“South of the Flatirons? The big rock formation? I do.”
“Say you don’t know the name of that big ol’ rock. You’re hiking the Mesa Trail and you look up at the big thing poking out from the Front Range, and somebody you’re with asks you what the hell you think that rock looks like. What do you say?”
I was thinking it was a trick question. “It looks kind of like a thumb,” I said.
“And?” Sam said. “What else does it kind of look like?”
I could feel the warmth of the beer. “I’ve always thought it looks kind of like a dick.”
“Exactly,” Sam said. “Same rock. Same angle. Same perspective. It’s a thumb, or it’s a dick. That’s what the problem is with acquaintance rape. For one of the two people involved, it’s a thumb. For the other, it’s a dick. My experience is that there is no negotiating perception.”
I thought he was waiting for me to disagree with him. I lifted my last french fry.
“It’s likely that the events in the guest room at your neighbor’s house took place out of sight of any witness’s eyes. That would make it difficult for you, or for anyone, to ever know what went down. If the contention is acquaintance rape, and lab results indicate sexual contact, one of the two people is going to maintain what happened was rape. The other is going to maintain that what happened was consensual sex. Truth? Ha. Find it, I dare you.”
“Truth is unknowable, Sammy?” He didn’t like it when I called him Sammy. I blamed the beer.
“Forensic science may throw us a bone. But it may not. Usually doesn’t. Rape kit may tell us that sex happened. Even, maybe, whom it happened with. But in your neighbor’s house? I suspect that the fact that genitals were bumping won’t end up in dispute. What will be in dispute is the mind-set and consent of the bumpees. Forensic science has trouble with mind-set. But . . . subsequent events are taking place, at least partly, in the public eye. That’s where, I think, you need to focus your attention—on the things that happen next that are knowable.”
“You talking about the lawyers again?”
“Yep. The lawyer wizards.”
Sam was being patient with me. Back when I was a complete hockey novice, he was the same way as he tried, unsuccessfully, to explain the concept of delayed off sides.
“The reason you know so little now, and the reason you may never know much more than that, is because of the attorneys. That”—he raised his glass in a mock toast—“is my lesson. This case is starting to smell a hell of a lot like that case.”
I didn’t see it. I told Sam that.
Sam said, “Attorneys all across the land learned important things from the Kobe Bryant fiasco. Any defense lawyer who studied that case from start to finish learned how to handle certain . . . delicate accusations against a . . . celebrity client. You want to know why this dance, the current one, is happening completely off the public’s radar?”
I knew my next line as though Sam had provided me with a script. “Because that’s the way the lawyers want it.”
“Lessons to be learned from Mr. Bryant? Shut everyone up. Attorneys everywhere learned from the situation between Mr. Bryant and his accuser that the earlier they are able to get everyone—I mean everyone, the cops, the prosecutor, the media, the accused, the accuser—to shut the hell up, the better things will turn out to be for the celebrity accused, and if the accuser knows what’s good for her, maybe even the better it will be for the accuser.”
“I don’t get it. What’s the advantage for the alleged victim?”
“That’s the second lesson to be learned. The attorneys for the defendant make crystal clear to the accused the high price she will pay for pressing her allegations. Reputation? Mental health history? Relationship history? Drug use? Sexual history? Determined private investigators will find it all. And then some. A ruling from the bench that the accuser’s recent sexual behavior could be admitted as evidence? The attorneys for the defendant will do everything they can think of to convince the accused that proceeding with criminal charges will guarantee mutually assured destruction.”
“And then?” I said.
“Then each side will start assigning a price to going away.”
“You’re certain about this, aren’t you?”
“Name me a celebrity in prison for sexual assault. Right now, today. I’m serious—do it. Off the top of your head.”
I couldn’t come up with one.
“Did Michael Jackson go to jail?” Sam asked. “For what he did?”
“No.”
“You must have heard the testimony about him in bed with that boy in his house.”
“Yes.”
