Diablerie (17 page)

"But I don't feel all that bad most of the time," she said.

"Yeah, I know. But sometimes isn't it like you can't feel anything? Like there's a dead space where your life ought to be?"

The glow of realization in her eyes told me I was right. My daughter had been created out of my own cold remove.

She put her arms around my neck and I felt naked, exposed. The passion of her hug was one thing, but there was much more going on. It felt as if I were on an abandoned beach with the first true love of my life. And in a way it was true. My ability to touch her was electrifying—something that I hadn't felt for so long I couldn't remember the last time it had happened. My heart was pounding. My breath was ragged and out of control.

"Daddy, you're hurting me."

"Let's go wake your mother up and get some breakfast, okay?" I said.

On our walk back to the house Seela said, "I'd like that, Daddy."

"What?"

"To see a psychologist. I'd like to talk to somebody about how I feel."

I called my own therapist after pancakes and bacon at Myrtle's Seaside Diner.

"I was waiting for you," he said.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Shriver. I needed to take my family away. They're hurting and most of it is because of me."

"What about tomorrow?''

"I don't know if we'll be back. We might stay here another day."

"If you can't make it," Shriver said, "I'll keep the appointment open. I know you're going through a lot, but try to get in to see me."

"I can't make it in the morning," I said, "but I could do it about three."

"Three then."

I hung up and Mona was standing there smiling at me. Smiling. When was the last time that had happened?

*  *  *

That was the last day that we were a family: Mona, Seela, and Ben. We rented a rowboat but never made it more than a hundred feet from the dock. There was a strong current that our oars couldn't master. But we laughed a lot and then spent the afternoon swimming. At least Seela and her mother did. I'm not a very good swimmer. I get frantic in the water, fearing I might sink. So I lay down on the sand and drifted in and out of wakefulness, having little naps and blinking at the sun.

In one reverie I was in a garden in Colorado in the spring. I was walking with a brown and beautiful woman wearing a see-through, gossamer white dress. Her dark nipples were hard, pressing against the pale fabric. We stopped at a rosebush with large orange and red and yellow flowers. The woman leaned toward a huge rose, got the whole thing in her mouth somehow, and bit it off. As she chewed the petals, I noticed that a thorn had tom her bottom lip. She felt the pain and licked off the blood and then smiled her bloody and beautiful smile for me.

I awoke with a start to see my wife and daughter on their knees on either side of me.

"Take us to dinner," Mona said.

"Yeah,'' Seela added.

That night our daughter fell asleep early. Mona and I were still wide awake. We had gone to bed, however, because that's what we were used to doing. We had even kissed good-night but our eyes remained open.

I was thinking about Star Knowland and her testimony that I had murdered a man twenty-some years ago. Certainly there was the possibility in the air that I would spend the rest of my life in a Western prison. It didn't matter if1 was guilty or not. I could be convicted.

Fear was gnawing at me. It was building into panic when I turned to Mona and said, "Tell me how this thing with Harvard Yard started."

"I thought this was a vacation, Ben."

"It's after midnight. By noon tomorrow you'll be back at work. He'll come to your office and you'll fill into his big, strong arms."

"It's over between us," she said, not looking at me.

"You mean, if he came to you and said he was sorry and that he loved you, you'd tell him no and spend the rest of your life with me?"

It almost was funny, how honest Mona was. She heard my words and considered them. Of course she'd run to Harvard; he was Ivy League, whereas I was just a two-year training college.

"Tell me," I said.

"Why?"

"Because I'm sitting here in the dark thinking about prison. Because you knew about Barbara Knowland and didn't even say a word. Not only that, you left me alone in the house to fend for myself when Winston Meeks was looking for me. Because you would have told him where I was if I had told you."

Mona sat up exposing her breasts. This revelation was shockingly unsexual.

"You wouldn't understand, Ben," she said.

"What?"

"I couldn't help it. I couldn't stop myself."

"Why wouldn't I understand that?"

"Because your whole life is like a day-planner. You wake up at the same time every day whether or not there's an alarm or clouds or sun or if the curtains are pulled. Because you go to work each day and come home every night and you're never mad or excited or frustrated. Because you never tell me that I need to do more or to be home. You never get jealous when men call and I flirt with them on the phone."

"I was jealous of Harvard Yard."

"His name is Rollins."

"I don't care what his name is."

"That was the first time," she said, "the first time you ever got the least bit jealous and I had already been fucking him for over a month."

"So tell me how it started," I said again.

Mona was seething. I was manipulating her but I didn't feel guilty about it. She could see what I was doing and I needed the friction to save me from sliding down into the hole she had helped to dig.

"Do you remember when I went to Oakland to interview Barbara Knowland for the story?" she asked.

I remembered that she'd gone out of town to do an interview but I didn't know with whom or even where. I nodded though.

"We were staying in the same hotel, Harv and I," she said. "I had some wine at dinner and he walked me up to my room. I guess I had been talking about how I wanted more life out of. . . out of you.''

"Me?"

