Age of Consent

by Marti Leimbach

  Thanksgiving still on? You and your daughter? he’d said with that same soft caressing tone to his words, a dark, low rumbling like the deep purr of a lion. I’d like to come along if you’re still asking.

  Yes! Yes, of course! She hadn’t even bothered hiding her enthusiasm. For the next twenty-four hours, she planned her outfit, prepared recipes, tried different styles for her hair, arranged the table with various centerpieces, all the while attending to the dreadful persistent thought that either Craig would not come at all or that he’d not come alone. He’d bring a girlfriend, June imagined, a despairing thought that made it difficult for her to look forward to the dinner as much as she would have liked. She worried she would be forced to entertain the two of them right there in her own house, that her affection for Craig would be obvious and shame her. She could not ask if he planned to bring a girlfriend, either, because to do so would be to suggest that he ought to. She tried to put it from her mind but by the time Thanksgiving dinner was in the oven, she was so sure he’d arrive with a girlfriend that she’d almost put out an extra place setting.

  A few hours later, she watched his car roll down her street, then the door opened and he got out. He wore a corduroy jacket and had combed his hair back. She waited for the other door to open and for a long-legged, glamorous woman to emerge from inside the Buick. But no woman came. He walked to the steps by himself, just him, all alone, and she nearly leaped at the sight.

  He’d brought a couple of T-shirts from the station as gifts. Throughout dinner, he told them all about what it was like to work in radio. June watched the way Bobbie tensed in fascination, her face shining toward Craig, the beautiful child mixing now with the teenage girl she’d newly become. Bobbie had been entranced by Craig. He told her stories of where he’d worked, of the famous disc jockeys he’d known. He talked about band members he knew personally. He did an impression of Casey Kasem. June was grateful, if a little jealous, when Craig promised to let Bobbie come to the station and see it in real life.

  That would be fun, wouldn’t it? he’d asked her, and Bobbie had nodded, unsure how to accept so great an offer. To be inside a real radio station was an unimaginable treat.

  At the end of the evening, June said, You’ll have dinner again with us, won’t you? She couldn’t bring herself to say have dinner with me. It felt too unlikely, even preposterous. She knew she still needed to lose some weight; she needed to wear better clothes, to do something. All she had been able to offer—for the moment—was the appeal of a home-cooked family meal. Weak bait, but maybe Craig was a hungry fish?

  Sure, he had said. And for a little while he’d come have supper with her and Bobbie. He’d astound them both with his knowledge of records and hit charts. He’d reel off the Top 10, even sometimes the Top 20, for any year in a decade. He could tell you whether a years-old album was gold, silver, or platinum without pausing for thought. Bobbie adored him—that was obvious—and hugged him at the door as he was leaving.

  She’s fond of you, June had said.

  She’s some girl.

  It was nice of you to remember her birthday.

  He’d brought her several record albums and a big box of chocolate for her fourteenth.

  Least I could do.

  But then, just as it had appeared he and June were establishing something, he’d disappeared. She resigned herself to the fact he was not attracted to her, not interested in that way. Even so, she listened to him on the radio and sometimes sent him a note. You played my favorite song today! she would write, though that might not be true. Once, he’d dedicated a song to “the little lady in the house surrounded by woods,” and she’d thought for sure, or at least perhaps, he’d meant her.

  All these thoughts sifted through June’s mind as she drove. After the awful heat wave and the hours of fierce traffic, and the tired remaining last hour of the journey, his voice was the tonic she needed. When he did not begin his show, she wondered what had happened. She thought perhaps her car’s clock was fast, but when she checked her wristwatch, she saw that it was well past midnight and still no greeting to the listeners from Craig, nor any explanation. Songs played, one after the other, and the music felt to June like silence, each song like another three-minute block of empty time.

