The laptop was open with the newspaper story on it. It wouldn’t be in newsprint until the next day, but the online version had come up merely a couple of hours later. TEACHER PLEADS GUILTY TO SEX WITH STUDENT read the headline. Dinah had been both happy and queasy.
Dinah and Joe were in sweatpants in the den, each with an open beer. They clinked bottles. “To justice, at last,” Dinah said.
Joe grunted.
The TV anchor intoned an introduction to the story with the guilty plea, then said, “And there was an interesting reaction from Joe Monetti, the girl’s father, and just retired assistant principal at Arbor Valley High, where Hill had been teaching.”
The camera cut to Joe in all his raging glory, though his f-bomb was bleeped.
“Way to upstage me,” Dinah said, chuckling.
“Yeah. That had been pent up for a while.”
“You sounded like Tony Soprano.”
“I wish. He’d be in a suitcase in the woods.”
“Now, now.”
“Nah, I know. A guy can dream, eh?”
The clip of Dinah only showed her saying that she was happy with the result but not how long it took. “Sheesh. They cut out all that great material about kids growing up too fast.”
“ ’Course. It was too long for a sound bite. Now, if you’d cursed him out . . .”
The newspaper had buried her comments, too, only a few words and a clumsy paraphrase, way toward the end of the story.
Dinah stretched. “Now what? I feel like for months I’ve waited for this, and now it’s over, and I just feel . . . hollow.”
“I’m out of a job, you’re selling the Den. We’ve gotta figure out what Morgan’s gonna do next year, poor kid.”
“She got accepted everywhere she applied.”
“She wanted to go to Boston,” Joe said, his voice dreamy with memory of a time when college tuition seemed to be their only Morgan problem.
“Yeah, poor kid. Wish we could have said yes. Coped with the distance. Loans, scholarships, maybe . . .” Dinah said.
“I don’t think it would have solved everything . . .”
“Yeah, I know. Not that simple. Nothing ever is.”
Joe took a long pull of his beer and nodded solemnly.
“I have an idea, though,” Dinah said. “It’s sort of crazy.”
“Hell, crazy is the new normal. I’m all ears.”
“Wait . . .” Dinah had glanced at the laptop and hit “refresh” on the story, idly, not really thinking, when the comments section lit up with reactions. She smirked and handed Joe the laptop. Together they huddled over it, reading.
Hooray! So glad to hear that he came clean and justice was done. About time. Now we don’t have to worry about him getting his job back and preying on other students. —Avfan32
Just goes to show that a handsome face doesn’t make him a nice guy. —Bert
I hope he goes away for a long, long time. Sick bastard. —Anonymous
I don’t believe it. I think he just plead to make it go away so he can get his life back. All it takes is an accusation and you’re life is over, people. Think about it. —JJ862
JJ862: What the hell is wrong with you? The cops busted them together and she wasn’t wearing a top. That’s not innocent behavior. Maybe you like to screw young girls, too? Does it hit close to home, pal? Plus, learn to use proper grammer. It’s your, not you’re.
Joe sputtered laughter into his fist. “I love it when people correct someone’s grammar and then spell grammar wrong.”
Dinah skimmed the responses. Other than the mysterious JJ862, the comment thread was full of indignant outrage against the monstrous aggressor TJ Hill. “You know, just by sheer numbers, at least some of these people had to have been saying nasty things about Morgan before. Or they were at least silent while everyone else was.”
“Mob mentality,” Joe said through a sigh. “As old as the hills.”
“Now everyone will say they knew it all along. I’d bet the house on that.” Dinah snapped the laptop closed. “Whaddya say we get the hell out of Dodge?”
“What?” Joe rubbed his temples and yawned. “Dodge?”
“Not exactly. Arbor Valley. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
49
Don’t do this,” TJ said, tears making tracks down his face, as Rain packed a suitcase with maternity clothes only, now that her belly was too big to hide, now that it no longer mattered. “You can’t leave me now, before the sentencing, when they’ll haul me off to jail. Jail, Rain! They’re going to lock me up!”
