by Bill Rowe
I sat down on the bed. My breathing was deeper than if I’d just finished a hundred-metre race in the pool. I didn’t look at Rosie. In truth, I was half-embarrassed at the way I had blurted out the suggestion like an excited kid.
I could feel Rosie looking intently at me, though. At last she said, “I was going to ask Lucy about that, myself. The court ban on identifying anyone by name in the media is there to protect me, the victim. Who’s going to complain to the judge if I go public with names? Rothesay? I can hear him now: ‘The judge must hold Ms. O’Dell in contempt of court for exposing me as a pedophile in England and in Canada instead of letting me continue to slither along under cover of darkness preying on children.’”
“But you didn’t ask Lucy about it?”
“No, I didn’t. Because, Tom, my sweet, I want it to be over, I told you.”
“So do I. But it’s not over yet and it can’t be over until we’ve finished what you and I set out to do at the beginning. Expose him for what he has done and for what we know he will do if we don’t expose him.” My eyes were fastened on hers now. I was sure of myself again.
She leaned against me and put her head on my shoulder and said nothing for a while. Then she lay back on the bed and pulled me down with her. “You’re bad, you know,” she said, “putting ideas in my head again. After the jury was dismissed and he walked out cocky and free, the first thing that flashed into my mind was going public with our names and exposing him to the world. But then I banished the thought completely. I couldn’t bear putting everyone, you especially, through all that.” She squeezed me and lay quietly for a while. Then she murmured, “This could be perfect, though.” I squeezed her and she whispered, “This could be so perfect, my lovely, lovely sweetheart.” A second later I felt her leg jerk as she fell asleep, before I drifted off myself.
My dead arm under her woke me up. The time on the clock radio read nearly eleven o’clock. We had slept as soundly as if we had engaged in an hour of vigorous sex. When I pulled my arm out from under her, she stirred and snuggled closer, whispering, “Oh God, Tom, I love you.” Immediately her breathing said she was asleep again.
I lay on my back thinking about my brainwave. My mother’s and father’s appalled faces appeared in my head. Jesus Christ. They’d probably disown me if Rosie went public. They would for sure if they knew I was behind the whole thing. Suddenly my great idea seemed absurd—disruptive to our own lives and everyone else’s, needlessly prolonging the agony, accomplishing nothing for us. I sat up and put my feet on the floor and sat on the side of the bed in a slump.
“Hi, love,” said Rosie, touching my back.
“It’s getting late. I’d better get up and go.”
“In a minute,” she said, pulling me back on the bed again. She found my lips and hugged me tight to her for thirty seconds. Then she got up on her elbow and looked at my face, tracing its features with her forefinger. “You are the bravest person I’ve ever known, the way you’ve encouraged me to fight him, supporting me all the way. Lucy could hardly believe it during the trial.” She kissed me and I hugged her with one arm and pecked her lips but said nothing. She placed a leg on top of me and moved her pelvis against my hip. “Oh, my love,” she whispered into my ear. “I have a wonderful feeling about us. For the first time in five years I feel like— what?—normal, absolutely normal.” She kissed me with wide-open lips, pressing against me, moving on top of me more, rubbing her entire body against mine. “I love you. I adore you. I revere you. I’d die for you. I am dying for you.”
I tried to respond as enthusiastically, but I was acting. My head seemed to be in a vise. I felt closed in by her weight, claustrophobic. The thought occurred to me that if I’d been pinned down in an open field by a sniper, with bullets kicking up earth on all sides of me, I wouldn’t have felt less sexually aroused than I did now. I pulled my mouth away from hers and said, “Maybe I should leave before we end up falling asleep again for the whole night. I wouldn’t want Mom and Dad to be worried. And what about Suzy’s mother? She’ll be home soon.”
Rosie looked at the clock. “Gosh, nearly eleven-thirty. Time moves so fast when you want it to stop.” Keeping her arms tight around me, she gave no sign of getting off the bed.
“It’s hard not to think of those exams coming up, too.” I said. “Especially after missing so much time. Going public like we were talking about earlier, I think you should leave that on the back burner till exams are finished, not even discuss it with Lucy, and we’ll think about everything in the meantime and make sure that whatever we do, we do it right.” I kissed her cheek. “Okay, sleepyhead, I’m up.”
“Ummm.”
After a last hug and kiss, I stood up.
“As soon as exams are over and whatever else needs to be dealt with is done,” she murmured, as I slipped on my shoes, “we’re going to go somewhere and spend the whole night.” I crouched down till my face was level with hers and she touched my lips with her fingertips. “Okay, my love? Promise?”
“I promise,” I said.
Chapter 13
THIS WAS THE DAY, and all unsuspecting, my parents were gone to work. This morning after my last exam, the house silent, I should have been wallowing in the luxury of being able to sleep in as long as I wanted with nothing to do and nothing at all on my mind. But this was the day.
