by Jan Burke
I laughed at that. “No, no thanks, Booter. I just thought you might have been out on his boat.”
“No, sorry. Never. I’ll have to ask him to show it to me — if I ever find a free moment. Now, I’m sure you’re busy, too. Don’t let’s waste time talking about fishing. Is there some way in which I may be of assistance to you?”
“Yes, I think you may. Tell me if the Alumni Foundation has heard from a graduate named Lucas Monroe.”
There was another pause, then Booter said, “I couldn’t give that information out, as I’m sure you know — privacy laws, of course. I know they’re a bother to you reporters — they can be pretty darn tough on an alumni foundation, too.”
“You remember him?”
“Who?”
“Lucas Monroe.”
“I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of him.”
“Worked with Andre. Used to share an office with him.”
“How long ago?”
“Oh, back when you were fishing with Allan and the other boys.”
“Well, then, no wonder. We have thousands of students here, and I can’t be expected to recall a man who went to school here back in the 1970s.”
You blew it, I thought. Once or twice five or six years ago. Sure. “You haven’t heard from Lucas Monroe since the 1970s?”
“No — I mean, I’ve never heard from him.”
“But you mentioned the 1970s, not me, Booter.”
There was a pause, then he said, “I guess I assumed you were asking about one of your old friends, someone who went to school here when you did.”
I tapped my pencil. “That’s strange, Booter. I mean, strange that you don’t know him.”
He laughed nervously. “Why? Why do you keep mentioning this fellow?”
“Oh, this brings us back to the dinner party, I believe. And a few other matters. If I were to ask Mr. Monroe if he’s seen you lately, I suppose I’d get a different story. He might be able to name a date and place and time.”
I heard the chair creak. I could picture him, leaning back, stroking his tie.
“If someone named — what did you say his name was?”
“Monroe. Lucas Monroe,” I said.
“Well, if he claims he knows me, or has been to see me, he’s lying, pure and simple.”
“Lying.”
“Yes, the man’s a liar.”
“A liar,” I repeated. “Well, you should know. By the way, Booter, did I ever tell you that I know how you got your nickname?”
“Oh, I suppose you’ve heard I was something of a pugilist in my day,” he said with a laugh.
“Pugilist? You mean boxing? I thought your sport was hurling.”
“Hurling? Why, no! You mean pitching, a baseball player?”
“Not exactly.”
“Oh, maybe you said ‘hurdling.’ I never went out for track and field. I’m slow as molasses.”
“Whatever you say, Booter. Well, if you remember anything about Lucas Monroe, let me know.”
Poor Booter. A man builds a certain kind of reputation, thinks no one will learn his secrets, then one day some stupid little story catches up to him. Suddenly his name is mud — or something worse.
Booter was a strange man. Not as dumb as he acted, but not as smart as he thought he was, either. I didn’t think he knew Lucas was dead, but I couldn’t be sure.
I needed to step back a little. I had been sort of mean to Booter, partly because I didn’t like hearing him call Lucas a liar.
Perhaps I had taken it all wrong. Coming from Booter, calling someone a liar could have been a statement of admiration.
18
DEKE AND DUNK were snoozing after a hard run on the beach. I had showered and changed, a chicken was roasting in the oven, and Rachel had set the table. Now she sat at the counter, drinking a glass of white wine, scratching Cody’s ears, as I worked on a batch of biscuits.
“So, tell me about this group you’re in,” Rachel said, obliging Cody when he lifted his chin to be scratched where he wanted to be scratched. “This SOS — Pete thought Frank was crazy to let you go to that meeting the other night. I told him it was none of his business, but you know Pete. If he thinks something is bothering his partner—”
“What? Bothering his partner? Frank told Pete that my going to SOS bothered him?”
Her hand stilled. “Uh-oh. Listen, I don’t know that for a fact. Pete borrows trouble, you know?”
I went back to kneading biscuit dough, she went back to spoiling the cat. I decided to set aside my worries about Frank, since there was nothing I could do about them until I had a chance to talk to him.
“SOS is Save Our Shelter, a group that supports the battered women’s shelter,” I said, “but I’m guessing that you’re not asking about that group.”
“No, Pete called it something else.”
“‘Survivors of Selman’?”
“Yeah, that was it.”
“That’s a joke that I regret letting Frank in on. It’s just what brought a few of us together years ago. Even then, calling it that was intended to be a joke. Women who had gone on with their lives after being with Lisa’s dad.”
“You make it sound like a crowd. How many old girlfriends does this guy have?”
“How many? Let’s see. Every now and then, Andre lasted a year with someone. He’s been with his current wife for about five years now. But before that, the man averaged two or three girlfriends and a dozen quick affairs each year for twenty or twenty-five years…”
“Merda, well over a hundred women! What derailed this freight train of love? Fear of AIDS?”
“No, I don’t think so. Maybe. There are several theories floating around. I don’t care, really.”
I knew she was studying me, but I kept my eyes on the biscuit dough, as if its white sameness inspired fascination. I was hoping she would let this line of questions drop. That went the way of a lot of hopes.
“So you still haven’t told me how the ex-girlfriends managed to meet each other the first time.”
