The Whole Golden World

by Kristina Riggle

  Dinah thought she might be sick.

  He was scoring points with Morgan, though. She nodded, leaning forward now, slightly. Henry folded his arms, leaned back in his chair. “That’s not the point, though, and that’s what no one has taken time to explain to you. For that I apologize. It’s our failing.”

  A teenager likes nothing better than an adult who eats crow in front of them. Morgan was loving this. Dinah wondered if TJ made her feel that way, too: adult, mature. But didn’t Dinah? Hadn’t Dinah in fact treated her too much like an adult, in the end?

  Henry continued, “This is about a teacher who behaved inappropriately and failed in his duty to keep his student relationships solely in the professional realm. You are an unusual case, Morgan, in how sophisticated and mature you are. This is not the first case of this I’ve run across in my career, you know. Most times, the girls are in thrall, and being manipulated, and once the spell is broken, they feel the full damage of a relationship that’s inherently unequal. You believe you are TJ Hill’s equal, and in many ways you are, and in fact far superior. But he”—at this Henry thumped his desk with his index finger—“did not treat this as a relationship between two equal adults. He treated you as a side project. A girl who would run to his beck and call, have sex when it was convenient, to be put aside at will. What kind of representative of the people would I be if I stood by and let that behavior stand? If I said, ‘Well, but Morgan Monetti is so mature, I’m sure it was just fine.’ I can’t do that and I won’t. We’re not trying to convict him of murder and lock him away for life. We want to hold him accountable for what he actually did, and only that. Because right now, he’s lying, Morgan. This man whom you want to think treated you with respect is now saying you are lovesick and crazy and made it all up.”

  Dinah realized with a burst of dizziness that she’d been holding her breath. Morgan seemed to be trembling in her seat. She could almost hear her daughter’s defensive shell crack. Dinah gripped her chair arms to stop herself from jumping up and down to say, Yes, exactly, that’s what I’ve been saying all along!

  Morgan had been looking down at her lap. Dinah watched her daughter take two slow breaths. In, out. Then she looked up at Henry, her eyes slitted and her chin jutted forward. “He’s only doing what he has to because of what you all are putting us through. Why don’t you let TJ plead, if it’s just about ‘accountability’? Offer his lawyer something light that keeps him out of jail, then, if that’s all you care about? Nuh-uh, this is about trying to persecute him because you’re all hysterical prudes who really do think I’m a child. You almost had me going there, Mr. Prosecutor. Well done, did you rehearse in front of a mirror?”

  Dinah began, “Morgan . . .” but could think of nothing helpful to say.

  “I’ll be in the car. Don’t forget, Mom: July 11.”

  Her eighteenth birthday.

  Morgan swept out of the room, and Dinah felt cold in her wake.

  At dinner, Morgan snatched up her plate and took it to her doorless room, ignoring Joe’s demand that she rejoin the family. He muttered that her behavior was unacceptable until Dinah snapped, “So what are you going to punish her with? We’re pretty much down to taking her behind the woodshed by this point.”

  In her head, banging like a gong, Dinah heard, July 11 . . . 11 . . . 11 . . .

  The trial would probably be over by then. Henry thought they’d get a date in early June. “Just in time for graduation,” Dinah had muttered. On her eighteenth birthday, Morgan could pack a bag, get on a bus, and vanish, and there wouldn’t be a damn thing anyone could do about it.

  She had to do something, and something big, soon. Or no matter what happened to TJ Hill, Morgan was as good as gone.

  40

  Rain hated Free Class Week.

  Beverly loved the people cramming the Namaste Yoga Center, buying trinkets and cutesy T-shirts with clever sayings; she loved the boost in class enrollment that always followed. She served free tea and cookies baked with organic ingredients and talked chakras to anyone who would listen.

  But to Rain, it meant that many more bodies crammed into the studio, extra sweaty feet all over the store mats for public use, and a spike in nervous giggling about any reference to pressing the pubic bone to the floor in cobra pose.