Rain stepped past him into the bathroom and put her face cream and basic makeup into her travel case.
“Look at me!” he shouted and seized her upper arm.
Rain froze in the act of putting mascara in her bag. TJ was behind her in the mirror. She gave him a look through their reflections that made him let go abruptly, as if she’d grown too hot to the touch.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t . . . I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean any of it. I need help, something’s wrong with me.”
At this, Rain cocked an eyebrow at him through the mirror.
“It was like a spell or something,” he said. “She cast a spell . . . No, that’s not what I mean. I know, it’s my own fault. It was like I was trying to go back in time, to when things between us weren’t so complicated . . .”
Rain went back into the bedroom, put the travel case in her suitcase.
She walked into the little yoga studio, which she’d always assumed they’d turn into a nursery, her yoga practice moving to wherever she found space and time, in the nooks of her new motherhood. She crouched in a squat and the baby punched, as if objecting to the tighter space. She smiled and rolled up her mat, affixing the carrying strap.
TJ had followed her. “Maybe that doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand it either. But it was so different with her, and we never talked about fertility, or babies . . .”
Rain stood up suddenly at this and braced herself on the wall. She noticed that TJ had not moved to steady her. He was looking down, still spinning his tales.
Rain pushed past him again, back up the stairs, her calf muscles already tired from last night’s practice with Beverly, during which each woman had apologized to the other and a tentative peace had been established.
While rolling up their mats, Rain had strained that peace by announcing her intention to quit. Beverly was taken aback and at first thought Rain was resigning in a fit of pique, but Rain finally explained she was tired of faking an earnest interest in chakras. She just liked the stretching, the strength, but the rest of it was all an act for her. She’d said, “I’m tired of acting.”
Beverly had nodded and asked a version of the question TJ was asking now, “But what are you going to do?”
Upstairs again, TJ was facing away from her on the bed, face in his hands. “You’re going to stay with my brother, aren’t you? Mr. and Mrs. Perfect.” He sounded about ten years old, and Rain wondered if he realized that. Not likely, she answered herself right away.
Insight was not one of TJ’s gifts. Never had been, really. Maybe not a gift of hers, either, since it had taken her this long to figure it out.
Rain added a newly purchased journal to the suitcase. She’d decided to dedicate her journal to the baby from this day forward and to write only things the baby might want to read someday. No doubt, eventually, she would have to explain to her child whatever truth there was to tell about his father. She could already imagine herself choosing words like terrible mistake and he was not himself, phrases that she’d been hearing from TJ for days, now. But she wanted all this—however it was told—to be a pebble dropping into a pool of happy warm memories. Ripples would occur but then fade and smooth out again. This was her constant prayer, second only to the health of her baby.
Rain walked around to the bed where he now sat. She removed her ring with some difficulty; her fingers were pudgy with excess water. The band left a reddened i
mprint. She held it out to him in her fingertips.
He looked up at her, saw the ring, and choked out a sob.
Her heart folded in on itself like burning paper. Just days ago, she’d walked into a courtroom prepared to lie under oath to save him.
TJ ignored the ring in her outstretched hand and stroked the side of her belly. He pulled her into the circle of his arms and laid his head on their child.
Rain lifted her free hand to stroke his hair.
“I love you,” he said, his voice resonating through her body. She pictured their baby turning toward the sound. “I always did. I never stopped. I was just . . . I didn’t mean it, I need help . . . Please help me through this . . . You hold my fate in your hands . . .”
Rain snapped herself up rigid.
The evening after the trial recessed, TJ’s lawyer had come to the house, waving a piece of paper, sputtering with angry disbelief that TJ had ruined any hope of a favorable deal by e-mailing Morgan. When Alex smacked the paper down on the kitchen table and shouted at TJ that he could be facing charges of witness intimidation, Rain had pulled it toward herself and read the printout. “You hold my fate in your hands.”
