Off Season

by Jean Stone

  “Pleased, yes. And as I said, I want more.”

  She smiled. “I heard you. But I’ve fulfilled my commitment. The month of February. Sweeps.”

  He raised an old eyebrow. “God, woman, aren’t we paying you enough?”

  “What are you talking about, Maurice? Do you want me to sign for the duration?”

  “You could do worse for your career.”

  “I’m sure. But I live on the Vineyard.”

  “It’s not as if I’m asking you to commute from L.A. We’re in New York now. Permanently.”

  She knew, of course that nothing in television was permanent.

  “I don’t want to commute from New York, either.”

  He raised his glass once again. “Thirty thousand,” he said.

  In spite of herself, Jill blinked. “What?”

  “Thirty thousand a week. Thirty-nine weeks a year. That comes to a little less than one point two million.”

  She stopped herself from reminding him that Good Night, USA was only an entertainment show wrapped up as a news magazine. That it was not network news and not even prime time, but early fringe, stuck in the seven-to-eight time slot of reruns of reruns and bell-clanging game shows. “That’s a lot of money, Maurice.”

  “You’re worth it.”

  She moved from his aura and turned back to the window. Her mother, Florence Randall, had been born here in the city, to wealth and prominence, but she had married a tavern owner who lived on the Vineyard. Florence had sacrificed her socialite’s position for the man she loved—and she had lived out her days in misery on an island, cut off from the world.

  But of course, Jill was not Florence, and for one point two million a year, she could practically buy a damn airplane and a damn pilot and fly back and forth whenever she wanted.

  If that’s what she wanted. If Ben would agree.

  Ben.

  “What about my husband?” she asked, her eyes still fixed on the view. “I may be worth nothing if this scandal breaks. If he is convicted.”

  “If he is convicted, we’ll deal with it then.”

  She sipped her champagne and thought of her options. One point two million a year was certainly more attractive than the unknown. But was Good Night, USA what she really wanted? To sit next to Christopher every week-night from now until the show was canceled because, sooner or later, they all were? And was the veiled entertainment really where her work, her passion lay?

  She closed her eyes and knew the answers to all three questions.

  “No,” she said. She turned back to Maurice. “I appreciate the offer, Maurice, honestly I do. And as important as my home is to me, so is the work I do every day. Good Night, USA is not really me. It’s frilly and glamorous. I want something more meaningful.”

  Just then a waiter appeared and announced that their supper was being served in the dining room.

  Maurice finished his champagne and held out his arm to Jill. “Well, I have from the squash soup through the tiramisu to change your mind.”

  The food was delicious, but her mind went unchanged. It was too close to April to make such a life-altering move.

  Ben wondered if they were all going to hold their breaths until spring. Jill returned home and spent only a little time at her studio and more at home, helping him redecorate the sewing room, then move on to the kitchen. Carol Ann came by two or three nights a week, which increased to four or five as April drew nearer. Amy and Jeff called from England; Amy assured Jill she’d be back in time for the trial, and in time for tourist season. Even Addie Becker checked in regularly to see if all was okay, if there were any new developments.

  He was glad for their support, grateful that they cared, but he would have been happier if they’d stop talking in whispers, even to him, as if someone had died—which, as yet, he had not.

  The mystery, of course, was what had happened to Rita and Charlie. He knew he should call them or go over there. But Jill kept reminding him that trust was important to Rita. He wondered—but did not ask—if it was simply easier for Jill not to have to see Rita, and if she secretly regretted confiding to her about Fern in the first place.

  “What about Sea Grove?” he’d complained one night well into March. “Rita and Charlie are my business partners, remember? We’re supposed to break ground soon. I don’t even know if they got the last of the permits.”

  Against the renowned island stubbornness he’d developed over the years as if he’d actually been born there, Jill had effectively shushed him.

  So he waited. And he trusted. And on the last day of March, nine days before trial, Rita Blair showed up at their door at eight-thirty at night.

  She looked like she was having quadruplets, not twins, and she was about to have them right there on the steps.

