First Daughter (27 page)

Schiltz spread his hands, shook his head.

"How about a clue, then? I was just treated to the best cherry pie on God's green earth." Was that a tremor at the left side of Schiltz's head? "And speaking of God . . ."

"You know."

"I saw."

Schiltz hid his face in his hands.

"How long?"

"Six months."

Jack stood up. "I just . . . what the hell's the matter with you?"

"I was . . . tempted."

"Tempted?" Jack echoed hotly. "Doesn't the Bible tell us again and again, ad nauseam, how God deals with the tempted? Doesn't the Bible teach you to be strong morally, to resist temptation?"

"Those . . . people didn't have Ami working next to them every day."

"Wait a minute, if
that's
your excuse, you're nothing but a hypocrite."

Schiltz was visibly shaken. "I'm not a hypocrite, Jack. You know me better than that." He sank into a visitor's chair. "I'm a man, with a man's foibles." He glanced up, and for a moment a certain fire burned in his eyes. "I make mistakes just like everyone else, Jack. But my belief in God, in the morals he gave us, hasn't changed."

Jack spread his arms wide. "Then how do you explain this?"

"I can't." Schiltz hung his head.

Jack shook his head. "You want to cheat on Candy, go right ahead, I'm the last person to stop you. Except I know from personal experience how affairs fuck up marriages, how they poison the love one person has for another, how there's no hope of going back to the love."

Schiltz, elbows on knees, looked up at him bleakly. "Don't say that," he whispered.

"Another truth you don't want to hear." Jack came around the
desk. "If you want to risk a broken marriage, who the hell am I to stop you, Egon? That's not why I'm pissed off. I'm pissed off because you go to church every Sunday with your family, you're pious and righteous—you denounce so-called sexual degenerates, ridicule politicians—especially Democrats—who've had affairs exposed. It's been easy for you to identify sinners from your high pedestal. But I wonder how easy it'll be now. You're not one of God's chosen, Egon. By your actions—by your own admission—you're just one of us sinners."

Egon sighed. "You're right, of course. I deserve every epithet you hurl at me. But, my God, I love Candy, you have to know that. I'd rather cut off my right arm than hurt her."

"I feel the same way, so don't worry. I'm not going to tell her."

"Well, I'm grateful for that. Thank you, Jack."

An awkward silence fell over them.

"Weren't you ever tempted, Jack?"

"What does it matter? This is about you, Egon. You and Candy, when you get right down to it. You can't have her and Ami, too, because if you do, you'll never be able to hold your head up in church again. I doubt even God would forgive that sin."

"Feet of clay." Schiltz nodded. "I've been laid low."

There was a rustling in the corridor and a moment later Ami entered, a clipboard in one hand, a pen in the other. She froze when she saw Jack. "Oh, I didn't know you were here, Mr. McClure."

"You must have been away from your desk." Jack saw her eyes flicker.

She was about to hand her boss the clipboard when she saw his stricken face. "Is everything all right, Dr. Schiltz?"

"Egon," Jack said. "You should call him Egon."

Ami took one look at Jack, then at Schiltz's face, and fled the room.

"Go on, make jokes at my expense, Jack." Schiltz shook his head ruefully. "God will forgive me."

"Is this the same god that was supposed to look after Candy, or Emma?"

I
REMEMBER
," Schiltz said. "I remember when everything was different, simpler."

"Now you sound like an old man," Jack said.

"Tonight I feel old." Schiltz sipped his bourbon and made a face. It wasn't single-barrel or anything close.

They were sitting in a late-night bar off Braddock Avenue, not far from the office. It was attached to a motel. While the interior was not quite so seedy as the motel itself, the clientele was a whole lot seedier. A low ceiling with plastic beams, sixty-watt bulbs further dimmed by dusty green-glass shades, torn vinyl-covered banquettes, a jukebox ringing out Muddy Waters and B. B. King tended to attract a fringe element right at home with the bleak dislocation of midnight with nowhere to go, no one to be with.

"Think of your daughter, then."

Schiltz shook his head. "I can't think of Molly without thinking of Emma."

"Actually, it's Emma I came to see you about," Jack said.

Schiltz's face brightened considerably.

