Firetrap

by Earl Emerson

  “No, don’t be. Everybody should be taken down a peg or two once in a while. It helps us keep perspective. I mean that.”

  “That’s a good philosophy. I’ll have to remember it.”

  “She’s changed enormously, Echo. More than any of us.”

  “I suppose she has. I’ve been close to her all along, so maybe I haven’t noticed the way others do. But then, we’ve all changed.”

  “Not so much that anybody stood up for me when Armstrong teed off.”

  “Kendra did her best.”

  “Yes. I’ve missed her spunkiness. In fact, she’s the one part of the family I’ve really missed.”

  “I hope you’re going to keep in touch. She’s talked about you a lot over the years, wondering where you were and what became of you. Do you hold that against us? That nobody stood up for you that night?”

  “Kendra was only sixteen and in shock. My mother never voiced an opinion contrary to my father’s, so I didn’t expect much out of her. Stone always wanted me out of the family, so as far as he was concerned, it was perfect. And my father…I’ve thought about this a lot, and he must have truly thought I was guilty or he wouldn’t have done what he did. You were the one I was waiting for. But you never let out a peep.”

  She sat back and appraised me, her wide blue eyes cooler than a drink of cold water. “Yes. Well. What did you want me to say? My sister told a room full of people you were the one. Later, I tried to talk to her about it, but she wouldn’t talk.”

  For a few moments watching India watch me, I was like a junkie going back on the juice, thinking she’d surely called me here to see me—ME—and that she was sending signals that she wanted to renew the relationship we’d had so long ago, that she might even want to go upstairs right here in the Olympic Four Seasons and take a room. Crazy thoughts. Until now I’d lived what I thought to be a moral life, taking care of my family, doing my job, staying away from women married to close relatives, but I could see the facade crumbling in one long lunch if she made the right moves. I had the feeling for part of the time that we spoke that she was working through some of the same feelings, that we were both sitting there battling our worst instincts, sensing Eden just over the ridge and fighting not to venture toward it. It was a fantasy, of course. She hadn’t sent out any signals.

  She said, “I’ve had conflicted feelings about what happened that summer.”

  “The part with you and me, or the part where my family called me a rapist and said they never wanted to see me again?”

  “Being friends with the brother of the man I was eventually going to marry was a good thing, or so I thought. Having sex with him probably wasn’t such a good idea. You were always a very nice guy, Trey. You had a good instinct about you. That was why I found it difficult to accept the fact that you’d hurt my sister. We all found it hard to accept, but there it was staring us in the face. She said you did it. She obviously didn’t want to finger you, but she did.”

  “And you accepted that even when I denied it.”

  “I did at the time. I’ve called you here to tell you I’ve changed my mind. I no longer think you did it. I know I’m late, but I believe you’re innocent, and I needed to tell you and offer you whatever my support is worth—if it’s worth anything at this point. I needed to get the words out and I needed you to be in front of me when I said them. I’m sorry you were falsely accused, and I’m sorry your family disowned you. I’m sorry about all of it. I truly am.”

  “So what you’re saying is, your sister lied and you know it.”

  “I’m saying I believe you’re innocent.”

  “Why this sudden change of heart? Because of our chat the other night? Did I seem so reasonable and normal that you decided to reevaluate what happened? Or did your sister tell you she lied?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say anything about my sister. I can say I’m sorry you got kicked out of the family and I’m sorry you didn’t get to see your mother before she died. I wish none of it had happened. It must have been awful for you.”

  “Echo talked to you, didn’t she?”

  “I think if perhaps you spoke to her, you and she might come to some sort of understanding. I think she might be…I don’t want you to tell anybody I’m the one who told you, but I think if you spoke to her…things might rearrange themselves. I can’t guarantee that, but I have a feeling it might happen that way. You should at least give it a try. And please be gentle with her.”

  “You’re asking me to be gentle with the woman who essentially ruined my life.”

  “I think…yes. I think you should talk to her and be nice. She’s not as stable as some of us.”

