School was always a struggle for Dale and while his older brothers played varsity football and baseball, he had never made it off the J.V. Their mother was a sickly woman who read the Bible every day and despite tubercular lungs, smoked Camel non-filters. She loved all three of her sons, but she felt particularly protective of her youngest. A southern woman, Jimmy could remember the way she called his younger brother Mama’s little possum. The nickname was designed to cause problems for any boy cursed with it. Dale hated the handle, resented that he needed to be looked out for. When he was around thirteen, one of his friends overheard Mrs. Duke calling Dale her little possum and next day at school teased him unmercifully. Dale went after the kid and both boys got suspended for fighting. The suspension was face-saving for Dale because his friend had kicked his ass all over the playground. That night at supper, Mrs. Duke had suggested that either Jimmy or Randall avenge their baby brother but this did not fly with their father, the Reverend Donnie Duke, who pointed out that vengeance is mine alone, saith the Lord.
All three Duke boys wanted to please their father. He and Mrs. Duke had met and married in Huntsville, Alabama and moved to the desert in the late 1960s for her delicate health. With a gift for words that he passed on to Randall, Reverend Donnie’s balletic tongue made him a natural in the pulpit of the Desert Redeemer, an Assembly of God church in Borrego Springs. Everyone knew him to be a good man, not some hellfire agent of a punishing God who used the Gospels to put the fear in people, but a gentle soul who tried to teach his sons to do right. He was bereft when his wife died of cancer at forty-nine. Randall was a senior in high school. Jimmy was a sophomore then and Dale in the eighth grade and the Reverend did his best as a single parent for the next five years until a stroke claimed him at sixty-two. Dale had come home and found his father dead on the kitchen floor, two Hungry Man TV dinners burnt in the oven.
Randall was in his third year of law school at Santa Clara when the Reverend Duke went to his reward. Jimmy was at University of Redlands and Dale a high school senior. The new role as family patriarch came naturally to Randall and he got a judge to grant him custody of his youngest brother. He was renting a house with three law school friends and Dale moved in with them. At the time Jimmy was glad Randall had stepped up, but later he wondered if Dale’s life might have turned out better if he had been the one to get custody. He knew it wasn’t realistic; only nineteen, what judge would have placed his younger sibling with him?
Randall enrolled Dale in a local high school in Santa Clara but the change of venue did not inspire the youngest Duke to care more about his education. Mostly he hung around with Randall and his buddies. With Randall’s tacit approval, the guys treated Dale like an errand boy. To pick up spending money he would do their food shopping, clean the house, and perform odd jobs like car washing or yard work. He didn’t have his own bed so he slept on the dirty living room couch. He went to school when he felt like it, and his brother was too busy with his studies to supervise him.
It was around this time that Randall developed a fondness for cocaine. The first year of law school is a well-known killing floor and those who can’t keep up are ground to dust and discarded. Randall was spending late nights buried in books and the coke kept him marching.
The oldest and youngest Duke brothers and their housemates lived in a quiet residential area of single-family homes and they blended in with the teachers, accountants, and storeowners who were their neighbors. Young mothers pushed baby-laden prams past children riding bikes in the shadows of old growth trees and Girl Scouts sold cookies door- to-door. It was a placid, family neighborhood. So Randall was surprised one spring night when a wild party erupted at the house next door. This was the home of a middle-aged couple, the husband a pilot for a regional airline and the wife a guidance counselor, and he assumed they were away and their college age sons had commandeered the place for a blowout. He was seated on the concrete floor of the garage with Dale while engaged in this speculation. It was after eleven o’clock at night and Randall had a test in tort law the following morning. They were on the floor of the garage because Randall was snorting lines of cocaine off an REO Speedwagon CD and didn’t want to do this in the house since his roommates might ask for a line. The stuff was expensive and he couldn’t afford to be generous.
It was a hot night and they had left the garage door open. The house had a driveway shaped like the letter J and the garage faced the dark backyard. The bay they were sitting in was usually occupied by a yellow ’67 Cadillac but its owner was out on a date. Sussidio by Phil Collins was blaring at them from the party next door. Dale later told Jimmy that he liked that song, maybe that’s why he was distracted when it happened.
Two headlights washed over them, a car pulling into the curved driveway. Randall was bent over the coke, taking his second hit. He looked up from the powdery tin foil in time to see that it was not his housemate’s old Caddy, but a black and white being driven by a Santa Clara police officer. They later learned that another housemate had been studying for the same tort exam and had called the police to complain about the noise coming from their neighbor’s place. The officer was stopping to check with the complainant before rousting the party. When Randall realized it was the police, he flew out of the garage like he had springs in his feet and was down the street before the cop figured out what was going on but Dale didn’t think to run. Instead, he gathered up the tin foil and crammed it in his pocket ignoring the headlights flaring on him like a camera flash.
