Fifteen Minutes to Live

by Phoef Sutton

  Ryan knew there were a million deep psychological causes for this relationship, but he didn’t care to find out what they were. All that mattered now was that once the situation had stopped being the simple one of her daughter being raped by the perverted teacher, once it had all become a bit more complex, it was easier for him to blame her than to try to sort it all out.

  Her mother stood up for her at first, but it began to sound more like someone making excuses. And her defense of her daughter’s character was further hampered by being seconded at every turn by Ryan. Kallen simply grew quiet now, and muttered to himself with an embarrassed air.

  An aunt or a grandparent finally brought Jenny into the office. At first this frightened Ryan a little, but once their eyes met it was all going to be over soon. He could see she was sorry she started this and was ready to take any route out he could give her.

  So they asked her about the drugs and at that she looked at him and her look was very different. It was angry and hurt and he felt a little guilty, till he remembered that she’d almost got him sent to prison. She denied knowing anything about the drugs.

  He spoke to her very gently, without moving toward her. He reminded her of their friendship and told her not to be afraid, that they all just wanted to help her. He also told her that he didn’t blame her for any of this. He just thought she’d feel better if she told the truth.

  When she looked at him that time he realized that she hated him now and that surprised him. Then he decided that it was only a natural reaction to preserve her dignity, so he didn’t blame her for that either.

  She spoke quickly and bitterly and before he heard her words he’d started to feel frightened that her intensity might turn the others against him again.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you the truth, if that’s what you want. I’ve been on drugs for months and when Mr. Ryan found out and tried to stop me I decided to get him in trouble.”

  There was no forgiveness in her eyes, so Ryan kept waiting for a trap to be sprung. It couldn’t be that simple.

  But the others pounced with relief. She was scolded for the damage she’d almost done to a fine teacher, condemned for her behavior. Estelman was for calling the police. Presser demanded she seek psychiatric care. Her mother wept and her father looked like he planned to fulfill Ryan’s prophecy of child beating as soon as he got her home.

  And all the while she kept looking at Ryan, smiling in triumph as if the trap had already caught him.

  Talk of police faded. It was agreed that she get psychiatric help. There was a doctor Presser knew who specialized in treating teen behavior disorders. It would mean missing a few classes, of course, but under the circumstances it might be better for her to take some time away from school altogether. There was obviously more to this than just drugs. The girl was nearly friendless, they decided, and her attempt to destroy the one teacher who tried to reach out and help her showed deep anti-social tendencies.

  Kallen avoided Ryan’s eyes on the way out, but Mrs. Kallen made a clumsy effort at an apology. Ryan wished her well.

  He kept thinking about Jenny’s smile all through Presser’s apology – or rather his insistence that he’d never doubted Ryan for an instant, which Ryan knew to be true. What was left unsaid was the fact that he would never have stuck his neck out to defend him if the facts hadn’t been so overwhelming.

  So he was back home and safe, with the added advantage of his wife being gone. She’d be back when she heard no more of this. She might even believe him now. She might not. It was difficult living with someone who knew you that well.

  But he kept thinking about that smile and why Jenny kept looking like she thought she’d won, when everyone was so obviously believing his story. Then it came to him. She was deliberately sacrificing herself for him, throwing herself on the spear of his story, with the idea that he was going to suffer from guilt at his mistreatment of her. No doubt she was picturing him now, twisting in torment at the price he’d paid for his freedom.

  He was glad that this fantasy was giving her some happiness in a difficult time, but mostly he just wondered how he could have fallen for a girl that naïve.

  Drifting back from these thoughts, he found himself discussing President Clinton’s Hollywood ties and how they were damaging him. Carl seemed particularly vehement about this. He noticed that One Arm was gone from the room and vaguely remembered him excusing himself to use the john.

  “What he doesn’t understand,” Carl was saying, “is how much America hates us. They watch our shows, they go to our movies, but they just don’t trust us. They think we’re irresponsible, left wing, perverts. And they’re right.”

  From all the ‘us’s’ and ‘ours’, Ryan supposed that Carl must work in show business and that he didn’t care for it much. He wondered if he could dust off that old spec script he’d written a few years back and show it to him.

  “I don’t suppose you people ever read outside scripts…”

  Carl reacted with a sharp intake of breath that made Ryan think he’d asked the wrong question, until he realized that he was staring at something across the room. Ryan turned and saw One Arm holding something made of dirty white cloth in his hand.

  Then he remembered the dress. Frank was holding Jesse’s white dress.

  “Where’d you find that?” Carl was asking.

  “The trash.”

  They were both in front of him now and he tried to fight hard to keep his leg still hanging casually over the arm of his sofa.

  “She was here,” Carl said.

  He couldn’t think of a way to deny it. “No,” he said.

  One Arm moved in closer to help him and Ryan involuntarily pulled his leg down, thought about putting it back but decided it wouldn’t look casual now.

  “What did you do to her?” One Arm asked.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, that’s my wife’s dress.”

  “She was here.”

  “You guys want to get out of here or am I going to call the police?”

  Carl laughed, “You?”

