Six Strokes Under (4 page)

Sharlene, the waitress, approached me from behind and tapped my shoulder. "Do y'all want to order something, darlin'? We have two specials tonight. Open-faced roast beef on toast with mashed potatoes and gravy or hash and poached." In spite of the name and the cocktail napkins, the food at Chili-Dippers was about as far from Mexican as you could stretch.

"I haven't decided," I whispered from behind the menu.

"I can't hear you, darlin'," she said, pushing the menu away from my face.

"The roast beef," I said, just wanting her to go away.

"Maxie, have you met Cassie Burdette? She's a caddie on the PGA Tour."

"Was a caddie," I said, lowering my shield in defeat. Max just stared.

I gestured to the bartender to bring me another round. "Nice to see you," I said to Max. As if we'd just exchanged pleasantries last week. As if it hadn't been ten years since he'd sweet-talked me into sleeping with him on the beach after the prom, with the help of a bottle of Boone's Farm Apple Wine and the pulsing rhythm of the Atlantic Ocean. Ten years since he'd barely spoken to me the following day or any of the days following that one.

"You two know each other?" asked Paul, replacing my empty glass with a full one.

"Myrtle Beach High," said Max, pointing to the prom pictures. "Classes of '90 and '92." As if our only contact had been waving at each other across a corridor crowded with horny teenagers.

"He was the quarterback, you were the cheerleader?" said Paul.

"You got the first part right," I said.

"You look great, Cass," said Max. "How are you?"

"Great," I said, working to keep my voice cool and still. "I thought you'd moved to D.C."

"Uncle Doug made me an offer I couldn't refuse," he said. "So I moved back last week. They hung the shingle yesterday: Gill, McClellan, and Harding. Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?"

I swallowed the last inch of my beer, surprised it had gone down so fast. "Hit me again, Paul. So you turned out to be a big-shot lawyer."

"Hardly," he said. "Mom told me you were on the PGA Tour."

"Not anymore," I said, reaching for the third Bud-weiser. "I'm working over at the Grandpappy for now." Max's eyes widened.

"Where your Dad..."

"Yep. And Kaitlin Rupert's home base now, too. What's up with all that?"

"If you read the paper, you know the story. She says Coach molested her; he says not a chance. And I believe him. That's why I took the case."

"And now the headshrinker who brought this all out turns up dead. Sounds like trouble to me." This wasn't going so badly. Max and me actually having a conversation. "Buy you a beer?"

He glanced at his watch. Then a wave of red washed up his neck, flooded across his jawline, and bled into his cheeks. "Sorry. I'm meeting Brenda for dinner. I'm already late." He gathered his trench coat from the barstool and reached for his wallet. "Let me get this young lady's bill, too."

"Not in this lifetime," I said, in a voice so hard even the drunk three stools down from me looked up in surprise. Brenda was the cheerleader who'd replaced me a couple of months after Max shut me out. I'd heard from Mom she'd married Max five or so years ago—promoted to cheerleader for life. Let him buy her drinks. I would get blasted on my own tab, thank you very much.

I watched Max leave the bar. "Once an asshole, always an asshole," said a stocky man who slid into an open seat beside me. "Gary Rupert. You remember me, don't you? Katie's my baby sister. And don't worry, Brenda's still got the biggest ass Myrtle Beach High School ever saw. In more ways than one." He laughed loudly and pulled his stool closer to mine.

Jesus. It was beginning to feel like the set from
Cheers
in this bar tonight—everyone I'd ever known was making a cameo appearance. I had no trouble remembering Gary. He'd asked me out several times after Max dumped me. With my sixteen-year-old heart broken, I wouldn't have gone out on a date even if my fantasy heartthrob Robert Redford had called. And Gary was no teenaged Robert Redford. Where Kaitlin had inherited the long-limbed, aristocratic features of her mother and the athleticism of her father, Gary had gotten the reverse—his mom's clumsiness and Coach's looks, only more squat and lumpy, and minus his father's charm. Maybe it was the beer and the tequila shooter I'd just swallowed, but it seemed like he'd improved on all those fronts over the intervening years.