“From your perspective did that . . . behavior look like Devil’s Thumb? Or Devil’s Dick?”
I didn’t answer. “He’s dead, Sam.”
“What? You’re arguing statute of limitations? Tell that to Roman Polanski. For the record, the jury thought it looked like a thumb,” Sam said. “There is no explaining juries sometimes.” He drained the dregs of his beer. “Especially California juries.” After five more seconds, Sam said, “Time’s up. You think you can’t name one because no celebrity ever took advantage of some woman, or some kid?”
“No. I don’t think that.”
“Name me a prominent politician who is in prison for sexual assault. Come on, quick.” I shook my head. “You think it’s because no politician ever took advantage of his position with some woman, or some kid?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think that.”
“Next category: sports heroes.”
“Sam—”
“Okay, okay. My point is that justice doesn’t catch up with the rich and famous very often. Certainly not in cases involving”—Sam hesitated as he searched for the right word—“sexual license. Usually the best that vics can hope to get is some measure of compensation. My point? The earlier everyone involved—lawyers on both sides, the accused, and the accuser—recognizes that the danger to the accused is not prison time but a slam-down beating in the court of public relations, the sooner the real work of resolving differences begins. And more and more, that work happens in private, not in court. Justice be damned.
“The other night I met the patrol guy who’d had the first contact with the RP on this incident.” RP is cop slang for “reporting party.” “Name’s Heath Wade. Good cop. I told you detectives are always looking for something that will tell us whom to believe in an acquaintance rape. Officer Heath Wade gave me a reason. Lucy had asked him to tell her about meeting the alleged vic for the first time. Everything he could remember.”
“And?”
Sam said, “His words to Luce: ‘Woman is either Helena Bonham Carter or she was telling me the truth.’ I had to look up Helena Bonham Carter online, by the way. Turns out she’s Bellatrix Lestrange. Harry Potter? Good actress. Heath Wade, the cop who was with the vic right after, he didn’t see Devil’s Thumb, Alan. He saw Devil’s Dick.
“Do you recall the media beating that the young woman took in Eagle County? Her mental health history revealed? Her sexual history revealed? Old boyfriends discussing private moments? Her family under scrutiny? I would imagine that the alleged victim in whatever happened in Spanish Hills on Friday night might prefer to avoid being dissected like that, or . . . that her lawyer, Mr. Maitlin, might be determined to keep his client from being dissected like that.”
“What you’re saying makes sense, Sam. I can see why the lawyers want silence. Maybe even why law enforcement wants silence. But I don’t see why everyone buys into the need for silence. Even Diane won’t tell me what she knows about the housewarming. Diane gossips like she breathes.” He nodded at that. “Then why the complete silence? Even from people who have no . . . s’mores on the fire?”
“S’mores on the fire?” He snorted, then averted his gaze for a moment, as though he’d spotted something near the bar that deserved his complete attention. I turned to look. Nothing there. When he looked back at me, he said, “Everyone who knows anything about Frida
y night—before, during, after—has a s’more on this fire. Libel? Slander? Allegiance? Public ridicule? Guilt by association? Nobody likes their s’mores burned to a crisp.”
Sam began to stand up. I asked Sam if I could ask him one last question. I told him I wanted a direct answer.
He said, “No promises.”
“As a father, do I have something to worry about? Based on what you know?”
He considered my question for a moment. “Do you have more to worry about than you did last week? I doubt it. Maybe less, given the sunlight.”
I watched his face for signs of equivocation. I didn’t see any. I said, “Thanks, Sam.” I stood up.
He let me take a couple of steps away from him before he added, “As a husband, though? That’d be a different question. If you asked it.”
I spun. “What are you saying?”
“Your wife is an attractive woman. Way too pretty to have settled for you, by the way. She seems to hold your new neighbor in some professional esteem. Now, I’m no expert, but those things are on the ingredient list for the recipe for the kind of mess we’ve been discussing.”
I tried to make my face blank until I turned away from Sam. Then I mouthed a profanity that involved my upper teeth grazing my lower lip.