Rosie had written her last exam two days ago, and last night she’d told me if she waited any longer, moving into the vacation swing of things, she might get cold feet. She had to act now. What was really troubling about Rothesay’s manner of operating, she said, was that he deliberately used the law to protect himself from public disclosure. If he had sexually abused a girl unrelated to him, his name would come out when charges were laid, but the victim’s identity could be kept back. However, by choosing as victims his nieces or stepchildren, he kept his name from coming out because by identifying him and the relationship, the victim would be identified. Wherever he went in the future, no one would know of the charges and he would be doing the same thing all over again by entering into a close relationship with the mother or aunt or sister of his intended victims. He would do it forever unless we stopped him by making sure his name was blazoned forth far and wide as a multiple sexual predator of children. She just needed to tell Lucy Barrett first thing this morning what she intended to set in motion that very day.
My father’s enraged face appeared in my head. Lying there in bed, I realized how deeply I had come to dislike and fear his censure. If Rosie went ahead today, I’d have to track him down this morning, as well as my mother, and prepare them for the media blitz on this fresh lunacy. Jesus, Jesus. I forced it all out of my thoughts, made my mental canvas blissfully blank…
The phone woke me. Grabbing it, I saw by my clock that it was now nine-thirty.
“I have an appointment to see Lucy Barrett in a few minutes. Are you ready for a media circus this afternoon?”
“I am,” I lied. “How do you want to do it?”
“You sound a bit sleepy.”
“I didn’t sleep too well last night. I really didn’t drop off till Mom and Dad left this morning.”
“I know what that’s like, awake all night with the brain in overdrive. You’re having second thoughts about it, aren’t you? I was up and down like a yo-yo all yesterday, too.”
“No, I’m okay,” I lied again. “How’d you sleep last night?”
“Like an innocent baby. Which surprised me. I went to bed worked up at the thought of it all, expecting to toss and turn all night, but I fell asleep and didn’t stir till six-thirty. And when I woke up I was excited and calm at the same time, and rarin’ to go. It was the strangest thing.”
“You know you’re doing the right thing, that’s why.”
“How about you? Do you really, honestly think so?”
“Yes. How’ll you do it? A news conference?”
“That’s probably the best way. Remember how we were talking last week about making people aware that kids from quo
te, unquote ‘good homes, ’ with top marks in school, are as vulnerable as any other child to the Heathcliff Rothesays of this world? So I was thinking of calling a news conference right outside St. Mary’s Elementary, where I was when it all happened.”
“Great idea. Where would you like me to be, up there with you or in the audience?”
“Oh, with me, please. Unless you—Suzy suggested I have some Status of Women activists with me for support—she’s arranging that—and she wants to be by my side when I do it. What do you think?”
What I thought was that I would love to be out of the glare of personal publicity completely. Since the trial, students at high school had been mostly considerate, but I’d been conscious of staring and whispering, and sometimes a female student would come up to me, seize me by the hand, look me in the eye, and proclaim me peerlessly heroic for my steadfastness in standing by Rosie. Even that had been too much. No fuss at all involving myself was what I really wanted. It took me longer to reply than I intended. “Sounds good,” I said. “We’ll all be there as you hit them with both barrels blazing.”
And she waited a little longer than I expected. Did she hear the lack of conviction, the lack of courage, in my voice? She started slowly: “Well, I… knowing you’re there in the same space with me with your love and support will help me get me through it. One of the Status of Women activists said she thought the media impact would be much greater at the sight of two young lovers side by side united in their love and strength while I expose myself so completely. But I would understand, Tom, if you didn’t want to…”
“No, no,” I said, “No, no. I want to.” Years later, looking back, I would see this as the first time I hadn’t been able to keep my fears entirely internal, the first outward sign of courage faltering. Years later I would read somewhere that bravery was only the fear of being thought a coward. That was the kind of bravery I felt today.
After bidding goodbye to Rosie, I dawdled on phoning my parents. Last night I’d heard Dad talking about a meeting he’d be involved in all day today with a big national retailer over putting a department store in St. John’s. I decided to wait till that was well under way this morning before calling his office and leaving a heads-up message for him with his secretary. Anything to avoid actually talking to him. Then I’d call Mom at the hospital.
Dad’s secretary, Libby, came on. Dad was not to be disturbed at his confidential meetings with clients from the mainland for anything, barring an emergency in the family. I asked her to please get through to him that Rosie was going public with everything about the trial. He’d know what I meant. Libby knew, too. “Oh Lord, Tom. It’ll be awful to hit him with that, today of all days.”
I called Mom at the hospital and, stressing urgency, got her out of a committee meeting. “Oh my God,” she responded, “did you tell your father?”
“I tried to, but he’s at secret meetings or something.”
“Yes, he’s holed up in the Newfoundland Hotel at strategy sessions. I can’t disturb him with this in the middle of all that.”
“What about if he hears it on the news?”
“Oh Christ!”
“I told Libby to tell him.”
“Oh Christ.”
When I hung up, the phone rang and it was Rosie again: “I ran it by Lucy, and she said that even if I held a news conference disclosing his name and mine, no one in the media will carry it. They won’t touch it with a barge pole.”