  And this time, this particular early May week, she felt sure that she’d get gawkers. People who’d figured out that “the teacher’s wife” worked there. Her pregnancy was undeniable now in her yoga clothes, which she’d had to order special over the Internet. This should have been beautiful. She used to fantasize about it, in fact, what she’d look like with a graceful arch of belly. Used to be that she couldn’t wait for stretch marks.

  But now her baby would end up the object of gossip: Did you hear his wife is PREGNANT? They’d text each other, and type OMG.

  When Rain walked into the full class, it was as bad as she feared. The room quieted as she strode in. Some of them were nakedly gawking. She’d put on a baggy sweatshirt on top of her yoga leotard, though she knew it would get in her way and overheat her, trying to keep her baby out of the rumor mill as long as possible. Even a sweatshirt wouldn’t work for much longer.

  Her mother had said on the phone last night, “Well, fuck them, then,” but then that was her advice for all Rain’s problems. Fuck everybody. Well, isn’t that what got them into this mess? Rain arranged herself in a seated position on her mat, rooting down into the floor, reaching the top crown of her head up to the sky. That’s how she always thought of it, extending toward the sky, not the ceiling. The sky was always there, anyway, and seemed a much better thing to reach for. Her neck stretched long and she sighed, grateful for the extra space in her spine.

  As she began her unjjayi breathing to settle herself for class, she remembered hissing into the phone to her mother, who’d insisted she just give up and move back home, “It’s not that simple.” Leave TJ? Let him go to jail? Going through labor without TJ by her side? No matter what else he’d done, this baby was part of him, too. This baby that they’d hoped, prayed, and tried so hard to bring into the world, together.

  God help her, she was planning to lie on the stand if she had to. She just couldn’t abide him going away. Not now. The future would have to take care of itself.

  She raised her voice above the chatter and slipped a serene smile into place. “Good morning,” she began, “and welcome to all the new faces . . .”

  When she spotted one person slip in and linger awkwardly, as the rest of the class trooped out, Rain thought nothing of it. This often happened during Free Class Week. Someone would be curious about yoga and feel the need to pepper her with questions. Often, Rain could send the person off to Beverly, who was better equipped to answer earnestly about the benefits to the lymphatic system and blood flow to vital organs.

  Rain had forgotten to tell the new students to wipe down the store’s public-use mats, so she set about with the spray bottle and towel to do the job herself. The chemical sting of the cleaner clashed with the smoldering incense cone still going in the burner next to her. She would usually light one at the end, for savasana, if only to drown out the sweat smell.

  Yoga might be graceful, but twenty-five straining, stretching, barefoot bodies in a warm room for an hour did not smell pretty.

  Rain found herself distracted by the lake outside. Usually she had her back to it, leading the class, and if she were walking through the room helping adjust postures, she was concentrating on the students. It was as glassy as a polished stone, unruffled. It seemed to be waiting and serene, knowing that no disturbance was so great that the water wouldn’t again settle against its edges, achieving perfection of a level surface only possible in nature.

  Rain shook her head. Now she was envying a lake. Good God.

  Finally, the woman approached, as Rain wiped her third mat, crouched with her knees up around her belly, which was still shrouded—she hoped—behind her big gray sweatshirt.

  She cleared her throat, and Rain looked up,
attempting her serene smile again. “Hello.” The woman looked to be in her forties, but trying to seem younger. Long dark hair, recently highlighted, fell in chunky layers. But more than that, this woman looked so nervous Rain wondered briefly if she were going to throw up.

  Rain dearly hoped she wasn’t one of those types who thought a yoga teacher was a therapist.

  “I hope I can talk to you,” she began. Her voice sounded slightly raspy and deeper than Rain would have thought. “I hope you will listen, for just a few minutes, before you react.”

  Rain stopped wiping, stilled now with the towel in her hand. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Dinah Monetti.” A pause while Rain’s mind scrambled like radio static. “Morgan’s mother.”