  “Ben?” she asked. Jill was out shopping; but it was better this way, just Rita and him. “I only have a minute. May I come in?”

  They went into the music room, where he’d been sitting in front of a fire, because though it was nearly April, it was damp and chilly in the house.

  He supposed he should offer her something, coffee or tea, but he did not.

  “Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner,” Rita said, awkwardly placing herself on a chair.

  Ben warmed his hands by the fire and wondered if he should help her sit down and if she’d be able to get up again.

  “Yeah,” he said, “I kind of wondered what happened.”

  She looked around. “Is Jill home?”

  He shook his head.

  “Oh. Well.” She lifted her chin. “Hey, I saw her on Good Night, USA.”

  Ben supposed Rita already knew Jill had done it for the money, so they could hire Herb Bartlett to defend him against the little girl whom Rita had befriended.

  “How’s Charlie?” he asked.

  “Fine.”

  “And your mother?”

  “Hazel’s fine, too.”

  He picked up the poker and stuck it into the fireplace. A couple of sparks ignited into small orange flames. “What about you?” he asked. “You doin’ okay?”

  She didn’t answer right away, then sighed. “I have some bad news,” she said.

  “Oh,” he said. “Well.”

  She started to play with the buttons of her jacket. Fidgeting was the word for what she was doing. For some reason he remembered a grammar school teacher, God only knew how long ago, telling him to stop fidgeting and pay attention in class. “Benjamin Niles! Stop fidgeting!” he could still hear her shriek. He wondered if any of Rita’s teachers had said the same thing to her.

  “I didn’t tell you what I’ve been doing because I didn’t think you’d approve.”

  “Spending time with Mindy Ashenbach?”

  She hesitated only a second, caught off guard. “Ben, you yourself said Mindy’s an unhappy child. The way I figure it is, kids are unhappy if they don’t receive love. Well, I’ve got plenty of that to go around right now, what with these hormones and all.”

  If she was trying to make a joke, he was too tired to laugh.

  “Anyway, I figured if she got some much-needed love and a lot of attention, maybe she’d end up telling the truth. Maybe I could find some goodness beneath her frightened exterior, and she’d realize that what she’d done—what she was doing—was wrong. So I befriended Fern Ashenbach. Then I convinced her to take off for the islands. Mindy has been living with Charlie and me since the beginning of February. And Hazel, too. So far, though, Mindy hasn’t admitted anything.”

  Ben sat down. “Why do I sense a but coming?”

  Rita tried to sit forward as if to make a point, but her big belly stopped her and she slid back again. “But I thought she was going to. The other day, she asked me how long it was until the trial. It’s the first time she acknowledged that I must know about it.”

  Tenting his fingers, Ben looked at the firelight glinting off his wedding band. Jill had said trust her, and so he was trying. “So what’s the bad news?”

  “Originall
y Fern was going to be gone a couple of weeks. Then she ended up in Caracas. Anyway, she came back this morning. She thinks I sold Ashenbach’s house to Charlie, which I only did to get close to her.” Rita waved her hand as if that didn’t matter. “She said she needs the house closing soon because she’s running out of money. That’s when she told me about the trial. About Mindy’s accusation. About how she tried to get you to pay; about how you refused even though she’d slept with you in your ‘hour of need,’ was how she put it.”

  Ben stood up then and put another log on the fire, so he wouldn’t become sick. “None of this is news to either one of us, Rita.”

  “You’re right,” she agreed. “But there’s more. She said she needs the money from the house to tide her over until the civil trial.”

  Ben sighed. “So she’s going to go through with it.”

  “She’s desperate for money, Ben. She’s sure she’ll win the civil suit because she’s convinced there will be a conviction in the criminal trial.”

  Picking up the poker, he attacked the flames. “Did she mention that she’s going to the tabloids? That with the civil trial, she’s finagling a way to bypass the gag order and sell her daughter’s story—her daughter’s lie—to the National Exposé? And what makes her so all-fired sure they’ll convict me? I thought she knew Herb Bartlett was my attorney.”

