The Long Fall

by Daniel Quentin Steele

  He followed her in and said, “The kitchen. For some reason, I don’t feel that bad about the kitchen.”

  They sat at the table, the way they had so many times before. He looked around as if he were seeing it for the first time and when he stopped at the counter near the refrigerator and looked back at her she knew what he was going to say.

  “The snow globe?”

  “It got knocked off. It completely shattered. I had to throw it away.”

  “Like a lot of things, Debbie, including me, right?”

  She let it go.

  “I’ll tell you what happened. Doug spent the night and I had a morning meeting at UNF. We must have had lightning hit the house the night before. It knocked out the alarm and I had to jump up and get out. As far as I knew, Debbie and BJ were spending the night at friends. I realized I’d forgotten a folder and came back.

  “I was at our bedroom door when I heard them. Kelly...had come in and...was....giving him oral sex. They had no way of knowing I was outside. Doug pushed her off. He told her to get out. He wasn’t acting. I could tell. I came in and Kelly was pretty honest about what she was doing.”

  She stopped and said, “You want something to drink? We have some of your Goldschläger. There’s beer in the fridge...”

  “The kind of beer he drinks?”

  She shut up. How did he manage to drive the needle in with such precision.

  “Just beer.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Kelly was definitely after him. She has been for awhile. I read her the riot act, she blew up at me and moved out. She’s at Mom and Dad’s right now. I told Doug to get his stuff and get out. It was too dangerous to have him around her. She’s 17 and hormone driven and he’s-“

  “Very sexy, right, Debbie. And ‘so damned big,’ right?”

  She spoke as calmly as she could make herself.

  “He’s very attractive, Bill, especially to be around a 17-year-old who’s dreaming of getting herself pregnant and married. Anyway, we were going to be through before long. I told him we...needed to make a break.”

  “So you say.”

  She almost stood up and felt that familiar anger begin to rise inside her.

  “That’s fucking IT, you asshole. I’m trying to honest and you keep taking shots. I never had sex with him, you bastard. Yeah, I was flirting. And I shaved my pussy dreaming about him. And I was going to wind up in his bed. Until you made an ass of yourself and ruined my career and Doug’s. But...I never fucked him before that night.

  “I just kept getting myself off with my handy vibrator, because you sure as hell weren’t getting the job done. And I would eventually have gotten the nerve up to break up with you and then after a respectable period of time I was going to let him fuck my brains out.”

  He looked like he was going to get up but he remained seated.

  “It was never serious, Bill. I didn’t fall in love with him. I just fell out of love with you. He was there to scratch an itch, but if I’d never met him, I was going to ask you for a divorce. He’s a kid, and I knew he’d never keep it in his pants for me. He’s too hot. So, yeah, I ended it with him. If you don’t believe me, take him in your office and put a lie detector on him.”

  “I’ve already talked with him.”

  There was something about the way he said it that made her know.

  “Shit, you must have made him really angry. I hope he didn’t hurt you too much.”

  She saw a smile grow on his face and realized it was the first time she’d seen him smile in three and a half months.

  “He was pretty angry, but....well, let’s just say he’s not going to be the pretty boy he used to be.”

  “But-“

  “You just have no respect for me at all, do you?”

  She looked at him again. He was dressed as usual in black slacks and a black shirt, but his arms and shoulders were better defined and his gut didn’t bulge out the way it had. She remembered the way he had looked in the gym that night. There was something else, something she couldn’t put her finger on. But he was different.

  She couldn’t believe she was actually asking it, but she heard herself say, “You didn’t hurt him too bad?”

  The smile vanished.

  “You still care for the bastard, don’t you? Are you really through with him?”

  “I don’t want you going to prison, losing everything you spent your life working for. And....I don’t care for him..but-“

  “He’s alive. I busted him up some and he’s having a little trouble breathing with busted ribs. And, I broke his nose, but he’ll live. In case you haven’t heard, he’s leaving town.”

  She just stared at him. What had happened?

  “I didn’t have anything to do with it. Apparently he’s had a job on the table for awhile in Chicago, but he says he was staying for you. He said he would have taken you with him if you’d agreed. Doesn’t sound like he thought he was just a way to scratch an itch.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I am going to have a beer.”

  She opened the fridge, grabbed a Michelob Light and took a sip after taking the top off.

  “He—he was more serious than I thought he would be. He’s...just a kid... Bill, actually emotionally I don’t know that he’s much more mature than Kelly. Just a big overgrown kid.”

  “You move pretty fast, Debbie. Throw me out, move him in, throw him out, and you’ve already lined up a replacement. Actually, I have to give you credit for making a better choice this time. That guy Abbott seems alright. A good writer, and at least with him, you won’t have to be always looking down.”

  She slammed the beer down so hard on the table that it sloshed over.

  “I never looked down on you, dammit Bill. That was always in your head. You’d think after 18 years and all the times I fucked you until you couldn’t move you’d have finally figured out that two inches of height is nothing.”

  He didn’t say anything, just looked around the kitchen as if he were looking at it for the first—or the last—time.