  “Well, somebody stole my car.”

  “Did you hurt her?”

  One Arm moved in on him and Ryan clambered off the sofa in an almost casual way. He didn’t like this guy. His whole approach to getting out of trouble was based on the idea that what people really wanted was for things to calm down and be normal and this guy didn’t seem to care about that.

  “I don’t have to listen to this,” he said, knowing it was very weak.

  The one hand reached out and touched Ryan’s throat, just the fingertips touching, and somehow the gentleness of the move made it more shocking. “Look at me. Did you hurt her?” He did look and the eyes he saw were dead inside and Ryan knew he was dealing with a crazy.

  He backed away from the fingertips and into a wall, knocking a picture frame cooked with the back of his head.

  “All right, she was here. Thought she could clean up, put on a change of clothes, then I’d call you guys. Well, she goes crazy. You know she’s crazy. She attacked me.” Here he showed them the cut on his forehead, wishing it was larger. “So I had to calm her down, defend myself. She broke away, stole my car and that’s it.”

  One Arm kept looking at him and Ryan knew he hadn’t believed a word of it, which struck him as rather funny since it was the closest thing to the truth he’d said all day.

  “I don’t think so,” One Arm said. “I think you’ve had her here since yesterday. Why did you hurt her? Or do you just do it for the fun of it?”

  “What are you talking about?” Ryan turned to Carl, as a sensible ally. “What is he talking about? Is everybody you know crazy?”

  Carl didn’t answer, but One Arm didn’t shut up. “You found out what was wrong with her, so you thought it would be okay, isn’t that right? You could play any little game you wanted and it would just wash away. But she wouldn’t put up with it, would she? What did she do to make you kick her in the face?”

  Ryan pushed past him to
the center of the room. “Shut up you son of a bitch, this is bullshit. My wife was here last night, you can’t prove any of this, it’s bullshit. The only thing you can prove is that your crazy bitch stole my car; you want me to call the police on that? Do you?”

  His hand was on the phone and to his amazement he felt them back down, saw them step back. He pushed it further.

  “I’m calling. I’m calling right now.”

  He felt like he was holding a cross out to a vampire. One Arm left – just turned and walked out of the house. Carl gave him a wonderfully impotent snort and left too.

  His hand was shaking when he took it off the phone and the room seemed to vibrate with their absence. He wadded up the dress, tossed it in the fireplace, got a can of lighter fluid from under the sink, doused it, then set it on fire.

  He squatted in front of the screen and watched, arms around his knees, his face hot from the flames. Springsteen was still on the stereo but it was one of those damned factory-closing-down songs and he didn’t enjoy it.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Carl leaned on the door jam and watched her sleep. He had no idea what time of night it was and he was afraid to look at his watch and find out. Every hour or so, one of them would get up from the kitchen table and go in to look at her, never telling the other what he was doing. Then, comforted by the sight of her sleeping, he would go downstairs and start to talk again.

  Bottles of Corona lined the table, though neither of them were drinkers. A few of the bottles swirled with the smoke of dying cigarette butts, though they’d both stopped smoking years ago. They’d gone from beer to wine to coffee, but still the talk wouldn’t end.

  Sitting in stunned silence on the way home from Ryan’s, they had begun to talk, overlapping each other in waves of enthusiasm, as soon as they’d walked into Carl’s house. Fishing the keys to the many cars out of their pockets (they couldn’t dare leave any in the house for Jesse to pilfer) and tossing them on the counter, they immediately began to rehash the interview.

  “Could you believe it?”

  “I couldn’t believe it.”

  “The way he stood there and…”

  “The gall of the son of a…”

  “Did he think we’d believe that…”

  “Does he think we’re idiots?”

  “Still, I almost believed him.”

  “He thinks we’re idiots.”

  “When did you stop believing him?”

  “When he opened the door.”

  “Is that why you pretended to get sick?”

  “I had to get a way in.”

  “That was fast. You thought fast.”

  “I had to get a way in.”

  “And when you brought the dress out. You should’ve seen his face.”

  “I saw his face.”

  A drag on a stale cigarette found in the back of a cupboard. Carl looking at Frank through the smoke.

  “Do you think he really did anything to her?”

  And silence and a beer and going round it all again, again and again, they felt sick from the circular motion.

  “He could have done anything to her.”

  “No way of knowing.”

  “She doesn’t even know.”

  Now it was Frank’s turn to suck on the year old Marlboro and feel his eyes burn from the smoke. “I know what you’re thinking. What does it matter what he did to her? She’s an Etch-A-Sketch – draw whatever you want on her, shake her and it’s gone…Well, it matters to me.”

  But what could they do? Go to the police? With what? And what about Martin? The police would give her back to him. Would she be safe there? Round and round.

  And taking turns going in to look at her. And wanting to fall onto a pillow and sleep. But no, the answer is close. Just have to keep talking.

  Finally, out of nausea, out of a feeling that if he went over this ground one more time he might literally vomit, Carl asked Frank a question he’d been afraid to ask. How did they become lovers?

  Frank looked up from urging Mr. Coffee onward.

