Mortal Fear m-1
Page 53
At last, with Drewe and Anna at their head, escorting Margaret, the family steps from beneath the tent and joins the waiting mourners. When I spy Patrick with Holly in his arms, anger ambushes me again. I should be there. That is my family, whatever may have happened, and Erin would want me there. But Drewe does not. She blamed my exclusion on her father, but I think she lied. This separation is punishment for my intimacy with Erin.
Bob Anderson looks lost in the ritual of hugs and tears, like a soldier separated from his unit after a battle. He moves constantly, restlessly. I want to talk to him. Exactly why, I’m not sure. But in this patriarchal family, making peace with Bob is the first step toward reconciliation.
The problem is how to approach him. Would Drewe cause a scene? Maybe I should wait and see him at his office. He’ll probably be working tomorrow morning, trying like all reticent men to grind away his grief with labor.
But I don’t have to wait. Without a discernible glance in my direction, Bob detaches himself from the crowd and walks across the grass toward me. He has the hunter’s eye; he’s known I was here all along. He must be sixty, but he still moves with animal ease, his burly limbs churning around that low center of gravity like an organic machine. I feel myself tensing for the inevitable explosion of his rage. I doubt he would desecrate the ceremony by hitting me here, but there’s no knowing for sure.
He stops two feet from me and looks into my face. Bob is shorter than I by a good six inches, but his presence has little to do with his physical mass. The windburned skin and blue-gray eyes seem to show first anger, then grief, then disgust. But perhaps I am merely reading my own feelings onto his face. Glancing past him for an instant, I see Drewe looking our way.
“Look at me,” Bob says sharply.
“Dr. Anderson-”
He stops me by raising one hand to the level of his lapel. “I want to ask you one question.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Do you know who killed my baby girl?”
My baby girl. Words so far from the image I will always carry of Erin, the very archetype of sensual womanhood. But behind the eyes of her father, a combat veteran who watched friends die by the dozen in Korea, there is only ineffable love for a being he will always see as an infant, or perhaps a beautiful toddler.
“I know his name,” I tell him. “But I don’t know where he is.”
“You think he’s alive, then?”
“Yes, sir. I do.”
“The FBI says he’s probably dead.”
“I know that. But I don’t believe it.”
Bob nods almost imperceptibly. “I don’t either. I’ve known men who fell into that river and came out alive.”
I wait.
“I want you to promise me something, Harper.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If you find out this man is alive somewhere, you pick up the phone and call me. First thing. You understand? First thing.”
The baldness of Bob’s intent reaches toward me like wind-blown flame. It’s the sort of intensity that makes even veteran cops nervous. “What do you have in mind to do?” I ask.
His mouth twitches at one corner. “Put him down.”
“Dr. Ander-”
“In the ground.”
A chill prickles the hair on my neck and shoulders. For the first time since this madness began, I feel I am looking at a man who is a match for Edward Berkmann. Unlike Lenz, Miles, or Baxter, Bob Anderson is terrifyingly simple. Clever rather than brilliant, he can handle any weapon from a deer-skinning knife to an automatic rifle, and he is possessed by a righteous anger that looks not to the law for guidance but to the Old Testament by which he was raised.
“Promise me,” he says again.
“I will.”
Bob exhales deeply, a sound almost like a sigh, but heavier, a sound that carries the weight of a burden I cannot begin to comprehend. “Drewe is my pride and joy,” he says, looking over his shoulder to where his wife and surviving daughter stoically accept the condolences of the last stragglers. “She’s already accomplished more than I ever did. I’m so damned proud of her I can’t sit still with it. But Erin…”
He looks back at me, allowing his shield of impassivity to drop a little. “Erin was always different. I knew from the start. She was a wayward girl, God knows, but it wasn’t her fault. It was her nature. She put us through the trials of Job, but I think we loved her all the more for it.”
For a moment he seems unable to continue. Then he wipes both eyes and regains his voice. “I don’t know what went on between you and Erin, but I always sensed there was something.”
Jesus-
“No man’s immune to the temptations of the flesh, son. And God knows she was a temptation to every man who ever saw her. But this…. When you told me she was dead, I thought I’d kill you the second I could get my hands on you. I knew that somehow that computer sex thing of yours had gotten her killed. But flying back from Memphis, I realized you were gonna punish yourself more than I ever could. And if you didn’t, God would.”
Bob runs a hand over his balding scalp. “But this other… bastard. He’s my responsibility. Ain’t no father and mother no place gonna have to endure what Margaret and I have because of this man.”
“Dr. Anderson….”
“You listen to me, son. I got enough money to take care of Margaret if she lives to be a hundred and fifty. I’m gonna leave some to Patrick to take care of Holly, and some to Drewe for the kids you two will have one day. The rest is going to Margaret, and I’m naming you as trustee. Just be still, Harper. You know more about money than anybody I ever knew, and more important, I trust you.”
I want to speak, but a lump the size of a golf ball is blocking my throat.