"Yes, you. And so when we got to my room, he tried to kiss me. I didn't let him, not at first. Then I said just one kiss. He hugged me close then and we kissed with a lot of feeling. I pushed him away and he took my purse and found my key card. He opened the door and kind of shoved me into the room. I couldn't help it, Ben. It made me gasp. Wherever I turned, he was there. And I was feeling him. Do you hate me?"

I pulled aside the blankets to show her my erection. Without another word she climbed up on it. The shock of entering her was something I hadn't felt since I was a teenager. She looked into my eyes, grinning while she bounced her hard buttocks against my thighs. Every time I came close to orgasm, she stopped and stared at me as if I were a stranger to her.

"Do you know why I was so upset the night you fucked my ass?" she whispered.

I shook my head, astonished by the language she was using, the language she learned from other lovers.

"Do you know why I was bleeding?"

"No," I gasped.

"Because I had just let Ham do that to me that morning in my office. I made him wear a condom but I was still so scared. He held his hand over my mouth and whispered things to me."

"What?" I asked. I didn't want to but I couldn't help myself.

"He'd tell me when he was going to press deeper," she said, "when he was going to give me more of his cock."

The hunger and pleasure in her voice were completely alien to me. It was as if I were with some other woman.

"Come," she said, seeing the orgasm build in me. She grabbed my hair and sneered at me. "Give it to me," she whispered, and I screamed and lurched under her like some machine that had slipped its gears and was coming apart under its own force.

*  *  *

We were strangers again in the morning. On the long ride back Seela talked to Mona about her classes and her &ends in school. The things she said were probably true but I knew that they were a shield for my daughter's real feelings and experiences.

I dropped Mona at our apartment and then took Seela down to her place.

"Are you going to be all right, Daddy?" Seela asked before getting out.

"Are you all right?" I asked back.

"I'll be okay. But what about you and Mommy?"

"We'll be okay, honey. We'll make it. Maybe we won't be together, but we'll make it.''

By the time I had parked in the lot and walked back to our place, Mona was gone.

There was a light blinking on the answering machine. There were eight messages, all from Harvard Rollins.

"Mona," he said in the h t one, "I'm sorry. Let's talk."

The installments got more and more intense until he said that he was going to call his &ends at the police department to make sure that she was okay.

That's what dragged Mona out of the house. His passion and need, his love and willingness to act.

I felt bereft. Maybe, I thought, Mona had made such deep love to me so that we could both know what we were giving up. It wasn't Rollins but our last bout of lovemaking that sounded the death knell of our relationship. As long as we didn't say anything, didn't get close enough to see who we really were, there was a chance that we could remain together. But now it was done. It was not possible for me to give her what Harvard Rollins could provide. And now that I knew about him, I could see too clearly into the fantasies my wife had to keep her from going mad.

At noon I picked up the phone and dialed.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Mom."

"Ben," she said, and then she paused for maybe half a minute. In those thirty seconds she swallowed the years of anger and complaints. I could almost hear the unspoken grievances smothered in the silence on the line.

"How are you, Ben?" she asked at last.

"Okay, Mom. What about you?"

"I'm all right," she said in a voice too high.

"I'm sorry about the other day," I said. "I got a lot on my mind and when you kept on ragging on me, I just couldn't take it."

"What's wrong?"

"Why did Dad used to hit me and Briggs so much, Mama?"

"Is that it? Is that what's bothering you? Your father's discipline?"

"Discipline? He whipped us with that strap until we were covered with welts, and we never did anything wrong."

"Never did?" she said. "You were defiant. You disobeyed. You, you ran in the streets."

"We were always home by four."

"You were supposed to be there by three thirty. Don't you understand? He had to stay on you like that. If he hadn't, you might have turned out bad."

"Like Briggs?" I asked.

That started my mother crying. It had been many years. I'd forgotten the tears, her defense against male anger.

"Did beating Briggs keep him from dealing drugs?" I asked.

"Why are you persecuting me?" my mother asked. "Why are you saying these things? We only tried to raise you right."

"By Dad beating one of us every other week? By him threatening us with beatings every day? By him refusing to let Briggs stay at home after they arrested him that first time?"

"Your father had to teach Briggs a lesson," my mother said. "He couldn't spank him anymore. He was a man. And, and we had to worry about you."

"By taking away my brother?" I said.

"You don't understand."

"All right," I said. "Maybe I don't get it. Maybe he was trying to do something that I missed, that Briggs missed."

My mother was the depth of night on the other end of the line—silence and darkness made up the whole of her presence.

"So let me ask you a question to see if maybe we can talk about this a little . . . Mom?"

"Yes," she uttered.

"Let's say Pop didn't like pork chops," I said. "Let's say he hated pork chops. He told you never to put pork chops on the table when he came home to eat."

"But your father loved pork," my mother said from a field of fond memory.

"But let's say he didn't."

"Okay. But he did, you know."

"And so one day," I continued, "you found this recipe for pork chops that you were sure he was going to love. You spend the whole day making these very special pork chops. And when he gets home and he sees those chops on the table, he grabs you by the hair.. ."

"No."