“It’ll take two minutes. Then you’ll be back on the case.”
Pure sarcasm.
“Just sign and get out?”
She smiled wanly and shook her head. Then, our standard peace offering: “Coffee?”
“Hell. Why not?”
In the bright Laguna kitchen we watched the coffee drip into the carafe. When it was ready we took our cups to the sundeck outside and sat in the shade of a silver-dollar eucalyptus. The day was warm and it was breezy there in the canyon, as it often is, and I felt again the loss of it all. My home, though it wasn’t really mine. My woman, though she wasn’t really mine. My daughter, though she wasn’t really mine. I guess I had borrowed a family after losing my real one and now it was time to return it. My frustration and fury melted away when I felt that loss. It just blew away in the breeze and it left me with a heightened sense of what was here for me now: nothing. She set the papers on the patio table and put a rock on them so they wouldn’t blow away.
“I wanted to get a few things straight with you,” she said. “One is, I don’t think you did what those pictures showed, but I also know you don’t remember a lot of what you did, back when we were drinking so much. I don’t either. But that doesn’t really matter. You’ve made Penny’s life extremely difficult. She refuses to believe anything that’s on the TV or in the papers, but that isn’t enough to save her. She’s taunted at school, she’s ridiculed by friends, she’s been disincluded by loving parents who think their own children might be... contaminated by her contact with you.”
“It doesn’t make sense to shun her for something I didn’t do.”
“Men believed the world was flat for centuries. That didn’t make sense either.”
“Well, now that’s really—”
“—But more to the point, Terry, you’ve humiliated me. You can’t even imagine the looks I get, the things people say — some of them trying to help, I know — just the way people are. You might be the alleged monster, but I’m the bride of Frankenstein. Well, I’m sick of it. That’s why I’m leaving. For Penny, and for me.
I didn’t speak. I could see by the flush on Melinda’s broad, pale cheeks that she was angry and hurting.
“I’ve already made an offer on a place up in the Portland area. Good schools. Nobody knows us. So I’d appreciate your cooperation on the sale. According to the joint ownership either one of us can impede a sale, and I’m asking you not to.”
“I won’t.”
“I’m settling for a little less than I asked. It’s still a buyers’ market and I want out. So, thank you.”
“What are you going to do for work?”
She looked at me and smiled just a little. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”
“You’re going to use that old credential and teach school.”
She nodded. “I just can’t do it anymore, Terry. The filth we shovel. The people we deal with. We’re just garbage collectors — human garbage. I’m sorry, but I’m bitter and I’m burned out and I’m finished. They’ll get The Horridus and another one will crop up to take his place. Anyway, there’s openings in some of the Portland districts. I’ll get something.”
“How’s Penny taking it?”
Melinda’s eyes bore into me. “She wants to stay.”
There was a long silence then and I listened to the cars hissing past on Laguna Canyon Road.
“You know, Terry, you did something more than humiliate me to the world. You humiliated me to me.”
“You know I’m innocent.”
“Of the children, I believe so. But how innocent are you of Donna Mason?”
I watched her sip her coffee. There are times when a man wants to crawl down a hole, and times when he is the hole. This was one of those.
She chuckled. “You can tell me I’m wrong and I won’t bring it up again. I’m not after confirmation. I’m past that, to be honest.”
“Well, yes. There is that.”
“How long?”
“A few months.”
“I’d flattered myself that it was more recent. I suspected. When I saw the interview I realized she was in love with you. I just knew. So, when were you going to get around to telling me?”
“I’d been thinking about... how to do it.”
Her face was flushed now, but Melinda still had the interrogator’s calm that had worn down so many creeps over the years. “Noble of you, not to rush things.”
“The same way you thought before you left Ish. I hurt you, Melinda. I cheated and I lied. But you’re not righteous either. Nobody is.”
“I feel very put in my place. I apologize for asking you when you were going to tell me you were cheating on me. I stand corrected.”
“I was wrong in what I did. I know that. I wasn’t expecting what happened.”
“And what, exactly, happened?”
“I just met her and fell. I thought we’d be right together. I fought it. I did what I could because I knew someone was going to get hurt. I did fight...”
“For whom?”
“You and me.”
We were quiet a moment while Melinda stared at me.
“What about us? Were we right?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ. Don’t. Don’t start listing my faults.”
“Most of them were mine.”
“I’ve got no interest in them, now.”
“Do you want me to get up and walk, or sit here and bleed?”
“Sit and bleed, sonofabitch, because I’m not done with you yet.”
My turn to offer the olive branch:
“More coffee, then, hon?”
“Sure, cakes.”
When I got back with fresh cups, Melinda had her knees up and her arms wrapped around them and her head sideways on her kneecaps. Her ponytail hung down behind them. I walked into her field of vision to set down the cup, then walked back out of it and sat down again.
“I knew we weren’t right, too,” she said. “I knew it from the first. But I did it anyway. That sounds like I settled for something less, but really it was just the opposite. I was getting more than I thought I deserved. I thought you’d make me feel young and beautiful and happy again. I thought you’d wrangle me into having another kid, even though I told you I wouldn’t. I felt old, Terry, when we started seeing each other. And I do again, now. I feel old as owl shit. I look in the mirror and I see a face made out of old, dry owl shit. For a couple of months you made me feel like a woman again, then it was just back to being dried-up old me. You’re one of those men that gets older and a little crazier, maybe, but you hold your looks and your body keeps up with your desire, and you do okay for yourself. I knew the drinking would pass. And when it did, I knew your vision of me would pass, too, and you’d see me for what I was. Owl shit. So, no, I’m not arguing with you when I say we weren’t right. We weren’t. Of course, then, nobody is, really, especially at our age.”
“God, Mel — you talk like you’ve got a foot in the grave.”
“I feel that way, Terry. Sometimes. I really do. How can’t you, in the kind of work we do?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I do.”
“And maybe you compensate with a twenty-eight-year-old television bombshell from Dixie.”
“West Virginia stayed Union.”
“Who gives a shit what West Virginia did?”
I watched one of our neighbors — former neighbors — driving along the gravel road. She craned her neck, having seen my car out front, trying for a look at a real child molester, the kind of guy they’re going to start chemically castrating in the golden state of California soon. (As head of CAY I was in favor of the old-fashioned, actual castration, but it is considered cruel and unusual. As an accused child molester with a trial date not yet set, I had to admit to some uncertainty on this issue.)