Then her mother began talking to her as if she were an adult confidant rather than her thirteen-year-old daughter. Her mother said that she didn't know why men were so unreliable.
If anything could be gained from this experience, her mother said, maybe it would be the lesson that Jessica would have to rely on herself.
Finally, Jessica’s mother actually apologized to her: She said that she hoped Jessica hadn’t gotten too attached to Floyd. Jessica was dumbfounded: Her mother had had no idea of Floyd’s designs. Perhaps Floyd had expertly concealed them, or perhaps her mother had simply not wanted to see the kind of man that Floyd was. But she made no effort to disabuse her mother of her illusions.
As it happened, Jessica was alone in the house with Floyd on that day that he boxed up the last of his things and loaded them into his pickup truck.
Jessica had come to dislike, and even fear, Floyd’s presence. Now that he was leaving, though, she found herself oddly regretful. She recalled how she had at first welcomed his presence in the house.
Floyd studiously avoided talking to her as he made his trips between the house and his pickup truck. She could have simply gone to her bedroom until he was gone. Instead she sat in the living room, where he would be forced to make some kind of a farewell. She wanted to hear what Floyd would have to say for himself.
She heard the click of Floyd placing his key on the kitchen table. On his way out the front door, he passed her in the living room. She had been sitting there all this time, the television turned off, with her arms folded across her chest.
Floyd made as if to depart without saying a word, pretending that Jessica wasn't there. He almost made it to the door like that. Then he turned around and said:
“I could have liked you a lot better, you know. But you never even—aw, never mind.”
Jessica didn't reply. Floyd walked out of the little house for the last time, and she would never see him again. She sat there on the couch for more than an hour, though, trying to understand why Floyd’s parting remark had made her feel so hollow inside. Rationally speaking, the guy was a creep: She should be glad that he was out of her life—out of her mother’s life. But the inexplicable sense of loss remained with her for weeks.
16.
After Floyd and her father, Jessica required one more significant experience with a man to cement her belief that the breed was fundamentally unreliable.
High school began on a surprisingly auspicious note. She was pretty, having inherited the best of the combined physical features of her mother and her long-departed father. She was not an honor roll student; but her intelligence, and a reasonable amount of dedication maintained her GPA near the upper middle of the pack.
Then, in her senior year of high school, she began dating Tony McClure.
Tony played football; but in a small town like Iron Mills, the line between the jocks and the dead-enders was often razor-thin. Tony’s membership on the football team didn't stop him from getting high, or from drinking to stupefaction every weekend.
Tony messed with her head. He somehow sensed Jessica’s weakness, the gap that had been there since her father left, the gap that had been widened when Floyd had answered her tentative, adolescent search for a father figure with sly, furtive lust instead.
“You ain’t so great,” he said, when he rolled off her one evening. They were naked in the back of his father’s van—a customized relic from the 1980s.
Jessica frowned and began to put her clothes on.
“When did I say that I was ‘great’?”
“Oh, I know that you think you are: You’re on the honor roll at school, and you’re always talking about college this and college that.”
“I’m not on the honor roll. But yeah, I wouldn't mind going to college.”
“Same thing,” Tony said.
Jessica didn't bother to refute this questionable logic. She couldn't understand why her attention to school threatened Tony, why he interpreted it as a personal insult. True, she had talked about going to college—but not in a way that any reasonable listener would interpret as arrogance. To the contrary, she had revealed to Tony that she was unsure of her chances. Her mother worked in a factory. No one in her family had ever attended college.
Then she realized: Tony, given his grades, would be lucky to even graduate. He had talked several times about getting a job at one of the factories around Iron Mills—the factories that had been dying off, even then.
A few weeks after that, Tony unceremoniously dumped her for another girl, Julie Trevor. Julie was blonde and wild, and as uncomplicated as Tony was.
But the breakup nevertheless stung, and she found herself thinking more about her father, more about Floyd. She began spending long hours in blank, ponderous mental states, like she had on that afternoon that Floyd had departed.
It wasn't long before her grades began to nosedive. She was pulling a C-minus in Algebra II on the day that she entered Mr. Frogge’s classroom to discuss her precarious situation. There had been a test that morning, and she knew that she hadn’t performed well. She had fully intended to study for this one, but the previous two nights her mind had been in a fog.
It was mid-December, only a few weeks before the two-week break for the Christmas holiday. It was that time of year when the sun sets at 5:30 pm, and the students and faculty of Iron Mills High School tended to hurry home after school let out. Football season had ended a few weeks before, and there would be no more major school activities until January. No one wanted to be in the school at 4:30 pm, when Jessica had set the appointment to talk with Mr. Frogge.
Mr. Frogge was behind his desk when she arrived, busy grading papers. He looked up, cordial but not exactly friendly.
“Jessica,” he said. “I can see now why you wanted to talk to me. I just got done grading your test.”
“What did I get?”
Mr. Frogge sighed. “It isn’t good, Jessica.”
Jessica reached out for the test paper that Mr. Frogge proffered. She turned the paper over and looked at it.
It was worse than she had expected. At this rate, she wouldn't merely get a C or a D in Algebra, she would fail the semester.
