I got in behind the wheel.
"Is she coming?" Mona asked.
"I thought you were asleep."
I rubbed the palms of my hands along the laced leather guard on the steering wheel. The supple and yet rough texture against my skin elated me. I was alive and still able to move forward in my own life.
"I was watching two men have sex in that doorway across the street," she said, almost wistfully. "One of them was dressed like a woman. He was fucking the other one. I was watching them and then I was in Saint Croix with my family on a vacation."
"She's getting dressed."
"What are we going to do, Ben?" Mona asked, sitting and waking up with a twist of her shoulders and torso.
We hadn't talked much at dinner. She was still too sad about Harvard and his sudden, inexplicable desertion.
"Why didn't you tell me about Barbara Knowland?" I said in answer to her question.
We both knew how long it took for Seela to put together her things and so it made sense to start a longer conversation. We had at least fifteen minutes' waiting time.
"Harv said that he should look into it before bothering you," she said, avoiding looking into my face.
"Had you already started your relationship then?"
Mona hesitated a long while and then whispered, "Yes."
"So you made love and then decided, or maybe it was the other way around," I speculated. "Maybe he told you to leave me flapping in the wind and then he took you up in his arms."
"You don't have to be cruel, Ben."
"Did you at least consider telling me?" I asked.
"Yes. Of course I did. But, you see, Barbara didn't call me first, she called Harv. She knew him because he had talked to her in Oakland, to see if we should do the original story on her. He's the one that told me about the accusation. Telling you would have involved him and that was just too . . . confusing."
"But, honey," I said in an evenly metered voice, "not telling me might have gotten me sent to prison for the rest of my life."
Mona looked at me sorrowfully and Seela rapped on the window. She had a bag that was filled with enough stuff to go away for a week.
"Pop the trunk, Daddy."
* * *
Mona and Seela slept on the long late-night drive. Or, when I think back on that night, maybe they just pretended to be asleep. Both of them had a lot on their minds. Mona betrayed me and in return was let down and deceived by both me and her lover. Seela was losing her parents, and she had in her own way betrayed those that she loved.
I worried about them on that ride, and not as distant relatives with vague problems, which is how I usually saw my wife and daughter, but as victims of my own wanton disregard.
I didn't feel guilty about what I'd said to Harvard "Harv" Rollins. A man had to do something to derail an affair like that. But all those years of quiet indifference I showed Mona and Seela had taken from them the water of life. They were dried-up seeds hoping for dew or the sweat of strangers. And I was the drought, the famine that afflicted them.
Oddly, these thoughts soothed me on that three-hour drive. I felt that my passive crimes against my parents, my wife, and daughter explained why people were after me, looking to put me in prison.
It was as if1 had summoned up Barbara Knowland and Winston Meeks, Harvard Rollins and my wife's betrayal. I was guilty and this was my punishment.
Most guilty men, I'd been told many times over, see themselves as innocent; this is the tragedy of the criminal: Because of his denial of guilt, he can never learn and therefore cannot contribute to the rehabilitation, not of himself but of the world that he has wronged. But I was guilty and I knew it. Maybe I hadn't murdered Sean Messier, but I had wronged my family.
When these notions came into my mind, I laughed out loud. The ladies roused in their slumbers, or pretenses, and then settled again.
We got a place at the beachside Montauk Manor House because someone had cancelled a reservation just an hour before I called. They left the door to our bungalow open and we tumbled in late that night, all of us going to sleep almost immediately. We didn't even take our bags from the car.
I awoke to the sound of the ocean through the open window, the susurration of waves felt as if it were calling to me.
Mona was deep asleep. She didn't stir as I climbed out of the rickety bed. I went into the common room of the suite. Seela's bag was on the broken-down blue sofa. That meant she was up and had already gone to the car.
The sliding glass doors that led to the ocean were open.
I could see my daughter walking down along the beach in shorts, her dark legs scissoring the bright sunrise.
"Hi, baby," I said, coming up to Seela.
I was barefoot, wearing gray suit pants and an old T-shirt.
"Hi, Daddy."
"What's wrong?" I asked, responding to her tone of voice.
"I don't know how to talk to you now that you found me up there with Martin."
"I already told you about me, honey, and it's not like you did something wrong, Seela. You aren't married to Jamal. Martin's not married to Millie. It was me that was wrong for even mentioning Jamal's name."
"It's not that," she said.
The cold water from the sea rolled over my bare feet and pant cuffs. It crossed my mind that I would have never allowed my business clothes to get wet like that before.
"What is it then?" I asked.
"Are you going to break up with Mommy?"
"That has nothing to do with you or anything you've done."
"When Marty came over yesterday, I had no idea what was going to happen," she said. "Neither did he."
"Nothing wrong with spontaneity."
"No, but there's something wrong with me. I feel it in my shoulders and at the back of my neck," she said. "If a boy or a man touches me there, I can't help myself. When Marty put his hand on my shoulder, he was just being friendly, but after that he couldn't stop me. I've been like that ever since I was fourteen."