“Lisa — the woman you’ll meet tonight?”
She nodded.
“She asked about five of Andre’s ex-girlfriends to attend her high school graduation. I was one of them. Later, Lisa’s mom invited us back to her house for coffee, while Lisa and her friends went on to a party.”
“You knew these other women were Andre’s ex-girlfriends?”
“No. It was the first time I had met most of them. I knew Marcy, Lisa’s mom, of course. And Sharon, Jerry’s mom — Jerry is Andre’s son. But the others were women I’d never met before. I turned to one of the others and asked, ‘So how do you know Lisa?’ and that was that.”
“Must have been weird.”
“Not really. In fact, it was a relief. Here were some other women who—” I stopped, felt the heat rise in my cheeks.
“What’s wrong?”
I shook my head. “Rachel, of all the stupid relationship moves I’ve ever made, getting involved with Andre was the stupidest. In the end, I felt — I don’t know, conned, I suppose. So here I was — meeting smart, strong women — and every one of them had been conned in exactly the same way.”
“He took money from you?”
“No. I was a student. I didn’t have money.”
“Your virginity?”
I laughed. “No, the precious prize of my virginity was long gone.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know you didn’t. Andre took my pride. That’s all. Just my pride.”
Rachel didn’t say anything for a while, just kept scratching Cody. I realized that I was kneading the dough a little too vigorously, and decided to roll it out while it would still make something resembling biscuits.
“Andre always courted and broke up with women in the same way. In fact, he always arranged — with the help of his best friend, Jeff — that you’d walk in on him having sex with another woman. It had happened exactly the same way for all of us.”
“Good God!” Rache
l said. “I’m surprised he hasn’t been killed by one of those women — Andre and his friend!”
“As far as I know, I’m the only one who didn’t leave it at shouting obscenities or running away in tears. Some even tried to get back together with him.”
“What did you do?”
I smiled. “I grabbed one of his prized fishing poles and started flailing his naked behind with it.”
She laughed. “Literally whipped his ass, eh? So then what happened to you?”
“I moved to Bakersfield. I worked the police beat for a local paper for a couple of years before the Express offered me a job down here. My father’s health was starting to fail, so I moved back home.” I started cutting out biscuits, putting them on a baking sheet, allowing the memories of my father’s illness to get lost in a more pleasant recollection, that of standing next to my mother when I was little, watching her make biscuits. Mom made the biscuits from scratch. I was using a mix, telling myself that was one step closer to homemade than popping open a tube of refrigerated dough.
“Maybe it was just time to come home, anyway,” Rachel said quietly, bringing me back to the memories of my father’s illness.
“Maybe.” Think of something else.
“Isn’t Frank from Bakersfield?” she asked.
“Yes. We were just friends in those days. It took us another dozen years to meet up again, but that’s where I first met him.”
“So — I guess I still don’t understand why you formed this SOS.”
“We all said things like, ‘I wish I had talked to you back then. It would have helped to know I wasn’t the only one.’ Becky — one of the women there that night — suggested we go around picking up survivors after Andre broke up with them. You know, let them know that they weren’t the first person to go through this routine. Someone said that the only thing Andre didn’t do was batter us.”
“Hmm.” She shook her head.
“Well, the comment made us think. ‘There but for the grace of God,’ and all that. As it happened, around the time we were having this conversation, the battered women’s shelter had lost some grant funding. We decided to make something positive out of what had been a negative experience for us. Sort of mush roomed after that.”
Cody protested as Rachel stopped scratching him. I looked up to find her staring at me. “Tell me the truth. This Andre didn’t hit you, did he?”
“No, Rachel. As far as I know, he never physically abused anyone. Psychologically — that’s another story.”
She looked as if she wanted to comment on that, but the dogs started barking. The doorbell rang.
“I’ll answer it,” she said. “Your hands are covered with dough.”
IF I HAD ANY WORRIES about Lisa and Rachel feeling comfortable with one another, those fears were proven groundless within the first few moments after Lisa’s arrival. Throughout dinner, they talked as much to one another as with me, discussing Rachel’s move to Las Piernas and Lisa’s upcoming candidacy. If Rachel thought it strange that Andre’s name didn’t come up until the meal was nearly finished, she didn’t show it.
“By the way, Andre’s condition hasn’t changed much,” Lisa said. She turned to Rachel. “I don’t know if Irene has told you about the person who is nominally my father. He suffered a heart attack the other night.”
“Yes, I know about his illness,” Rachel said. I knew her well enough to see that she was displeased by Lisa’s flippancy. At first, I doubted Lisa saw it. I was wrong.
“I’m sorry. I’ve offended you. I did the same thing with Irene the other day at lunch. The problem is, I don’t think very highly of my father. Among friends, I tend to let my guard down. My father’s illness hasn’t changed my relationship with him. No miraculous healing of old wounds or finishing of unfinished business. To Jerry, his son, he has been a very affectionate father. To me, worthless.”
“That seems a little harsh,” I said.
She lifted a brow. “Does it? Think back to when you were dating him. When it was my father’s weekend to have custody, what happened?”