“We have to do something about this,” she said.
“Well, Jessica,” Mr. Frogge said, not unkindly. “There isn’t much that ‘we’ can do about this. It’s a fait accompli. Do you know that word?”
Jessica nodded. She had not heard the word before, but it was easy enough to grasp from the context.
“You had the same chance as every other student in the class. And most of the class did pretty well on this one, to tell you the truth. The grades on this exam actually ran above the average, so there won’t be any sort of a curve.”
“I—I’ve had a lot of problems of late,” she said. She then fumbled through a vague explanation about ‘personal problems’—how she had had trouble concentrating.
Mr. Frogge listened to her without interrupting. When she had finished, he said, “I’m sorry Jessica. I really am. But you can understand that if I rigged the test scores of every student who had broken up with her boyfriend—yes, I know all about you and Tony McClure—you can understand that I would spend all of my time rigging grades, and the administration would throw me out on the street. Does that make sense, Jessica?”
She nodded. It did make sense, when you put it that way.
“I—I could maybe do something if there’s been an extraordinary situation. Is someone in the hospital? Has someone died, God forbid?”
Jessica shook her head. She was briefly tempted to invent a personal tragedy, but that was no good. Iron Mils was a small town. A wild, outright lie would be quickly exposed. Mr. Frogge wasn't stupid.
“Well, I’m sorry then. I have no choice but to give you the grade you earned. Do you understand?”
Jessica’s heart was pounding, and she felt herself suddenly short of breath, when she said, “Maybe we can work something out.”
Mr. Frogge leaned back in his chair, raise
d his eyebrows and said, “Excuse me?”
Jessica took a deep breath. She had been thinking about this all afternoon, without allowing herself to fully acknowledge what she was thinking. She had known—she had decided—that this was the only way.
Mr. Frogge had noticed her—in that way that men notice women. He hadn’t been as overt or as lame as Floyd had been five years ago, but there could be no mistake about the lingering looks he often gave her when she entered his classroom for second period every morning. Sometimes she would see him looking, and he would turn away, his face slightly red, obviously torn by a mixture of longing and shame.
And if she had to sleep with a teacher, she could do far worse than Mr. Frogge. For despite his name, Mr. Frogge wasn't a frog. He was perhaps thirty-five years old, with a full head of hair and a strong, dimpled chin. The physique of his athletic youth had been only slightly softened by time and adulthood. He was the Iron Mills wrestling coach, and he had gone to the state championship as a wrestler himself less than twenty years ago, around the time Jessica had been born.
Mr. Frogge was also married and he had a small child. His wife was in her late twenties. Mr. Frogge frequently mentioned her during class, and everyone knew that her first name was Janet. Janet Frogge showed up at school now and then, when Mr. Frogge had left some necessary item at home, or when he stayed late during the wrestling season. Janet Frogge was less than ten years older than Jessica was at the time. So in terms of the age difference, what she was proposing wasn't so much of a stretch—especially if you compared her to Mrs. Frogge.
“You heard me,” she said. “And you know what I mean. You know exactly what I mean—so please don’t try…please don’t try to play dumb.”
Mr. Frogge gave her another raise of the eyebrows. “I see,” he said. His tone was different now. They were no longer teacher and student, strictly speaking. They were dealing with each other via other terms.
Over the course of the next few minutes, it was decided that they could use the little storage room at the rear of Mr. Frogge’s classroom.
The coupling was hurried and unromantic, though not completely unpleasant. More importantly, her brief time alone with Mr. Frogge achieved its intended end. When the grades were returned the next morning, Jessica received a middling B, rather than the failing grade which she had earned.
The arrangement continued for a while, until the day Jessica, blithe with her newfound power, turned in a blank exam. Up until now, she had made a reasonable attempt at solving the problems on each exam, and Mr. Frogge had spotted her points where necessary. Mr. Frogge had explained once that she needed to make an effort on each test, so that no one would ever have a cause to be suspicious. Plausible deniability, once again.
The blank exam was returned to her with a grade of zero.
When she confronted him after school, Mr. Frogge was indignant.
“What do think this is, Jessica?” he hissed through clenched teeth. “Do you think that this is some kind of a game? I can’t give you a passing grade on a blank test paper.”
She realized that she had unnecessarily tested him, even though he had been drawing away from her of late (or perhaps because of that). He might have been feeling guilty. He might have simply been growing bored with what they were doing. Perhaps he was afraid that the school’s administration would find out.
“I can get you in trouble, you know,” Jessica said. “I can—tell someone.”
Mr. Frogge’s response was pure ice. “Try it. See how your story squares with that exam paper of yours.”
She would later reflect that she probably should have blown the whistle on Mr. Frogge. At the very least, she might have been able to bargain her way to a passing grade in Algebra II, in exchange for an agreement not to press charges. Or something. Could she have pressed charges if she had wanted to? She wasn't sure. She had been a minor when she had the affair with Mr. Frogge. Not by much, but barely.
She ended up with a low C average in Algebra II for the year. The larger problem, however, was that her grades in other classes had suffered as well during her “fog period” following the break-up with Tony. There would be no scholarship, no financial aid, no college.