Gary picked up my empty shot glass and sniffed it. "Bring us a couple more shots of tequila, Pauly. My friend Jose Cuervo, if he's available tonight."

"I'm sorry about your sister," I said. Which seemed entirely inadequate, given the circumstances, but the best I could come up with.

"I hear you've been working with Katie over at the Grandpappy," he said. "Can't you talk her out of this mess? It's tearing the family apart."

"I'm not working with her.. We only met today," I said. "We're both spending time over there before we leave, but that's as close as it's going to get. Sorry."

"She's crazy," he said. "We can't figure out what's got into her. I'm the only one will talk to her anymore. It's breakin' Mama's heart. She's even joined a support group for wacked-out parents. They had pickets over there today at Bencher's office."

"Charlatan shrinks write shfiction," I said, noticing my words had started to slur.

He nodded. "I wouldn't be surprised to hear they were involved in the murder."

The second tequila shooter arrived at the same time as my open-faced roast beef sandwich. Although the mashed-potato-walled pool of congealing gravy made me queasy, I knew dinner was the smart choice. I'd suffer a whole lot more than heartburn tomorrow if I went with the tequila. I pushed the shot glass in Gary's direction.

"I'm over my limit. Thanks anyway."

Based on the front page of the
Sun,
Paul would be collecting five bucks from Lester tonight. Just as he'd predicted, Dr. Bencher headlined the morning edition.

Outside Dr. Gregory Bencher's office yesterday, protesters picketed his participation in a sexual molestation case. Inside the office, an unidentified assailant shot the psychiatrist dead. Police sources have identified the motive as robbery, denying a connection between the protest and the murder. No suspects have been arrested in the case.

Robbery? I hadn't intended to go by the bar this evening, but I couldn't wait to hear the latest on this turn of events.

I rolled into the Palm Lakes parking lot at seven, grateful, in spite of a sour stomach and a pounding headache, that I'd found the good sense somewhere to turn down the second tequila. I was surprised to find the pro shop door still locked. Odell called out to me as soon as I stepped inside.

"I could use some help here," he said. His voice sounded funny, tinny and strained. I traced it to the back office, where he sat with Kaitlin. She was slumped in a heap on the small sofa across from his desk. Odell was perched on the arm of the couch, patting her shoulder arhythmically. She clutched a ragged golf towel in her right fist, which she used to blot the beads of blood that oozed from cuts along the inside of her left wrist.

"What happened?" I asked. If she'd tried to kill herself, I'd have to rate it a half-hearted attempt. "Should I call 911?"

"Too late for that," said Kaitlin. "That might have helped fifteen years ago."

Odell shot me a look loaded with worry, helplessness, and a touch of annoyance. "It's just a few scrapes on her arm," he said. "Nothing too deep. She's a little upset about her doctor being shot and all. I was hoping y'all could maybe talk while I open up the shop."

I didn't want to talk with her. I didn't need Joe Lancaster's warning to tell me that the best thing I could have done was to put a good distance between me and this girl. But I knew I owed Odell, going way back to those years after Dad split. All the peanut butter crackers and Pepsi he'd fed to me, and the dollars he paid me to shag balls out of the practice bunker when I was too sad to go home, and the five or six times he tried to talk to me about Dad leaving, even though I snapped each time that there was nothing left to say.

"Sure," I said to Odell. "Go on and open up."

At first, we sat without speaking. I balanced on the corner of Odell's desk and let my eyes wander over the bookshelves behind Kaitlin. Jack Nicklaus,
Golf My Way.
Al Geiberger,
Tempo. Harvey Penick's Little Red Book.
John Feinstein,
A Good Walk Spoiled.
And my personal favorite—Stephen Baker,
How to Play Golf in the Low 120s.
Cataloging Odell's collection was not why he'd left me in here, but I was at a loss for how to help Kaitlin. I was almost certain she'd made the cuts on her arm herself. I had no idea how to handle that. And I'd never mastered the skill needed to offer heartfelt condolences, never mind about a shrink who'd been murdered after persuading someone to file suit against her own father. Other possible topics of conversation seemed impossibly shallow, like golf, or even bigger minefields, like incest.

