‘Store? What store?’
He laughed. ‘I’m like my father. I call the dealership a store. We just got this lovely Corvette. I’ll hate to see it sold, but Ted Cross ordered it. He owns Cross Supermarkets. It’s really a sweet-looking car.’
‘Your store is still open?’
‘No, but Dad trusts me with the keys,’ he said with a wide grin.
‘OK.’
She wasn’t really into cars, but showing interest in things someone you liked enjoyed was probably a good idea. That was something she could truly say her parents had: they always took interest in what excited the other.
Mrs Dante thanked them and wished them well as they left the restaurant. Her gaze was clearly fixed on Victoria, those silvery gray eyes like the eyes of a fortune teller holding back on what she really saw. Victoria wondered if that was something she imagined or if she had become super-perceptive.
Both she and Bart seemed to be afraid to start talking after they left the restaurant. She knew she was churning over possible things to say, including Thank you for dinner. It was the proper thing to say, of course, but tonight that seemed to have a finality associated with it or a formality she was trying to avoid. She reviewed her behavior, what she had said, not only to him but to the Dantes, scrutinizing it all as if it had been a one-act play and she was reviewing it for a romance magazine.
Just like in a play or a movie, after they had gotten into Bart’s car and started away, they began to talk simultaneously, both beginning with that Thank you. They laughed.
‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’
‘I was only going to say thank you for dinner. What was your thank you?’
‘Thank you for coming to dinner. I’ve been in that place dozens of times, as you heard, but this time everything was really great.’ He turned to her. ‘It’s definitely the company I was keeping.’
‘You’re going to have me saying thank you so much that I’ll start sounding like that doll my parents gave me when I was five. You know, the one with a string you pull to make it say “I’m hungry”. Then you’d take the toy baby bottle and start feeding it. I still have the doll and it still works.’
‘Don’t psyche me out by telling me you still feed it,’ he joked.
‘No, but I do look at it occasionally and wish I was five again,’ she said, sounding her first deep note of sadness, a note that could quickly bring the conversation to the Incident and its aftermath. She held her breath, expecting him to say something about it.
‘Believe it or not, I often wish I was five again,’ he said instead. ‘I miss being irresponsible.’
‘Irresponsible?’
‘Seriously. My father loaded me up with all these responsibilities just when I was ready to be reckless, wasteful and selfish.’
‘Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,’ she said.
‘I’ve heard that, but I don’t know where it’s from. Sounds like Shakespeare, right?’
‘Henry the Fourth, Part Two,’ she said. ‘He’s complaining about the weight of his responsibilities. A king is envious of lower mortals who can sleep free of worry.’
‘That’s for sure. Not that I’m a king, but my mechanics worry only about the car they’re working on. When they’re done, they’re done, whereas my work’s really just beginning. My father’s a tough boss, too. I’ve got to be up on every detail in that shop. He’ll challenge my purchase of a new wrench. Was it the best quality for the best price? Did we really need it? Stuff like that. But I’m not complaining. I mean, I am, but I’m not. Know what I mean?’
‘Yes,’ she said, laughing. ‘Believe it or not, I do.’
He looked at her. ‘I believe it.’
She remembered something Dr Thornton had once said. ‘We all live in the gray area when we finally take control of ourselves,’ she told Bart. ‘Nothing’s simply black or white anymore. You’re constantly questioning what you say, where you go and what you do.’
‘Yes. That’s true.’
‘The hope is you’ll be satisfied with your choices – at least enough to live with them,’ she said, again regretting the philosophical, somewhat mournful note.
He was quiet, too long for comfort.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I tend to get a little heavy.’
‘You look absolutely perfect to me,’ he said.
‘No, I mean …’
She saw his wide grin and nodded. ‘Serves me right.’ She wanted to add that she was out of practice, but the truth was she was never in practice. This was the longest she had been alone in a man’s company, not counting doctors or college teachers who held private conferences.
‘So tell me more about yourself,’ he said as they drove on.
Was this it? What she was waiting for? Questions about the rape and the aftermath and how she felt about the fact that the rapists had never been caught? How do you live with the violation of yourself, but doubly so, having no closure?
How would anyone know what that was like unless she had experienced it? How many times had she looked at a boy, a man, and wondered, Were you the one? Are you looking at me now with some smug satisfaction, enjoying the fact that I don’t know it was you?
It could have been any of them. All she knew was it had to be at least two. It didn’t have to have been two local men, of course, but she had that sense, that intuitive feeling that it was. Maybe it was someone who had influence with the police and got away with it. Maybe someone was paid off. Of course, they might not be living here anymore. Maybe they left before they could be caught. There were so many maybes that nothing seemed too far-fetched.
Her silence was unnerving, but with a simple question he had sent her reeling back.
‘What movies have you seen and liked?’ he prompted. ‘What’s your favorite song these days? What’s your favorite color? Where would you like to go on your dream vacation?’ He fired questions at her like someone who was quickly trying to wipe up what he had spilled.
She relaxed.
‘What do I get if I answer everything?’
‘My lifelong gratitude,’ he replied.
She was quiet.
‘Isn’t that enough?’ he asked.