So Jessica put her affair with Mr. Frogge—and the artificially inflated test scores—behind her.
And then came Seth, and a crime of much greater magnitude.
17.
After graduation, Jessica got lucky: The early twenty-first century economy was still buoyant from the go-go 1990s. But Jessica had no intention of going to work in the factory alongside her mother—let alone Tony McClure. That writing was already on the wall: Most of the local manufacturing employers were already moving work to China.
Instead she landed an entry-level job with a bank in Cincinnati. Her boss was a portly, red-haired man in his mid-thirties named Seth Greenwald. Throughout the hiring interview, Seth’s eyes continually wandered to her legs, her breasts, and everywhere else. She thought of Floyd, and then of Mr. Frogge. She was not the least bit surprised when the bank called to inform her that she had been given the job, even though nothing in her academic record nor her background suggested an aptitude for banking.
Jessica started sleeping with Seth after about four months on the job. Seth was different from any of the men she had been with so far.
Floyd and Mr. Frogge had each, in their own way—and perhaps without fully knowing—taken advantage of her thwarted love for an absent father. Tony had simply treated her cruelly, she now decided; he had never had any real feelings for her.
But Tony, Mr. Frogge, and Floyd had all had one thing in common: They all had the balance of power on their side.
Seth, on the other hand, was obviously besotted with her. Seth thought she was amazing. She knew this because he told her so at regular intervals.
She had been sleeping with Seth only a few months when he proposed marriage to her. Jessica was taken aback. She wondered what Seth would say if he had known about Bryan—the man she had met at a bar only a few weeks before Seth’s proposal. Bryan was the polar opposite of Seth: He worked in construction, and he rippled with an undercurrent of violence. Come to think of it, Bryan was a lot like Tony.
“But—but what about the bank?” Jessica faltered. I mean—aren’t there rules against that?”
“Yes,” Seth said. “There are. But we can get around them if we transfer you to another bank.” He gave her the half-smile of a wounded puppy. “Do you want to marry me? Is there a problem with—with the age difference?”
She saw her out and seized upon it. “No, no—I’ve always known that you’re thirty-four. But you see, I’m only nineteen. And—”
“And marriage is a big commitment.”
“Yes! Marriage is a big commitment. I was a high school student a little more than a year ago.”
“Okay,” Seth said. “I understand.” But something told her that Seth did not understand. In any event, Seth did not raise the subject of marriage again.
She continued to see Seth, while at the same time seeing Bryan. One rainy night she came home from visiting Bryan’s apartment when she noticed a familiar-looking car following her. She braked suddenly in the parking lot of her apartment complex, and the car accelerated and abruptly sped around her. The heavy rain prevented a clear view, but she was almost certain that it was Seth’s car.
Nevertheless, the next day at work Seth said nothing to her about the incident. Jessica told herself that she had probably been mistaken; Seth’s car was a common enough make, model, and color.
A little before lunch time, Seth sheepishly approached her at her teller’s window and whispered, “Dinner tonight?” Since her roundabout rebuff of his marriage proposal, Seth had become almost timid around her, despite the fact that he was much older than she was, and her boss to boot.
Jessica nodded. “Sounds good.”
“Great! Okay then. I’ll pick you up at six-thirty. I found out about this excellent little Italian place. You’ll love it!”
&
nbsp; The uneasy arrangement with Seth had been going on for about a year when Mrs. Crabtree died. Mrs. Crabtree was a seventy-eight-year-old widow who had been a customer of the bank since 1963, or some ridiculously remote date in the past.
Mrs. Crabtree had a checking account and a savings account. She also had a large safety deposit box. The Crabtrees (back when Mr. Crabtree was alive) had been afraid to put all of their wealth in their accounts, where banking officials, government auditors, and other snoops could have access to it. Moreover, the Crabtrees had been severely unnerved by the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s.
The elderly couple therefore hedged their bets by converting a significant portion of their funds to hard cash, gold, and rare coins. The Crabtrees had probably considered keeping this hoard in their basement, but they instead opted to put this trove of cash and valuables in a safety deposit box at the bank.
No one at the bank knew for certain the total value of the cash, gold, and coins in the safety deposit box. Items placed in any safety deposit box—including bundles of cash—were outside the bank’s normal accounting system.
The unfortunate passing of Mrs. Crabtree therefore resulted in a fateful appointment one day between Jessica and Mrs. Ellen Frazier. Ellen Frazier’s maiden name had been Ellen Crabtree. She was the daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. Crabtree—and the couple’s sole heir.
18.
“We were so sorry to hear about your mother,” Jessica said. Ellen Frazier was seated in the visitor’s chair in front of Jessica. Jessica was seated behind her desk at the bank.
As Seth had become more uncertain about his own position vis-à-vis Jessica, he had begun to promote her. Although Jessica still had to take her turn behind the tellers’ counter during peak hours, this was no longer her primary job. She had been given a desk in the open office space of the bank, and a host of new responsibilities. One of these responsibilities was the management of client safety deposit boxes.
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