Rain stepped back, breaking the embrace. He still would not take the ring. Rain regarded its delicate circle. She flung it across the room, where it bounced with a thin tink off the vanity mirror above the dresser.
She scooped up her suitcase and yoga mat and descended the stairs.
The suitcase was heavy, but not backbreaking, and she was feeling rather spry. In fact, Rain was grateful to be trailing the suitcase behind her, because it provided a barrier between herself and her increasingly desperate husband, whose feet were now stomping down the stairs.
“I demand to know where you’re going,” he said. “You have to tell me; I have a right to know where you’re taking my child.”
This gave Rain a chill—another glimpse into the future.
She was halfway to the door when he snatched the suitcase out of her hand. Rain hitched her purse and yoga mat higher on her shoulder and stared at him. He was panting as if he’d run a distance.
“I won’t let go of this.”
Rain shrugged and turned toward the door. Greg would pick it up for her if she asked. Hell, the cops could come get it.
He shouted, his voice wild and cracked: “I’ll kill myself! I swear, I’ll take all the pills in the house. I’ll slit my wrists. I can’t go on alone . . .” He was gripping her suitcase so hard Rain felt a flash of worry he might swing it at her.
Rain stayed near the door. She reached into her purse and removed her cell phone, dialing a number she’d used so often these last months. “Greg? This is Rain. Your brother says he’s going to kill himself. You might want to check on him. . . . No, I’m not at the house.” She raised her eyes to meet her husband’s. “I don’t live there anymore.”
She clicked off the call and dropped the phone back into her purse.
TJ, his mouth dropped open, his skin white but for red smears of flush on his cheeks, had dropped her suitcase handle. She stepped closer, picked her suitcase back up, and walked out the door.
Brock bounced with his whole little body, every ounce of him glowing with glee and joy over something as simple as peekaboo. Rain closed her eyes again, scrunching them up tight, then gasping as she flung her eyes open, eyebrows up, mouth wide. He let out a gleeful shriek, and Rain had to grip him hard under the arms so he wouldn’t fall right out of her lap.
Angie was boiling water for tea. It was Lipton decaf, not any kind of fancy tea like Beverly might give her, but Rain was grateful for the gesture toward preparing something she liked. Stone was in another kitchen chair, fiddling with his guitar, picking out chords.
Fawn exclaimed, “Oh, let me do your hair! Can I do your hair? Please?”
Her sister clasped her hands under her chin, and Rain chuckled. “Sure, why not.”
Fawn was attending cosmetology school at night. Stone, saying not a word, played the opening strains of “Beauty School Dropout” from Grease.
Rain sputtered laughter, and Stone winked. “What?” Fawn demanded, musicals never having been an interest of hers.
“Here you go!” sang out Angie. “I put an ice cube in it to cool it off for you a bit.”
Angie traded tea for Brock, swinging her grandson high over her head. Fawn had disappeared up the stairs for her supplies.
Rain wondered, while blowing on her tea, what the odd feeling was, and then named it: surprised contentment.
She’d fled this house as a teenager, going to stay with her steady, calm Gran. After college, she’d lived in dumpy apartments, then married TJ, never even once considering coming back here to live.
And yet, here she was. Dog plopped his heavy head on top of her foot. It was like wearing one giant fuzzy black slipper.
Fawn clattered down the stairs with her arms full of curling irons and rollers and hair elastics and spray, and Stone switched to thrumming the bleak chords of a horror movie sound track.
“Shut up, buttface,” Fawn retorted, but mildly, barely paying any attention, as she set about pulling a brush through Rain’s long hair.
“When was the last time you cut this mess? Your split ends have split ends.”
“My beauty regimen hasn’t exactly been a priority. What with my husband screwing a teenager and all.”
Stone quit strumming, Fawn quit brushing, and Angie quit tossing Brock.
Rain knew she should probably lighten the awkward moment she caused, but instead she sipped her bitter tea, too tired to do all the work anymore.
