by Alan Drew
“Do me a favor,” Rachel said, nodding at his boots, “and leave those outside.”
He slipped them off, suddenly aware that he stank of horse sweat.
“I’ve got lasagna in the oven,” she said, turning her back and going into the kitchen.
Lasagna: the meal of crisis. They had lasagna after her father died. They had lasagna after Emma broke her leg. They had lasagna the night she told him she wanted out.
“Where’s Em?” he said, watching her pull the pan from the oven.
“Upstairs,” she said.
“Mind if I go up?”
“Yes, I do mind,” she said. “You and I need to talk.”
Shit, she’s marrying the computer guy. Wants more money. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good.
“I’m not too crazy about the smoke and mirrors,” he said. “It’s been a long day.”
“You know me, Ben,” she said, holding her hot-mitted hands out to him. “I wouldn’t waste your time, especially now. Just sit, please.”
He did as he was told and took in the apartment—the painting of Catalina they had purchased together after taking a whale-watching cruise to Avalon, a photo of Emma in her softball uniform, a photo of her as a toddler kicking up wet sand at Laguna Beach. It was too hot in the apartment, made broiling by the oven, and he stood to open the two front windows, jostling loose the wooden rods Rachel had jammed between the aluminum frames.
“Close those,” she said.
“He won’t be out until dark,” Ben said.
“I don’t care,” she said. “He’s terrifying and he’s out there somewhere.”
He shut the window and replaced the rod. She carried the pan of lasagna to the table and served him a hunk of it. It was watery, but he kept his mouth shut. She hadn’t dished out any for herself, so he grabbed her plate and filled it.
“Thanks, but I’m not hungry,” she said. “You look tired.”
“You, too.”
They watched each other, and for a moment he thought she was going to take his hand, but then she cut into the lasagna and that was that.
“Look, Ben,” she said. “You and I were stupid kids once. Remember that day on the floor at my parents’ house?”
He smiled. It had been their first time. “I still think about it sometimes.”
Her cheeks flushed. “What was I, sixteen?”
“Yes, you were.”
“You were seventeen, just turned. I was in love with you,” she said, glancing at him, a softness in her eyes he couldn’t ignore. At that moment, he wanted her. Right now, in a way he hadn’t in a very long time.
“That was one of the best days of my life,” he said.
She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re not going to like this.”
“Then don’t do it,” he said. “We can give it another shot, Rach. I’ll give you more attention, I’ll work hard—”
She touched his wrist. “No,” she said quietly. “This is about Emma, Ben. About Emma and this boy. I came home from school the other day and walked in on them.”
“What?” he said. “Sex?”
“No,” she said. “Well, not then, but Emma told me some things when I started asking questions.”
“Sex?”
“Lower your voice.”
“Answer my question.”
“Yes,” Rachel said. “Yes, she’s had sex. She told me. It was difficult for her to say it.”
“What the hell, Rachel,” he said. “You spending too much time with your boyfriend to be a mother?”
“Don’t do that, Ben,” she said, pointing at him. “You need to calm down.”
It sickened him, the thought of someone—this stoner—touching his daughter.
“She’s barely fourteen,” Ben said. “He’s three years older. He took advantage of her.”
“It doesn’t sound like that’s the case.”
“Who cares what it sounds like? She’s too young to make that decision. He zeroed in on the up-and-coming high schooler and took advantage of her.”
“She says they’re in love.”
“Love?” he practically shouted. “What does she know about love?”
“What did you and I know about it?” Rachel said.
Ben stood up from the table and faced the window.
“We can’t change what’s happened,” Rachel said, her voice quieter now. “We have to be practical, realistic. We need to have a plan—one we’re on the same page about. We need to get her to the gynecologist. Make sure she’s using birth control. I mean, I’ve talked to her about it, but that was in the abstract. I didn’t think it would happen this early.”
“You’re saying we should put her on the pill?” he said.
“You want to lock her in her room?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I do.”
Rachel walked over to him and placed her hand on the small of his back. He melted for a moment. For a split second he would have done anything she said. “Ben.” But then he pulled away and went for the stairs. He wanted to see Emma, his little girl; he wanted his little girl back.
“Don’t,” Rachel said. Somehow she beat him to the bottom of the stairs. “Don’t go up there right now.”
“Emma,” he called up the stairs.
He could see Emma’s closed bedroom door, a NO TRESPASSING sign hanging on a nail.
“Ben,” Rachel said. “Look at me. Wait until you’ve thought it out. She’s your daughter.”
Why did it feel like she wasn’t his anymore? Like she had been taken from him?
“Emma,” he said. “I know you can hear me. Come out here right now.”
“Look at me,” Rachel said. He wouldn’t. He was watching his daughter’s door. “When you’re upset you say stupid things. Things you can’t take back. Don’t do that to her.”
Emma’s door cracked open. He could see her darken the sliver of open space, watching him at the bottom of the stairs.
“Ben,” Rachel said loudly, her hand pressed against his chest. “Go home and think about us.”
He looked at Rachel; he hadn’t heard her refer to them as “us” in a very long time.
“Think about us back then,” she said. “Maybe that will help you understand.”
