Firetrap

by Earl Emerson

  His fourth swing was wider than the others, and because we were bumping up against each other now, it threw him off balance and he knocked over a chair.

  “Let’s you and me go outside and settle things,” Armstrong said.

  “John, stop it,” said Echo. “I mean it. We have to go home.”

  “Why are we going? He’s the one who doesn’t belong here.”

  “He’s right,” I said. “I’m the one who should go.”

  “Don’t you dare leave like this,” Kendra said.

  At that point John Armstrong took another lunging swing at me. I stepped aside and gave him enough of a nudge that he slammed into the wall and made the chandelier rattle. Echo said, “Enough, John. Stop it. Can’t you see he could beat your brains in if he wanted?”

  “Fuck that. And fuck you all,” said Armstrong, barging out of the room.

  Echo kissed India good-bye and followed her husband. With the assistance of his nurse, the old man sat heavily, caught his breath, and proposed a toast to the successful fund-raising project, though by now the bloom was off the rose and the only person who hoisted a glass was Stone.

  23. CONFESSIONS OF A SHUNNED SON

  JAMIE ESTEVEZ>

  After I refused his offer of a cab, Trey, amid a flurry of apologies for his earlier behavior, took me home on the Harley. It seemed that even if the family reunion hadn’t exactly been a rousing success, the affair had burned off some of his excess nastiness. If I’d had a lick of sense, I would have taken him up on the cab, because the late-night breeze was bitterly cold.

  By the time he shut the Harley off in front of my building, my watch said it was just after two in the morning. I was feeling a little woozy from the wine and maybe also from the bizarre revelations of the evening. “I’m a little, uh…” I said.

  “I’m guessing you want an explanation for that scene back at the mansion?”

  “It sounds complicated and…ancient.” He’d been accused of rape. He was embarrassed talking about it and so was I. But I did want to hear his side.

  You could tell the thought of revealing this story was as harrowing for Trey as facing John Armstrong must have been. I’d watched Trey turning to his father and later his brother for intercession while he was being cursed and accused, and couldn’t help but see the heartbreak in his eyes when he realized they weren’t going to intervene. Echo must have been easily as mortified as Trey had been.

  “When I was seventeen and Echo was fifteen, she and her sister were invited to stay at the family vacation home in the San Juans for a few weeks. India was eighteen and had just graduated from a private school back east. I had one year left in public school. Kendra and Echo were both sophomores and great friends. The adults came and went that summer as their business demands allowed: India and Echo’s father, Harlan Overby; my father, Shelby; our mothers.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m cold. Would you like to come upstairs and talk where it’s warmer?” I couldn’t believe I was inviting someone up to my apartment who was by recent accounts a sex offender. I should be locked up for my own protection, just like Mama always said.

  I had a small condo on the fourth floor with a partial territorial view between two buildings to the west so that I caught a glimpse of the sunsets. The small kitchen was buffered from the living room by a counter island. I seated Trey on the sofa while I ditched my helmet, scooped up a photo of myself on my bike before he saw it, and went into the bedroom, where I dropped my wrap onto the bed and checked my makeup in the mirror. My hands were trembling. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea?” I asked as I came back into the living room.

  “No, thanks.” He sat on one end of the sofa while I turned on the gas fireplace, then sat on the other end, tucking my knees and bare feet up. Even though I had an early flight in the morning, I was glad we were doing this. Maybe it would make working with him easier. Or at least tolerable. I couldn’t help thinking about him and Stone Carmichael’s wife, the way they’d talked alone in the parlor and then disappeared, the way they’d looked at each other. I didn’t know whether they’d been allies in the past, enemies, or what, but I would have expected Echo’s older sister to have had some protective instincts when her sister’s erstwhile attacker returned to the scene.

  I’d watched Trey all night and saw the strain in his relations with the family, especially his father, but I liked the way Trey spoke to the nurse, because he was the only man in the room who treated her like a real person. He was the same with the waitstaff, which gained him A grades in one of my major tests: treating waiters, receptionists, and ticket attendants like people instead of hirelings. Having worked as a waitress all through college, I felt this attribute to be important. Who would have thought I’d have to add not being a rapist to the list of qualifications I looked for in a man?