  “You’re surprised she’d be unfaithful? I was. She believed in marriage and she hated cheating.”

  “But love is always infidelity, isn’t it? Always a betrayal of someone or something. Even with your first girl, when you’re seventeen and living at home, you’re still cheating. Cheating on your parents. Pretending to be a child with them and a man with her. Having to hide the smile on your face and the scent of her on your body. And all that hiding making it so much more precious, so much more exciting.”

  “And you’re cheating on your friends too. Pretending you’re still one of the gang, when all you are is her lover and you could care less about any of them.”

  “And it doesn’t matter how old you are, or how free you are, you still cheat. A single man with a job in love with a single girl, he’s still unfaithful. He’s cheating every time he drives to work and pretends to go through the old routine, while, in his mind he’s really with her, rushing to her, flowing all over her.”

  “Just walking down the street, pretending to be a regular human being, he’s betraying all the other human beings around him. Because he’s nothing like them. He’s not walking next to them at all. He’s not even there. He’s with her.”

  The old cat jumped onto the counter and Frank began to pet her. “And we were in our thirties. Well into the Age of Boredom, when nothing is new.”

  “Now I’m not being self-pitying, it’s simply true. New-ness, or whatever you want to call it, becomes a very scarce commodity after thirty. I think that’s unfair. If I were in charge of the human life span, I’d make sure to budget new-ness much more selectively, to ration it out. As it is now, it’s almost used up in the first three years of life. By then you’ve seen for the first time, tasted for the first time, held something for the first time. Learned to walk, talk, go to the bathroom. What have you got to look forward to that can compare with that? Sure, there’s school. Making friends. Falling in love. Learning to drive. Sex. Learning to trade. That has to carry you for the next twenty-five years. But after that? What’s the new excitement? Mastering your home computer? Figuring out how to work CompuServe?”

  “Now, if it were up to me, I’d parcel out. So that, say, at thirty-five we just learned how to go on the potty. Imagine the feeling of accomplishment! They’d have office parties. ‘Did you hear? The Vice-President in Charge of Overseas Development just went a whole week without his diaper. We’re buying him a gift.’ It’d be beautiful.” Frank laughed and the cat jumped to the floor with a loud thump and a liquid grunt.

  “So that’s why you did it,” Carl said, “because you were bored?”

  “Well, yeah, but I can tell from your tone that I’m not explaining this well. Look at it from her point of view. She’s not happy in her marriage. Not unhappy exactly, but not happy. He doesn’t want kids, so that’s nothing to look forward to. Her life is chock full of quiet tedium. Suddenly, she falls in love. And sure, there’s the excitement of being with her lover, but there’s also the excitement of not being with him. Of waiting and going on with her ordinary life. And all that dullness now becomes part of the drama. Because that’s her cover story. All the dreary anguish and monotony that fills ninety-eight percent of her life is electrified with meaning, since it now serves as the perfect camouflage to hide the two percent of passion.”

  “And, yes, she felt guilt and, yes, she felt shame. But those are powerful emotions too, and were all part of the glorious transformation of a featureless, bland life into an adventure.”

  “For you too?” Carl asked.

  “Of course,” Frank said, off hand. “For me it started much earlier. I’d been in love with her for about two years. Apologizing love. Really gut-wrenching stuff. My brother’s wife. Around her all the time. Longing to touch her. Feeling pain, real pain, in my stomach when I was around her. But not wanting to be anywhere else. And loving every minute of it, don’t get me wrong. All that pain made life worth living.”

  �
�It’s like when I lost my arm. I was fifteen. Martin had just gotten his driver’s license and he took me out joy riding with some friends. Drinking a lot of beer, of course. Plowed into a telephone pole. I had my arm crooked out the window on the passenger’s side, like a real grown-up. And then, well, I didn’t have my arm anymore.”

  “And before I knew what had happened, Martin was crying over me. Really crying, only time I ever saw him do that. And for years after that, I was the center of everything. I was the injured boy in the hospital. The handicapped child. The patient in physical therapy. The child overcoming his disability. Every accomplishment was over-praised, every failure was explained away. Well, it ruined my character, let me tell you and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Who wouldn’t give their right arm to be treated like something special?”

  “Well, being in love with Jesse, that felt the same way. It made me special. I was the man in love. The heartbroken man. The rejected suitor. It was wonderful.”

  “And then, and yes, I’m finally answering your question, we went to my cabin in the desert one weekend. She knew how I felt about her and I think it flattered her, although she pretended to feel sorry for me. Anyway, we were all supposed to go to the cabin, Martin and Jesse and me. But at the last minute, Martin couldn’t go – he had to fly to New York on business. So Jesse decided to go on her own. I thought that meant something. It’s a three-hour drive to the cabin, with her sitting right next to me, and all the while I kept thinking maybe it meant something. We got there. I took those pictures of her in the desert.”

  “Then it happened.”

  “We made love all weekend. We never stopped. I don’t think two people have ever done anything like it in recorded history. I remember every second. I could close my eyes now and relive it all. And that’s good, because she’s forgotten. So if I forget any of it, then it’s just gone forever.”