"It's something . . . well, something I can't explain."

Schiltz leaned forward. "Tell me."

Jack took a deep breath. "I'm seeing Emma."

"What d'you mean?"

"I heard her talk to me from the backseat of my car."

"Jack—"

"She said, 'Dad.' I heard her as clearly as I'm hearing you."

"Listen to me now, Jack. I've heard of these manifestations before. Actually, they're not uncommon. You think you're seeing Emma because your guilt is too much to bear. You feel you're complicit in the tragedy, that if you'd been able to pay more attention—" Schiltz held
up a hand. "But we've been over all that too many times already. I'm genuinely sorry that nothing's changed for you, Jack."

"So you don't believe me, either."

"I didn't say that. I fervently believe that you saw Emma, that she spoke to you, but it was all in your head." Schiltz took a breath. "We die, we go to heaven . . . or to hell. There are no ghosts, no wandering spirits."

"How d'you know?"

"I know the Bible, Jack. I know the word of God. Spiritualism is a game for charlatans. They play on the guilt and the desperate desire of the grieving to speak to their loved ones who've passed on."

"It isn't just life and death, Egon. There's something more, something we can't see or feel. Something unknown."

"Yes, there is," Schiltz said softly. "His name is God."

Jack shook his head. "This is beyond God, or the Bible, or even his laws."

"You can't believe that."

"How can you not even accept the possibility that there's something out there—something unknowable—that isn't God-based?"

"Because everything is God-based, Jack. You, me, the world, the universe."

"Except that Emma's appearance doesn't fit into your God-based universe."

"Of course it does, Jack." Schiltz drained his glass. "As I said, she's a manifestation of your insupportable grief."

"And if you're wrong?"

Schiltz presented him with an indulgent smile. "I'm not."

"See, that's what I think gets you religious guys in trouble. You're so damn sure of yourselves about all these issues that can't be proved."

"That's faith, Jack." Egon ordered them another round. "There's no more powerful belief system in the world."

Jack waited while the bourbons were set in front of them, the empty glasses taken away.

"It's comforting to have faith, to know there's a plan."

Schiltz nodded. "Indeed it is."

"So if something bad happens—like, for instance, your nineteen-year-old daughter running her car into a tree and dying—you don't have to think. You can just say, well, that's part of the plan. I don't know what that plan is, I can't ever know, but, heck, it's there, all right. My daughter's death had meaning because it was part of the plan."

Schiltz cleared his throat. "That's putting it a bit baldly, but, yes, that's essentially correct."

Jack set aside the raw-tasting bourbon. He'd had more than enough liquor for one night.

"Let me ask you something, Egon. Who in their right mind wants a fucked-up plan like that?"

Schiltz clucked his tongue. "Now you sound like one of those missionary secularists."

"I'm disappointed but hardly surprised to hear you say that." Jack made interlocking rings on the table with the bottom of his glass. "Because I'm certainly not a missionary secularist."

"Okay. Right now because of Emma's death you're cut off from God."

"Oh, I was cut off from that branch of thinking a long time ago," Jack said. "Now I'm beginning to think there's another way, a third alternative."

"Either you believe in God or you don't," Schiltz said. "There's no middle ground."

Jack looked at his friend. They'd spent so many years dancing around this topic, holding it at bay for the sake of their friendship. But a line had been crossed tonight, he felt, from which there was no
turning back. "No room for debate, no movement from beliefs written in stone."

"The Ten Commandments were written in stone," Schiltz pointed out, "and for a very good reason."

"Didn't Moses break the tablets?"

"Stop it, Jack." Schiltz called for the check. "This is leading us nowhere."

Which, Jack thought, was precisely the problem. "So what happens now?" he said.

"Frankly, I don't know."

Schiltz stared into the middle distance, where a couple of dateless women who had given up for the night were dancing with each other while Elvis crooned "Don't Be Cruel."

His eyes slowly drew into themselves and he focused on Jack. "The truth is, I'm afraid to go home. I'm afraid of what Candy would do if she found out, afraid of the disgrace I'd come under in my church. I can tell you there are friends of mine who'd never talk to me again."