  Something was wrong. Twenty past midnight and Craig still hadn’t arrived on the air. It was a terrible thought that he could disappear from the airwaves and that such an important part of her life could conclude so abruptly. She wondered if something had happened to him. The station sounded unmanned, just a parade of songs, one following another, and it seemed ominous, a sure sign that Craig was either injured or dead. She now felt certain that something bad had happened; Craig was gone.

  This notion that he was physically injured was so powerful that she finally pulled into a gas station. She teetered in her heels over the broken cement to a phone booth in order to call the station. Why not? she reasoned. She was a devoted fan. The station should be grateful for listeners who cared so much. But standing in the booth, enveloped in the smell of beer and urine, looking through the glass door mottled with dead gnats, and seeing stars peeking through a veil of purple sky, she considered that the people at the station would not be grateful. They would see straight through her, spy the inane, hopeless crush she had on Craig, and dismiss her completely. Nevertheless, she continued. Under the halo of a yellow lamp, in a cloud of stinging insects, she dropped her coins through the slot and waited. But the station didn’t answer. He probably had dozens of women calling him nightly. Too many like her.

  Back in the car she decided she was just man-starved. That was her trouble. Whenever she left home for a period of time, a more adventuresome spirit took hold and she did things like buy a new dress or get her hair restyled or call a man. At home, in the normal routine of her days, it was possible to live in a closed, sexless world. She sold makeup to women—who are you going to meet in a job like that? Women, that’s who. She wanted a man, or at least his voice, and now she had nothing. She told herself there were any number of reasons Craig was off the air now. He could be recording commercials or creating voice-overs. There was little reason for her to worry. Even so, a little while later, when Craig still hadn’t arrived on the air, she pulled into a rest station, already reaching for her purse.

  The phone was next to the bathroom door and she hoped nobody flushed while she was talking. She dialed the number, then listened to the phone ring and ring. She was tired; the phone seemed heavy in her hand. She’d almost decided to hang up when she heard a click and someone’s voice. “Hello?” she said, cautiously. “Is this—?” She heard music in the background. It was, indeed, the station. She did not ask if Craig was there. She said, “I am a friend of Craig Kirtz. Can you tell me why he is not on the air now?”

  She was surprised by how she came across, not like a silly, lurking fan but businesslike, concerned. The person on the other end of the phone, the screener—a young man by the sound of his voice—treated her accordingly. Craig was now forty-five minutes late, he explained. She heard the sigh at the end of the line. “We don’t know why.”

  “Shouldn’t you check the hospitals?” she said.

  “Check hospitals?” The man sounded alarmed. “Lady, I’ve got to get his show filled.”

  —

  SHE DROVE TO a hospital—in the early hours after midnight, at a time when reason sleeps, it seemed a sensible thing to do. She parked the car, then made her way across the lot toward the main building, with its blocky wards and tiny squares of lit windows that gave it an all-night feel. She entered the wide doors at the front of the emergency room, hearing the whoosh of them opening and feeling the sudden chill of air-conditioning within. It seemed to June she’d been ebbing toward this hospital all night, but with no clear reason why she had come. A young man had gone a little AWOL—it did not mean he was in the hospital and it certainly did not mean he was in this hospital. She’d taken her fantasy of Craig too far, not only half believing that it could be she to whom he
was speaking words of affection when introducing love songs but now that it might be she who came to his aid at the time of his greatest need. She was pathetic, she decided. She wanted to leave the hospital, the state, the nation. She wanted to never be seen again. But she had come this far.

  She went to the desk and asked after Craig, explaining he was a radio celebrity, expected right now at the station, and that everyone was concerned about him.

  “We are asking hospitals all around the capital if he has been admitted,” June said seriously, as though this were a reasonable thing to do. If the receptionist—or whoever she was—mistakenly believed she was from the station, that was okay by June.

  “Who would have brought him in?” the receptionist asked. She had corn-yellow hair with dark roots. Her eyeliner had filled the creases beneath her eyes, and she wore an expression as though she’d been hounded all night by crazy people and June was just another.

