Age of Consent (28 page)

June took in a breath. “It could be someone…important to him.”

She meant a girlfriend. Bobbie could tell from the mild panic in her mother's voice.

Bobbie said, “Maybe it's a bill collector. Don't answer.”

The ringing persisted, like a person at a front door who has seen you're inside.

“What should we do?” June said.

“Go home.”

But her mother could not stop herself. She picked up the phone, holding it lightly, as though she might want to drop it at any second.

“Hello?” June's voice was high and fluttering, a little feather that floated from her mouth.

Bobbie busied herself with the cassettes. She tried to listen to the conversation but June shooed her away, pointing at the closet where there were drumsticks and fans, some sheet music on the floor. She took these things out, then saw a stack of magazines resting on a shelf above the hangers. She brought down a few issues and saw on the cover of the first issue a naked model in tall heels and stockings, her buttocks taking up much of the page. Where her nipples were the editors had placed strategic graphics so that they could not be fully seen—two red stars covering the areolas. Bobbie thumbed through the pile and saw they were all the same type. She put the magazines back where they'd been and fished down some cymbals instead, balancing them on her head like a hat. Soon, she was again trawling across the uneven ground with boxes and knickknacks—a basketball, a desk lamp. She didn't want her mother laboring under the unwieldy boxes.

When she returned, June was making an attempt to fold the bed linen, the phone now put away.

“What did they want?” Bobbie asked. When her mother didn't answer, she added, “The person who called, I mean.”

“I don't know,” June said, her voice sharp as though Bobbie had asked a rude question.

“Well, you talked to them for a long time,” Bobbie said. “I heard—”

“All right, Bobbie. Enough.”

They made one last trip to the car. It seemed to Bobbie this was the kind of place where feral cats were poisoned, where anything that got broken stayed broken, and where just occasionally a body might be found. Last time she'd been here, Craig had parked well away so his housemates wouldn't spot her, then checked to see if anyone was home before bringing her inside. She hadn't liked the place then either.

At the car, she told her mother, “I want to go home.” Even though Craig was at their home, and it meant returning to him.

June balanced the weight of her boxes on the hood. “But what about the rest of his things?” she said.

A foam mattress, a wooden chair, a desk that couldn't possibly fit. What did her mother think, that they could tie these things to the roof?

“We can come back,” Bobbie said, though they both knew that would not be possible. The housemate would throw out what had been left behind. His instructions, which had put her in mind of vultures, were to
pick it clean
.

“Please, Mom.” They were standing outside the car, the wind working its way through the trees above them. The car was full; there was no room left to haul a thing.

“I know, I heard you. You want to go home.”

The car was warm from sun, but so tightly packed that Bobbie had to sit at an angle and with her knees practically in her face, everything of Craig's surrounding her.

“Who was on the phone?” she asked.

“No one,” June said. Bobbie made a face and June said, “Oh, all right! It was a police officer.”

Even the word terrified her:
police
.

“What did they want?” Bobbie whispered.

June shook her head. “Apparently information about a fight before the accident. In a motel…”

Bobbie didn't hear anything after that. The word
motel
from her mother's mouth felt like an accusation.

“But they just want to ask him a few questions. He hasn't
done
anything!”

Bobbie nodded. She wondered what would happen next. Would the police show up at their door? Ask her questions? Would she have to swear an oath? The thought of talking to a police officer terrified her and she wished they could keep driving, drive far away, that they could escape.

“I'd like you not to mention this to Craig,” her mother said. “You won't say anything, will you?”

Bobbie said nothing, not to agree, not to disagree. Instead, she looked out the window at the passing houses.

“He gets very upset about police,” June continued. “And we don't want him unhappy.”

Of course not. That was the important thing, not to upset Craig or trigger his moods. Bobbie felt a plummeting despair. He was in their house. He brought the police. There would be questions, probes, explanations to be given. It filled her with dread. Finally, reluctantly, as though asking for a tremendous favor, she said, “Do we have to keep him with us?” She almost stopped there, the plea seeming so preposterous given the lengths her mother was willing to go to for Craig. But she carried on anyway. “He is working again now, has his old job back. He could get his own place.”

She longed for her mother to answer that of course they didn't have to house Craig, that their home was for themselves and Craig was only there for a short while longer, until he was healed enough to drive himself to work rather than rely on June. She ached for her mother to promise he would go soon, but she felt the way she had as a young child, desiring a particular toy at Christmas, an expensive, luxurious toy, all the while knowing the odds were slim. Even so, she asked, just as she'd asked years back, with a child's heart and hope. When her mother did not answer, she felt a sinking in her chest, and her own inner disciplinarian rising from within her and telling her to stop behaving like this and stop expecting so much.