Jack waited a moment to gather his thoughts. He was mildly surprised to learn that whatever anger he'd felt toward Egon had burned itself out with the bourbon they'd thrown down their throats. The truth was, he felt sad.

"I wish I could help you with all that," Jack said.

Schiltz put up a hand. "My sin, my burden."

"What I can offer is another perspective. What's happened tonight is a living, breathing test of your iron-bound faith. You live within certain religious and moral lines, Egon. They allow for no deviation or justification. But you can't fall back on any religious fiction. God didn't tell you to have an affair with Ami, and neither did the devil. It was you, Egon. You made the conscious choice, you crossed a line you're forbidden to cross."

Schiltz shook his head wearily. "Would Candy forgive me? I just don't know."

"When I saw her earlier tonight, she told me in no uncertain terms just how strong your love is for each other. You've been through bad patches before, Egon, and you've managed to work through them."

"This is so big, though."

"Candy's got a big heart."

Schiltz peered at Jack through the low light, the beery haze. "Have you forgiven Sharon?"

"Yes," Jack said, "I have." And that was the moment he realized that he was telling the truth, the moment he understood why her unreasoning outburst had cut him so deeply.

Jack cocked his head. "So who are you now, Egon? You see, I can forgive what you've done, I can look past the part you play, the lies you've maintained, and still love the man beneath, despite your betrayal of Candy and Molly—and of me, for that matter. You're my friend, Egon.
That's
what's important in life. Friends fuck up, occasionally they do the wrong thing, they're forgiven. The religious thing—well, in my view, it's not relevant here. It's what you do now as a man, Egon, as a human being, that will determine whether you live the rest of your life as a lie, or whether you begin to change. Whether or not that includes telling Candy is entirely up to you."

The Everly Brothers were singing "All I Have to Do Is Dream." The two listless women on the dance floor seemed to have fallen asleep in each other's arms.

"This is a chance to get to know yourself, Egon, the real you that's been hidden away for years beneath the Bible. I've seen bits of him out in the woods with our daughters, fishing, looking up at the stars, telling ghost stories."

Schiltz downed the last of his bourbon, stared down at the table with its empty glasses, damp rings, crumpled napkins. "I don't believe I fully understood you, until tonight."

He turned away, but not before Jack caught the glimmer of a tear at the corner of his eye.

"I don't . . ." Schiltz tried to clear the emotion out of his throat. "I don't know whether I have the strength to get to know myself, Jack."

"Well, I don't know either, Egon." Jack threw some money on the table. "But I'd lay odds that you're going to try."

T
HE
S
PANISH
Steps, running on Twenty-second Street, between Decatur Place and S Street NW, was part of the luxe, lushly treed Dupont Circle area of Washington. Its formal name was the rather dull Decatur Terrace Steps, but no one, especially the residents of the Circle, called it that. They preferred the infinitely more romantic name that conjured up the real Spanish Steps in Rome. By any name, however, it was a delightful stone-and-concrete staircase guarded on either side by ornamental lampposts and crowned at its summit by a leonine fountain. By day, children could be seen running and squealing around the mouth of the great beast from whose mouth water spewed in a constant stream. At night, it gathered to itself a certain Old World charm that made it a favorite assignation spot of young lovers and adulterers alike.

Calla stood waiting for Ronnie Kray at the top of the steps. She had arrived a few minutes before midnight so that she could drink in the nighttime glow that illuminated the steps in a sepia tint. One of the lamppost lights on the right was out, and the resulting pool of shadows spilled across the stairs in a most pleasing manner. Couples
strolled arm in arm, perhaps kissed chastely, then ran across the street laughing or stood on the corner, waiting for their radio-dispatched taxis to arrive.

Though she worked long and hard for the First American Secular Revivalists, and was as rational as the members who sat on either side of her, she was, at heart, a true romantic. Perhaps this was why she was drawn to Ronnie. Though she knew he was in his mid-fifties, he looked a decade younger. Perhaps that was because he was possessed of a romantic streak with which she could identify. Besides, he treated her like a lady, not like a kid, the way many at FASR did, especially Chris and Peter. She hated that they never took her suggestions seriously. Ronnie did. Ronnie got her, and she loved him for that.