I couldn’t avoid the people or the music, but I could get away from the candle. Fresh air, that was what I needed. Not the front porch, though. Not with Jack and that girl. I started to make my way through the crowd. It was harder than I thought it would be. Things were whirling. The air grew thick. The other door seemed to have disappeared, or the layout of the room had changed, because I no longer knew which way to go. I put out an arm to steady myself.
Unexpectedly, somebody took it. From somewhere on the other side of the fog I heard somebody say my name. I grabbed at the voice with both hands and fell over onto Ben Searles.
“Hi,” he said. “You need some help?”
“Outside,” was all I could say.
“This way.” Gratefully I let myself be led through thecrowd. I tried to lean on him so it wouldn’t be obvious that I was drunk. Finally we came to a door and he opened it, letting in a wonderful blast of cold air. Then the thick, sweet smell of burning vanilla filled my nose and mouth. I opened my mouth to say that this was the wrong door. Instead I threw up.
Then I was on my knees, staring at an enormous puddle of red wine and stomach acid soaking into a beautiful, intricately patterned rug. The people near us looked alarmed and embarrassed, and moved away quickly. I heard Ben say, “She’s okay, but don’t eat the oysters,” as he handed me a cocktail napkin. There was a little nervous laughter. I was wiping vaguely at my mouth and staring at the spreading pool on the floor, which looked exactly like I felt: soiled, used, vile.
“Okay?” Ben was crouched next to me. His polished shoes were perilously close to the vomit puddle. For some reason that made me feel worse and tears welled up in my eyes.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Can you get up?” He put his arm around me and lifted me to my feet. Somewhere between the floor and his shoulder I started to feel dizzy again and my eyes closed. My head fell against his chest and I thought, dimly, this is all very inappropriate.
I heard Raeburn’s voice. “What is this? What’s wrong with her?”
I didn’t open my eyes. Ben’s shirt smelled nice, like an extremely clean forest.
“It’s okay, Joseph,” he said. “She’s not feeling well, that’s all.”
And then Jack’s voice cut through the fog like a bell. “I’ll take her.”
Ben said, “She’s okay,” but I made my eyes open, found the tuxedoed, golden-haired blur that was Jack, and put my arms out toward him like a child. I saw the face of the girl from the porch drifting over his shoulder and then I was in a cloud of Jack-smell, with his good, strong arms around me, and my eyes closed again.
Raeburn sounded formal and aloof. “I can’t even begin to tell you how embarrassed I am, Searles. I’m sure we can handle her from here.”
“Just get her home, she’ll be okay.” Ben sounded easy and light.
“I’ll take care of it.” Raeburn was still smooth, still polite. He took my arm and pulled me away from Jack and I was on my own again, trying to stand, with the only certain thing in the world the bright burst of pain where his fingers dug into my flesh.
Searles turned away.
Raeburn started to pull me outside, half carrying, half dragging me.
“In front of all my colleagues, Josephine?” His voice was an angry hiss. “In front of everyone I know? Do you think I don’t have enough to worry about from these people?” His grip tightened. “Where did you get it? Who gave it to you? Was it Searles?”
“They aren’t exactly carding,” an unfamiliar female voice said. “She could have gotten it anywhere.”
“What she didn’t get herself I got for her,” Jack said. “For Christ’s sake, let go of her. She’s sick enough.”
I was conscious of wintry air on my bare legs. We were outside now. “Excellent,” Raeburn said. “You’ve gotten your sixteen-year-old sister drunk in public.”
“As opposed to in private, where it’s okay.”
Raeburn swore and pushed me toward Jack, who was warm and stable in the cold white world. “Take her if you want her. You’ve already ruined her.”
I started to cry. My legs lifted off the floor, and then I was being carried away and placed in the truck, carefully; Jack’s coat was tucked around me, something soft was put under my head, and all the while I heard Raeburn’s voice from very far away saying cruel things until finally the door closed.
Later, at home, Jack held a glass of water up for me to drink.
“Jack.”
“Hm?”
“They were talking about us. All of them.”
“Well, they are now,” he said calmly.
“Who was that girl?”
“What girl?”
“On the porch.”