  Staring at the flames, Trey seemed reluctant to return to his story. “You were in the San Juans for the summer,” I prompted. “You and some others.”

  “Actually, just the last part of the summer. All the Carmichael boys worked summers—character building was big with my mother. I had a job at a lumber mill, but they closed down, so I joined the group late. It was basically an open house for friends and family, as it was every summer in August. Echo, India, Kendra, and I were the mainstays, along with my adopted mother, who has passed on now. I’d worked all through June and most of July at the mill, so it should have been nice to be on the island with nothing to do except lift weights for the football season and play croquet with the girls.” He stopped and thought about that summer for a few moments. “But the week I got laid off, Shelby Junior and his fiancée, Melissa, were killed in a car wreck on Mercer Island. As you can imagine, it was devastating for us all.

  “But we all put on a brave face, because that’s what Carmichaels do, and it was good to have Echo and India there, since they both needed to be entertained and it kept Kendra and me from drowning in grief. Then one night I come back to the house after taking a walk, and they’re all staring at me like I’m some kind of monster. It turns out Echo had come in all beat up and accused me of raping her. I didn’t even see her out there. I’ve never understood why she would accuse me.”

  “Did they take her to the hospital?”

  “I have no idea. As far as I know, the police were never called. The Carmichaels and the Overbys both go to great lengths to keep their personal problems out of the public eye.”

  “You talked to India for quite a while tonight.”

  Trey’s gray eyes swung from the flames to me. “She was updating me on the family.”

  “So all these years you’ve been hoping Echo would tell the truth?”

  “Or get found out.”

  “Did she have a grudge against you for some reason?”

  “Not that I knew of.”

  “Or maybe it was dark and she actually thought it was you?”

  “Doubtful.”

  “What were the Overbys like?”

  “They’d lived on the East Coast most of their lives. My father did a lot of business with their father. They’d been friends since school. Like us, they were quite well off. Their mother was a reformed hippie type. Note their names, India and Echo. India told me tonight that her mother left their father not long after this happened and is now married to a guy on the East Coast who builds private jets.”

  Trey lapsed into silence and stared into the gas fireplace. I watched the emotions flicker in his eyes with the flames.

  “What did you say?”

  “I told them I didn’t do it.” He sighed and leaned back. “My father told me I was to cease all contact with the family. I couldn’t believe my ears. I was being drummed out of the family. They’d made some sort of deal with the Overbys not to prosecute if I was banished. My father told me he was doing me a favor by saving me from the greater damage of prosecution and life in prison. Nothing I said could convince them I was innocent. Remember Renfrow from the party?”

  “The man you were so rude to?”<
br />
  “He worked for my father and Overby both—still does, I guess. He was there that night. He always looked at me like he expected to catch me stealing the family silver. To add insult to injury, it was Renfrow who drove me down to the ferry that night, neither of us saying a word, but him sitting there with a smug look on his face. There was no ferry until morning, so I waited by myself until the commuters started lining up at five.”

  “You must have been bitter.”

  “Assuming I was innocent, I must have been bitter? Isn’t that what you mean?”

  “I’m assuming you’re innocent.”

  “Thanks,” he said and seemed to mean it. “I was bitter. It’s tough being the black sheep of the family, you know.”

  “You think color had something to do with it?”

  “You think it didn’t?”

  “I couldn’t say. Kendra spoke up for you tonight. She seems to be on your side.”

  “A few years too late. Oh, I don’t blame her. She was in shock, too, and Echo was her best friend. She didn’t know what to think. She was only sixteen.” He stood up and said, “I think I should go. It’s getting late, and I have a history of being dangerous when it gets late.”

  “Don’t make jokes like that. You can’t be disappointed with the way your life has turned out? I mean, if you’d been a Carmichael, we both know you’d be doing something else for a living, but you’ve got a great job as it is.”