—
NATASHA SAT DOWN at a bench near the open classroom door. She could see the professor sitting on a table in front of the students, reading with mock anger from a text he had splayed on his lap.
“And what loved the shot-pellets
That dribbled from those strung-up mummifying crows?
What spoke the silence of lead?
Crow realized there were two Gods—
One of them much bigger than the other
Loving his enemies
And having all the weapons.”
He let the words hang in the air for a moment before releasing the students, yelling over the din of their shufflings which poems to read for the next class. Natasha recognized Tucker immediately, though the young man’s hair was long and he had grown a beard. He was bigger than she expected—six foot four, she guessed, broad shoulders, biceps straining his shirtsleeves. She followed him, weaving in and out of the students as they made their way to their classes. He had a backpack slung over his shoulder, a skateboard strapped to the bag with a bungee cord. The barrel of a gun was painted on the board, and band names, too, were drawn in Sharpie across the empty spaces—X, Black Flag, Social Distortion, Dead Kennedys. He sat down at a bench beneath a tree and opened the book he was carrying. He teethed the cap off the pen and began scrawling words across the page.
“You like poetry?” Natasha said.
“The good stuff,” Tucker said, squinting up at her.
She asked him the poet. Tucker dog-eared the page, closed the book, and showed her the cover. Ted Hughes.
“Sounds like angry stuff.”
“Cathartic, maybe,” Tucker said. “Beautiful, if you ask me.” He slipped the book into his backpack and pulled the hair
out of his eyes. His body was all muscle, but his face was soft—a boy’s face still. “I didn’t see you in class. You an extension student?”
“I was listening outside,” Natasha said. “The professor was putting on a show.”
“Yeah,” Tucker said, sly smile. “A wanna-be actor.”
“He’d be a pretty bad one.”
“Who are you?” Tucker said, a hardness coming into his voice.
“Natasha Betencourt.” She showed him the badge, her thumb hiding the MEDICAL EXAMINER etched into the metal.
“Let me see that again,” he said.
She showed him, not bothering to hide it this time.
He squinted up at her, fear bleaching his face. “Who’s dead?”
—
TUCKER AGREED TO meet at a park set against the hills and the remnants of an avocado grove. Natasha said she’d give him a ride, but Tucker said he wasn’t getting in any car with her unless she had the authority to arrest him. So Tucker skateboarded there and Natasha followed him in her Z, until he reached a patch of irrigated green shaded by young junipers.
They were sitting on a cement bench near a new playground, watching a city worker push trunks of avocado trees into a wood chipper, when she told him about Lucero.
“How old was he?”
“Seventeen.”
Next to a field newly cleared of trees, men lowered an irrigation system into a hole in the ground.
“One of Wakeland’s?”
“He was a swimmer.”
“Jesus,” Tucker said, biting nails already chewed to the quick, one thumb rimmed in dried blood. “How’d you find me?”
“Your mother.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Was my father there?”
“Yes,” Natasha said.
“And my mom told you where to find me?”
“She did.”
He studied her—astonished, it seemed.
“You know I can’t talk, right? I mean, you’ve already found that out.”
“I know that seven years ago you said something.”
He glanced away, at the men lowering the pipe into the ground.
“How’d he do it?”
“Shot himself in the head.”
Tucker nodded and looked at the ground.
“I wanted to talk,” he said. “Wanted it off my fucking back. I didn’t give a shit if people thought I was some freak.”
“But your father didn’t want you to, right?”
“Let me tell you about my dad.” He pulled down the waistband of his pants to reveal scars, striations of them white and welted on his upper hips. “Belt,” he said, letting go of the pants. “He would pull it right out of the loops and go at it.” He bit a slice of fingernail and spit. “I got this because I cried in front of my Little League teammates when we lost a playoff game. I was eight. He said I needed to toughen up, you know. Get a backbone. He called me a pussy.”
“Your father’s the frightened one,” Natasha said. “Sounds to me like you might be braver than him.”
Tucker finished chewing his left thumb and moved on to his index finger. After the men lowered the pipe, a bulldozer dropped earth on it.
“What did Wakeland do to you?”
“You know, no one’s ever asked me that question,” he said. “It was always ‘What happened?’ or ‘the accuser alleges that’ and shit like that. Not even my mother asked me that question: ‘What did he do?’ ”
“Maybe she’s frightened to know,” she said. “Maybe she’s afraid it’s her fault.”
“Just like my mom,” he said, “to make it all about her.”
“But your mother sent me here to find you.”
He looked at her. His eyes clear green like the deep end of tide pools. They were intelligent eyes, but she could see an insecurity in them. He would have been the type of child who tried to keep his parents from fighting, the kind of kid who tiptoed around the house to keep his world calm. A man like Wakeland would notice that. For a man like Wakeland, that would be an invitation.