"I met your brother at Chili-Dippers last night," I finally blurted out.

"And he tried to talk you into asking me to drop the suit," she said. I shrugged. "I won't do it. Especially now that Dr. Bencher's dead. Someone tried to shut me up by killing Bencher, but it isn't going to work."

"You think he was murdered because of the lawsuit?"

"Maybe," she said. "Maybe it was those people Mother sicced on him—the False Memory Consociation. Fancy name for a bunch of cretins butting into business they know nothing about."

"You think they'd do something like that? While they're picketing right outside his door?"

"How the hell should I know what they would or wouldn't do," she said. "All I know is that he was the only one who believed me, and now he's dead."

"I'm sorry."

"Sure you're sorry," she said. "Everyone's sorry now. That doesn't help me live with it. Hearing his footsteps in the hall at night. All those games we played when I was little." Her voice had developed a girlish singsong quality. "Bouncing on his lap. A game for me. Masturbation for him."

The harsh thought crossed my mind that she was rehearsing lines for a court appearance. "You just forgot all this until now?" My question brought the cold tone back.

"It happens to a lot of us women," she said. "Even in families that seem picture-perfect on the outside." She looked at me hard. "In your shoes, with your history, I'd take a look in my own mirror. I doubt you'll find the risen Christ among the men in your family. And don't overlook your precious Maximilian Harding. He's no different than the rest of them." She stood up, flung the bloody rag into the trash can, and marched out of the office, leaving me no time to smooth things over.

"I have nothing to do with Max," I called out after her. Silence.

Nice work, Cassandra. If golf doesn't pan out, you've got a real future in the helping professions.

Ten minutes later, unable to tolerate further procrastination, I followed Kaitlin back into the pro shop. News crews from Channel 14, Channel 8, and Channel 2 had arranged themselves in a circle, covered wagon-style, outside the door. Technicians had wrapped wires around the wrought-iron hitching posts in front of the door, and halogen spotlights rested on the chowder pot and the cannon. The area was lit up like a ballfield at night. Four anchor-people shouted questions at Kaitlin. I let myself out the back door and slunk around the adjacent building, past the locker rooms, to eavesdrop.

"Can you tell us something about the details of the sexual abuse?" asked one anchor, her face composed into a mask of concern in distinct contrast to her intrusive questions. "Did you remember this in the process of psychotherapy or had it come up before you contacted Dr. Bencher?"

"Did your doctor make suggestions that your father had abused you?"

"Do you have any ideas about who murdered Dr. Bencher? Did he have any enemies that you were aware of?"

"How will Bencher's death affect the lawsuit against your father?"

In spite of my instinctive dislike for this girl, I felt a rush of sympathy. The bright lights of the cameras washed her features out to shadows. With her eyes wide and her mouth open in confusion, she looked young and lost. Even so, I had to believe she would lash out at anyone who had the misguided urge to try to help her get her bearings.

Now there was a conflict a good shrink could seize upon. Unless, of course, your shrink was lying in the morgue with a bullet hole in his carotid artery.

I jumped in alarm when Odell tapped me on the shoulder. "Your junior clinic golfers are here," he said. "I'd suggest you start early and get them away from this zoo." I nodded, ashamed to be caught snooping.

I developed a hunch early on in the session that the seven kids Odell had me working with had been sprung from an expensive reform school just that morning. For the next hour, I was too busy to worry any more about either Kaitlin's dilemma or my own whopping failure as peer counselor.

"Swing it like a baseball bat," I told Angela, a chunky girl with pigtails and a broad band of freckles across her nose. "Slow it down at the top just long enough that a bird could sit and rest for a minute on your club. Then let her rip." Angela coiled up and belted a shot out past the fifty-yard marker. "Good girl," I said. "Now you're getting the hang of it!"