  “It’s a job I love. My grandmother lived two blocks from Six. When I lived with her, she would take me there and the guys would sit me up in the driver’s seat. Then she died, and I went away and was rich for a while. And thirteen years later I was back in the Central Area, and a few years after that, I was sitting up in that fire engine for real. It’s an amazing job a lot of people want and very few get a crack at.”

  “You wouldn’t go back to that family if you could?”

  As he opened the door, he gave me a fleeting look. “It’s a moot point, isn’t it? Because they’re not going to ask me back. Tonight was a onetime deal.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.”

  “Oh, yeah. I’ll never hear from any of them again.”

  “One last thing.”

  “What?”

  “What’s really going on with you and India?”

  “We were friends once. Actually, more than friends. I guess you could say we have some history.”

  “You’ve got a lot of baggage.”

  “I’m a black man. That’s what we do. We carry baggage. Or didn’t you know that?”

  24. SETTING THINGS RIGHT

  STONE CARMICHAEL, NINETEEN YEARS EARLIER>

  “Echo, come back. For God’s sake, come back. Jesus. Wait up.”

  But she doesn’t wait. She is running in the moonlight in a ragged gait, running and sometimes limping, and all the while holding her arms across herself as if she’s made of straw and about to burst apart, and I guess she is still crying because she was sure as heck crying before. Hard to tell from back here. I can’t keep up with her at the best of times because she is the star on the cross-country team for her school, but especially tonight when I’m drunk and so incredibly pissed off about India and my little bastard so-called brother. Jesus. You’d think of all the people under the stars your brother would have some allegiance to family and nameplate and tradition; you’d think your own brother could keep his hands off the woman you’ve vowed to marry. But then, he was never my real brother, was he? My real brother is dead.

  “Echo?”

  I trip in the path and stumble forward, dancing like a three-legged goat to keep my balance, and by the time I regain my equilibrium and get my stride back, she’s dashed up the porch of the big house and vanished through the front door, light spilling out through the doorway behind her. Somebody reaches out and closes the door, but it doesn’t seal completely and a knife blade of light slices out across the porch. As I climb the steps, I try to catch my breath and rearrange myself, smoothing my hair back, wiping my face. I’m drunk, and they are inside waiting to judge me. I can hear them jabbering excitedly, Echo’s entrance stirring them up like a stick in an anthill.

  But most of all I can hear Echo sobbing. She’s still crying, for God’s sake. Who would have thought she would have taken this so badly? Who would have thought a couple of feuding brothers and a faithless sister could upset her this much? Or that the simple misunderstanding we had together in the cottage could be so blown out of proportion?

  Her mother says, “What happened, Echo? My God! Who did this to you? Darling? You’re hurt.”

  “What the hell happened?” This, a man’s voice.

  “Goddamn it!” It’s her father now, no mistaking the booming Harlan Overby baritone that’s convinced so many people to invest with him despite his wretched history of losing money. “Who’ve you been with?”

  I slip quietly through the door, and at first I’m noticed only by India, who’s in a long white robe, her hair swathed in a matching white towel, clearly just out of the sauna downstairs, her skin flushed from the residual heat. Everyone else is staring at Echo’s bloody face and black eye, but India is looking at me studiously as I slide over to slip my arm around Echo’s shoulder, her mother on the other side. My mother is rushing from the kitchen at the far end of the house with a wet rag, presumably to dab at the splotches of blood under Echo’s nostrils. “There, there,” I tell her, patting her narrow shoulder.

  “Who did this to you?” her mother asks.

  “It was in the old gardener’s cottage, wasn’t it?” I say. “I have to confess I was outside, too. Just taking a walk.”

  Echo hears my voice and realizes for the first time I’m the one standing on her left side, and as the recognition dawns she tenses up. She speaks through the damp cloth her mother is using to swab her face, weeping so frenetically we can barely hear her words, much less form intelligible sentences out of them. “We were in the cottage. Me and—”

  “I saw Trey leave the cottage,” I tell them, “but I couldn’t figure out what he was doing out there in the middle of the night. Then I saw Echo leave and I followed her up the path. I tried to call her, but…well, you can see how she is.”