The door opened, and Ricky loped in, breaking into a grin. “There’s my girl! There’s all my kids. Damn, if this don’t make me happy.” He strode across the creaky floor and planted a kiss on Rain’s cheek. He smelled like the aggressive strawberry air freshener he used in his car to cover up the cigarette smoke. “I’m sorry as hell for the reason, but I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Me, too, Pop,” she replied. “I am, too.”
Fawn had resumed brushing. “If I ever get my hands on that asshole, I will twist his head off like the stem off an apple.”
“I never did like him,” pronounced Angie, now bouncing Brock on her shoulder and pacing the small kitchen.
Rain frowned. “I thought you said I was lucky to have him.”
“That’s before I actually saw you when you were married to him. You were lifeless.”
“Lifeless?”
Ricky took up the thread of conversation while Angie tickled Brock’s chin. “Yeah, you were always fussing over him so much you barely paid any attention to yourself.”
“Like this hair,” Fawn interjected. “Not gonna cut it just now and get hair all over the floor, but promise you’ll come to class with me tomorrow and I’ll trim it up. Maybe some soft layers? Bangs, even. You’ve got the face for it.”
“Forget the hair, go back to lifeless. And if I was lifeless, why didn’t anyone say anything?”
“I did, once,” Fawn said, and Rain felt the heat of some kind of curling iron behind her. “And you bit my head off. Said you guys were just tired and I was judging and anyway I was one to talk.”
“I said that?”
“Yep. I remember the quote. ‘You are one to talk.’ Cuz I was still dating Davy.”
Rain bit her lip as she remembered Davy, a dropout who had several DUIs to his name.
“I’m sorry.”
“Well, you were right about Davy, anyhow, as it turned out. No big whoop.”
Angie said, “Hey, Ricky, can you go change this little stinker?”
Ricky shrugged. “Why not? C’mere, mister . . .”
Angie plopped down across from Rain. She was wearing a denim miniskirt and a red tank top. She was kicking a plastic flip-flop halfway off her foot and popped a piece of gum in her mouth. “Nicotine gum. Finally quitting, if you can believe that. Hon, we did try to say stuff a couple of times, but we gave up quick when we could see how deep you were in. W
e figured eventually you’d come around.”
“Took long enough,” Rain muttered.
“Well, if I’d had any idea it would have taken all this, I might have made like that guy in The Graduate and screamed from the choir loft,” Angie said, to which Stone began picking out the melody for “Mrs. Robinson.”
Rain’s tea had cooled too much to drink. Her head was warm from whatever Fawn was doing back there. “I’m surprised you all want me back here, if I was so lifeless and defensive.”
“Honey, we knew it wasn’t about you.” Angie put her hand over Rain’s wrist. It shocked her that Angie’s skin was looking papery over her ropy veins. “You’ve always been the perfectionist in the crowd, and we knew you wouldn’t give up just because we said so. You’d have to learn it on your own.”
Rain closed her eyes and let her head relax into Fawn’s rhythmic pulling and curling. One thing she’d forgotten, all those years since she left this home, so glad to put the turbulence and noise and squabbling behind her, was the forgiveness. Angie and Ricky may have thrown plates, but they would always forgive each other. And they were forgiving, too, in the sense of forgiving a bad mood in each other as well as themselves. These people couldn’t carry a grudge any more than they could carry a car.
Rain contrasted that with Gran’s exacting, black-and-white morality, and for the first time, she felt something less than idolatry for her grandmother.
“Mom? Did it hurt when I moved in with Gran?”
“Oh, like hell, it sure did,” Angie replied. “I cried for days.”
Ricky was coming down the stairs with Brock. “I can vouch for that. I offered to drag your ass back but Ang said no.”
“I’m sorry,” Rain said, putting her hand over her baby, imagining what it would feel like to have that child choose to walk away from her, long before adulthood.
“Don’t be. I knew you needed it.”
Stone started singing and strumming a Rolling Stones refrain, “You can’t always get what you want . . . you get what you need . . .”
The Whole Golden World Page 35