  “Doesn’t matter, Debbie. In a month it’ll all be moot. Thank you for telling me what happened between Doug and Kelly. It matches what he said and I have no reason not to believe you because nothing he or you said contradicts what BJ saw and heard.”

  He got up.

  “Goodbye, Debbie. I’ll let myself out.”

  She stood up and almost touched him. She was reaching for him when he drew back and she dropped her hand.

  “Bill, thank you. Thank you for talking to me. It’s been hard....not being able to talk to you. Even if this was just about Kelly, I’m still glad you were finally willing to talk to me.”

  He had turned around when she said, “One favor, Bill. Please, call Mom and Dad and talk to Kelly. She won’t talk to me. I can understand why. But you’re her father. Try to talk some sense into her about Doug.”

  “I’ll call and go by right now. Goodbye.”

  I sat in my car in the dark for 10 minutes after I left Debbie’s house. No matter what she said, it wasn’t my house anymore. As long as I stayed away from her, I could remember the house and our life the way it had been. But I had been in there now. I could see him fucking her up against the refrigerator or spread-eagled over the table. Maybe he hadn’t, but I saw the pictures in my head.

  It was probably a mistake to have talked to her. In some sick way I felt better for it, but I was still sick about it. Talk about a dog going back to its vomit. She was poison. There might be a day when I could look at her and not want to hold her, to kiss her, to bury myself in her. But it wasn’t today.

  I drove to the Bascombs. I called ahead and got Cathy. I asked if Kelly was there and when she said she was, told her I was coming by to talk to her.

  It was 11:15 p.m. when I pulled into their driveway. Roy answered the door.

  “She’s in her bedroom, Bill. “

  It wasn’t the first time we had talked since everything fell apart, but they had just been hi and by when
I came to pick up the kids.

  He stopped me as I walked past him and put his hand on my shoulder.

  “I wanted to apologize for what I said...when this all started. I never really believed that she...would throw everything away for a pretty face. That’s not the daughter I raised. I know Cathy has talked to you. This thing with pretty boy will end. And she’ll come crawling back to you. When she does...just try to remember that she was a good wife for a long time. That’s all.”

  I stood there for a second but there was nothing I could say to that. I went on back to what had been Debbie’s younger sister Clarice’s room years before. Now Cathy and Roy kept it as a guest bedroom.

  I knocked on the door and after a moment pushed it open and went in. She was sitting cross-legged on Clarice’s old canopy bed, wearing headphones and doing something on a laptop at the same time.

  She wore a light blue pajama set and I didn’t have to look too closely to know that Doug had been right. She was a sexually mature, beautiful woman. Except for the hair coloring, she could have been the woman I’d first seen on the University of Florida campus 20 years ago.

  “I assume your soon-to-be ex-wife told you a pack of lies about what happened?”

  “No, she told me the truth. She told me the same story Doug told me this morning.”

  She looked up at me and the angry retort she was planning died in her throat as she stared at my face.

  “God, daddy, what happened to you? Oh, no, you didn’t go after Doug did you? It wasn’t his fault.”

  She tore the headphones off and set the computer on the bed.

  “You didn’t have him arrested, did you?”

  I shook my head and sat down beside her on the bed.

  “No, Doug and I just got into a little tussle. He about put my eye out and banged me up and I smashed his nose and broke some ribs, but he’s going to be okay.”

  “Dad, you hurt Doug?”

  I shook my head watching the expression on her face.

  “Why does everybody seem to find that so hard to believe. Yes, I hurt him, but nothing he won’t recover from. And I didn’t get him arrested, although I sure as hell could have.”

  “We didn’t do anything.”

  “Kelly, in the eyes of the law, having oral sex with a 17-year-old would get him sent to state prison and branded a pedophile for life. You’ve lived with a prosecutor your whole life and you’re not stupid. Your mother walking back in was the best thing that ever happened to Doug. Because if he had had sex with you, I’d never rest until he was spending a long time in an all-male barracks at Raiford. Or until he was dead.”

  “Dad, but I—“

  “Do NOT tell me you love him, Kelly. You’re 17 and you’ve got high school and college and a life ahead of you. You’re not hooking up with a 28-year-old man who used to be your mother’s boyfriend.”

  She stared at me with an expression of pained innocence.

  “You’re just mad at him because of mom. But he didn’t chase her. She chased him. And she’s been flirting with guys for years. I bet you she was fucking them a long time before she put her hooks into Doug. I care for him and I know he cares for me. He hasn’t said anything, but I can tell it by the way he looks at me.”

  I took a deep breath.

  “He is not my favorite person on this planet because of your mother’s involvement with him. That’s true. But that’s not the reason why you’re not going to get involved with him. He’s too old for you. He’s had more women than you’ll probably ever know about. And you could never trust him. He moved in on your mother when we still had a marriage. What makes you think he would be true to you?”

  “He wouldn’t cheat on me. I’d keep him happy.”

  “No one woman is going to keep him happy, baby. It doesn’t work like that with guys like Doug. And you say you can tell that he cares for you because of the way he looks at you. You’re not a little girl anymore, Kelly. He’s looking at you the way a man looks at a beautiful woman, and that’s what you’ve turned into. When a man looks at you that way, he doesn’t love you. He just wants to have sex with you.”