  “I don’t know,” said June.

  “What I mean is do you know if it was an ambulance? Do you have a reason to think he’s at this hospital?”

  “No. Yes. I don’t know.”

  The receptionist took a sharp breath. June told her what he looked like, his age, height, a guess at his weight. The receptionist checked through a clipboard full of admission sheets, pausing finally and looking up at June.

  “Wait here,” she said, then disappeared behind a curtain for a few minutes. When she returned, she went to the corner of the desk and made a phone call. Then she approached June with a curious expression as though she wasn’t quite sure what to say. Yes, a person of that description had been brought in.

  “Oh!” June said. She was horrified. She felt she had created this scenario somehow. That the power of her imagination had caused Craig to be in this hospital, in pain.

  “His first name is Craig but his last name…well, he has his radio name but his actual last name is…uh…” She wondered how long she could stall. If she really knew the man, she’d know his real name.

  “We’ve got Kirtz,” the receptionist offered. “Hang on a second.” The receptionist held up a finger.

  June watched as she went back to the phone and punched some numbers. The woman was turned away from June, having dragged the receiver as far from the desk as the cord would allow. Another woman, a black nurse with a stethoscope and a crisp white trouser suit, arrived a few minutes later from behind a curtain and told June she was not allowed to discuss patients with anyone except relatives.

  “Are you a relative, ma’am?” She had a thin flat face with a wide nose, deep lines beneath her straightened bangs. Her eyelids hung heavily, like two weighted curtains, and she looked serious, even angry, or it may have been that after so many years of organizing patients and staff, an air of exasperated bossiness had become her natural state. Typed out on a badge above her shirt pocket was the biblical name Esther.

  “Oh…yes. Yes, I am a relative,” June said.

  “You his wife?” Esther asked.

  “Not his wife, no.”

  “Then who are you?”

  She thought for a moment. “His wife.”

  Esther gave her a look, then shook her head slowly from side to side, as though everything about June was difficult. “He had a car accident,” she began. There was an explanation about how he’d been retrieved, and that he had not been conscious when they brought him in, and how there had been no number in his wallet so they hadn’t notified his next of kin.

  “Next of kin,” June repeated and wondered if he was dead. When her real husband had died, had been found dead, in fact, it had taken three of the staff just to cope with her. And she wondered if it was her apparent calm now that made this nurse doubt who she was. “How bad is it?”

  “He broke his arm—”

  “That’s it, his arm?”

  “And a head injury and…are you really his wife?”

  “We’ve been married for three years,” June heard herself say. As she said the words she began almost to believe them. “We have a daughter,” she added, then felt a shiver of panic and a deeper voice calling to her from inside herself, asking, Have you lost your damned mind?

  She sensed a subtle shift in tone in the nurse, who came out from behind the desk and took her to one side, huddling beside a fire extinguisher mounted on the wall and a big stainless-steel table on legs. June was told it was serious but that he was stable. No, he could not be seen now. She could go home or she could wait.

  June searched out a chair in the waiting room, joining a few other people with their newspapers and bandages and kiddies in strollers. The seat was hard plastic, linked by the arm to the one next to it. Across the aisle was a family—a mother and father with their little girl whose lap was filled with a large, gaudy pink teddy bear, and her foot wrapped in ice. The foot was swollen so that it looked like a paddle, the toes bluish. The girl did not look especially unhappy. Like many of the injured, she had an almost giddy response to her accident. She bounced the teddy bear on her knee, then pretended to feed it some of a Hershey’s bar she was eating. June did not worry for the family; the worst was over for them and now only good things would happen. The foot would be x-rayed, then set in a cast. They would go home with the feeling of near escape. She was not even that worried about Craig. He was alive; she was here waiting for him. The doctors would fix him. Every bad thing about the day—the long drive, the dust of the road, the sun’s uncomfortable heat—was over now. She could relax in the waiting room as these others around her were doing, with a sense that within the labyrinthine corridors of the massive hospital, and all its privacy curtains and examining rooms and surgical suites, good was being done for those who needed it.

