Off Season

by Jean Stone

  “That’s Pilgrim, Emily,” her father corrected. Ben still did not acknowledge John, even when he stepped well inside the room, even when the son of a bitch eased Emily from Ben’s lap.

  “Speaking of Thanksgiving,” he said boldly, “any plans this year?” They’d had it together every year. Even since he’d met Jill, they’d had holidays together.

  His daughter looked to John, then back to Ben. “I thought John told you,” she said. “We’re going to Maine to see his folks this year.”

  John did not elaborate, and Ben did not ask. He stood up. “Well, maybe I’ll see you at the play.” It was clear the time had passed to confide in his daughter. He had tried; he had failed. “Guess I’d better be going. Work to do.”

  “Can’t you stay for supper, Dad?” Carol Ann asked.

  He did not look at his son-in-law. “Thanks, honey, but I promised Amy I’d have dinner with her.” Then he moved his eyes to John in a long, steady glare, as if to say not everyone was afraid of him. “Thanks for the coffee,” he said. He kissed the kids and his daughter and left, hoping she wouldn’t notice that his coffee was untouched.

  Finally Jill cried. She had made it through over forty-eight hours in Sturbridge, mechanically taping her interviews, mechanically conversing with yet another videographer who thankfully had shown up but was disappointingly mediocre, mechanically taking her meals in her room so she would not break down in public once she stopped working.

  She sat on the edge of the bed in the hotel room now, and finally she cried. But her tears were neither for her husband nor for a “misguided” little girl. They were for her. For Jill Randall McPhearson Niles, the intelligent, glamorous, have-it-all woman who suddenly had nothing, who suddenly was exhausted from trying so damn hard.

  I need to do this myself, Ben had said. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have bet he’d arranged the date for the pretrial conference, scheduled it for a day when she’d be out of town.

  Alone.

  Without him again.

  It might be easier if he were dead, instead of at this place in between, this coma of will-he-or-won’t-he survive this ordeal. Or will-she-or-won’t-she.

  Through her tears, she turned to the one thing, God help her, that right now made any sense, that made her feel connected to something positive and worthwhile. The hotel television was showing Good Night, USA.

  But it only deepened her sorrow to watch the picture-perfect hosts Christopher and Lizette, the untouchable darlings who did not have to deal with things like child molestation. Even if they did, Addie would have found a way to make it go away.

  To make matters worse, Christopher’s tan now made him even more attractive, his tawny hair blonder from the California sun, his straight white teeth straighter and whiter. He was not sensuous: his edges were too sharp, his image too perfect. Yet underlying his veneer of the sweet-talking gentleman was an authoritative, power-hungry persona that Jill had often found enticing and sometimes intimidating.

  She wondered to whom he made power-love now.

  As she turned down the volume, the “talking heads” become mouthing heads, smiling, sincere, making all America believe that what they said was true and that their lives were together.

  What had been so wrong with that life: and why had Jill expected more? And more what? Love? That was, after all, why she’d relinquished the spotlight and stepped into this hellhole where she was now.

  She used to try to avoid arguments. Whenever she and Richard, her ex-husband, had argued, she had simply gone to bed. The two fought frequently. Morning, afternoon, her escape had no time clock. She had hoped that upon waking, all dissension would be gone, magically disintegrated during that time between sleep and wake. Rarely had that happened.

  With Ben, avoidance worked only for him. Avoidance and excuses.

  Rick says we can’t be sure what Ashenbach would do if he learned I left the island.

  People who made excuses, she’d found, often had something to hide.

  She grabbed the edge of the mattress and dug her fingernails into the covers. She squeezed her eyes and refused to let herself think that thought again, to even begin to think that.…

  She heard a long, low cry, a moan of sorrow, a wail of hurt.

  And then she realized that the noise had come from deep within her. And from the one question she’d been denying:

  Was Ben really innocent?