I left her to separate James and Joshua, twins with a death wish who were using their nine-irons to conduct a sword fight. They weren't bad kids, I had to remind myself, just a little swollen with overprivilege and dangerous to themselves and others with a golf club in hand.

Two hours later, the mothers and nannies, wearing color-coordinated shorts sets, big hair, and strappy platform sandals, arrived to pick up their charges and transport them to the next lesson. Tennis, karate, swimming, and, because it was still the South, etiquette. God forbid they should be allowed to spend time on their own—who knew what trouble they might find. I moved down the range, picking up the clubs the children had left scattered on the Astroturf mats. Dad would never have allowed Charlie to treat his equipment with such carelessness.

"Those are the tools of your trade," he told him a hundred times, as he supervised Charlie cleaning the grooves and then wiping down the grips. By the time I was old enough to play, Dad had lost interest in teaching, beaten down by my brother's persistent and petulant rejection, too tired to notice that I now followed his instructions exactly.

I stashed the children's equipment in the pro shop and returned to the range with my own clubs. Kaitlin had surfaced from her impromptu press conference and parked herself two stations down from me. A tall, athletic man in magazine-perfect golf attire stood with his arm draped around her. He had the Deikon logo written across the bill of his baseball cap, on both the sleeve and the pocket of his golf shirt, and painted down the entire length of his bag. Based on what Laura would have called an idiot's educated guess, I assumed this must be her Deikon rep.

"I shouldn't even be showing you this one," I heard him say. "Strictly experimental. I can't wait to see how you make it sing."

Gag me with a spoon.

He offered Kaitlin a driver, a long, slender club with an enormous copper head and silvery-blue shaft. I strained to make out his now-whispered words. I thought I heard "Ball Hog," "Tee Warrior", and "Fairway Bruiser." Kaitlin laughed, shrugged off his hand, and accepted the club he offered. He stood behind her, arms folded, and watched as she clobbered a ball out into the field, well past any reasonable range where the drive of my dreams would have landed.

"Wow!" he said, pretending that the force of her swing had knocked him to the ground. She helped him to his feet, giggling, and brushed invisible debris off his backside with more meticulousness than the brief interaction with Astroturf seemed to merit. If I squinted hard enough, I could still make out the tic-tac-toe pattern of the cuts on her left arm. Hard to believe this was the same girl I'd seen crumpled up in Odell's office only a couple hours earlier. It seemed almost like theater. She had to know I was watching.

I hit a few shots with my short irons, working on the precise placement of my fingers on the club shaft. "Close the zipper and keep the hot dog in the bun" was how I described it to the kids this morning. I'd stoop to anything it took to bring the excruciating difficulty of the game down to their level. Or my own. Next I worked on keeping the tempo I'd tried to teach Angela. But my mind couldn't let go of the length of Kaitlin's drives. Or the sight of her running her hands over the Deikon rep's buttocks. From the wash of envy that followed both events, I guessed the long dry spell without a real boyfriend was beginning to wear me down. My few static-filled, longdistance phone conversations with Jack left a lot of needs unsatisfied.

I replaced the clubs in my bag. I'd have plenty of time to practice at the range in Florida. Besides that, if I didn't know how to swing a golf club by now, hitting a few more dozen balls at Palm Lakes sure wasn't going to help me survive Q-school.

"I'm going home to pack," I told Odell. "My plane leaves early."

"Good luck, sweetheart," he said. "I know you can do it. We're all behind you." All part of the problem, I thought. Too damned many people behind me, all leaning hard. Members of the country club and even some visiting tourists that Odell had persuaded to back me with their bucks.

"She's goin' to be a star," I'd heard him tell them. "You'll see her on TV when she's playin' on the LPGA Tour, and you'll be able to say, That's Cassandra Bur-dette. I helped get her there."

More likely, That's Cassandra Burdette, working the cash register at the pro shop. When the hell is she going to pay back that money she owes me from when she flunked out at Q-school?