“The problem is,” he said, “I wouldn’t know how to answer that question. What did he do to me?” He watched a bulldozer push the torn-up trees into a pile near the chipper. “Freshman year I get busted,” he said, “in the parking lot, toking up. Goddamned resource officer trolling the lot has nothing better to do. He hauls me through the courtyard with the handcuffs on, right in the middle of lunch, in front of everybody. Wakeland just happens to be walking by and follows us out to the patrol car, jawing at the cop. ‘C’mon, Joe,’ Wakeland says. ‘He’s fourteen years old; get the cuffs off him.’ But the cop says he can’t do it and he slips me into the patrol car, and at this point there’s this throng of kids standing on the steps watching the scene.
“ ‘Joe,’ ” Wakeland says. ‘He’s one of mine.’
“And then the cop closes the door and I’m stuck inside the hot car with the windows up, watching the two of them talk. All I can hear is the police-radio static, so I have no clue what they’re saying, but a couple minutes later the cop opens the door, keys open the cuffs, and hands me over to Wakeland. ‘Lucky I’m a nice guy,’ the cop says. ‘No second chances, though.’
“So Wakeland hauls me over to his office in the swim complex, says he’s gotta call my parents. I beg him. I mean, I fucking break down and beg him not to tell my father. He’s got the phone in his hand, his finger in the dial, and I’m crying like an idiot. He puts the phone back on the hook, gives me a tissue, and watches me for a minute.
“ ‘All right,’ he says. ‘This is between you and me.’ ” Tucker laughed ironically. “Between you and me.
“So Wakeland makes me promise,” Tucker continued, “to come to his office each day at lunch, to get my homework finished. ‘If I find out,’ he says, ‘you’re smoking that garbage again, I’m calling the police and your parents.’
“And I did. I went to his office every day, did my homework, stopped getting stoned, got a B-plus average the next semester. My parents couldn’t believe it. My dad mostly stopped belting me—that’s how happy they were. They invited Wakeland over for dinners. Sent him Christmas cards. Let me watch movies at his apartment. I couldn’t believe it, either, to be honest. I mean, I didn’t believe I could do anything good, and here I was getting A’s on tests.”
The man running the chipper fed a severed branch into its mouth. A cloud of wood chips flew out across the ground and another man raked them beneath the new monkey bars and swings, a soft landing for kids when they lost their grip.
“It was almost a year,” he said, “before anything…” He ran his hand through his hair and blew out air. “The problem is,” he said, “he was like a dad, you know? He was like the dad I wanted. He’d show me extra attention after swim practice, giving me tips no one else got. We’d go to Angels games. I’d hang at his house, drinking beer. He’d help me with my homework, made me study for tests. I borrowed a fucking tie from him for my junior prom. It’s crazy,” Tucker said. “This college stuff is easy for me now because of Wakeland. I owe him for that, I guess, in a weird way.”
“You owe him nothing.”
“He kept copies of Playboy in his guest bathroom. Sometimes we’d look at them together, and somehow that started to feel normal, like the kind of thing you were supposed to do with a dad.”
“You were a child.”
“I was a teenager.”
“You were a child,” she said. “I could tell you a little bit about the childish brains of teenagers.”
He looked at her. “I never said no. That’s the problem.”
Natasha didn’t know what to say about that; whatever she knew about the teenage brain couldn’t help her understand it.
“Sometimes,” he went on, “even now, when things are shitty, I think about calling him. Like he’s just some old friend and the other stuff didn’t happen.” He let out a long breath. “Fucking strange. Gets you wrapped so tight around his finger.”
“You did, though,” she
said. “You finally said no.”
“Not to his face,” he said. “I stopped eating. Couldn’t make myself go to school. Took a bunch of pills. I finally told my mom and she ran to the bathroom and puked. After that it was all lawyers and interviews in small rooms.”
“Confidentiality.”
“Why are you down here?” he said. “Why not a cop?”
“The detective assigned to the case is frightened to see you,” she said.
“Frightened to see me?”
“He knows,” she said, “that if he’d said something a long time ago, you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Yeah,” Tucker said, “just another asshole that doesn’t want to get on the wrong side of Wakeland.”
“No.” Natasha shook her head. “It’s not that.”
Tucker stared at her, confused for a moment. “It happened to him? Wakeland?”
She nodded. “I think so.”
“So now you want me to say something.”
“Lucero, that was the kid’s name,” Natasha said. “He’s not getting any second chances. His mother won’t talk, either. She’s illegal and afraid she’ll be sent back.”
“God,” Tucker said. He put his palm to his forehead, as though shielding his eyes from the sun. “Wakeland knows how to pick ’em.”
“Let me get you with a detective,” Natasha said.
“The statute of limitations is up,” he said. “The law doesn’t care about what happened to me.”
“I know,” she said. “I know about the statutes. But not on Lucero.”
“You think I’m stupid?” Tucker said, standing now. “You don’t get it. This money’s putting me through college; I got plans for it. I said what I needed to say and no one gave a shit. Everyone retreated to their corners and protected themselves—Wakeland, my father, the school district. You know how long it’s taken me to stop thinking about killing myself, to be able to sleep with my girlfriend? I’m twenty-five years old. All my friends are graduated, starting careers or going to grad school. Some of them are married, have kids. I’m taking a fucking poetry class at a community college.” He stopped and took a deep breath. “I feel bad about it. I mean, I feel bad about this kid, I really do, but I can’t do what you’re asking.”