Minutes later, she began to feel a burning in her stomach that she associated with car sickness, a condition she thought she'd outgrown. At a stoplight, she rolled down the window and stuck her head out to breathe the cool air. She heard the breeze rustling a willow tree that grew messily in a hollow area of ground next to the road. She angled her head, seeing the back of the car, stuffed as it was with all of Craig's things. And with that sight, the weight of his presence in her life pressed against her freshly, as though he had just now discovered her and had set his desire freshly upon her. Nothing could rival his attention, not teachers at school, not her mother, not Dan. The force of it reigned outside the normal domains of school life and home life.

How could she do anything now? After so many incriminating acts and all the time that had passed during which she'd said nothing, how could she speak to her mother of the things that Craig and she had done? How could she warn her mother, and turn her away from him? She knew she had to say something, that this was her last chance. She couldn't bear to confess all that had happened, but there was no other way out. “Mom,” she began. She let out a sigh, a wretched sigh loaded with as much meaning as a word and which no word could describe.

“I heard you the first time,” her mother said crisply. “You don't like Craig. No need to repeat it.”

“It's just that—” She stopped. “The police, that motel—” She willed herself to continue but her voice died inside her even before her mouth closed. It was impossible. If she told her mother she was in that motel room with Craig, everything between them would change. Her mother's opinion of her was like a plant that she tended, keeping it decorous and in flower. It was fully false, yet necessary, and the only way she could continue to be in her mother's presence. How could her mother know any of the truth of what she had done with Craig and then carry on loving her as before? For that is what she wanted, to have things as they would have been if Craig had never existed and had not divided her life into these two halves that must never meet. In future years, she would ask herself why it was that girls like her did not tell their parents, and why they ached with secrets even decades later, and even then felt the impossibility of such a confession.
Because
, she would say helplessly,
just because…
And in those years, just as now, she'd keep quiet. Instead of telling her mother what she needed to, she leaned away and spoke out the window, into the bright October morning.

“Will he live with us for long?” she asked miserably.

He would stay for as long as he wished. Bobbie knew this, just as she knew that only a stark and full confession from her would change her mother's mind. She was not willing to pay that price, that great price, no. Her mother, whom she loved, loved an imagined child that she pretended to be. Bobbie would not let her down. She would act as if everything were all right, even though she felt yet another break between them, the distance that severed growing children from their parents and that separated her from her mother now.

The stoplight changed and the car went forward. “For the time being,” June said, which might have meant forever, and probably did.

2008

O
utside the courthouse Bobbie stands nervously on the curb to hail a cab. It takes a while for one to come and all that time she is worried she'll be approached by her mother. Part of her wishes to confront June directly, to tell her she knows that she lied on the stand, that she's seen it twice now and that both times astounded her. She wants to show her the detestable little note that Craig sent to her:
I married her because you would not let me marry you.
What would she make of that? Bobbie wondered. Is it possible that June would imagine Bobbie had invented the note, too?

The sun bears down on her. Finally a taxi arrives. She tells the driver where to go but of course he has no idea where she means—the inn is so out of the way—so she guides him through the first few miles and promises further instructions in a moment. Meanwhile, she closes her eyes. She thinks, I'm tired of all this shit.

The urgency of her feelings gives her a disturbing sense of disorder and wildness; it is as though she has done something for which she should be ashamed, but she cannot imagine what. She has been discredited. Is there anyone who knows what really happened and to whom she does not have to plead to be believed? And then she remembers again the man she has never forgotten: Dan.

Technically, she is not supposed to speak to another witness because to do so could jeopardize both their testimonies. But they've already testified now so perhaps it would be okay. The drive to tell him what happened in court today, to explain what it felt like to sit wordlessly and watch her mother refute her own testimony, is fierce.

Besides, now that she has thought of him, she can think of nothing else.

They have not spoken since they were teenagers. Over the course of recent months, however, she has received three e-mails from Dan. In the first, he explained that he'd found her after much searching and that he hoped she would not be annoyed at him for doing so. There followed a carefully worded, warm paragraph asking how she was, then some information about Craig's arrest, which Dan imagined she already knew about.
I was so sorry to hear that his behavior has continued
, he wrote.
I'd wrongly imagined that your situation with him was unique, not that this would ever excuse it.
His letter was full of formality and apology. She wished she could reach through the computer screen and tell him that Craig was a bastard and let's just get that out in the open quick. Also, that she was immensely glad to hear from him, that she wished she'd had the courage to get in touch with him years ago, but that she'd been too ashamed.