  COURT BEGINS

  2008

  She doesn’t understand much about criminal court hearings, but Bobbie is pretty sure she can’t be seen driving her mother’s car, or admit to speaking with June last night when she’d arrived into her bedroom like an aged Thumbelina. There are strict laws about trying to persuade witnesses. June could be held in contempt of court, Bobbie worries. And then she thinks how she’s only been back in her mother’s life for a matter of hours and is already trying to protect her.

  She parks the Impala a mile from the courthouse, locks the door, and leaves the keys on the front wheel. She’s going to walk the rest of the way. The traffic is heavy, with sudden explosions from car horns that unnerve her on this raw morning, but it is better to walk and clear her head and not have to answer any questions about why she is driving her mother’s car.

  The courthouse looks like a college library, set back from the road with fat pillars and impressive stairs, a concrete fortress that scares her. She can’t bear the thought of climbing the stairs to the entrance. She wishes she was going anywhere but through the massive doors and into the entrance hall, which has the official feel of a municipal building and a worrying coldness to it as though the law is there to frighten people, not to keep them safe. The only people she is allowed to talk to right now are from the district attorney’s office and she tries to find the conference room where she is to meet with them before the hearing. She has been told that everywhere else, and everyone else, is off-limits.

  “Hello, hello!” she hears, and there is the assistant district attorney, a young man named Dreyer, in a tailored suit and crimson tie. He has pink cheeks, a receding blond hairline. He looks like he’s fresh out of law school but has, in fact, been litigating for years. He tells Bobbie this is a nice judge and an outstanding jury. “They will like you!” He smiles, as though he is about to introduce her to his parents. “And here’s coffee!” He holds out a paper cup. She notices his cuff links, two little white-gold squares, and his wedding ring, a fat band on his young hand.

  “I hope you take it with milk,” he says.

  As they go into a side room next to the courtroom she says, “Am I going to be humiliated in there?”

  “Absolutely not,” he says. “I wouldn’t let that happen.”

  She wan
ts to ask him about Craig but doesn’t want to risk hearing something that will upset her. Dreyer must sense this in her because he says, “He’s not going to talk to you. He may look at you, but so what? He’s the one on trial, not you.”

  “He doesn’t worry me.”

  She knows he doesn’t believe her. He says, “Don’t direct your answers at him when you testify. Look at the jury. And if you can’t look at them, look at me.”

  “My mother—”

  “Your mother won’t be in court until after you testify. She’s a defense witness. You won’t even see her.”

  “I’m afraid she’s going to try to, you know, disrupt things.”

  Dreyer looks at her sharply, his eyebrows knitting together. “What makes you say that?”

  “I think she’s gone a little nuts. She showed up in my room last night. She practically climbed through the window.”

  “Showed up at your hotel room? Does anybody else know this?”

  “The woman who let her in, I guess.”

  “You didn’t talk to her about the case?”

  “I didn’t talk to her at all. I drove her home.”

  “You haven’t spoken to any other witnesses?”

  “No.”

  “Not to Daniel Gregory?”

  Dan. Absolutely not. “No,” she said. “I haven’t.”

  “Not even on the phone?”

  She hadn’t called him, though she’d wanted to. When she’d returned to the room, having dropped her mother off, she’d found his number in the book. She’d even written it down. But she hadn’t called him, mostly because by then it was too late at night to phone a man you haven’t spoken to in decades. “No,” she says to Dreyer. “The last I heard from Dan was when he told me about the girl, the one who said Craig had been having sex with her. The one whose case got messed up.”

  Dreyer says, “Then stop worrying. Relax. This morning is easy. You are talking to me. We’re just going to have a chat while you are on the witness stand. You know all the questions and you know all the answers.”