Our waitress was passing by on the way to the bar. “Something wrong?” she asked.
“No,” I said, lying.
22
Lauren was awake when I got home.
She hadn’t stayed up for me. She had not chosen to stay awake because she was waiting to grill me about being out so late. Nor had she chosen to stay awake because she was desperate to have an intimate moment with me before the day ended.
The reason she was awake was so familiar in our world that it had become almost mundane. Lauren was awake because she was in pain.
While I was out having a beer and a grilled cheese sandwich with Sam, pain had jostled or poked or aggravated Lauren awake during the early hours of her slumber. She would have tried to ignore it at first, to overcome it by defying it, and attempt to return to the sanctuary of sleep. When that failed—and it usually did—she would have opened one eye and spied the bedside clock. Then she would have sighed as she calculated the number of hours of discomfort she would have to endure until dawn.
At some point that night she reached out, or more likely looked over, and discovered that the bed beside her was empty. How she’d felt about my absence I had no way to know. It was not the kind of complaint she would give voice to at that stage of our marriage. Until issues are worked through, infidelity changes the degrees of freedom for an offending spouse. Lauren and I weren’t done with the working through.
As the aggrieved spouse, I had already decided that any advantage for me was illusory. For each of us there was an enduring price for her infidelity.
I wondered for a moment if Kobe, and Mrs. Bryant, felt the same way.
I’D ALREADY CHECKED ON THE KIDS. Gracie was sound asleep down the hall, lying sideways in her double bed, having managed to wrap herself in her pretty duvet as though she were the protein filling inside some tropical, ginger-red burrito. When I’d gone downstairs, Jonas was, I thought, pretending to be asleep. I whispered his name into the dark a couple of times, encouraging him to engage with me. He didn’t.
His sleep patterns worried me. His recovery worried me.
The fact that maintaining the pretense of sleeping had more value to him than any immediate alternative involving contact with me worried me.
I told myself to give it some thought when I wasn’t so exhausted.
I entered the bedroom in my bare feet. Lauren was sitting up in bed, her knees clutched to her chest, rocking gently from side to side. The sway was measured and kept a certain rhythm, like a human metronome. It was the kind of rocking a mother would do to goad a cranky baby to return to her slumber.
The dogs were nearby. I knew they would both be on alert. Emily got up to greet me. She nuzzled me in the crotch a couple of times before she forced the considerable weight of her flank against my thigh, herding me toward the bed. Toward Lauren. Fiji was on her side smack in the middle of the big bed. She wagged her tail maniacally as I approached, rolling onto her back at the last second so that I would rub her soft belly. The long silk of her tail was tangled in the bedclothes.
I would disappoint her about the belly rub.
The only light in the room came from the moon and from a muted match in Kitchen Stadium. Mario Batali versus some young guy with great hair who looked like he wanted to be somewhere without cameras, cooking something other than aubergines.
From the edge of the bed, I couldn’t see Lauren’s face. It was screened by her dark hair. She didn’t speak. I didn’t speak.
I knew her nighttime distress the same way I knew her distant cousins. We were related, but my knowledge was once removed.
When her deep, disabling pain erupted in the dark of night, I felt helpless. The dreaded aches covered territories in her legs and expanses in her long bones that didn’t exist on any anatomical chart. There were never true culprits. No injuries. No bumps or bruises. Never any structures to identify, never any specific maladies to blame. The pain she experienced laughed at the puny efforts of ibuprofen. The pain mocked the maximum doses of Vicodin or Percocet. Lauren rarely bothered to take them at all.
The pain was in her head or in the trunk line of neural cable that was her spinal column—caused by the way MS had screwed up her wiring—but she felt the agony in her legs, so we acted as though that was reality.
Once I spotted her rocking on the bed, I inhaled slowly, checking the room for telltale signs of cannabis. She hadn’t been smoking. Occasionally, weed was palliative for her. Science didn’t seem to know why. Other times it wasn’t. Science didn’t seem to know why that was true, either.
