Off Season (42 page)

Fern leaned forward, inches from Jill’s face. “Excuse me, Miss America, but your husband molested a little girl. Why the hell are you protecting him?”

“
My husband did nothing of the sort
. And if he did—as we’ve learned you’re going to say—do such a thing years ago too, then why the hell did you abandon her? Why the hell did you allow her to be raised by her grandfather, who lived next door to where Ben was going to work? Why, if you were so all-fired concerned about Mindy’s welfare, didn’t you do something about it then and not years later, when you just happen to need money?”

Fern raised her arm and threw a closed-fisted punch that led with a grotesque imitation diamond jutting from her finger.

Jill’s hand flew to her face. The sting was unbelievable. The blood that gushed was even greater.

“Get out of here, bitch, before I kill you!” Fern demanded.

Just as Jill reached in to grab Fern’s hair, a hand came up from behind her. “
All right, ladies,
” a man’s voice said. “
That’s enough.
”

Jill was escorted from the property and driven to the hospital by none other than Hugh Talbot, who had a nerve as far as she was concerned.

“You told Christopher,” she accused him in the cruiser. “You broke the judge’s gag order and called Christopher. You should go to jail.”

He shook his head. “I told your friend before the judge issued any order. Even before Ben was arrested. It was a mistake. I was wrong.”

Jill clutched a cloth against her face, which did not want to stop bleeding.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Niles,” Hugh said as they arrived at the emergency room.

She was stitched up and had a chance to peek in on Rita once again, then called Ben to come and get her. It was Ben, of course, who’d called Talbot and warned him
that Jill was headed for Menemsha. It was Ben who made certain Talbot ruined all her fun.

Rita shrieked when Jill walked in, a bandage from the corner of her eye down to her lip.

Then she said she was sorry she’d missed the showdown, and offered Jill a baby to hold to help ease her pain.

For another hour, Jill and Rita sat together, each holding one of Rita’s babies, friends trusting friends.

The morning of April the ninth was sunny and cool and more like early June than the end of winter, not like a day that could start the end of all things good in Ben’s life.

It was too nice a day to spend in court waiting to be humiliated in front of the world.

In the small courtroom that appeared to have been filled with furniture from a secondhand shop, Ben was proud that his wife was a symbol of beauty—inside and out. Under other circumstances, he might have chastised himself for thinking such a shallow thought, but she was wearing the pashmina wrap that he’d bought in New York—and the black and blue badge of courage, from her eye to her lip.

From the table where he sat—flanked by Rick and Herb Bartlett—he turned around and smiled at her. Amy was beside her with Jeff and Jeff’s roommate Mick, who had just graduated from Oxford and was holding Amy’s hand.

And God, there was Carol Ann. And John. Jesus, his son-in-law had come. Apparently a “closed proceeding” did not exempt family.

Or Sheriff Hugh Talbot, who sat on the opposite side.

Earlier Ben had seen the beefy D.A. along with Mister Rogers, the cardigan-clad man who perhaps was there, like Rick, as the island representative, deferring to the seasoned pros.

He did not let his eyes drift to the table where Mindy sat, undoubtedly accompanied by Fern, the concerned mother who’d been away for two months.

The judge arrived with little fanfare.

Ben shifted on the hard wooden chair, and the proceedings began.

The reading of the charges.

“How does the defendant plead?”

“Not guilty, your honor.”

One motion accepted. One motion denied. Ben tried to pretend that he was watching television, that this was fiction, not fact, and that the life involved was not his own.

“Before we call the defendant to the stand, the defense has a special request.” Herb Bartlett was on his feet, wearing a modest suit, as if he knew not to wear his city-slicker, big-shot Atlanta clothes in a courtroom on the Vineyard.

He asked the judge if Mindy could be brought to the scene to reenact what had happened.

Highly unusual
, the judge called the request.

Herb soft-shoed his words, citing this case and that. It had been proven, he explained, that even after only a short period of time, a child—or adult, for that matter—who weaves a story becomes able to not only believe the story, but to embellish it with new memory they unknowingly created.

The judge listened. Then, under the objection of the prosecution, she allowed Bartlett’s special request.

They went during the lunch break.

•   •   •

Mindy did not want to get out of the truck.

She sat on the worn seat of Grandpa’s old pickup and looked at Menemsha House. It looked different close-up than from her bedroom window; it seemed smaller, lonelier, not quite as scary.

Had it been that long since Grandpa had grumbled at the old yellow school buses that rumbled up and down the hill? The buses that carried laughing schoolkids to and from the fun at the museum Ben made for them?

Had it been because of her that Grandpa’s grumbling had stopped? And the children’s laughter, too?

She tried not to think about it, but the memories came back, Kodak moments floating in her brain, of tying straw brooms and pegboarding floors and being in charge of making sure the kids swept up when they were done, being in charge because Ben said he needed her because she was so smart and because he could trust her more than the others, even the boys.

She was too far away to be able to read the sign on the door. But Mindy knew it must read “Closed Until Further Notice.”

Was there a line underneath that said, “If you want to know why, ask Mindy Ashenbach”?

“Melinda,” her mother said from outside now, where she’d walked around to the passenger door, “you have to come outside.”

