him, and her nails clawing down his back. For days he twisted his head over his shoulder to look in the mirror, see the long red marks of her fingernails on his shoulders. It was obvious she wanted him. He even showed Brewer. It didn’t even feel like bragging then. “Look Paulie, Paul, whoever you are now, you better get yourself some serious help, because you’ve gone over the edge.”

  “I am getting help,” Paul said quietly, “from a therapist right here in Red Paint. Therapists can be very understanding, especially the women. So perceptive, so hands on. I just came from seeing one, in fact. But we had a little falling out, you could say. She thinks she knows what rape is all about, but I didn’t think she really did.”

  Simon grabbed Paul by the arms, held him there, inches from the water. “If you touched my wife I’ll kill you.”

  Paul went limp in his grip, no tension at all, like a body without any life left in it. “I’ll kill you? That’s what any husband would say. You can do better than that.”

  Simon let go with a little shove, and Paul laughed at him. The smirking face, the accusation, or maybe it was the silly mustache, but Simon jumped on him, rode him to the dock. Then what? What do you do to a person who doesn’t resist?

  “This is how you like it,” Paul said, breathing up into Simon’s face, “being on top. You always have to be on top.”

  Simon sat back, like a boy in a schoolyard fight, the victor who isn’t sure what he won. He got up carefully, wary of any sudden move to knock his legs out, spill him into the water. When he was clear he pulled out his cell phone and called Amy’s number, watching as Paul rose to his knees, then his feet. “She better answer.” The phone rang, and rang again. Then the recorded message. “Amy, where are you?” he said. “Call me if you’re there, call me right away!” He turned on Paul. “Where is she?”

  Paul shrugged. “You’re lucky to have a beautiful wife like that.”

  Simon’s memory triggered back to the Hall of Mirrors … You’re lucky to have a beautiful boy like that. This man, Paul Walker, had been stalking Amy and Davey. Simon felt his fingers gather into a fist. The fist rose up and swung. Paul had to see it coming, but he didn’t duck, even seemed to lean a little to catch the full weight of the punch to his face. The force of it sent him stumbling backward, over the edge. He hit the water, sending up a wave that drenched the dock, and went under. Simon watched the spot. A head started to break the water, then sank again. He began counting … one, two, three, and by ten it seemed like an eternity had gone by. Why wasn’t Paul surfacing? One punch couldn’t have knocked him out. Simon looked over the opposite side of the dock, and then the far end, checking if Paul was holding on there. Twenty, twenty-one—how long could a man hold his breath underwater? Maybe he hit his head on a rock below the surface. That would explain the blunt trauma to his face. No one would suspect a punch. Simon rubbed his right fist down his shirt—no mark there, no blood on his knuckles, nothing incriminating. What was he talking about, covering up a murder? Thirty, thirty-one …

  The head bobbed up, the mouth spit water and gasped for air. Paul Walker was just a few yards from the dock, within reach of it almost, just a couple strokes away. His arms swatted at the water and then reached up toward Simon. He’s drowning. The thought of this was surprisingly reassuring—his accuser drowning, the man who was threatening his family drowning. Simon turned, looked toward the inn, the small parking lot, and around the bay, 360 degrees. Not a soul in sight. Paul’s hands were grabbing at the water now, yet his expression didn’t show any fear or distress. Was this what he wanted, to die? Would he be giving the man his wish?

  The cell phone rang, da-da-da-da, the tone growing louder as he fumbled to pull it from his pocket. Amy.

  “Simon,” she said, “what’s going on? Your message scare
d me.”

  “You all right?”

  “I had a little problem earlier, but it’s over with. What’s happening with you?”

  “Nothing,” he said, watching Paul in the water. “I just was wondering where you were.”

  “I’m at the office, but I need to talk to you.”

  The head went under again, creating a little depression of water above it, then sank out of sight.

  “Yeah, okay, but you’re breaking up. I’ll meet you at home later. I love you.” He pressed OFF and stared into the water. It was remarkably smooth, like a sheet of dark green paper, barely a ripple of disturbance.