  “Trey?” Kendra says. “Echo, that can’t be right. He wouldn’t hurt you. That’s not like Trey at all.”

  “No, it isn’t like Trey,” says India.

  “Was Trey in the cottage?” her mother asks, shaking her by the shoulders. There is something frantic in her mother’s questioning, and I know it has to do with the unsettling thought that a black boy has besmirched her daughter. “Was he?”

  “I know he was in there,” I tell them. “Because I saw him leave. He was in there, right?” Now, bawling more than ever, she nods and looks even more confused, glancing up at me as I pat her shoulder and kiss the top of her head. “Poor dear Echo,” I say. “What a terrible night for you. I bet you didn’t plan this.” She shakes her head. No, she didn’t plan this.

  “What happened?” asks her father, standing in front of us, his hands on his hips. Despite the fact that he looks something like a cartoon in his smoking jacket and jodhpurs, Harlan also looks like the rich and powerful man he is. “He didn’t force you, did he?”

  At the word force Echo becomes even more hysterical, crying even louder and of course everybody in the room draws the conclusion that she was raped. “Was it that black thug?” her father asks. Harlan always thought Father had made a mistake of Olympian proportions in adopting Trey. It is one of two traits I have in common with Harlan Overby: distrust of Trey and an undying love for his eldest daughter.

  “Had to be Trey,” I tell them. “I hate to say this about my own brother, but I saw him leaving the cabin.” She says nothing. “It’s okay. I know you’re afraid it will be your word against his, because that’s how it always turns out in a situation like this. And you know the victim is almost never believed, but that won’t happen tonight, because I’m on your side. We’re all on your side. It won’t be just your
word against his. I swear to you on that. I’ll stand alongside you. I’m your witness. I saw him leave the cottage. Come on, Echo. We need to get this settled. But we can’t do that until you admit it was Trey.”

  “I don’t want to…” she says, her words muffled as she buries her bloodied face between her mother’s breasts. She is so slim and small, still a child really. I would give anything if we could reverse course and start the evening over.

  “If it was Trey, you have to tell us,” her father says. “There’s no point in trying to say it was anybody else. Stone saw him leaving the cottage.”

  Echo tilts her head and gives me a look so filled with broken yearning and shattered trust, so salted with confusion and erosion of hope it almost breaks my heart. She is a wilting flower, an innocent in the process of losing her innocence.

  “Goddamn that Trey,” says Harlan. “You swear he did this?”

  Once again, Echo looks at our faces, then at me, and our eyes lock for a few seconds, and she looks away and says, “Who else could it have been?”

  “Goddamn him,” says my father. “Goddamn that bastard.”

  “What happened?” asks India, speaking for the first time. “How did you come to be out at the cottage after midnight?”

  The two sisters look at each other, and then Echo begins crying again and covers her face with her hands, and she and her mother walk awkwardly out of the room together. “No more tonight,” her mother says. “That’s the end. I shouldn’t have let it go this far. This is private now.” They head toward the rear of the house and disappear into the main bathroom. Soon we hear the shower running while Elaine waits outside the door, as if standing guard. Echo is under the running shower for a long time.

  I look across the room to where India has dropped into a chair, her face blank. Everyone in the room is running through their own version of shock, trying to digest why Trey, the adopted son and gifted athlete, has done something that not only disgraces the family but will no doubt rupture relations between the Overbys and Carmichaels for years to come. Off in a corner Harlan and my father confer, Harlan as angry as I’ve ever seen any man, Father defensive and calming, some sort of deal being worked out by two deal makers who’ve been working out property and investment agreements for twenty years. Everyone else is silent except for the misfits, Renfrow and his girlfriend, who continue to play backgammon as if nothing has occurred, laughing to themselves, popping peanuts into each other’s mouths at every toss of the dice.