She'd said none of this, of course. Instead, she'd written back just as carefully as he had, crafting the e-mail, then deleting it and starting again. She told him that she was happy to hear from him and that she remained out of touch with her mother and so she had been unaware of the news of Craig's arrest.
Thank you for letting me know
, she had written.
And what a delight to hear from you.
A week or so later, she got a new e-mail, this time to say there had been a police investigation and a raid on Bobbie's childhood home where Craig and her mother still lived. The police had been looking for child pornography but hadn't found any, apparently, and there was some question as to whether Craig had been tipped off. Was she going to be in touch with her mother? Was she going to come back due to all the chaos surrounding Craig's arrest?

She remembers how she typed her reply to Dan several times, changed the wording around, deleting and beginning all over again. It mattered to her. Of all the things she has had to let go of in her life—her home, her only parent, her identity for that matter—the hardest to abandon had been Dan. She typed out the words,
Thank you so much for taking the trouble to write again
, wishing she could say all the other things, which had nothing to do with Craig or her mother but were about how she'd felt about Dan, what he'd meant to her.

She wanted to tell him about her short, hapless marriage to a guy who she'd had no business marrying as she didn't love him the way she knew she was capable of loving. And how, afterward, she'd changed every stick of furniture, painted the walls, torn up the carpets, and gutted the kitchen, remaking the house afresh in his absence, creating a kind of nest for herself to settle into and wait for someone else, maybe even Dan if he'd been present, if he'd been available.

It would have been silly to tell him such a thing—and totally inappropriate. It seemed too awful and comic an admission.

When she heard from him again it was only with regard to the progress of the case. There had been some kind of mistake in the way in which the prosecution was handled. The result was a mistrial. No verdict returned. The girl's family had been devastated; the case had been closed.

The only hope of bringing him to justice would be a separate case
, Dan had written.
If a historic case came forward, that is. There must be many of his victims out there.

Victim.
The word didn't settle correctly with her. Even so, she is here. She doesn't know why exactly. Maybe it is to avenge herself, however shallow and deluded that ambition might be. Maybe it is to avenge the young girl who has been Craig's most recent target, if only by allowing her to see that another person had been through the same type of experience with Craig. Or maybe she is here simply because Dan asked her to be. She is going to call him now—hasn't she waited long enough? And anyway, who will know? It isn't as though a court official is listening to her phone calls.

So she dials his number. She hears his voice. “I knew it would be you,” he says. “Where are you?”

His voice hasn't changed. Thirty years and he sounds the same. She says, “What if I got changed and we had some dinner together?” She holds her breath, waiting for his answer.

“What
if
?” he laughs. “Just tell me where.”

TWO HOURS LATER
she is at the bus stop where she'd first run into him all those years ago. The line of stores nearby no longer includes a Kmart, nor resembles the strip mall she remembers. It has transformed into a giant, upmarket indoor mall with a staggering fountain and huge blocky sections with big-name department stores. These days, if a teenager tried to hide here among the flowers the night security staff would spot her. And if a girl tried to get through the great glass entrance hall with nothing on her feet but blood, there would be a guard to escort her out within minutes.

The bus stop looks mostly the same, however. They've traded the thin metallic benches for some candy-colored seats, and the flooring has been updated, but it is enough like it used to be that she finds it easy to remember meeting Dan here. She waits, watching the swoop of headlights as cars pass. At last, a midnight-blue sedan switches its signal light on, then slows coming toward her. Suddenly, she sees Dan behind the wheel.

There is an instant flash of recognition. The flood of anticipation turns at once into something more immediate and visceral. She is flushed, her lips starched, her focus on the man in the car so strong that everything around her fades. She isn't even sure her legs will carry her safely as she walks forward, reaching the door before Dan has a chance to get out, saying his name too loud as though calling him from across a distance. As she climbs in she loses her footing so that she practically falls into the seat beside him.

“Hi.” She smiles.

He says her name. He says, “Oh Jesus.”

Beside him, she feels every burden float from her. It is as if there is no trial, no lying mother, no Craig.

“It's very good to see you,” she says, her words feeling puny, even ridiculous, given the swell of emotion.

They are strangers, but also friends. They know nothing of each other's lives except the very beginnings. What is most astonishing, apart from the fact she can hold in her mind's eye both the boy she knew decades ago and the man before her, is how the air around her seems scented with the summer of 1978, as though those days are present within this one.