  A thin line of sweat formed on Rita’s brow. “She’s sure there will be a conviction because she’s going to take the stand.” Rita stared into the fire and took a long breath. “She’s going to tell the court that this wasn’t the first time you touched Mindy. She’s going to say that when you and she were lovers, when Mindy was three, she caught you touching her then.”

  The world seemed to stop, seemed to stand still in that motionless, weightless, timeless space he remembered from the night he was arrested.

  He set the poker back in its stand. He covered his eyes with his hand. He wondered why it was that he hadn’t yet died.

  “Now,” Rita said, struggling to get up again, “I hate to give you bad news and run, but apparently it’s time for me to get to the hospital. Can you give me a lift?”

  It was eerily like the night Kyle had died. Ben had left Jill a note and she met them at the hospital, then Charlie did, too, and the three of them stood, waiting for nature to do as it needed. This time they should have been happy. But Ben was still in shock, and Jill sensed something was wrong, and Charlie was too nervous, so none of them shared the excitement that there should have been.

  Nor had Jill shared these last weeks of Rita’s pregnancy and for that Jill felt sad and a little bit guilty. Then she reminded herself that what counted was that she and Rita always—always—had been there for each other when it truly mattered—like the night Kyle died, like when Jill fled to England, like … now.

  So Jill and Rita and Ben and Charlie didn’t speak much, but they waited together, Jill holding one of Rita’s hands, Charlie holding the other.

  At just past midnight, their sorrow lifted, their moods escalated in an instant: two healthy, screaming babies arrived, a boy and a girl, both with red hair, and, Rita proclaimed, both looking exactly like Kyle. Her Kyle. Their Kyle.

  Ben and Jill hugged her and hugged Charlie and shared tears of raw, pent-up emotion. Then they left the hospital before Hazel could get there with Mindy, for all they knew.

  As soon as they got home, Ben told Jill of Rita’s visit, and what Fern said she planned to do.

  Jill bolted toward the door. Ben grabbed her arm.

  “Stop!” he pleaded. “Please, honey. Stop.”

  But she could not, because until that moment Jill had never known what rage was, not pure, primal, hateful rage.

  She ripped her arm away from Ben and stormed outside to her car. Without looking right, left or behind, she peeled out onto North Water Street, punched down on the accelerator, and lit out for Menemsha.

  She banged on Fern Ashenbach’s front door with both fists. The glass shook but did not break, though she kept banging until the door was opened, not by Fern but by her daughter.

  Jill caught her breath: the child stood there in her pajamas and old, bedraggled slippers. Then she remembered why she’d come.

  “I want to see your mother,” Jill managed to say.

  “Who is it?” came a voice from behind the child. The sound of the shrill voice sent sharp anger down Jill’s spine.

  Mindy had the sense to leave and go upstairs. She did, however, leave the front door open.

  Jill stepped inside.

  And then Fern Ashenbach was there, her hair askew, a snarl on her face, a stink coming from her body that smelled an awful lot like gin. Jill stepped back.

  “You won’t get away with this,” Jill screamed. “You won’t get away with destroying my husband.”

  Fern laughed. “Hello to you, too.”

  Jill planted her hands on her hips. “You won’t get away with it, Fern. No one will believe you. Too many people know Ben. Too many people know him better.”

  Fern leaned forward, inches from Jill’s face. “Excuse me, Miss America, but your husband molested a little girl. Why the hell are you protecting him?”

  “My husband did nothing of the sort. And if he did—as we’ve learned you’re going to say—do such a thing years ago too, then why the hell did you abandon her? Why the hell did you allow her to be raised by her grandfather, who lived next door to where Ben was going to work? Why, if you were so all-fired concerned about Mindy’s welfare, didn’t you do something about it then and not years later, when you just happen to need money?”

  Fern raised her arm and threw a closed-fisted punch that led with a grotesque imitation diamond jutting from her finger.