  Outside her room, the wind spun eddies of autumn leaves. The room had grown so still that Jill could hear them now, small tornadoes “dancing in the dark,” Rita used to say back when they were girls and Jill was afraid to walk home alone. “Nothing will hurt you,” Rita had reassured her. “The sounds are just leaves having a party, like the toys in the Nutcracker after everyone is asleep.”

  Jill had believed her because she had wanted to, and because, after all, they were only girls. Girls who maybe were … Mindy’s age.

  Nine. Or ten. The same ungrown-up, imaginative age that thought sex must be like being in the dark—exciting or frightening or a little of both.

  And then she remembered the old corner store and the penny candy and the shelves in the back where she and Rita had stood and filled tiny paper bags with fireballs and root beer barrels and pink and yellow candy dots on white paper strips.

  And that made her think of Mr. Blanchette.

  He was as old as Jill’s father but thin and white-haired, and he always wore the same blue-and-black-checked wool shirt in winter and a sleeveless undershirt in summer. He never spoke but sat behind the counter turning pages of small magazines that Rita said had pictures of naked women and sometimes of girls like them.

  They nicknamed him Mr. Creepy, which well described how Jill felt when she looked in the dusty window and saw him sitting there, even though she’d never seen inside the magazines and did not know for sure if he was a pervert as Rita claimed.

  Whether the accusation was true or false, just or unjust, when Mr. Blanchette was in the store, the girls did not go in.

  Did Mindy and her friends now look at Ben the same way? Did they call him Mr. Creepy?

  And could the first Mr. Creepy’s reputation have been saved if he’d had a wife who’d pulled a few strings?

  On the TV screen, the credits rolled. Behind the type, Jill watched Christopher remove his microphone, say some soundless words to Lizette, and smile for the camera that he knew was still set on him. Jill knew because she’d been there. And in a matter of weeks, she’d be there again. Away from the pressure. Where nothing bad happened.

  Did Christopher know she’d signed the contract?

  Was he pleased?

  Then, without drawing her glance from the screen, Jill stopped wondering. If she were going to save either Ben or herself, she knew she had to take some action of the positive kind.

  Slowly, deliberately, she reached for the phone. Then she dialed the number that she still remembered.

  They were a motley group, or at least that was what Rita called them. Ben didn’t care what label she gave them: he was glad that he’d not returned to the house to suffer in silence. He was grateful that Amy had made dinner for Rita and for him at her new apartment; even though it was ham and scalloped potatoes and was pretty well dried out.

  Feeling grateful and glad, he was damned if he was going to think about it this evening. For just one evening he was going to set his mind free.

  “Here’s to the last of the Vineyard singles,” Rita declared, raising a cup of too-strong coffee.

  “Excuse me,” Ben said, “but I believe I’m married.” He’d helped himself to half a bottle of wine from Charlie’s private stash and was feeling quite good for a guy whose life was in grave question.

  “Oh,” Rita said. “I forgot. Your wife’s away so much.”

  “Ouch,” he responded, but he didn’t mind the barb. “Rita, you won’t be alone for long. Before you know it, you’ll be a family of three.”

  Amy looked at him queerly. Rita did, too.

  �
��Someone forgot to tell you that a mother and a baby do not always make three,” Rita said.

  “Well, there’s always your mother,” he replied. “Three generations. That’s a family, isn’t it?”

  Rita threw a packet of sugar at him.

  Amy stood up and cut another slice of apple pie that Rita’s mother had made just before she went to the senior center tonight.

  “When are you due, anyway, Rita?” Ben asked. Since Jill had told him she was pregnant, he hadn’t thought much about it, except to miss Kyle.

  “April,” she said. “And it can’t get here fast enough.”

  April.

  As in April the ninth.

  Suddenly the wine and the ham and the apples did not agree on being in his stomach. He glanced at his watch and wondered how soon he could politely excuse himself and take his motley body home.

  • • •

  “I heard you were coming.” Christopher’s voice was exactly as Jill remembered, a touch softer than it was on TV, less in control, more like a man with feelings. She’d often wondered what exactly he’d done that day after she returned the ring, after she’d left the studio to start her new life.

  Had he cried?