"With other kids at school?"
"And two teachers."
"What teachers?"
"I won't say, Daddy. They shouldn't have done it, but I'm the one who came on to them."
Again I thought about being guilty. I humiliated my daughter by shining a light on her indiscretion. Now she opened a door for me to pass through. Where was I when she was so vulnerable? Where was I when she was a child having sex with men? And why would I burden her with my troubles? I felt responsible but out of control, like when I would go out on a drinking binge in California and Colorado.
My little ugly duckling, that's what I had always thought about Seela. Could she have read my thoughts? Had I ever called her beautiful, as she was to me now? Had I looked into her eyes when she got home from having sex in the cloakroom with Mr. Hodges or maybe Mr. Rhynne?
My strength left me and I fell to my knees in the wet sand. Seela knelt down beside me.
"Don't tell Mommy," she said, "not ever."
"Have you written about any of this in your diary?" I asked. "No one knows. I haven't written about it and I haven't told anyone, not a soul but you."
The cold wave on my knees sent a tremor through me. And a thought came into my mind.
"On those days that you, that you did that, what did you write in your journal?"
"I just wrote down things that happened a long time ago," she said, "or I made something up."
She was my daughter all right. She protected herself automatically, like a seasoned boxer or some amphibian hatched onshore but who instinctively knows to run for the water before the ominous shadows descend.
"Would you consider going into therapy for a while, Seel?"
"You think I'm crazy?"
"Uh-uh, no. But I do think that you feel guilty for things you've done, and if you can talk to somebody who's safe, maybe you'll learn how not to feel bad."
"But I don't feel all that bad most of the time," she said.
"Yeah, I know. But sometimes isn't it like you can't
feel anything? Like there's a dead space where your life ought to be?"
The glow of realization in her eyes told me I was right. My daughter had been created out of my own cold remove.
She put her arms around my neck and I felt naked, exposed. The passion of her hug was one thing, but there was much more going on. It felt as if I were on an abandoned beach with the first true love of my life. And in a way it was true. My ability to touch her was electrifying—something that I hadn't felt for so long I couldn't remember the last time it had happened. My heart was pounding. My breath was ragged and out of control.
"Daddy, you're hurting me."
"Let's go wake your mother up and get some breakfast, okay?" I said.
On our walk back to the house Seela said, "I'd like that, Daddy."
"What?"
"To see a psychologist. I'd like to talk to somebody about how I feel."
I called my own therapist after pancakes and bacon at Myrtle's Seaside Diner.
"I was waiting for you," he said.
"I'm sorry, Dr. Shriver. I needed to take my family away. They're hurting and most of it is because of me."
"What about tomorrow?''
"I don't know if we'll be back. We might stay here another day."
"If you can't make it," Shriver said, "I'll keep the appointment open. I know you're going through a lot, but try to get in to see me."
"I can't make it in the morning," I said, "but I could do it about three."
"Three then."
I hung up and Mona was standing there smiling at me. Smiling. When was the last time that had happened?
* * *
That was the last day that we were a family: Mona, Seela, and Ben. We rented a rowboat but never made it more than a hundred feet from the dock. There was a strong current that our oars couldn't master. But we laughed a lot and then spent the afternoon swimming. At least Seela and her mother did. I'm not a very good swimmer. I get frantic in the water, fearing I might sink. So I lay down on the sand and drifted in and out of wakefulness, having little naps and blinking at the sun.
In one reverie I was in a garden in Colorado in the spring. I was walking with a brown and beautiful woman wearing a see-through, gossamer white dress. Her dark nipples were hard, pressing against the pale fabric. We stopped at a rosebush with large orange and red and yellow flowers. The woman leaned toward a huge rose, got the whole thing in her mouth somehow, and bit it off. As she chewed the petals, I noticed that a thorn had tom her bottom lip. She felt the pain and licked off the blood and then smiled her bloody and beautiful smile for me.
I awoke with a start to see my wife and daughter on their knees on either side of me.
"Take us to dinner," Mona said.
"Yeah,'' Seela added.
That night our daughter fell asleep early. Mona and I were still wide awake. We had gone to bed, however, because that's what we were used to doing. We had even kissed good-night but our eyes remained open.
I was thinking about Star Knowland and her testimony that I had murdered a man twenty-some years ago. Certainly there was the possibility in the air that I would spend the rest of my life in a Western prison. It didn't matter if1 was guilty or not. I could be convicted.
Fear was gnawing at me. It was building into panic when I turned to Mona and said, "Tell me how this thing with Harvard Yard started."
"I thought this was a vacation, Ben."
"It's after midnight. By noon tomorrow you'll be back at work. He'll come to your office and you'll fill into his big, strong arms."
"It's over between us," she said, not looking at me.
"You mean, if he came to you and said he was sorry and that he loved you, you'd tell him no and spend the rest of your life with me?"