  “Somehow the thought of seeing her again doesn’t seem very appealing, especially after meeting her husband.”

  “Promise me you’ll get in touch with her.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “I should have spoken up for you that summer. I should have told everyone why Stone saw you leaving the cottage and how your watch happened to be there. You deserved to have all the facts out on the table. Now that I know you were innocent, I feel sick about it.”

  “Speaking up for me might not have changed anything.”

  “At least I wouldn’t have had to live with this feeling of cowardice all these years. And you would have had the satisfaction that one person wasn’t afraid to speak the truth on your behalf.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  “Thank you.”

  We had lunch and talked about more mundane matters during the meal. Afterward, we paid the bill and she gathered up her coat and moved toward the restaurant entrance. I followed her into the hotel lobby, where a well-dressed, middle-aged man and woman on one of the davenports watched us as only two disapproving white people can watch a black man with a white woman. She asked for a ride to the Monorail terminal, which I gladly gave her. We were strangely silent on the walk to the car and during the drive, but then, India had always been a woman of silences.

  I’d had all those empty summer weeks to win India’s affections from Stone. Whether I’d done it on purpose or whether we’d simply fallen into a trap of proximity and hormones, I was never certain, but over the years I had to live with the sick fact that sleeping with my brother’s girlfriend had given me almost as much satisfaction as throwing me out of the tribe must have given him.

  32. HOMECOMING

  TREY, NINETEEN YEARS EARLIER>

  It’s been a long night, and even though an hour ago when I was with India I felt about as good as any man can ever feel, I’m pretty miserable right now. Leery of crabs and wary of sucking tide pools, I’ve been pacing the beach in the moonlight, standing still and thinking hard when the moon moves behind the clouds, walking and thinking even harder when it comes out and forms a tall shadow in front of me as I dodge slimy rocks and holes near the waterline. The tide is out and the beach is wide and broken and rocky. Even though Stone has either sabotaged or tried to sabotage every relationship I’ve ever had with a girl, I feel like a total rat for what India and I have been doing behind his back.

  We’ve been thrown together most of the summer because Stone’s been off gallivanting for Father’s companies, and while Kendra and Echo have been here, too, they’re younger and in many ways have nothing in common with India and me. Then there’s been the issue of Shelby Junior’s car crash and the way I’ve been handling it, or not handling it, including the afternoon I broke down out in the boat and wept in front of India—just the two of us in the sunshine, as she scooted over and pulled my head into her lap. She’d been comforting me, and then we shared our first kiss, and everything was different from that moment. We’d been distant friends since we were kids, and lately she’d been my brother’s girlfriend, the woman whom by all accounts he was fated to marry. But after our lips touched, we were something else to each other and we both knew it—saw it in each other’s eyes at the dinner table and when we were goofing around with our sisters, although it was still a week before we kissed ag
ain, and another week after that before we drifted out to the gardener’s cottage late one evening.

  No telling whether it was her plan or mine, though we both felt guilty afterward and said as much, talking for hours about what we’d done and why. And then, predictably, we did it again and then went back to the big house to our respective bedrooms to spend the rest of the night mulling things over. I’ve always been wary of Stone, probably because he has always treated me shabbily. Shelby was the oldest, and it was Shelby who took me under his wing; Shelby who was my mentor, guardian, and coach throughout my grade school years; Shelby who in fact had at times been more of a father to me than his father had been to him. His death struck the family like a tornado taking off a roof.

  India would have been a temptation to any male on the planet, so I didn’t have much of a chance against her allure: seventeen, overloaded with testosterone, stranded on an island in the San Juans with nothing to do but keep her and her sister amused for the better part of the summer; my adopted mother urging me to take them out on the boat, to the wreck off the north end of the island for diving, waterskiing, crabbing, fishing. Often, neurotic Echo would opt out, and Kendra, suffering from her usual overblown sense of duty, would stay with Echo and read or listen to music while India, the more adventuresome of the sisters, would go with me.