  Or had he run to Maurice Fischer and told the RueCom boss it would be fine and they’d be better off with Lizette?

  The tone of his voice now gave nothing away.

  Jill twisted the cord. “I thought we should bury the hatchet before we meet for the publicity shots.”

  He paused. “What? And miss out on huge ratings we’d get by doing it on the air?” He did not say there was no hatchet to bury, or that he was grateful she’d left him because he’d met someone new. “Speaking of which,” he continued, as if she called every evening, as if they spoke every day, “have you talked with Addie? The network decided to do the shots in New York.”

  She had been looking forward to a few days of sunshine and relaxation in L.A., not Manhattan’s stark city landscape of pollution and high-rises. She had been looking forward to being on the opposite coast. “Why New York?”

  “It could have something to do with the fact our old viewers were used to seeing us in the snow and cold.”

  “Then why not Boston?”

  “Because New York is bigger? Better? Who knows.” Unlike Jill, Christopher never questioned the whats and the whys of those behind the scenes. Which could also be why his career was so much further ahead. “I only know it’s going to be the week after Thanksgiving. And we’re booked at the Plaza.”

  Jill laughed. “The week after Thanksgiving? Well, maybe that explains it. Addie’s from the city. She gets to be there for the holidays.”

  “Oh,” Christopher replied without further comment.

  In the silence that followed Jill tried to picture them at the Plaza—shooting public relations promos in Central Park perhaps, in a hansom cab with a white horse, decked out in red velvet and evergreen boughs. Would she be in fur, or would that upset too many animal-rights viewers? And why was she wondering these things when she was there on the phone with the man she’d once thought she loved?

  “Is this okay with you, Christopher?” she asked. “Having me fill in for Lizette?”

  “Jill,” he said, his voice soft once again, “we’re professionals, aren’t we?”

  She didn’t know what she’d expected, but she didn’t think it was that. Something more personal, perhaps. Something that said he cared. Or that he didn’t.

  “Besides,” he added, “I’ve done a lot of things in my day, but chasing a married woman has never been high on my list.”

  A married woman. Yes, she reminded herself, that’s just what she was. And despite how she felt, that would not change. At least not for the moment. At least not until she’d given it her very best shot.

  Which meant getting off the phone with her ex-lover right now and returning to her senses—or what was left of them.

  “Well, then I’ll see you in New York,” she said, and quickly rung off before he—or she—misconstrued why she’d phoned at all.

  Chapter 14

  “Did you go trick-or-treating?” Laura Reynolds asked Mindy when she came back, a long time after Grandpa had yelled at her to leave. During that time she must have forgotten that Mindy was ten, not five.

  Mindy used her tongue inside her mouth to search for the back molar that she’d been playing with all day. It was loose and ready to pop out. She wished the doctor would leave so she could put her fingers inside and see if she could pull it.

  “No trick-or-treating?” Dr. Reynolds persisted. “Don’t they have a party at your school?”

  Mindy sighed. “I’m in the fifth grade. Only the little kids do that.” She looked past the doctor out into the yard that was quiet and gray now that most of the leaves had fallen.

  Mindy didn’t like November much: with all the tourists gone, there wasn’t much to do. And it meant the holidays were coming, which were a joke.

  Thanksgiving was a day like any other, though last year Grandpa bought an already-roasted turkey from the supermarket, and she pretended her mother had come home from Timbuktu and cooked it.

  As for Christmas, well, Mindy promised herself that this year she would positively not go to the community center party for the island kids. When she first came to live here, it made her feel special to get all those presents. But last year she realized it was mostly for the poor kids and the kids without anybody, which practically meant her.

  If she didn’t go this year, maybe no one would know she was poor and that she was without anybody except Grandpa, who never knew what to give her so he settled on a twenty-dollar bill. Maybe he wouldn’t even do that this year. Maybe he was too upset about this problem with Ben. He sure seemed to be avoiding her lately, as if she’d done something wrong.

  A lack of positive parental attention can lead to much unhappiness, Dr. Laura had said. Difficulty making friends. Overachieving. Lying.