“Why not?”
“I’m still underage. I wouldn’t be able to do it until I’m nineteen, the age of majority. Until then, without a specific court order, not even my adult parent or guardian would be able to do it without going to jail for contempt of court. The whole idea is the protection of victims of sexual abuse, especially underage victims. So a court order allowing disclosure would be needed.”
Suddenly, I became really brave again. “Can Lucy get that from the judge?”
“She says that as prosecutor she certainly wouldn’t suggest to a judge the disclosing of the name of a victim of a sex crime. It might frighten off other potential complainants. And even if I had a lawyer of my own go to court and ask for a disclosure order, she doubts that I would get it until I’ve reached the age of majority and can exercise my own mature judgment. Till then it’s a no-go.”
“More than two years from now. In the meantime, he walks away from this once more, free to move on and abuse more innocent children.”
“Sure looks like it.”
“Honest to God, Rosie. We’ve got to stop this perverted psychopath.”
“I’m open to suggestions.”
“First, I’ve got to call Dad and Mom and tell them your public disclosure is off.”
“I’m sorry about all this needless disturbance to everyone’s sanity. But at least they’ll be relieved. I can’t imagine they were very happy when you told them.”
“Shagging wimps. The whole problem with this world is people being too timid to rock the boat. I’ll talk to you later.”
I HEARD DAD’S TIRES in the driveway at nearly seven o’clock that evening, and a minute later the front door opened with a tranquil call: “Where’s Tom?”
“We’re in here, Joe,” said Mom from the kitchen. “Your meetings ran late.”
“My meetings ended at five-thirty. I’ve been driving around town for over an hour trying to cool off my GODDAMNED TEMPER.”
“Well, calm down and come in and we’ll all talk.”
“I am calm. Deathly calm.” Dad loomed in the door. Seeing me sitting there must have ruffled that calm, for he abruptly roared, “Why did I have to hear of this for the first time on the phone from my secretary as I was going into a meeting with my firm’s biggest prospective clients?”
“I tried to call you earlier at the office.”
“When? My Day-timer will show that I didn’t leave the office till ten twenty-five. When?”
“At eleven, as soon as I heard from Rosie that she intended to do it.”
“But you must have talked about it before that. Why didn’t you alert me?”
“She had to see the prosecutor first, and that didn’t happen till this morning and we agreed to keep it conf—”
“You agreed! Let me struggle to get a grasp on the enormity of what I am hearing from my own son. I was hit with this out of the blue, and I couldn’t think straight for fear of my possible clients hearing my name on the news publicly associated with this tawdry piece of sleaze, and I nearly made a complete balls of my presentation to them, all because you agreed with Rosie not to tell me. And you went along with that totally unwarranted insanity instead of alerting the parents who have succoured you and supported you all your benighted life. And then when I come out of my disaster meeting, I’m told you and she have called it all off anyway. Is this the logical thinking I am being asked to accept here?”
I couldn’t refute his pretty powerful analysis, it was so accurate, but I refused to confirm it. Instead, my gorge rose. Into my head popped the image of my father’s face outlining his idea for bettering my future: After such a gruelling year, he had suggested, I should do some travelling in Europe this summer to recharge my batteries. I’d be seventeen then. Stay at student hostels. He could hook me up with another boy of similar age, a son of a partner, who was thinking of doing the same thing. And that break would really give me a chance to consider attending a university away. His associates at the accounting firm in England could arrange for me to start a year at the University of London, for example. I had been incredulous. Leave Rosie back here while I jaunted about Europe all summer? And then go to a university away while she was back here going to Memorial. I had stayed polite and thanked Dad and said I’d think about it, and to avoid a blow-up had kept myself from telling him how deranged I thought the notion was. Right now, though, telling the man the truth about his evil initiatives seemed imperative.
“Why would I discuss anything with you, for the love of Jesus?” I shouted. “It was only the other day you c
ame up with some other transparent bullshit to pull me and Rosie apart. Why would I confide in someone who is always trying to stab me and Rosie in the back?”
“You ungrateful little fucking bastard!” Dad underlined his roar with a blow of his fist to the kitchen door, shattering a panel.
I leapt to my feet, hands poised for a fight, bawling, “Come on, you cowardly arsehole. I’m sick and tired of listening to you always trying to cover your own butt all the time.”
Above the head of my mother, who had jumped between us, my father’s saucer-sized eyes showed neither doubt over wanting to kill me, nor fear of being killed himself. Yet he surprised wife and son by abruptly turning away and walking out of the room and up the stairs. Perhaps he’d thought better of the patricide-filicide scenario unfolding here. More likely he wanted to nurse the limp hand he was cradling.
An hour later, the evening calm and soft with a beautiful sunset forming, I went on a long walk with Rosie around Quidi Vidi Lake. We were intending to talk over what we should plan for this summer. The trial had diverted us from all thought of that. But tonight we never got anywhere near that kind of planning either. After a few seconds of silence while a group of runners passed us, I said, “I’d like to kill that bastard.”