  As I walk back to the house the clouds loom darkly over the night sky. I can see all the lights are still on in the great room, and through the windows I watch figures moving about the rooms. Harlan Overby is visible, gesticulating like a wild man, unnaturally agitated in a manner I don’t think I’ve seen before. Everybody’s still awake, which is unusual for this time of night, past one in the morning. When I reach the house, I’m startled to discover Renfrow’s girlfriend sitting in the dark on the stoop smoking a cigarette, the only clue to her presence the orange glow of her cigarette tip. When I say hello, she stares past me as if I don’t exist. Even though I’ve known her only a few hours, it’s not the first time she’s ignored me.

  When I open the front door and step into the foyer, my father and mother are sitting near the tall stone fireplace in their accustomed chairs. Kendra and Stone are by the tall window overlooking the dark Puget sound and the distant glow in the sky provided by Seattle’s skyline. Renfrow is hunched over a backgammon board rolling the dice and scoring against an imaginary partner. Harlan is strutting back and forth in front of the dead fireplace, and Elaine is beside him with her arms folded tightly across her breasts, lips pursed. India is all by herself in a far corner curled up in the window seat with her eyes closed. Only Echo is missing.

  As I enter the house, everybody in the room stops whatever it is they’ve been doing and looks up at me. Suddenly I feel like a kitten in a room full of mad dogs. If I didn’t know better, I would guess they all hate me, all except Stone, who actually does hate me but who gives me a look I can’t figure out until later.

  “What?” I say, turning to close the front door behind me, only to find Renfrow’s girlfriend staring at me. “What?”

  Harlan jogs across the huge room, but stops ten feet away, his face tinted with rage, the veins under his eyes standing out. He looks like a man who’s just lost a diamond ring down a drainpipe and believes I’m responsible. “Were you out in the gardener’s shed with my daughter?”

  I swallow hard and glance across the room toward India but cannot judge by the blank look on her face what the climate of the room is or what I should say. I have no idea what she might have told them. Whatever it is, it’s made Harlan angrier than I’ve ever seen him. Elaine, too, who is behind him glowering at me.

  “It’s not a shed. It’s the gardener’s cottage,” I say stupidly, trying to remain calm and gain time to think. I’ve had sex with three girls in my life, but until now I’ve not been confronted by any of their fathers. It’s unnerving, especially with my whole family watching.

  “Were you out there with my daughter?”

  “I…Yes.” I see him coming at me but don’t realize he’s going to release all the fury in his tightly coiled body until it’s too late and he’s struck me across the face with the back of his hand. I’ve been hit harder by brush while riding my dirt bike around the island, but I back off anyway, worried he might do worse. He tries to strike me again, but I sideslip, and then Father flounces across the room and takes hold of Harlan’s arm. Neither man looks at the other; all eyes in the room are on me.

  “She already told us everything, but we want to hear it from you. Did you have sex with her?” my father asks.

  “Yes, but…” Overby wrestles my father for a few moments, two middle-aged men engaging in the roughhouse behavior of their youth, and then Renfrow approaches and together they hold Overby at bay. “It wasn’t like that,” I say.

  “Oh,” says Elaine, her voice curdling with disdain. “Just how was it?”

  “It was…” I glance one more time across the large room to India, looking for a clue or for some help, for some hint of how she wants me to respond. I feel as if I am betraying her as badly as the two of us have already betrayed Stone. When she doesn’t give any sign as to what she might have told them, I glance at Stone to see how he’s taking this, but instead of a look of injury on his face, I am surprised to see triumph. Or am I imagining it? Why would he be amused that I slept with his girlfriend? And why am I taking all the heat for this? There were two of us in the cottage.

  Elaine walks over to a coffee table and picks up a watch, dangling it by one finger. “Is this yours?” she says.

  “If it’s a Corum, it is. Father gave it to me for my birthday.”

  “You bastard,” Overby said. “You stupid bastard. You’re going to prison. You’re going to spend years behind bars, you bastard.”