When Randall came to visit him in the juvenile lock-up the next day he said Dale, if I go down for this I’ll never be a lawyer. My life will be over. I can do way more good for you down the line, and I mean way more, if you just take the bullet. He all but begged and then pointed out that he had never asked his youngest brother to do anything for him before this. And he never would again.
Dale loved Randall, who had taken him in when their father had died, so what could he do but his brother’s bidding? There was no money to bail him out and he remained incarcerated until his court appearance.
It was while visiting him in the lock-up that Jimmy learned exactly what had happened. Dale was already skinny but he had lost weight in the four days he’d been inside. He laid it out for Jimmy how their brother had asked him to take one for the family and that he was willing to do it. Jimmy recognized the toughness his little brother was selling for the posture it was, that he was still the kid who had gotten his ass kicked all over the schoolyard. Jimmy had tried to talk him out of it, to tell him that Randall needed to clean up his own problems, but Dale was proud that he was finally in a position to provide something of worth.
The day Dale was sentenced Randall had a final exam in contract law and couldn’t be there. But Jimmy was in the courtroom when Dale stood and nodded as the judge told him he hoped he would use the next phase of his life to reflect on his behavior and sentenced him to serve in the N.A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility until his eighteenth birthday. Jimmy remembers watching his brother try not to cry.
Dale had used that time to become acquainted with tough rednecks from Stockton, wannabe rappers from Oakland, junior division criminals from all over northern California in for B and E, robbery, drug dealing, assault and manslaughter. He was released with a working knowledge of how to fashion a weapon out of a bedspring, with his first crude tattoo—the letters T-H-U-G on his stomach—and with a sense that life was not going to work out for him in a traditional way.
This is what Jimmy thinks about as he takes Bruno off the leash and lets him run. It’s what he thinks about when he takes a shower and gets ready to go out. And it’s what he thinks about when he climbs back in his pickup and heads out to meet his former associate, Cali Pasco. Randall is for Randall. That will never change.
CHAPTER TEN
Piloting the Mustang down the palm-lined streets in the starlit early evening, Kendra’s mind is a storm of vexation. The cool of the air conditioning on her supple skin does nothing to tamp her distre
ss. Her heart thuds against her chest wall and she has to concentrate to breathe evenly. The intersection of North Indian Canyon Drive and East Vista Chino comes on her like a curtain rising and when she realizes she is going to run a red light she hit the brakes so hard the Mustang skids and she pitches forward. Checks the rearview mirror to make sure no one is behind her, puts the car in reverse and backs up to avoid getting clipped by someone equally distracted.
Kendra cannot hold her liquor and after a single drink will experience the heightening of whatever emotion she is currently feeling. So the despair coursing through her is amplified by the combination of vodka and schnapps contained in the pair of Mel-tinis she drained. This encounter with Nadine is a fitting capstone to a series of emotional setbacks. For several years she has occasionally thought that her marriage to Randall is one of convenience. Her choice to remain in it is not the easiest thing for her to deal with since it eats away at her sense of self-esteem, the particularly American creed to which Kendra adheres. You must “reach for the sky,” “dare to dream,” “believe in yourself.” If the mechanism that regulates self-generated optimism is faltering, it feels like the ground might open and swallow you.
Then there is her daughter: meant to be a joy, she has become a stranger. And now what was a little innocent diversion, a lubricious sidebar to her anodyne daily life, a small reward for the quiet depredations she suffered as a political spouse, is looming as a disaster that could end Randall’s political career and with it their future.
Driving past a sprawling golf course she considers her equally unappetizing options. She could do nothing, although that carries a high risk. Perhaps Nadine is bluffing. Being involved in a scandal will not help in her quest to escape the confines of the tanning business and propel herself back into the more expansive world of resort tennis. If Nadine has her own interests at heart, this will not advance them. But Kendra cannot count on Nadine being rational.
She can always pay the money to have her sit on the compromising material. But perhaps Nadine isn’t telling her everything. Perhaps there is further evidence of their affair that she is withholding until a more strategically propitious time. Nadine said she had no intention of blackmailing her but how could she be certain? And once Kendra allows herself to be blackmailed, there is no way to know when it will stop. What if she had pictures? Nadine could continue to bleed her for money, or she could release the images for sport. There is no way of knowing. And since pictures hardly exist as physical photographs anymore but rather as indolent pixels brought to life at the stroke of a key, there would be no negatives to destroy. They would always remain, like free radicals in a human body, waiting for just the right moment to coalesce into something fatal.
The next option is to summon her courage, tell Randall and see what he advises. After absorbing the shock, she assumes he will act in his own interest and that strategic selfishness will require a degree of cool calculation on his part from which they both might benefit. While this gambit involves admitting a lesbian affair to her husband the week before an election, given Randall’s record of serially mangling their marital vows he can hardly object to her doing the same. Although she suspects he will be upset with the timing.
