He sighed and looked at his feet, realizing that it was going to come out, no matter how many times he denied it. “Let me put some coffee on.” He shared the truth. As the rest of the family awoke and joined the klatsch, one by one, he retold the story, using the same words, the weight of which seemed to double with each admission. “I’m not a pervert. I have never cheated, never even thought about it. I looked at a few dirty Web sites, got embarrassed, and stopped doing it. But the e-mails poured in and every now and then I clicked on one. I don’t even know how I got in this chat room or why I became Hotdamndaddy.”
Each telling had less conviction, and he started to wonder just who he was. Was he a pervert? How could he adopt such a name? Who was he fooling with his lies about virgins? What did he expect out of such an exchange? Why had it titillated him? What were they going to say at work? Would they fire him? Would Sheila forgive him? Or Connie? How was he supposed to go on with his life?
Meanwhile, he could see it in their eyes, could see that they read his guilt and his shame; they felt his doubt. He could not defend himself, didn’t even try to defend the truth. How could he defend what he didn’t understand? But he did rationalize the unspoken judgments. After all, he was still the same person that he had been the day before, a good father and a good husband. He had so much love in his heart for his family; he would never knowingly hurt any of them.
He pleaded with Sheila. “Go outside with me. We have to get rid of the reporters. They won’t leave us alone until I go out and talk to them.”
“You got yourself into this; get yourself out of it.”
Susan and David went with him, but Connie remained aloof and distant. He stepped out, a child under each arm, and motioned for the reporters to gather and get ready for him to read a statement. He was shaking so badly that he had to hold the sheet of notebook paper with both hands. His voice faltered and cracked as he read: “My heart goes out to the family of Amanda Leavy. Their loss is impossible to fathom, and we should all respect their privacy and allow them space to mourn in peace. I have never met Amanda or any of her family, never spoke to them, never heard of them before last night. The FBI found my name in an Internet chat room that she had visited at the same time as me. Apparently, we had a short exchange. I respect the FBI, and all the police, for vigorously investigating all leads and for tracking down all possible clues. I was relieved, of course, that they were able to arrest her killer so quickly. I regret that a small indiscretion on my part diverted their attention, however briefly. I further regret the pain this incident has caused my family. I have nothing to add, other than to ask that you disassemble your stakeout and allow me and my family to get on with our lives. Thank you.”
Fred hugged his children, each in turn, and began to retreat to his front door. He heard some of the individual questions stand out from the cacophony of shouted voices: “What was the nature of your ‘indiscretion’?” “What is the name of the chat room where you met Amanda?” “What, exactly, were the words that you exchanged?” “Where is your wife?”
He lost his composure momentarily, and turned back in anger. “I told you, no more questions. Just leave me alone.”
As he entered the living room, he saw that Sheila had been sitting, watching his performance on television, surrealistically able to look up and see the back of his head through the blinds while the cameras focused on his face as he spoke. Her head remained still, as just her eyes reached up and grabbed his. He could not see even a trace of recognition, not a hint of the love they had shared for so many years. She spoke in a dry monotone, not a single inflection betraying her feelings. “You know, in time, you’ll have to answer those questions.”
Copyright ©; 2005 by Timothy F. Dempsey.
Seated Woman
by Jeffry Scott
Here with a story about newspapermen is lifelong newspaperman Jeffry Scott. As many longtime EQMM readers will know, “Jeffry Scott” is a pseudonym the author uses for his short fiction — which he’s been producing for EQMM for more than thirty years. Just like the characters in his new story, Mr. Scott once traveled the globe in pursuit of news. Now he’s mostly to be found in England.
It is not a big canvas as they go, about three feet deep by two wide, rather dull and muddy at a distance and the composition seems odd. Most of the bottom third is filled by a tiled floor — plain tiles — uninteresting.
Then comes the chair, a chunky, peasant-made job with-out curves or decoration, its color only a touch darker than those tiles — unless that’s a trick of the eye, difficult to tell somehow — so it appears to be growing out of the floor like fungus. Perhaps the picture needed cleaning or the on-looker was confused.
I’ve never seen the thing, you understand. We are dealing in hearsay.
Robin Ratcliffe told me all about it and that is how I can describe this painting in considerable detail. Robin wasn’t one for art galleries but he felt seedy one morning-after and needed a washroom in a hurry. Public buildings tend to have them. He was halfway between a bar and a hotel at the time, but the gallery was right across the street so that’s where he went.
He wouldn’t say at the time what city he was in. I think he feared that morbid curiosity might drive me to try my own luck, if I knew the location. With hindsight I believe that the gallery is in New York, west of Central Park. I could confirm that; I have no intention of doing so.
Brits are strange, self-conscious creatures, especially when abroad. Pit stop completed, Robin decided that it was bad form to treat a shrine of culture so dismissively, as if anyone noticed him enter or would have cared if they had done. The place was cool without being chilly, quiet and calm and restful, persuading him to make a token round of the exhibits.
Robin was very much your see-one-Old-Master-and-go-off-home type but he did his best. Works on show were impressively mounted and some forbade viewers to cross red cords fencing a wall-space, but the pictures struck him as no better than passable to mediocre. Bored yet dutiful, he drifted through a couple of rooms and then he found sanctuary as the queasiness struck again.
The gallery wasn’t busy at the time, and a side room small enough to be humanly scaled seemed to beckon. It looked cosy, Robin said bitterly. Settling into a corner of a surprisingly comfortable window seat, he closed his eyes to offset a brief spell of dizziness. He definitely did not nod off, Robin Ratcliffe assured me long afterwards. Then he apologised for raising his voice. (I had not suggested that he’d dreamed what happened to him; he was just understandably... sensitive about the incident.)
The next bit came out during his second or third version of the story. Originally, Robin skipped the part where he opened his eyes. After a few retellings he understood that I wouldn’t laugh at him or, worse still, remain solemn and then speed back to El Vino, the Fleet Street hangout, to announce that Robbo had lost it or, best possible case, turned most peculiar.
Eyes closed, for no logical reason Robin felt uneasy and borderline alarmed. It was an illogical relief to find upon opening his eyes that he still had the side room to himself. He took a deep, reassuring breath. Quietness deeper than a hush had been claustrophobic enough to generate minor panic. He said, inadequately, that it was as if an invisible balloon had inflated to expel all sound and a lot of air from the room.