He stroked my hair. “I’ll tell you about it when you’re sober.”
I felt very warm and faraway. “Jack?”
“Hm?”
“Changed my mind,” I said. “You can kill him.”
The next day, fighting my hangover in bed, I pulled the wooden box out from behind the headboard, took out my birth certificate, and tucked it underneath my mattress, where I could reach down to touch it. Then I lay back, sweating and sick.
His part is finished, I thought. He no longer matters.
Christmas passed the way it always did in the Raeburn household, which is to say without notice. The notion of the three of us sitting together in the same room, exchanging gifts and singing carols, was ludicrous. But late on Christmas night Jack produced a brick of hash and said, “Ho, ho, ho.”
“Joy to the world,” I said.
We deserved any fun we had. Any time the college wasn’t in session was hell for us. Summer was the worst—by July our father had usually descended into a depression that approached psychosis, and we made it our business to be somewhere else whenever possible—but winter break was no picnic either. Our long driveway wasn’t plowed unless we arranged and paid for it in advance. So once the snow fell, and it was just the three of us there in that isolated old house, Jack and I retreated to the attic.
Raeburn never came up there, and Jack had set apart a corner with an old couch, a hot plate, and a space heater. There we sat, through those long, dark winter weeks, and played cards or read to each other or smoked joint after joint until neither of us felt like talking. Jack and I never had trouble amusing ourselves. God knows we’d had enough practice.
This winter wasn’t as bad as some. Raeburn didn’t talk to either of us for a week after the Christmas party, which was some relief, but whatever ace was up his sleeve was entertaining enough to dull the edge of his cabin fever and too good to keep to himself. On those rare occasions when the three of us met for dinner, our father would chortle and snort to himself with the smugness of a person who wants to make sure you know that you’re not being told a secret. He kept the study door locked tight now.
Finally, finally, Raeburn called the snowplow. After it came and went, he threw some clothes in the back of his car, mumbled something incomprehensible, and disappeared down the road. The bar that sold sandwiches also sold pizza and six-packs; Jack and I gave Raeburn a twenty-minute lead and went in search of one of each. When we came home, we moved back into the parlor, which was flooded with bright winter sun. It was as if the very air in the house was celebrating with us. Late that night we went for a long drive on the twisting back roads outside of Janesville; the air was bright with starlight reflected from the snow, and the world seemed beautiful.
For about a week.
Raeburn came home that Thursday because the first week of the semester was registration week and there was nothing for him to do at the college. It was only the second week in January, but the snow was melting and patches of green grass were showing through the white. Jack and I were in the parlor, playing double solitaire, and we heard the motor long before we saw the motorcycle on our driveway through the bare trees. I remember thinking that anyone who would ride a motorcycle in January, early melt or no early melt, had to be either crazy or desperate; so I wasn’t surprised when the rider, who was wearing a leather jacket and jeans and must have been freezing, pulled off his helmet to reveal long hair and wire-rimmed glasses.
“It’s Searles,” Jack said, although I could see that for myself. A moment later we heard Ben pounding on the front door and screaming our father’s name.
“Should I go get Raeburn?” I asked.
Jack shook his head. “He has to be able to hear that.”
But when I finally went to find him, Raeburn was sitting in the study with his legs stretched out, smoking a pipe and gazing complacently into space. Outside Ben shouted, “Open the door, Raeburn—I know you’re home—I can fucking
smell
you.”
Raeburn was wearing an expression of deep satisfaction. “Josephine,” he greeted me.
“There’s someone at the door,” I said.
“Then perhaps you should let him in.”
When I opened the door, Ben was in mid-pound and he nearly clocked me. “Christ!” He jumped back, startled.
“It’s me,” I said. “Just me.”
Sweat stood out in beads on Ben’s forehead and his long hair hung loose and wild around his flushed face. His breath formed clouds in the cold air. “You scared me.”
“You’re the one who’s yelling.”
“I almost hit you.” His voice was thick with barely controlled rage and his hands were shaking. “Go get your father. I know he’s here.”
I could feel Raeburn standing behind me. When he said, “Hello, Searles,” he sounded unusually pleasant. I could hear the smile in his voice. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“You know damn well why I’m here,” Ben said over my shoulder. His jaw was clenched tight.