  Rain was crouched, so the best she could do was crab-walk away, toward the glass wall that faced the lake. She shot a look toward the class door, on the other side of the room. It was closed, and they were alone.

  Dinah dropped down to sit. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m not going to hurt you, goodness.”

  “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “I know.”

  “You could get arrested or something. Witness tampering. Intimidation.”

  “I’m not trying to intimidate. But, yes, I know I could get in trouble. I’m desperate.”

  “What are you so desperate about?”

  “My daughter.”

  “I don’t want to talk about her.”

  Rain had her back pressed up against the glass. The morning was cool outside, and the smooth glass felt steadying. She sat cross-legged and resigned herself to Dinah’s presence. She’d throw her out soon, or just leave herself. Dinah did not seem to be physically threatening, though her presence sent waves of adrenaline crashing through Rain’s system, even so.

  “I know you don’t. Look, she thinks she’s in love.”

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “I’m going to lose her. She hates all of us for interrupting her . . . romance. She’s all but announced her plans to run away the day she turns eighteen. I may lose her forever. She could get hurt out there; she’s not as mature as she thinks she is.”

  “Why are you telling me this? And why should I care? Forgive me, but your family has played quite a large role in ruining my life.”

  “As yours has done to ours.”

  Rain stood up. If this nutcase followed her, she’d call the police, or she’d call Alex. She wasn’t sure how exactly, but their lawyer would have a field day with this incident.

  Dinah stood, too, and suddenly her face crumpled, anguished. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that . . . I blurt things out without thinking; it’s my biggest fault. If I can convince my daughter he didn’t love her, I can get her back. I can help her see this for what it was . . . I can get her back. It’s danger she’s in, maybe not literally, as if she’s hanging off a cliff, but she might as well be. If she runs away, someone is going to zero in on how vulnerable she is and . . . She’ll be prey. Again.”

  “So my husband is a predator.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what went on . . .”

  Rain knew she was lying. That’s exactly what she thought.

  “I don’t know what you think I can do. You are nuts to come here, and if you don’t get out in ten seconds, I’m calling the police and our lawyer and telling them you’re trying to intimidate me.”

  “She’s confused. My daughter is lost, and, and . . .”

  And then the lady fell apart. Shaking and pale, she folded down on the floor, curling up like she’d gone catatonic. She was muttering to herself something Rain couldn’t hear.

  And just like that, Rain was in her place, for just a moment, and the compassion rushed through her as quickly as the adrenaline had.

  “Okay. I won’t call the police. I won’t tell the lawyer you showed up. But you really have to get out of here. We can’t be seen talking, and I can’t help you, anyway.”

  Dinah sat back, cross-legged, and held her forehead in her hand. She said, in the voice of someone living through the despair of an idea that only sounded good in her head, “I wanted you to tell her that your husband loves you.”

  Rain laughed, looking up at the ceiling. Definitely ceiling, not sky. “Yeah, that would work out perfectly.”

  “I guess I thought, if she could see you, if you were real to her, and not just some story he told about a cold, loveless marriage . . .”

  Rain drew back. “That’s what he said?”

  “That’s what she told me. That you’d withdrawn from him and stopped loving him because you couldn’t have a baby. Don’t hate me, I’m just repeating what she told me.”

  Rain stepped back again, almost touching the wall, looking down on Dinah still folded up on the floor. “Don’t hate you? You come here, to my place of work, stalk me, really, to accost me and demand that I explain to your daughter—who slept with my husband multiple times—that he really loves me, and not her. You’re crazy.”

  “Not the first time I’ve been told so.”

  “Leave. Right now before I change my mind about calling the police. Don’t ever contact me again.”

  The lady followed a winding, nearly drunken path to the door, almost crashing into the next free class people. One or two of them looked at her a little too long, and Rain prayed that none of them would recognize her.

  Rain encountered TJ at home, and he rushed to her with a hug and offered to draw her a bath. His hair was wet from the shower, and Rain remembered the day she’d come home unexpectedly to find him behaving oddly, freshly showered at a strange time.