One night as I joined her as she toked on her bong on the deck outside the bedroom—a night the cannabis was working—I convinced myself that there were angels in heaven who liked the aroma of burning weed. It was as good an explanation as any.
I approached the bed full of trepidation.
Our marriage was balanced on some kind of edge. Was it a high-wire or a wide causeway? I didn’t know the margins of error. Neither did she, I suspected. All I knew was that there had been nights recently when my compassionate touch hadn’t been welcome, and there had been nights recently when I hadn’t bothered to offer it.
Chronic illness is not contagious, but somehow it spreads. Maybe it’s fungal. There were times Lauren’s illness brought out the best, the most generous, part of me. There were times that it brought out more callous instincts. That night I checked my tank for reserves. I had none. Hella’s story about the rape and Sam’s sermon about yet another rape had, together, exhausted me. Lauren was rocking herself as though the movement alone could take her someplace else. But it couldn’t; I knew her tank was as empty as mine, or emptier.
I sat on the edge of the bed, reached beneath the comforter, and rested my open hand on the top of the foot of her left leg. She didn’t cringe or pull away. That was a good sign. After a few moments of skin-to-skin contact, I gently extended her leg, bending the knee. She didn’t stop rocking. She didn’t resist me.
Next, I didn’t so much begin to massage her leg as I began to caress it. I’d learned from numerous failures at amelioration that my goal wasn’t to solve the mystery of her agony, not to try to find the muscles that needed release, nor to trace toward an insertion point, but my goal was to distract her central nervous system from its focus on her agony.
Simply, my goal wasn’t massage. It was competition—to give her malfunctioning central nervous system a damn good game. An alternative. I had low expectations. I didn’t expect to win. But if I could stir things up, maybe I could keep the match from being a rout. There were no guarantees. What worked one time failed the next.
I followed my instincts. That time, I began with her ankle. I used some pressure, wrapping the joint with both hands, intertwinin
g my fingers, and closing them around the bony structures like a vise. I tightened my grip, released it, tightened it again. In between, I used some strokes, too. Gentle ones. I allowed my fingertips to circle the round bones, over and again, and let the pad of my thumb trace the length of the ligaments and tendons that tied the joint to the rest of her lovely leg.
I used my fingernails to scratch lightly and the flat of my palm to confound whatever part of her nervous system might be paying attention. I etched letters on her flesh with my fingertips, spelling out my wishes for her and for us.
After a while, I moved down from her ankle to her foot and worked it, instep, arch, and heel. I compressed her toes, one by one. I focused on the sole for an extended time until I thought I could feel tension seep from her toenails. How could I tell? I just could. Maybe it was her breathing. Maybe it was the fact that Emily, the big Bouv, had finally closed her eyes. I then changed my attention to the long bones in Lauren’s leg, confusing the scene further, I hoped, by coming from two directions. At once, I moved up her calf with my left hand, slowly, and down her thigh with my right hand, slowly, until both my hands arrived at her knee.
I used both my hands to surround the knee the same way I had her ankle. Intertwined my fingertips. My hands squeezed. They coaxed. I caressed her knee. I soothed it, scratched it, pressured it. Confused it. Confounded it.
Then I started the process all over with her right leg.
The whole endeavor took a good half hour. More.
The timer in Kitchen Stadium was still counting down when I was finishing.
Mario never seemed to lose his cool. His competition had been defeated long before a single dish came off the fire. The poor guy was going through the motions.
In the kitchen of life, I wanted to be Mario, not the guy who was plating the sauce that hadn’t set up quite right. I wondered if Preston Georges had ever been in Kitchen Stadium. Had ever taken on Mario Batali.
Toward the end, as I was tracing the femur on Lauren’s right leg, she leaned forward and grazed the back of my shoulder with her dry lips before she lowered her head to the pillow. A few minutes later, when I gently lifted the comforter back over her naked legs, her breathing seemed to have found the rhythm of sleep.
The Last Lie Page 18