She stared past her mother, who did not seem unhappy to be on center stage, as Grandpa would have called it.

And then Mindy saw Ben, who stood with his head down like he was examining the ants on the ground. Next to him was his beautiful wife who wore a beautiful blue shawl. Did Ben have a lump in his stomach, as she did? Did his beautiful wife have one, too?

Did they too notice that nobody was talking?

Then Fern spoke up.

“She won’t get out of the goddamn truck,” her mother told everyone.

Mindy felt that too-familiar tremble begin in her belly. She sucked it in; she held it back.

Her mother yanked open the passenger door. Mindy stared at her and wished her mother were dead. Or at least on some other island.

“Mindy?” It was the judge’s voice. The judge was crossing the lawn, headed for the truck.

Mindy closed her eyes and wished that instead of her mother, it was she who was dead. Or that she’d never been born in the first place.

For Ben, it was chilling to stand on top of the hill overlooking the bay, on the lawn of the place where he had once had a dream, back when he believed in dreams.

They had moved up to the back porch. The onlookers—the family—were relegated to the driveway.

He handed the bailiff the key to the door, which had not been opened in months.

And then Mindy was in his line of sight, and he could not look away. Fern had dressed her in a dress, for God’s sake, a pink dress that made her look like she was going to a kids’ birthday party, kids who were much younger than ten. Or eleven, if that’s how old Mindy was now.

To Fern, maybe this was a party.

“I went into the office, behind the big room where the kids learned to make pegboarded floors.”

The sound of Mindy’s small voice startled him. He tried hard to swallow, but he could not.

They went inside.

His lungs filled with dust—carpenters’ dust, dust-in-the-air dust. He tried to clear his throat.

They moved into the office behind the big room. He looked up to the transom where it had all happened, where Mindy had jumped down on him in her childish game. He closed his eyes. He wanted to cry.

“What happened once you were in here?” the judge asked her now.

“Well,” she said, “well.”

Why was she stuttering?

He opened his eyes. When he blinked, she was looking right at him.

She folded her arms around her waist. She lowered her eyes to the floor.

“Mindy?” the judge asked. “Do you remember what you said on your video deposition?”

He wanted Herb to leap forward and shout “Leading the witness!” But they weren’t in the courtroom, so maybe it was different.

Then Mindy began to cry. Her body quivered in that slow-motion motion that Ben knew so well. She bit her lip, but the quivering did not stop. Then the tears flowed down her young cheeks, onto her dress, onto the dust on the floor.

She ran from the room, out the front door, and raced down the hill.

Ben found her at the Gay Head cliffs. She’d fled to her house, grabbed her bike, and must have pedaled like hell to get out of sight.

But there she sat, her pink dress all dirty, her knees pulled up, her hands clasped around them. She was looking out to the sea. And despite the sun, she was shivering.

He watched her a moment. He thought of Noepe and prayed that his old friend would help him out once again, that he would give him a few words of wisdom to
help this child in pain. Then he crossed the cliff and sat down next to her.

“I see one that looks like a canoe,” he said, following her gaze past the clay cliffs and up to the puffy white clouds in the sky over Cuttyhunk. “Birchbark, I think.”

She sniffed a little. She hugged herself tighter. “It’s probably worthless,” her small voice replied with a crack. “But maybe we should buy it, then set up a souvenir shop and sell it with other junk to the tourists.” She lowered her head. Her tears fell again.

“I miss my grandpa,” she said quietly. “It’s because of him, you know. Well, it wasn’t his fault, really. It just sort of happened.”

And then she told Ben the story of how it all happened, how she was angry, how she made a mistake and told her grandfather what she thought he wanted to hear, how she never meant it to go this far but that once it had started she did not know how to stop it, especially when Grandpa died and her mother showed up and told her not to rock the boat to their future.

When she was finished Mindy said, “I’m sorry.”

He had not interrupted her because he was too choked up to speak. But now, as he looked at the frail child, clothed in a dress that didn’t at all suit her, Ben felt nothing but compassion. “Child molestation is a terrible thing. Do you understand that, Mindy?”

She nodded.

“And it happens too often. And it makes people scared.”

She nodded again. “I guess I’m lucky,” she said, “that it didn’t happen to me.”

Ben put his arm around her. She hesitated at first, then moved closer beside him.

Charlie opened the tavern, and they had a damn party.

Amy was there, organizing everyone, Hazel included, who claimed she was most upset that she’d not been told of the arrest or the charges or the trial, but what the hell, a party was a party. Amy announced that she was home for good, that she absolutely intended—someday—to buy the tavern from Charlie, and that, by the way, Mick would be sticking around. Jeff moaned that he’d have to find another roommate and that Mick would hate living on an island. Then Mick reminded him that he’d done that all his life.

Carol Ann and John came as well, and they brought the kids, who had no idea why they were there except they wanted to see the two red-headed babies who, it was promised, would show up.

Addie Becker was there, along with that bigwig, Maurice Fischer. Christopher, thank God, was nowhere to be seen.

Hugh Talbot came with some egg on his face, but it faded when he was reassured that if he’d never called Christopher, who’d called Jill, who’d called Addie, who’d
called Herb Bartlett, well, maybe they never would have gotten to the bottom of what really had happened.