The car's interior light fades; the turn signal dings and flashes. Still, he does not drive off. She keeps looking at him, at his face that is at once familiar and so very new. He has become the sort of man who has to shave every day, even twice a day, and whose whiskers ink the skin above his lip. His once overly lean body is a different shape. The shoulders that had seemed bony are now large and full, hard to contain beneath his jacket. Filled out, with a thicker neck and some roundness at his belly, he is solid; the added weight and years give him a presence he'd once lacked. He is magnificent, she thinks. She almost tells him so.

He moves his gaze, taking in the shape of her. She has ditched her court clothes and wears a tunic dress with strappy shoes. Her legs are well-muscled and tanned with California sun. Her toenails are painted pink. In her ears are tiny pearls. “You are lovely,” he says. “I feel like an old wreck next to you.”

He smiles, then leans over to kiss her hello. Somehow their timing is off and the kiss lands wrongly, not quite on her cheek. They try again, and this time he turns to her and brings her toward him, holding her lightly. “Bobbie,” he says again, sounding her name slowly as though learning it for the first time. “I have to touch you to see if you are real.”

On the road, he tells her he lives in Bethesda and works as a medical academic, with a specialty in pulmonary disorders. She nods and tries to take in the details, but all she can focus on is how his voice is the same as she remembers, or almost the same. He sounds older but she can hear through the deeper tones that same Dan who'd spoken to her for thousands of hours that long-ago summer.

“What I'd love is to make you dinner but I've got two teenage daughters at home and they won't give us any peace,” he says.

“What about your wife?” she says. She might as well get it out there.

“My wife, oh.” He raises his hand and flaps his fingers in an imitation of a bird flying skyward. “She's gone.”

She isn't sure what to make of the idea the wife is gone. Does he mean gone for a week or for a lifetime?

“We can't eat where I'm staying, either,” she says. “The place is booby-trapped. My mother barges in. Also, I think the innkeeper's a spy for my mother. And I think my mother is a spy for him.” She means Craig, of course. “You know, Mr. Charming at the defense table,” she says, and watches Dan smile.

He drives on, stealing glances at her occasionally. When she catches him, he says, “Can't help it. You look great.”

“No,
you
look great.”

“
You
,” he says. He laughs aloud.

She remembers how they used to joke and she says, “How could I look great when I look nothing like I used to look?”

“You do, you know. Sort of.” He gives her hand a squeeze.

“You weren't in court today,” she says. “You missed my mother lying on the stand.”

Dan nods slowly. “Well, I suppose she would.”

“I can't understand it.”

“Why not? It makes perfect sense.”

“I didn't think she'd actually make stuff up. I never thought of her as a liar.” She remembers what Dreyer had said, how parents don't ordinarily lie against their own children. “I wonder if she even recalls all those years ago. Maybe she's just forgotten.”

Dan says, “She hasn't forgotten.”

“She kept looking at me the whole time, then coming up with these tales. I don't understand the woman,” Bobbie says. But of course, if she allows herself to truly imagine what it would be like to be June, she understands completely. That June cannot bear what happened all those years ago is perhaps one of the easiest things to grasp. “I'm really worried we will lose this case,” she says.

A moment goes by, and then Dan says, “Did you expect another outcome?”

So Dan thinks the case will be lost. Perhaps he'd always assumed it would be. She lets go a long breath. “Maybe I did, yes. Didn't you?”

“At first. But by the time the trial began, no. Not really.”

“It was your idea to begin with. For me to testify, I mean.”

“Not because I thought we'd win,” Dan says. “I'm sorry if that's why you came all this way. I thought you would want to tell what happened. It doesn't seem right that he should have gotten away with what he did, gotten clean away.”

“But if we lose—”

“There's losing, and then there's losing.”

She thinks about the girl in the other case, the one that was botched and ended in a mistrial. Her parents have come to court every day since the start of this trial. They huddle nervously together, their grim faces looking around the court as though they are the ones on trial.

“That girl,” she says. “I wanted her to know that there is at least one other person in the world who knows she was telling the truth. That whatever happened in that trial, she was believed. I can picture exactly what happened to her, you see.”

“What happened?”

“She made a phone call. He kept her on hold while he did a break. They talked through his show; she got flattered. People imagine that girls these days are far more sophisticated than they really are. All he had to do was say the right things and spend a little money. Once she was in the thing, she wouldn't know how to get out. That's the point. He'd have trapped her somehow.”

“Go on,” Dan says.

“That's it. A very mundane story, really. He'd have convinced her that she was stuck with him. That the whole idea had been hers to begin with. He'd have told her how much risk he was taking, all because he loved her. He'd have told her he was protecting her from other men who would not appreciate her. That she was special and he saw that specialness. He'd say this even as he was taking off her clothes.”