  She nodded numbly to the offer of a bath.

  TJ kept asking if she was okay. She nodded and pointed to her throat as if it were sore. “Talking too much,” she said. And he made her tea.

  Slipping into the bath, under the bubbles, Rain pictured the girl in her home, in her bed, maybe even in this tub. A wave of nausea rolled through her.

  She imagined TJ raking his hands through his hair—his classic gesture of distress—as he confided in the girl, this child, about their infertility. Using the deepest pain of their marriage like a gambit.

  The mother could be lying, of course.

  But why would she? In fact, that was incredibly foolish of her to show up there. Rain felt sure if she told Alexandra about this, they could get the mother in some serious trouble. If the mother was stalking her, that wouldn’t exactly look good for the prosecution’s case. It would make the whole family seem deranged and unstable.

  Rain rubbed soap bubbles across her itchy belly, which despite everything, made her smile. The baby would be born not caring about any of this. The baby would just love her; the baby would be ignorant of anything but love, and brief hunger, maybe. Sleepiness. Messy diapers. This was the simple world of newborns.

  But the baby would grow into a kid, and maybe not be perfect. TJ had seen enough imperfect kids struggling through his classes. Kids with learning disorders and physical deformities. Kids whose parents died of cancer, who resorted to cutting themselves to cope. Kids who grappled with depression, even in the bloom of youth. A musician honor student who thought it was just fine to sleep with her teacher.

  Even though she’d resigned herself that somehow, improbably, TJ had actually had an affair with a student, in her mind this girl was a beautiful temptress. A siren. In fact, Rain had given in one day to a sick curiosity and looked up her picture online, finding it in an old news story about some music competition, and her beauty had almost knocked Rain out of her chair. Not to mention the long, dark hair worn much the same way Rain herself wore it now—straight, side-parted, no bangs.

  It’s easy to hate beautiful girls, and so she did. TJ was going through something, and the girl saw a chink in his armor and charmed him. He was technically wrong, she would allow, but just a few calendar months was all that stood between TJ who briefly fell from grace, and TJ the sex offender. It was all a technicality.

  The baby kicked her, and she rubbed
the spot as if truly stroking her baby’s soft skin. “Shhh,” she said, soothing the baby or herself, she didn’t know.

  41

  When Dinah saw the envelope, she assumed it was another attempt from Helen Demming to buy her business. The formal, neat cursive “Dinah Monetti” on the cream-colored envelope shoved under the door at the Den was perfectly in character.

  “Bitch,” she muttered, and picked it up.

  Janine was off for the day, and so Dinah was opening the Den herself, just like when she’d first started and didn’t have enough revenue to hire much help. She could afford just enough to hire a couple of minimum-wage kids to cover the hours when the kids got home from school. She would dash home for the boys and Morgan, help them with homework, cook dinner, and usually fly back to the Den to help close, not trusting the kids who worked for her to count out the cash drawer or do a thorough enough job cleaning.

  It was usually one of the best parts of the day, back then, having sent her employees home, having the whole place all shined up and spotless, ready for the next day’s business.

  Now she had Janine, and a few shift managers she paid a little more, but the place did not belong to them, and they never could pay it the same loving attention. Crumbs would gather in the corners, tables would get sticky. It never was a dump—Dinah would have knocked heads and fired people over that—but it wasn’t the same. If only she could clone herself and have a whole Den-ful of Dinahs.

  Dinah ignored the envelope as she set up the cash drawer, accepted delivery of the pastries, and brewed the first pots of coffee. She could stand it no longer, then, and sat at the couch near the fireplace to open up Helen’s latest salvo.

  In the deliberate, even handwriting of a child just learning cursive and wanting to do it perfectly, she read the following:

  You may call me on my cell phone and we’ll talk.

  That night, for once, Dinah had not minded that Joe was out at a baseball game, cheering on the AV Tigers. She’d plied the boys with some extra TV time after they finished their homework and joined Morgan in her room.