“Do I?”
“Tell your daughter to go inside,” Ben said levelly. His fists were clenched.
“Why?” Raeburn’s laugh was unpleasant. “Will it destroy her good image of you to learn that you sleep with your students?”
“No. But it might destroy her good image of you to hear that you bribe yours into lying for you.”
I thought of Margaret Revolt and began to understand.
I stepped quickly through the door and onto the porch. The melting snow was half-frozen slush beneath my socks, and the flannel shirt that I was wearing—one of Jack’s—wasn’t enough to keep out the cold.
“Bribery wasn’t necessary,” Raeburn said.
“You unbelievable bastard.” Ben’s face was white with fury.
Raeburn’s eyes flicked to me. He pointed at Searles, a mirthless grin on his lips. “Look, Josephine. Young Benjamin has discovered that life is unfair. Aren’t you glad that you already know that?”
“You can’t do this.” Cords stood out under the skin of Ben’s neck and he said it again—“You can’t
do
this!”—only this time he screamed it, the sound harsh and furious and dying without an echo in our little clearing. It was more than rage, more than a protest at the sheer unfairness of it all; it was a denial of the very possibility of what Margaret and my father had done. Raeburn was right. Ben Searles, it was clear, lived in a world where people simply didn’t do the kinds of things that my father did.
I felt sorry for him. I remembered fading in and out of consciousness with my head on his tuxedo, and the way he’d smelled like a clean forest and made light of the steaming pool of vomit on the president’s rug, and I felt sorry for him.
“It’s unfortunate,” Raeburn said. “Perhaps in your next position, you’ll be more careful with your female students.”
He turned around and closed the door.
I stood on the porch in my stocking feet, and Ben looked like he was the one who was going to throw up, right now. I thought, that’s only fair, and took a step toward him.
Suddenly he hurled himself at the door, pounding on it with his fists and screaming obscenities at my father through the scarred wood.
“It won’t do any good,” Jack said. He was standing in the side yard in his boots; he had come around the house from the back door.
But Ben’s assault was already fading into hopelessness. He gave the door one last kick and let his forehead fall onto the wood.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said to the door. “My career is over.” The despair in his voice was palpable. “I’m thirty-two years old and my career has just been ended by a bitter old man and an eighteen-year-old girl who dresses like my grandmother.”
I reached out to touch him, and Jack said softly, “You can get back at him.”
There was an envelope in Jack’s hand and he extended it toward Ben. The young professor stared at it blankly.
I knew that Raeburn was probably standing on the other side of the door, listening. Quickly I pointed at the door, and Jack nodded.
“Please go home, Mr. Searles. Please.” I tried to sound frightened and pathetic. It wasn’t hard. “Before my father gets angry.” At the same time, Jack whispered something to Ben, keeping his words under mine.
Ben’s eyes widened.
They spoke quietly, Ben Searles and my brother, for only a few minutes. I didn’t hear what they said. The snow, where it still lay on the porch, was up to my ankles. My toes ached with the cold.
After the motorcycle was gone in a cloud of exhaust fumes, I took careful steps through the melting snow to stand next to Jack. “What was that?”
“A letter,” Jack said. His eyes gleamed.
“Where did you get it?”
He stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his boot heels. “Stole it from the study.”
“What was in it?”
“Margaret Revolt and our father,” Jack said. Behind us, the door opened and Raeburn came out onto the porch. He was looking at Jack but the frustration in his stance told me that he hadn’t heard anything.
“You,” he said. “What were you talking to him about?”
“Giving him directions.” Jack’s face was innocent, but his eyes were shining.
Sunday night: burrowed deep beneath Jack’s blankets, my icy feet tucked under his legs and his hands wrapped in my hair.
“She was smart,” he said. He was talking about Crazy Mary. “She made up games. She’d read to me, novels about clones and Martians and space battles, and then we’d pretend to be the people in the books. She always wanted to be the alien. Or we played cards—I remember building a big house of cards, with towers as tall as I was. Once on my birthday she came up with a huge box of dominoes and we spent three days setting them up; when the box was empty, she came home with a cake and we knocked them over, and that was my birthday present.”