‘If I tell you everything about myself in five minutes, you’ll have nothing to look forward to,’ she replied. She thought that was a very good answer and before he could respond, she congratulated herself.
Maybe I’m coming back, she thought.
Maybe I’ll be Mrs Lazarus.
His response was pretty quick and sharp, too. ‘Oh, I think I’ll have something to look forward to every moment I’m with you, Victoria Myers.’
His words – the way he said them, the look in his face – warmed her in places she had long since thought had retreated deeply into her bones, those dead places that in the early days seemed to spread and seep into her. She feared she was turning into a shadow or at least no longer casting one. How many times back then did she look to be sure?
They didn’t simply steal my virginity, she thought. They stole my identity, my sense of self. They drained my ego and turned the day into a duller form of night, a form of it without stars.
A short while later, they turned into his family’s car dealership and garage. He drove around to a side entrance and parked.
‘You’re the first girl I’ve ever taken to this door,’ he said.
‘How many girls have you brought here on a date to see cars?’ she countered.
He thought a moment. ‘None,’ he said. Then he nodded and turned off the engine. ‘This is getting serious.’
She had to laugh, expecting him to laugh as well. But he didn’t.
He got out and opened the car door for her. Then he took out his keys, unlocked the side entrance and flipped on some lights.
‘Get ready to see the only competition you have,’ he said, taking her hand.
He turned on another light and the showroom lit up. The red Corvette was center stage.
‘We’ve got three days with it. He’s
away, so we figured we’d show it off and maybe draw in another customer or two,’ he explained and then started around the car.
‘It is beautiful.’
‘Only solid colors are out this year. See the blacked-out grille and ribbed chrome rocker panel molding? It has an electric clock, dual exhaust, tachometer, seat belts, heater and defroster all standard,’ he recited.
‘I think you should be in sales, not service,’ she said.
He paused and looked at her. ‘I have to start doing all of it. I have to …’
He paused when another light went on. She saw the shocked look on his face and turned.
John Stonefield stepped into his office doorway. He looked as if he was finishing buttoning his shirt. At six feet two with broad shoulders and a full head of thick, dark brown hair, he looked more like Bart’s older brother than his father. It was easy to see that Bart had inherited his striking movie-star facial features.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ his father demanded.
‘Huh? I …’ Bart looked at her and then back at his father. ‘I just wanted to show Victoria the Corvette. Why are you here, Dad?’
‘I had some work to catch up on,’ he said. ‘Finish up and get those lights off before we attract some worthless gawkers banging on the doors.’
‘I didn’t see your car in your parking spot,’ Bart said.
‘Parked behind the place. I didn’t want to attract anyone. Like I said. Next thing you know, some cops will be coming around to check.’
He looked behind him and then out at them again.
‘Victoria,’ he repeated as her name sunk in. ‘Victoria Myers?’
‘That’s right.’
So his parents didn’t know he was taking her out, she instantly thought.
‘Oh. Well, finish up showing her the car,’ he said and stepped back into his office, closing the door.
Bart looked at her, obviously very embarrassed. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you for a ride in one of these sometime,’ he added quickly and hurried back to her side.
She said nothing.
He turned off the lights and walked her to the side door, flipping off those lights as well.
When they got back into his car, he just sat there.
‘I didn’t get you into any trouble, did I?’ she asked.
He looked at her and then, without speaking, started the engine and backed up. Instead of driving off the property, though, he went behind and stopped.
His headlights revealed two cars.
He put his into reverse and turned around. Then he drove off quickly.
‘Bart?’ she asked as he drove faster. He took a deep breath and slowed.
‘That other car is Shirley Barbara’s,’ he said. ‘She’s our bookkeeper.’
‘Oh. Then maybe he is catching up on work,’ she offered.
He looked at her. In the gleam of a streetlight, she caught the expression on his face. It was soaked in pain, the sort of pain someone would express if he or she had just stubbed a toe.
‘Yeah, right,’ he said. ‘He’s just catching up on work.’
He seemed to fall back into a coffin full of dire thoughts. He took deep breaths.
‘I’m sorry, Bart,’ she said. She nearly bit her tongue for saying it. There was no way to pretend. Bart’s father was having an affair with his bookkeeper.
He looked at her and she held her breath, but then he slowed down and pulled up on the side of the road. He put the car in neutral and just sat there, staring at the steering wheel.
‘I always suspected something,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how long it’s been going on, but it’s been going on a while.’
‘Does your mother have any idea?’
He thought a moment and then shook his head. ‘I doubt it. With Florence Stonefield, you never know, though. I’m sure things will change between my father and me. There was always a little strain, but this is like a rupture.’ He took a deep breath. ‘It’s all right. I’m a big boy now,’ he said.
‘It’s never all right,’ she said. She put her hand on his arm and he turned to her.
Maybe it was a cry for sympathy or the need to feel safe and secure, but he leaned forward and kissed her softly, and then, when she returned the kiss, it was as if they were both lost and suddenly found. He kissed her harder, more passionately, and she welcomed it. His lips were all over her face, her neck and then back to her lips again.
The bright headlights of an oncoming car caught them in the windshield. He pulled back.