“I never agreed with your daddy’s politics,” Bob says haltingly. “But I always respected his guts. For a long time now, I’ve looked at you like you was my own. Now you got to put the past behind you and do whatever you have to do to make up with Drewe and get on with the business of living.” He inhales deeply, as though speaking so many words winded him. “That’s all I’ve got to say.”
Bob sticks out his callused hand. I take it, and for the first time since my father died I feel a surge of filial devotion, an atavistic sense of belonging that blasts all words into the eternal irrelevance they embody. For the few seconds we clasp hands, I am plugged into a world where ambiguity does not exist.
And I feel strong.
Everyone is gone now. In the distance I see the yellow backhoe that will fill Erin’s grave, but no operator. The funeral-home tent gives surprisingly cool shade, or perhaps it’s the opened earth that cools the air here.
Taking my surviving Martin from its case, I realize I forgot to bring a strap. I’ll have to sit to play. Using one foot, I prop the flight case up on its side and sit on the fat end, with my shoes at the foot of the grave. The polished metal casket has a bottomless sheen. A French vanilla sprinkling of Delta soil dropped by the family lies across the lid like the first fingers of the reclaiming earth.
“I hope you can hear this,” I say, my voice sounding too offhand for what should be a solemn moment.
Hitting the strings once to check the tuning, I begin the syncopated chords that lead into “All I Want Is Everything,” a song I wrote in a moment of crystallized indecision, a song Erin asked me to play anytime she saw me with a guitar. With a suspended chord hanging in the air, I begin singing softly.
Being born in Babylon
It’s so hard to get off on
The half-life of every choice
We love that serpent’s voice
It takes a sure hand and a sharp knife
To cut the fruit from the tree of life
But once you taste that virgin drop
How do you know when to stop?
All I want is everything
Girl you know it’s true
All I want is everything
But all I need is…
Diamond cuff links on my sleeves
Chartreuse Italian shoes
And time to wear them out
No really, a nice house and a nice car
And a nice girl, not a movie star
A normal kid and some green grass
And a great camera to make them last
All I want is everything
Girl you know it’s true
All I want is everything
But all I need is you…
I play without singing for a bit, remembering how Erin used to laugh at the verse about the gold teeth and Italian shoes, and then suddenly get pensive as the rest of the lyric came around. She knew she would never fit into the middle-class scene painted in the second half of that verse, and perhaps also that she would never be all I needed-just as no one person could keep all her demons at bay. Remembering the farewell kiss in her house on the day she died, I sing the last verse.
Two roads lead from this spot
One’s easy, the other’s not
They say pleasure’s born from pain
But I don’t ride that train
I can go East, I can go West
Choose one, and I lose the rest
But for a man who wants it all
This is sure some easy call
All I want is everything
Girl you know it’s true
All I want is everything
But all I need is you
As the last chord fades into silence, a voice from close behind me freezes me in place.
“What are you doing?”
Moving slowly, I lay the guitar on the ground, get up, and turn to face Drewe. She stands just inside the shade of the tent, wearing a black dress, black shoes, black hat, and Ray-Ban sunglasses. She seems a pale apparition of rebuke.
“Saying good-bye,” I reply. “This is what she wanted. I had to do it.”
“You told me you wrote that song for me.”
“I did. But she liked it.”
Drewe says nothing. I glance over her shoulder for a car but see only the empty cemetery lane.
“What did my father say to you?”
“He let me know it was okay I was here.”
“That’s not all he said.”
“That’s all I’m going to tell you.”
Her mouth wrinkles in disgust. “More secrets?”
“If you like.”
She sighs, then turns and begins walking away.
“He told me I should do whatever it took to make up with you,” I call out. “That we should get on with living.”
She stops and turns back, squinting her eyes against the sun. “And what did you say to that?”
“Nothing. I don’t think I can make it up to you. I think it comes down to whether you can live with what you know and with me too. Or whether you want to.”
“Do you think anyone could?”
“I don’t know. I think you’re a unique person, Drewe. I think you love me, even if you don’t like me or even respect me right now.”
“And you think that’s something to build a life on?”
“It’s a start. I love you, Drewe. I’ve loved and respected you since we were kids.”
“Then why did you fuck my sister?”
The profanity shocks me, but if anything was ever going to push her to it, this is it. “Because I couldn’t sleep with you.”
“No!” she cries bitterly. “We were sleeping together then! You’d asked me to marry you!”
“And you said we should take a year to be sure.”
“That was for your benefit. I was sure! I thought you might not be, and obviously I was right.”
“I was sure, Drewe.”
“You were sleeping with other women too, weren’t you?”
“No.”
She walks back a little way, her arms folded protectively across her chest. “I hate this,” she says softly. “I hate it.”
“I hate it too.”
“I try to trust people, I want to, but everything is always so-so ugly at the bottom.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is!”
“It’s not true with you. I mean, you’re the exception. And I’m glad you are. It actually gives me hope for the world.”