  She turned her back on me.

  “It doesn’t matter what you say. We’ll get together. You can’t stop us. I’ll be 18 in a little while and then you and Mom can’t stop me.”

  I didn’t tell her that Doug was going to be 1500 miles away very shortly and if he had any sense would avoid her like the plague until that time. And after that...well, I knew prosecutors all over the country and the ones I didn’t the Big Man did. Doug would be watched.

  She turned back to face me and she looked so much like Debbie that it hurt.

  “Besides, it’s too late to protect my virtue, Daddy. Doug wouldn’t be the first.”

  “I know that.”

  “No, I’ve had two boyfriends since then. I’ve been—with both of them. I stopped seeing Jamie and started going with Charles, but Jamie moved back into town three months ago. We hook up sometimes.”

  She acted like she hoped I’d be shocked.

  “I know this will shock and dismay you, Kelly, but I realize that once you start having sex, most people don’t stop. I wasn’t aware of your boyfriends, but I can’t say I’m surprised. I know that I can’t lock you in your room, and put a chastity belt on you, and short of that, if you want to have sex you’re going to have sex.”

  “I—“She looked really surprised. “I didn’t expect you to-“

  “To treat you like an adult? It comes hard, Kelly, because you’re always going to be my little girl, even when you turn 60. But this is something you’ll find out when you have your own kids. You treat your children like children...until you can’t anymore. And I can’t treat you that way anymore.”

  I reached out and grabbed her hand and held it in mine.

  “I’m not going to tell you not to have sex because I know I can’t enforce that, and I don’t expect you to respect my opinions because I’ve made a pretty bad mess of my marriage. But I just want you to remember one thing...and remember it for the rest of your life.”

  I took my hand and ran it along the side of her face. And beneath those woman’s features and her mother’s beauty, I saw the little girl I had known years ago.

  “I love you Kelly. You’re my daughter and you always will be. I know I haven’t shown it, but I love you and your brother more than anything on earth. You are the most precious things on earth to me. Nobody except your mother and I, and maybe your brother, will ever love you exactly that way.

  “But, if you’re lucky, you’ll find some man that will love you just as much, in a different way. He’ll love you for more than your body and your face. He’ll love you if you lose your looks, or that body grows old. It’s what every parent wants for their child. I want someone to love you as much as I do.

  “I want someone to love you as much as I loved your mother. I want someone who will walk through fire for you, because I would have for your mother. That’s gone now, but we had it. And I just want the same thing for you.”

  I leaned over and kissed her on the forehead and walked out. Cathy would have said something but I waved her off. I could barely see for the tears blinding me, but it was okay. I had said what I wanted to say. Now it was up to Kelly. She could make her own mistakes, but I hoped she’d be smarter than her mother had been at her age.

  I had stopped at a late night espresso shop for a cup of very strong American coffee that was as close to real French coffee as you could find in the River City. It was 12:30 a.m. before I finally sprawled on the bed in my condo and clicked on the late news. As I’d expected, all the buzzing was about the dramatic murder inside the Jacksonville Jail. A lot of the details were held back, but enough had been released that it would go national the next day.

  I punched up a pillow, lay back and sipped at the coffee between swallowing two pain pills with water. My left eye had begun throbbing like crazy again. I hadn’t taken the rest that I’d been ordered to. I let the sound of the news wash aro
und me as I thought about the day gone by. It had been the longest day of my life.

  It had begun with me in bed with Aline having to break off a budding relationship that I didn’t want to break off. In the space of only 17 hours, I had been told by my son that my 17-year-old daughter was having sex with my wife’s boyfriend; a vicious killer had made a very real threat against my family;

  I’d nearly got my head knocked off extracting a measure of revenge against the asshole who had stolen my wife; I’d received a not-so-polite threat to come down the right way on a racially charged domestic violence/murder case; had one of the most overt sexual overtures I’d ever received; realized I was lying through my teeth when I told myself I didn’t want to see Aline again; met a man who should have hated me but did me a favor I could never repay proving the value of ‘Friends In Low Places; met with my soon-to-be ex-wife and found that despite whatever feelings I might have for Aline, I wasn’t yet over Debbie; and dealt with my 17-year-old daughter as an adult for the first time.

  I’d crammed a week worth of living into less than a day. No wonder I was exhausted.

  I was about to click off the television, strip and hit the bed when a familiar face flashed on the screen. I ran it back and turned the sound up.

  “....official government sources in Rwanda have confirmed the initial reports that Father Eagan Dunleavy, a special emissary from the Vatican, has died in a crash near Kigali International Airport, the primary airport serving Kigali, the capital of Rwanda.

  “Sources said that Dunleavy and four others in a small jet, had flown directly from Paris to the Rwandan capital in what was said to be a private diplomatic initiative to ease tensions and fears of a resumption of Hutu-Tutsi violence.

  “Unconfirmed reports say that the plane was brought down by one to two surface to air missiles, possibly American-made Stingers stolen or sold to rebel Rwandan military units.”