  After some time, he couldn’t say how long, Simon dove in himself.

  He entered by the back door and hurried dripping over the kitchen floor to the laundry room. He unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it in the dryer. Then he undid the belt to his pants, let them fall to the floor, and stepped out of them.

  “Hey, Dad, what’re you doing?”

  Simon whirled about and pulled his pants in front of himself, then felt self-conscious doing that. He had always tried to be easy about his nakedness in front of his son, and besides, he was still wearing boxers. He tossed the pants into the machine. “I’m just drying some clothes, Davey. They got wet.”

  The boy pointed at his father. “You’re hairy.”

  “That happens as you grow older. You’ll get hair on your chest, too, in a few years.”

  “No I won’t. I’ll pull every hair out.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  Davey stepped into the laundry room and boosted himself onto the washer. “How did you get so wet?”

  Simon spun the dial to twenty minutes and pulled out the knob. The old dryer rattled on. “Well, I was drinking soda coming home and had to stop fast. The drink spilled all over me.” The lie came easily to him, no thought needed. He just opened his mouth and there it was.

  “It must have been a really huge soda.”

  “It was, from Burger World.”

  Davey reached out and poked his arm. “You shouldn’t drink and drive, Dad. You could be arrested for that.”

  “I think I’d get off easy since it was Sprite. But you’re right, I shouldn’t be drinking anything. Both hands on the wheel.” Simon saw his son’s eyes drift downward toward his wet, clinging boxers. He grabbed a towel from the pile on the washer and began drying himself. “Let’s not tell Mom about this, okay kiddo? I don’t want her to worry about my getting in an accident.”

  “You mean you don’t want her yelling at you?”

  “She doesn’t yell, she lectures.”

  “Okay, I won’t tell.” Davey leaned back on the washer, as if getting comfortable in a familiar chair. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  “Then you wouldn’t have to tell her about me and Kenny, would you?”

  “Kenny and me. What’d you two do this time?’

  “His mom caught us playing mumblety-peg.”

  “Mumblety-peg?”

  “We weren’t throwing at ourselves, we were just tossing his jackknife at his sister’s teddy bear. If you hit him you lose.”

  “What is it with you and knives all of a sudden?”

  “You played mumblety-peg when you were a kid, didn’t you?”

  Simon debated his answer. “A couple times, I guess.”

  “So you know, knives are cool.”

  “They aren’t so cool when they cut you. If you don’t stop playing with them I’m going to ground you for a month or however long it takes to get your attention.” The boy struck the washer with his heels in a rhythm, one two, one two. Simon grabbed the legs to silence them. “Are you listening to me?”

  “So we have a deal?”

  It was the wrong thing to do, bargain with your kid over playing with knives. No parent in his right mind would do it. Perhaps he wasn’t in his right mind, temporary insanity taking over, or more precisely, situational insanity. But how many times could he claim that? “Okay,” he said, “this once, so as not to upset Mom, we’ll keep our secrets.”

  The boy spit on his hand and held it out. “Seal it.”

  “I’m not spitting on my hand, Davey.”

  “Then the deal can be broken.”

  Simon lifted his hand in front of his mouth and made a spitting sound. The boy clenched their palms together, then turned them, grinding them together. Simon had forgotten this intimate adolescent ritual, how binding it really felt.

  “Now we can never tell,” Davey said. “Ever.”

  He heard her calling his name from the front door, then the pounding of her shoes as she ran up the stairs. He always found the heaviness of her step too insistent, unable to be ignored. He had hoped to be ready for her, to know what he was going to say, but here he was coming out of the bathroom with just shorts on, toweling off his head, no clue whether to tell the truth or lie. Either one had its dangers.

  “Simon, are you okay?”

  “Sure,” he said brightly, leaning forward for their usual kiss. “Why?”

  She looked at him with a disconcerted expression, thrown off by his nonchalance, or something else. “Did you just take a shower?”

  “I did.”

  “You always take your shower in the morning before work.”