  “She went down there with me. She wanted to do it.”

  Harlan practically explodes in my face. “You lying misfit! You raped my daughter.”

  “Now, now, Harlan,” Father says, holding him firmly. “We made a deal. Remember?”

  “He needs to go to prison.”

  “You know what we agreed. At least give me this.”

  “Rape? I didn’t rape anybody. We were…together…she wanted to. Tell them,” I say, looking imploringly at India, but before she can utter a word, her mother steps forward, my watch still dangling from her finger as if it were a dead reptile, and attempts to launch a gob of spittle at me. She isn’t much of a spitter, and the saliva drops to the carpet between us. For some reason her efforts and the hate in her pretty eyes shock me more than anything else.

  “How dare you say it was consensual. How dare you.” She glares at me.

  “But I…”

  “I suppose she asked you to beat her up, too?”

  “Beat her up? She’s not beat up.”

  “Come now, big sports hero. We’ve seen Echo. We saw what you did.”

  “Echo? But I…Echo?”

  “I saw you leaving the cottage, little brother,” Stone says. “Sorry. I had to tell them. I saw you leaving.”

  “Sure, I left the cottage a while back, but…I never saw Echo.”

  “Liar,” said Elaine.

  “It’s time to get this bastard out of the building,” says Harlan. “Get him out of here. You’re right. We made a deal. You go through with your portion of it before I call the police—or kill him.”

  It is hard for me to figure how this has all come about. Echo. India. Am I going crazy? I glance from face to face in the room and register looks I’ve never felt before, but which I know will follow me to my grave.

  “How could you take advantage of a fifteen-year-old girl?” my father says, stepping forward until we’re nose to nose. I haven’t moved since coming into the house, am stuck to the spot as if I’d stepped into a glue trap.

  “I didn’t see Echo.” India is refusing to look at me. “I never saw Echo. I saw—”

  “Echo says you did, and you just admitted it yourself,” says Elaine, stooping to mop up the spittle off the carpet with a damp rag
she’s had in her hand all along. “Echo says you did, and that’s good enough for me.”

  “I saw you leaving,” says Stone. “I mean, I’d like to lie for you, bro, but with something this serious and the Overbys being such good friends and all, I don’t see how I can. I did see you leaving the cottage, didn’t I?”

  “I left it. But—”

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” says Stone.

  “Let me talk to Echo. She can’t be saying I did anything, because I didn’t.”

  “You admitted you had sex with her,” my father says. “Stone saw you leaving the cottage. Renfrow found your watch. Echo said you were the one. What else is there to talk about? The subject is exhausted.”

  “But I never saw Echo.”

  “You just said you had sex with her.”

  “I said…” I glance around the room, my eyes lingering on India for just long enough to realize she isn’t going to speak up and may not confirm what I want to tell them. Maybe she believes I actually did this, that I waited out there in the dark until Echo happened along and jumped her. “Why don’t we bring Echo out here? Get this out in the open.”

  “Not on your life,” says Harlan. “You’re not going to lay eyes on her ever again. Not if I can help it. Not in this lifetime.”

  I glance around the room, and India finally gives me a look she might have given a small animal her school bus has crushed. We’d been in love for a few days, at least I’d thought so, and I expect her support. I suppose it’s too much to hope she’ll defend me when it would mean admitting we were in the gardener’s cottage making love for an hour and a half. I wonder if she’s sacrificing me because she thinks I’m guilty, or if she’s merely trying to protect her own reputation. And what the hell did happen to Echo?

  For a while nobody speaks. Kendra won’t stop sobbing. My father appears to be the most shocked and possibly the most tormented of the lot. He is clearly shattered by this whole situation.

  “But I didn’t do it.”

  For a few seconds a white father looks at his black son as if he believes him, but at the end of the look the window of doubt closes and the father’s eyes grow even more sorrowful and he takes on the mien of a man who is about to put down his favorite horse.