‘Not the best place to park and neck like teenagers.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said. She wanted to say they could find a better place, but she didn’t.
She saw his smile. Then she leaned back in her seat and he shifted to drive away.
‘So, more important. What did you think of the car?’
She laughed. ‘Stunning,’ she said.
‘Yeah, stunning. Good word. Maybe hanging around with you, I can get credit for that class of your mother’s I quit in the middle.’
‘You still have to write that paper on Huck Finn,’ she replied, eager to get back to the lightness they had been enjoying.
‘Only with your help,’ he said.
He drove her directly home, describing his aborted college days. If he had been afraid of silence between them earlier, he was absolutely terrified of it now. He talked just as much for himself as her, she thought. Before they reached her house, he talked about picking her up to shop for the bathing suit and then the boat and the lake.
When they pulled into the driveway, he got out quickly and hurried around to escort her to the front door.
‘I had a good time,’ she said before he could ask. ‘I mean it.’
‘I know. Same here. I’m going to make sure you have plenty of those,’ he said.
She smiled and then he kissed her, softly, but still full of uncertainty. He held his face inches from hers, waiting to see her response.
She put her right hand on his waist and her left on his shoulder as if she was having dance lessons and they were about to do the foxtrot.
He brought his lips back to hers. The kiss was longer, stronger, reaching deeper.
It was the goodnight kiss she feared she would never have, the kiss she had dreamed about the night before she had gone to the lake. It was a dream lost.
And found.
‘Night,’ he whispered. ‘See you at ten.’
‘Night,’ she said. She turned to the door. Her fingers were trembling on the handle. He seemed to sense it and reached past her to open it for her.
She didn’t look back.
She was afraid she would turn to a pillar of salt.
FIVE
Every time Marvin Hacker had seen Victoria after that night, he experienced a myriad of feelings. The strongest was fear. There was always that lingering nervousness he hated to recognize in himself. He was the bravest, the most defiant and toughest son of a bitch in his whole class, wasn’t he? His twin, Louis, resembled him, but was always weaker, meeker. Marvin could get him to do anything he wanted, but Louis whined a lot. There were times Marvin thought Louis would give away the whole thing. He was glad when Louis went into the army and, although he’d never say it aloud, relieved when Louis was killed in Vietnam.
To fight his fear, he would sometimes look directly at her and smile. Her gaze always shifted away quickly. It used to bother him, but then, in his senior year, he liked how he could frighten her. Even if she knew, she would never say, he thought. Under that basic worry lay his pride, his power. That was a feeling he would never surrender. It felt good to do what he wanted; it always did. Guilt was no competition. Maybe he didn’t have a conscience. His mother often told him that.
‘You’re just like your father,’ she’d say. ‘When you do somethin’ wrong, the only regret you have is that you didn’t do it enough. Thank God Louis is not like either of you,’ she’d often add. She babied Louis more. Marvin toughened him up or tried to, but what d
ifference did it make now?
He still found her attractive, of course – cute in those days. He was amused at the way some of the guys thought of her as ‘spoiled’ or something. Of course, Bart Stonefield wouldn’t so much as share air in the same room with her. For that matter, he wouldn’t share it with him or Louis anymore if he could. Fuck him, he thought. Who needs him?
He often thought while he was still in high school that he would love another taste of her. He wondered if it would be different, better – less frenzied, of course – but he put his lust into other girls. Why tempt the fates and bring trouble? But he always told himself that he could do it if he wanted to do it. He liked to strut. He didn’t have a chip on his shoulder so much as he had epaulettes declaring him in charge.
When she had left to go to college, Marvin thought she had left for good. She’d meet some college guy and get married and move away, just like most of the well-to-do girls he knew from school. He had hardly seen her during the past four years – maybe only two or three times – but each time he had to look twice to be sure it was she. He didn’t keep track of her. Of course, he knew when she had graduated high school, but he was smart enough not to ask anyone too much about her. What he knew about her, he had overheard. For quite a while afterward, she was often a topic of someone’s conversation. Thanks to him, she was famous. Well, not just him, but it had been his idea.
It was almost six years to the day.
He didn’t do anything to mark any anniversaries, of course, but, hell, he couldn’t just look at a calendar and not realize what the date meant. Why, he would bet anyone that he remembered it just as much as she did. She, of course, would wish she could forget.
Marvin had seen her in South Fallsbugh the day after she had returned from college. He knew she had to have graduated. He saw she had a new car, bought at Stonefield’s. The plate frame advertised it.
‘Son of a bitch,’ he muttered. Did Bart make the sale? It’s like water off a duck’s back with these guys.
He seriously considered asking her out on a date. What a cool thing that would be!
He fantasized.
Maybe he would get her drunk; maybe he wouldn’t need to. Whatever, when he screwed her, would her eyes suddenly pop open with the realization? He liked to think he had a unique dick, that there was something special about him that women appreciate. He knew how to get their rocks off, get them screaming for mercy. He had staying power. He heard he’d been nicknamed The Drill. Whether it was true or not, he loved it. Girls warned each other, ‘Don’t go out with him unless you want to be sore for weeks.’
The Incident Page 7