It almost was funny, how honest Mona was. She heard my words and considered them. Of course she'd run to Harvard; he was Ivy League, whereas I was just a two-year training college.
"Tell me," I said.
"Why?"
"Because I'm sitting here in the dark thinking about prison. Because you knew about Barbara Knowland and didn't even say a word. Not only that, you left me alone in the house to fend for myself when Winston Meeks was looking for me. Because you would have told him where I was if I had told you."
Mona sat up exposing her breasts. This revelation was shockingly unsexual.
"You wouldn't understand, Ben," she said.
"What?"
"I couldn't help it. I couldn't stop myself."
"Why wouldn't I understand that?"
"Because your whole life is like a day-planner. You wake up at the same time every day whether or not there's an alarm or clouds or sun or if the curtains are pulled. Because you go to work each day and come home every night and you're never mad or excited or frustrated. Because you never tell me that I need to do more or to be home. You never get jealous when men call and I flirt with them on the phone."
"I was jealous of Harvard Yard."
"His name is Rollins."
"I don't care what his name is."
"That was the first time," she said, "the first time you ever got the least bit jealous and I had already been fucking him for over a month."
"So tell me how it started," I said again.
Mona was seething. I was manipulating her but I didn't feel guilty about it. She could see what I was doing and I needed the friction to save me from sliding down into the hole she had helped to dig.
"Do you remember when I went to Oakland to interview Barbara Knowland for the story?" she asked.
I remembered that she'd gone out of town to do an interview but I didn't know with whom or even where. I nodded though.
"We were staying in the same hotel, Harv and I," she said. "I had some wine at dinner and he walked me up to my room. I guess I had been talking about how I wanted more life out of. . . out of you.''
"Me?"
"Yes, you. And so when we got to my room, he tried to kiss me. I didn't let him, not at first. Then I said just one kiss. He hugged me close then and we kissed with a lot of feeling. I pushed him away and he took my purse and found my key card. He opened the door and kind of shoved me into the room. I couldn't help it, Ben. It made me gasp. Wherever I turned, he was there. And I was feeling him. Do you hate me?"
I pulled aside the blankets to show her my erection. Without another word she climbed up on it. The shock of entering her was something I hadn't felt since I was a teenager. She looked into my eyes, grinning while she bounced her hard buttocks against my thighs. Every time I came close to orgasm, she stopped and stared at me as if I were a stranger to her.
"Do you know why I was so upset the night you fucked my ass?" she whispered.
I shook my head, astonished by the language she was using, the language she learned from other lovers.
"Do you know why I was bleeding?"
"No," I gasped.
"Because I had just let Ham do that to me that morning in my office. I made him wear a condom but I was still so scared. He held his hand over my mouth and whispered things to me."
"What?" I asked. I didn't want to but I couldn't help myself.
"He'd tell me when he was going to press deeper," she said, "when he was going to give me more of his cock."
The hunger and pleasure in her voice were completely alien to me. It was as if I were with some other woman.
"Come," she said, seeing the orgasm build in me. She grabbed my hair and sneered at me. "Give it to me," she whispered, and I screamed and lurched under her like some machine that had slipped its gears and was coming apart under its own force.
* * *
We were strangers again in the morning. On the long ride back Seela talked to Mona about her classes and her &ends in school. The things she said were probably true but I knew that they were a shield for my daughter's real feelings and experiences.
I dropped Mona at our apartment and then took Seela down to her place.
"Are you going to be all right, Daddy?" Seela asked before getting out.
"Are you all right?" I asked back.
"I'll be okay. But what about you and Mommy?"
"We'll be okay, honey. We'll make it. Maybe we won't be together, but we'll make it.''
By the time I had parked in the lot and walked back to our place, Mona was gone.
There was a light blinking on the answering machine. There were eight messages, all from Harvard Rollins.
"Mona," he said in the h t one, "I'm sorry. Let's talk."
The installments got more and more intense until he said that he was going to call his &ends at the police department to make sure that she was okay.
That's what dragged Mona out of the house. His passion and need, his love and willingness to act.
I felt bereft. Maybe, I thought, Mona had made such deep love to me so that we could both know what we were giving up. It wasn't Rollins but our last bout of lovemaking that sounded the death knell of our relationship. As long as we didn't say anything, didn't get close enough to see who we really were, there was a chance that we could remain together. But now it was done. It was not possible for me to give her what Harvard Rollins could provide. And now that I knew about him, I could see too clearly into the fantasies my wife had to keep her from going mad.
At noon I picked up the phone and dialed.
"Hello?"
"Hi, Mom."
"Ben," she said, and then she paused for maybe half a minute. In those thirty seconds she swallowed the years of anger and complaints. I could almost hear the unspoken grievances smothered in the silence on the line.
"How are you, Ben?" she asked at last.
"Okay, Mom. What about you?"
"I'm all right," she said in a voice too high.
"I'm sorry about the other day," I said. "I got a lot on my mind and when you kept on ragging on me, I just couldn't take it."
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