She pulls off her sunglasses and looks into my eyes. “I’m no exception, Harper.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. No one’s completely pure. Everyone has a past.”
“What are you talking about?”
She hesitates, then pushes on. “What could you learn about me that would shock you the most? That would hurt you the most?”
There is a strange buzzing in my head which prevents my thinking clearly. “I’m not sure I-”
“You’re not the only man I’ve slept with, Harper.”
She takes a quick step back, as though the bald statement has shocked even her. “You don’t believe me?”
“But you said….”
“I let you think that because you wanted to believe it so badly, and because it was almost true.”
“Almost true?”
She folds and unfolds the earpieces of the sunglasses in her hands. “When I was in college, the last year before medical school, I hadn’t seen you for almost two years. You called maybe twice that whole time. I’d spent four years doing nothing but studying. I’d just taken the MCAT, and I was sure I’d blown it completely.”
“But you scored in the ninety-eighth percentile.”
“I didn’t know that then, okay? I just hit this down place in my life. I felt like everything had been a mistake. I’d been in love with you for years, was practically living like a nun, yet I was being faithful to a man who was sleeping with women all over the country. It seemed insane. It was insane.”
“Drewe-”
“One night I accepted a date with this boy. We went for pizza and a movie, nothing special, but I liked him. He was in some of my classes, and he made me laugh a lot. Anyway, when he took me home, I asked him to come in.”
“Drewe, you don’t-”
“And while we were kissing,” she says forcefully, “I realized how good it felt simply to be held by another person. And I just… didn’t resist anything he was doing. Almost my whole dating life had been spent pushing away hands and saying ‘Please don’t’ or ‘I’m sorry.’ And I was just tired of it. I couldn’t do it anymore. He was kissing me and I realized with sort of a shock that I was wet. And I was wearing a dress and I just-I just did it.”
I have a childish urge to cover my ears with my hands. Drewe watches me with an almost defiant look, her green eyes flashing, as if daring me to criticize her.
“What do you want me to say?” I ask. “It hurts.”
“That I did it? Or that I didn’t tell you about it?”
“I understand why you did it. I’m surprised you didn’t do more of it. But why couldn’t you tell me?”
She shakes her head as though she can’t believe what she’s heard. “I did exactly what you’ve done to me! Tried to spare your feelings.”
“I know that. I get it, okay? I don’t know why it hurts so much. I guess it’s because I always put you on such a pedestal, as if you were more than human. Hell, Drewe, you let people think that.”
“ What? When I was young I acted wild so people wouldn’t think I was a prude! When I finally tried to be myself, everyone made me into a saint. I can’t help what people think!”
“Was that the only time?”
She glances at the ground, then back up at me, still defiant.
“God, Drewe-”
“I didn’t sleep with any other men, but I slept with him again. For a couple of days after, I wouldn’t talk to him. But then I did. I slept with him every night for a week. Then I stopped.”
The whole scenario is impossible to comprehend, like someone telling me my mother was secretly married to some stranger. “Why did you stop?”
“I was terrified I’d get pregnant, for one thing. I knew I didn�
�t love him, for another. I liked him, but I didn’t love him. I loved you. And I knew the things I was doing with him were things I should wait to do with you. Even though you weren’t showing any signs of commitment to me.”
“The things you were doing?” I hesitate, trying to control my imagination. “What were you doing with him?”
She shakes her head and takes a step toward me. “Just sex. It doesn’t matter.”
“Then tell me. Just intercourse? Or everything?”
“ Just intercourse? Isn’t that the worst offense in the scale of guilty behavior?”
“No. I don’t know. Did you-”
“Stop it, Harper! This is wrong. It’s dangerous.”
“I guess it is. Was he-”
“What? Better than you? Bigger than you? Tell me you’re not that juvenile, Harper. Tell me you’re more mature than a seventh grader.”
I whirl away from her and start packing the Martin into its case. As stupid as it is, all I can see is Drewe debasing herself for some faceless guy and loving every minute of it, all at a time when she wouldn’t sleep with me, the man she claimed she loved.
She circles around until she is facing me again. “You know something, Harper? The biggest penis I ever saw was on a cadaver in medical school. You think it was doing that man any good?”
“Just shut up.”
“I won’t! I thought you were different from other men. All this obsession with how many conquests they can make and who has the biggest prick and who can piss the farthest… I see it every day, in hospital staff meetings, in politics. Men are like three-year-olds trying to snatch all the toys from each other. Life isn’t about that. You think it hurts to hear I had sex with a man for one week in my life? How do you think I would feel if every girl you ever slept with was lined up in a row? I know half a dozen personally, and the rest would probably fill a school bus! I’m sure they did things for you I couldn’t even imagine. But I don’t want to imagine them. You slept with my sister, for God’s sake. You have a child by her. So don’t stand there looking like a kid who just found out there’s no Santa Claus. I’m the one who’s been wronged. I’m the one who should be apologized to.”