“We all shared—”
“Not we, Irene. You and I. I’ll grant you, there was always the ‘doting father’ show. It drove me crazy for years. He put this big act on whenever he first dated a woman. I was baffled — going from being adored to ignored, unable to comprehend what was triggering the change. What was I doing that made him suddenly turn cold? Until I grasped the fact that his affection was connected to the impression he wanted to make on his date, and not on my behavior, I never knew what to expect.”
“You seemed to have that figured out by the time I met you,” I said.
She laughed. “Rachel, when Irene first met me, I was an absolute monster.”
“You were not,” I protested. “You just tested me. Kids do that to adults.”
“Oh, sure. But most women in their twenties didn’t catch on. Trust me. I tested lots of them.”
“Tested how?” Rachel asked.
“At first, just by whining a lot and generally being obnoxious. Irene would pretend to be bored by it — she’d just yawn and say things like, ‘Most people quit that baloney by the time they’re three years old.’ So then I moved into phase two. Let’s see… there was the time I put cod liver oil in your shampoo bottle—”
“It washed out. Eventually.”
“The times I put shoe polish on the rims of the eyepieces of your binoculars, so that when Andre took you to a hockey game, you—”
“—looked like a raccoon until Andre finally broke down and told me why people were laughing at me. Yes. An old trick, but Andre was deeply amused.”
“Actually, I think most of them were old tricks. The plastic wrap beneath the toilet seat, salt in your cola—”
“Makes it foam up, right?” Rachel asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Oh, there was also the time I put laxative in your coffee.”
I made a face. “That was one of the worst.”
“If Irene was reading an article in a magazine and got interrupted,” she told Rachel, “I’d tear out the last page of the story.”
“That one was irritating, but at least it didn’t ruin my day.”
“You see, a brat.”
I shrugged. “You were just trying to get my attention. I wasn’t an angel when I was twelve, and I didn’t expect you to be one. Besides, you were treating me the way I treated my older sister. I figured I was doing penance.”
“I don’t know about the penance, but you’re absolutely right about the attention.” She turned to Rachel. “I was devastated when Irene moved to Bakersfield. She was one of my favorites. I really hated Alicia.”
“Alicia?” Rachel asked.
“Alicia Penderson,” I said. “A girl I had known since grade school, was the one who—”
I caught myself, but Lisa just laughed. “She was the one who was in bed with my father when Irene whipped his butt with a fishing pole!”
She saw our mutual discomfort and said, “Oh, please! I’ve been an adult for years now, Irene. You don’t need to act embarrassed about the fact that I knew about my father’s sexual activities. Lots of sounds carry up along that heating vent to the attic.”
“Maybe I’m still a little old-fashioned about some things,” I said. “I know you didn’t get it all from eavesdropping through the furnace. Your father thought it was oh-so-progressive to tell you things most parents keep from their children. I think you had to grow up a little too fast as a result.”
“Nothing can be done about it now,” she said. “I survived. I didn’t turn out so badly, did I?”
“No,” I said, smiling. “Not at all. I’m very proud of you.”
She looked down at the table, turning a deep shade of red.
“Nothing to blush about,” I said. I turned to Rachel. “Lisa graduated from high school when she was fifteen—”
“You told me you graduated early,” Lisa said.
“Only a semester early. And I wasted it completely. If I ha
dn’t taken college classes during a couple of summer sessions, I might still be an undergrad. You, on the other hand, finished your master’s degree when you were nineteen — and graduated with honors.”
“You’re a sociologist, like your father?” Rachel asked.
“Oh no. My life is in politics. But I did get a degree in sociology.”
“There seems to be a family love of the subject,” I said. “Her brother is also a sociologist.”
“Are you close to your brother?” Rachel asked.
She hesitated for a moment before saying, “Close? No. He’s six years older than I am—”
Rachel glanced over at me. “You dated a guy who had a son your age?”
“Thank you, Rachel,” I said dryly. “Jerry’s three years younger than I. He was just starting college when I was about to graduate.”
“Oh, I see. You were much older then.”
“Don’t give Irene a hard time,” Lisa said. “My father’s conquests are legion — and most of the women were in their twenties when he met them.”
“I’m not sure I’ve been defended,” I said. “To go back to Rachel’s question — I think age differences didn’t matter so much as the fact that he grew up in a different household.”
“You’re right. Jerry’s my half-brother, Rachel. For the most part, he lived with his mother, and I lived with mine. But he sometimes spent months at my father’s house, and he lived with Andre all summer, every summer. When I was young, I was very jealous of him, of course. Eaten up with envy. I would have loved to have had one-thousandth of the attention he received from Andre. For a while, when I was in school, we grew further apart. But in the last few years, we’ve started to get to know one another again.”
We shifted to less volatile subjects, eventually leaving the table to make ourselves more comfortable near the fireplace.
“I should be getting home,” Lisa said at about eleven o’clock. “Oh, by the way, Roland Hill said that he would talk to you if you called tomorrow.”
“How did you ever get him to agree to do that?” I asked.
She smiled. “I wouldn’t be very good at my job if I couldn’t get a little cooperation from people like Roland Hill.”
The phone rang as I was about to thank her. The machine picked it up before I could get to it.