  Jill’s hand flew to her face. The sting was unbelievable. The blood that gushed was even greater.

  “Get out of here, bitch, before I kill you!” Fern demanded.

  Just as Jill reached in to grab Fern’s hair, a hand came up from behind her. “All right, ladies,” a man’s voice said. “That’s enough.”

  Jill was escorted from the property and driven to the hospital by none other than Hugh Talbot, who had a nerve as far as she was concerned.

  “You told Christopher,” she accused him in the cruiser. “You broke the judge’s gag order and called Christopher. You should go to jail.”

  He shook his head. “I told your friend before the judge issued any order. Even before Ben was arrested. It was a mistake. I was wrong.”

  Jill clutched a cloth against her face, which did not want to stop bleeding.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Niles,” Hugh said as they arrived at the emergency room.

  She was stitched up and had a chance to peek in on Rita once again, then called Ben to come and get her. It was Ben, of course, who’d called Talbot and warned him that Jill was headed for Menemsha. It was Ben who made certain Talbot ruined all her fun.

  Rita shrieked when Jill walked in, a bandage from the corner of her eye down to her lip.

  Then she said she was sorry she’d missed the showdown, and offered Jill a baby to hold to help ease her pain.

  For another hour, Jill and Rita sat together, each holding one of Rita’s babies, friends trusting friends.

  Chapter 32

  The morning of April the ninth was sunny and cool and more like early June than the end of winter, not like a day that could start the end of all things good in Ben’s life.

  It was too nice a day to spend in court waiting to be humiliated in front of the world.

  In the small courtroom that appeared to have been filled with furniture from a secondhand shop, Ben was proud that his wife was a symbol of beauty—inside and out. Under other circumstances, he might have chastised himself for thinking such a shallow thought, but she was wearing the pashmina wrap that he’d bought in New York—and the black and blue badge of courage, from her eye to her lip.

  From the table where he sat—flanked by Rick and Herb Bartlett—he turned around and smiled at her. Amy was beside her wit
h Jeff and Jeff’s roommate Mick, who had just graduated from Oxford and was holding Amy’s hand.

  And God, there was Carol Ann. And John. Jesus, his son-in-law had come. Apparently a “closed proceeding” did not exempt family.

  Or Sheriff Hugh Talbot, who sat on the opposite side.

  Earlier Ben had seen the beefy D.A. along with Mister Rogers, the cardigan-clad man who perhaps was there, like Rick, as the island representative, deferring to the seasoned pros.

  He did not let his eyes drift to the table where Mindy sat, undoubtedly accompanied by Fern, the concerned mother who’d been away for two months.

  The judge arrived with little fanfare.

  Ben shifted on the hard wooden chair, and the proceedings began.

  The reading of the charges.

  “How does the defendant plead?”

  “Not guilty, your honor.”

  One motion accepted. One motion denied. Ben tried to pretend that he was watching television, that this was fiction, not fact, and that the life involved was not his own.

  “Before we call the defendant to the stand, the defense has a special request.” Herb Bartlett was on his feet, wearing a modest suit, as if he knew not to wear his city-slicker, big-shot Atlanta clothes in a courtroom on the Vineyard.

  He asked the judge if Mindy could be brought to the scene to reenact what had happened.

  Highly unusual, the judge called the request.

  Herb soft-shoed his words, citing this case and that. It had been proven, he explained, that even after only a short period of time, a child—or adult, for that matter—who weaves a story becomes able to not only believe the story, but to embellish it with new memory they unknowingly created.

  The judge listened. Then, under the objection of the prosecution, she allowed Bartlett’s special request.

  They went during the lunch break.

  • • •

  Mindy did not want to get out of the truck.

  She sat on the worn seat of Grandpa’s old pickup and looked at Menemsha House. It looked different close-up than from her bedroom window; it seemed smaller, lonelier, not quite as scary.

  Had it been that long since Grandpa had grumbled at the old yellow school buses that rumbled up and down the hill? The buses that carried laughing schoolkids to and from the fun at the museum Ben made for them?