  He tossed the towel into the clothes hamper in the hallway. “You’ll have to amend your assumptions about me,” he said, with a little teasing in his voice, “because as you can see, today I showered after work.”

  She reached into the hamper, pulled out the towel, and took it to the bathroom. He could see her draping it over the shower rod. That was a good sign, her caring about a wet towel. She ran water and splashed it on her face, then stared at herself in the mirror. He turned away, into their bedroom.

  She came in moments later and sat on the edge of the bed. “You scared me with your call,” she said. “I thought something happened to you or Davey or … I don’t know.” She pulled off her shoes. “Where is he?”

  “Out back,” Simon said. “I saw him when I came in. He’s fine. We’re both fine.”

  “You hung up so fast, and when I called back I got your message.”

  “Yeah, like I told you, it was bad reception.” He opened a dresser drawer and pulled out a black T-shirt.

  “I had a scare today at the office,” she said.

  He pulled the shirt over his head, and it shrouded his eyes and ears, the world disappeared from his perception just for a moment. Then he picked up his hairbrush. In the dresser mirror he could see her behind him, watching as if there was some deep significance to his every move. He wondered how a man brushing his hair would look an hour after killing someone. What would give him away? “What kind of scare?” he said and set the brush on his bureau.

  “The new patient I told you about, he wouldn’t let me leave my office.”

  Simon felt a shiver of fear sweep over him, the same as he’d felt on the dock. Amy, trapped in her office by an insane man. She could have been assaulted or killed, and he would have been powerless to stop it. In fact he would have been the cause, bringing this lunatic upon them. He went to her, bent over her on the bed, surrounded her in his arms. She seemed smaller to him, some of the life let out of her, not the Amy he was used to. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish I could have done something.”

  She made a slight wriggling motion, and he let her break free. “What could you have done?”

  “I don’t know. I just always think I should protect you.” He looked out of the window and saw the tree house, wedged in the branching arms of the white pine, with the rope ladder dangling to the ground. The place where Davey took refuge when the stranger lingered at the front door.

  “He never actually touched me,” Amy said, “he just wouldn’t get out of my way.”

  This was a usable fact—Paul holding her against her will, with who knows what intent? He could incorporate this into his story line, if one were ever needed … He said he had just been with my wife in her office and implied
he had done something to her … No, he didn’t say exactly what. I imagined the worst.

  “So,” Amy said, “I called the police.”

  Simon turned around faster than he should have. He would have to control his reactions better, not betray what was going through his mind. “Did you have to get them involved?”

  “He said you wouldn’t want me to.”

  “What?”

  “My patient, Paul, he said you wouldn’t like it if I called the police and he told his story to them.”

  His story—what would that be exactly? “I didn’t say I didn’t like you calling the police. I just asked if it was necessary.”

  “He didn’t talk to them,” she said, “if that’s what you’re worried about. He just turned around all of a sudden and left.”

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  She looked at him curiously, still sitting on the bed, her hands in her lap, doing nothing but observing him. He realized now that it was a suspicious question. It was more difficult than he supposed to know beforehand whether a question sounded suspicious or not.

  “No, he just strolled out the door like any other patient. I called back to 911 and told them there was no need to send someone, but they still had to.”

  Simon got down on his knees and pulled sandals from under the bed, reaching far under to retrieve the pair. When he stood up again he said, “You’re not going to see him again, right?” He felt dishonest asking this, knowing what he knew. Of course she wouldn’t be seeing him again. He realized at this moment that he wasn’t going to tell her about meeting Paul, punching him, and watching him sink into the murky bay. She didn’t need to know.

  “Of course I won’t see him again. He said he was leaving Red Paint anyway.” Amy stared at Simon for a moment, an uncomfortable silence, as he strapped on his sandals. “He did say something very disturbing. Maybe he was just trying to shock me, I don’t know, but we have to talk about it.”

  Simon moved toward the window again to slow down the momentum of this conversation. He saw Davey in the yard now, at the base of the tree house, gouging at the trunk with something in his hand. It had to be a knife. Even under threat of perpetual grounding, there he was in plain view carving into a tree.