Kendra had caught Randall cheating on her early in their marriage when they were taking a spa weekend at a resort in Arizona. Her mud wrap had been rescheduled due to overbooking and she returned to their suite to find him bending a chambermaid over the credenza. She had torn a lamp from its moorings and thrown it at him, and then flew home a day early.
Back then Jimmy was single and upon her return Kendra sought him out. The two of them had always liked one another. At her wedding Jimmy had been the best man and the general theme of his toast was Randall’s utter unworthiness of a grade A premium bride like Kendra Kerry. He had had a few drinks that afternoon but only enough to heighten the poetry of the moment and his words were heartfelt and kind. The truth: Jimmy had been a little jealous of his brother. Kendra was beautiful and talented, and her years around football players both in high school and college had given her the ability to swear and tell a joke, something Jimmy found captivating. So when she turned up at his condo the night she got back early from her spa weekend, he had not been displeased.
It was early summer and the clothes she wore were sheer and revealing. Whether this was by design or by accident, Jimmy never knew. Aware her brother-in-law did not keep a stock of Chardonnay in the refrigerator, she arrived with a bottle and a corkscrew. He filled a couple of highball glasses—stem glasses not part of his modus operandi either—and they sat side by side on the living room sofa. She was edgy, but her makeup was perfect. Kendra confessed what had happened in Arizona, told him how mortified she had been, and Jimmy pretended to be shocked. But he knew Randall had been sexually profligate prior to his marriage and had suspected that the nuptial state would do nothing to change his habits. He took no joy in being right as he observed his sister-in-law’s sadness and Chardonnay-fuelled distress. Kendra cried a little and asked his advice. Divorce was a definite possibility, she was certain. She sipped another glass of wine, then poured a third. The phone rang—it was work-related—and when Jimmy came back from answering it, she slid closer to him. In what had truly been intended as a gesture of comfort, he put his arm around her shoulder and was slightly taken aback when she tilted her face up and kissed him gently on the lips. Although he would have loved to take her to bed, he couldn’t let this happen, so he defused the situation by channeling the Reverend Donnie Duke and gassing about the importance of marriage and how she had to pray for the strength to forgive his brother and heal their union. This tactic served to chill her ardor considerably.
It was not something she had appreciated at the time.
When the bottle was empty Jimmy realized he was still working on his first glass. Energy spent, passion vitiated, Kendra curled up on the sofa. Jimmy brought her a pillow, arranged a spare blanket over her and went to bed. The following morning she was gone. They never spoke of that encounter again. By the time it became clear she was not going to leave Randall, the closeness that had existed between them that evening evaporated.
Upon Randall’s solo return from the spa weekend, Kendra had made it clear to him that, whatever he was going to do in the way of philandering, he needed to be less cavalier in his approach. Randall had been so grateful for her forbearance he didn’t commit adultery again for several weeks. And he had made sure to do it while he was travelling. But for all of her husband’s cheating since that time in Arizona, he has managed to keep it from fouling the nest. This has been their arrangement, their quid pro quo. In return for her tolerance of his sexual peccadilloes and not divorcing him, it is understood that, should his career continue its ascent she will remain at his side.
A thought takes shape like the outlines of a cavalry appearing on a ridge: What if Nadine does not have any evidence save for the matching tattoos? Perhaps this whole encounter is some kind of attempt to get her to offer money without Nadine actually extorting her in a technical sense, but rather by a masterful use of nothing more than innuendo. Perhaps the whole thing is a bluff.
But it’s not. Kendra quickly dismisses that hopeful notion as the sort of weak thinking that has put her in this situation in the first place. No, there must be real, incontrovertible evidence of her bad judgment and, by extrapolation, her husband’s lack of moral fitness for public office.
Kendra’s cell phone is ringing when she pulls into her driveway. A message from Nadine. She feels her heart thudding and takes a deep breath before checking it. There is no text, only an attachment. She opens the attachment and waits for it to load. In a moment she is looking at two-inch high video of Nadine’s naked ass, the manga kitten tattoo staring at her like a hangman. There is a piece of music with the attachment that Kendra slowly discerns through her panic, Michael Jackson singing Beat It. Tiny Video Nadine shakes her booty side to side in time to the music and Kendra’s head seems like it’s going to fly off her shoulde
rs. But then her emotions abate and she begins to feel a little quiver because however horrifying Nadine’s return to her life might be, the time they spent together did have its enjoyable moments. The memories of the clandestine assignations that this video calls forth, stripped of the context in which they had occurred and rendered purely pornographically, are kind of a turn on.
A tapping on the car window snaps her out of the near-trance she is in. Brittany stands there in jeans and a band tee shirt that reads The Violent Mood Swings. Kendra slams the phone into her lap hard enough to send sparks to her face. She rolls down the window. If the girl has seen anything, she isn’t letting on.
“Do I really have to go to this retarded Purity Ball with Dad?”
“Yes,” she tells her daughter. “It’s going to be an important night for your father and purity is a very important thing. Particularly now.”
Angry Buddhist (9781609458867) Page 8