  Mindy rocked in the rocking chair in her room. “I thought my grandfather told you not to come back here.”

  The doctor smiled. “The court prefers that I do. They want me to help you handle the trauma before it has a chance to get too big.”

  “I don’t have no—any—trauma.”

  The doctor frowned. “No? What Mr. Niles did to you must have been very upsetting.”

  She pushed at her tooth again. She remembered when Brianna Edson had spat one out one day in reading class. Brianna had plopped her bloody tooth onto her open book and watched it stain the page red. Mindy had written Gross Out on her notebook and showed Mark Goudreau, who sat next to her.

  “Mindy,” the doctor prodded again, as if Mindy had forgotten she was in the room, as if she possibly could. “You seem distracted today. Is it because they’ve set a trial date? Does that upset you?”

  Mindy knew the doctor would have loved her to say it did. She would have loved her to say that something—anything—upset her. Then the doctor would have something to do. “It’s not until April,” she said, because that’s what Grandpa had told her. “I’ll be eleven by then.” She looked off toward Menemsha House, which had not been opened since that day. She wondered if it would ever open again, and if it was her fault if it didn’t.

  Difficulty making friends … Lying.

  Dr. Reynolds had stopped talking. Mindy hated when she did that, as if it were up to her to fill in the blank space, the dead air that sat between them. She wiggled her tooth with her tongue again.

  “Mindy,” the doctor said after about two hundred minutes, which might have been more like two, “what’s on your mind?”

  “If you must know, I was thinking about you. Do you have a boyfriend? Do you let him touch you in ‘inappropriate places’?”

  The doctor hesitated a moment. Mindy sucked at her tooth.

  “Adults are different from children,” Dr. Laura replied. “But even when you’re an adult, if someone touches you without consent, it’s wrong. Do you understand that?”

  Mindy opened h
er mouth, plucked the bloody tooth, and held it out to her. “This is my twelve-year molar. Does it mean I’m mature for my age?”

  Dr. Reynolds sighed and picked up her bag. “Our time’s up for today, Mindy. But I’ll be back tomorrow. Maybe you’ll be in a better mood.”

  Mindy watched her leave and felt a little sad but did not know why. Maybe it was that lack of positive parental attention showing up again.

  • • •

  Ben got out of his car in the parking lot of the school. He’d come to see his grandkids in the play whether John liked it or not, whether the world liked it or not. He had, however, waited until the performance was about to start: no sense running into people he should not and did not want to see.

  Walking into the long corridor where he’d not walked since Carol Ann had been a student, he noticed the construction paper turkeys that lined the walls. It was, of course, almost Thanksgiving. The time had passed so quickly, as if the days and weeks were racing toward April, hell-bent on getting to the trial.

  Jill had come home from Sturbridge but soon would be gone again, this time to New York for press photos with Mr. Celebrity. But Ben figured it didn’t much matter where his wife was these days; the conversations they had were more on edge than not, and he sadly felt more at peace when she was away.

  Guilt, he supposed, was causing that. Guilt for putting her through this nightmare, which would soon be over one way or another if the calendar had its way.

  The auditorium lights had already been dimmed. Metal folding chairs sat in neat rows from the stage to the back, about three-quarters of them occupied by parents and grandparents and siblings of all ages. Even in the darkness, Ben spotted Carol Ann and John sitting near the front. He scanned the room: he saw the editor of the newspaper, the head of the fish cooperative, and even Sheriff Talbot. But did not see a silhouette that resembled Dave Ashenbach’s.

  He took a seat by the door, in case he decided to go home.

  From behind the stage, someone worked the pulley, and the old maroon curtain slowly jerked open. The audience hushed, as if this were a high-priced Broadway performance. It occurred to Ben that to most of the people there, it was just as important, perhaps more. Families—children—were the Vineyard way of life. He moved uncomfortably on the chair and remembered that that was why he’d built Menemsha House: for the children, to help their young minds work and play and grow into the best that they could be.