Rosie O'Dell (29 page)

That night I did think about it, but unwillingly. I just wanted to go to sleep,
to sweet oblivion, but sleep stayed miles away and hours off. My brain insisted
on contemplating what Rosie had done. She’d supplied no details and all I had in
my head was the abstract: she had been sexually exploited. However, my
imagination obligingly filled in the blanks with pictures of its own devising.
All the acts she and I had engaged in together. Acts I thought I was taking a
lead in, but that she was already an old hand at. She had encouraged the man! If
she had been forced by him, I told my
self, then I’d have no
trouble accommodating my mind to the mere physical acts involved. But she had
taken the lead in doing the acts too, and the fact that she’d been only twelve
could not stave off my nauseating feelings of jealousy and betrayal. The law
said she could not have consented. Hah! I well remembered her from those days,
and she’d been as intelligent and knowledgeable and aware as any adult I’d ever
known, then or since.

This line of thought made me throw myself about in my bed and call myself sick
for thinking that way. Sick, sick, sick. Why, she’d been only a vulnerable
little girl, grief-stricken over the loss of her beloved father, and easy
pickings for a guileful child molester. I loved her. I loved the poor little
thing. But no. She’d made it clear the man had not been like that at all. She
had brought it on herself. And she had left me for him. I loathed her. I loved
her and I loathed her.

Two or three hours before I was due to get up and go to school I fell into a
sleep of dread. In it I slid relentlessly headfirst down a deep narrowing dark
airless cave until I came to a stop upside down with my shoulders and head
wedged tight into a constricted space from which there was no escape but a
gasping, panicky, claustrophobic death.

My eyes flew open in the black. At first, even awake, I thought I was still
doomed at the bottom of the narrow cave. Then it came to me that I had escaped
and I held in my head, fully formed, simple and elegant, the solution. The
activity she believed she had taken the lead in was so wrong and so vile to her
that it had traumatized her mind and body for months. Therefore she could not
have done it of her own free will but must have been unwittingly under his
control like an automaton. But for a man to have been able to exercise such
control over a girl so morally intelligent and naturally resistant to abhorrent
behaviour or exploitation, he must have already been practised and skilled in
exerting his will in that way. Thus, though Rosie may have thought she had
encouraged him and wanted to do it, in truth, she had been a defenceless,
guileless child manipulated into thinking and doing it by a cunning pedophile
who had known exactly how to do it because
he had done it all
before
.

I jumped out of bed and went to the window. I pulled the curtains apart and
looked out into the sliver of dawn appearing under the wispy finger of fog over
Signal Hill. In the strengthening light of morning, as the sun rose and the fog
dissipated, my conclusion seemed just as strong to me as it had been between
asleep and awake in bed. Dr. Rothesay was a chronic pedophile. Why else would he
have married a widow years older than himself
who just happened
to have two prepubescent daughters, when he could have courted almost any young
woman he wanted? Jesus Christ, it was all so obvious. Why hadn’t anyone seen it
clearly at the time? And if he was a pedophile over here, he’d been a pedophile
over there in England. I even knew how I could prove my theory true: through the
association of my father’s accounting firm in St. John’s with the international
firm’s offices in London. I would ask my father to use the London office to
conduct an investigation into Heathcliff Rothesay’s background. They did that
all the time to check out important job applicants. Headhunting and verifying
the bona fides of the heads hunted was their stock in trade. This was perfect. I
even knew why my father would do it for me. Obviously, when Rosie had been in
grade seven, my mother and father had suspected something about Rothesay and
Rosie. But their suspicions had been somehow nipped in the bud and nothing had
come of it. This was now an opportunity to set the record straight. I looked at
my clock. My father usually rose at quarter to eight. It was now seven-thirty.
I’d wait till he got up. But hang on—Mom couldn’t find any reference to a Dr.
Rothesay when we’d been in London. Either he wasn’t a doctor at all or he must
have changed his name to cover his tracks. I could not stop myself from bolting
out of my room and down the hall and knocking on their door. On my mother’s
sleepy “Yes?” I entered and strode to the foot of their bed like a man possessed
of a Nobel Prize–winning concept.

“Mom,” I erupted, “you said you’d help me if I needed you to, you and Dad,
well I need Dad’s help now. Dad, I need your people in England to check out
someone for me. Dr. Rothesay. I’ve been wondering what he is doing over here in
Newfoundland in the first place. Why did he leave London so early in his medical
practice to come over here to a remote part of the British Empire? Yeah, yeah,
yeah, everyone has heard all the sentimental sop, broken heart and all that
crap. But what was he really escaping from over there? Dad, I need an
investigation into his background in London.”

My parents’ eyes were riveted on me. My father looked bug-eyed. The bedclothes
up to his neck, with his head lifted slightly off his pillow in wild surmise
over what his lunatic son might be babbling on about in the quiet, dawn sanctity
of his matrimonial bedroom, he began softly, “Dr. Rothesay?” and his voice rose
with every subsequent word. “Investigation? In London? What the hell are you
talking about?”

“Shh,” said Mom. “I told you something was wrong.”

“I can’t tell you yet,” I said. “I promised I’d keep everything
confidential.”

“Rothesay? What are you trying to find out about him?”

“Dad, I said I can’t—”

“I know what you said, Tom. But you’re asking me out of the blue to go on a
wild goose chase without—”

Mom broke in. “Tom, sweetheart, does this have anything to do with Rosie and
Pagan?”

“Mom, I promised I’d keep it secret. But if the background check in London
turns up what I believe it will, I’ll get the necessary permission to tell you
and Dad everything. I promise.”

“Just tell me this then,” she said. “Does it have anything to do with that bad
time in Rosie’s life when you were at St. Mary’s? I think you were in grade… I
can’t remember.”

“Grade seven,” I said, before realizing she’d just wormed affirmation out of
me. “But please, Mom, I can’t talk about it. I’m just asking for your help like
you promised last night. So, Dad, some nice and sharp inquiries about Rothesay
before he came over here by your firm in London to the police or the courts,
whatever they do when someone from England has applied for a job as president of
some big company here in Canada, say, will turn up the information I
need.”

“Tom, my son, listen. Before we get into your nice and sharp inquiries about
whatever it is you won’t tell us about, let’s look at the thing for half a
second. The man is a practising physician over here. If he’d done anything wrong
over there, surely he would have lost his licence to practise and would not have
been able to transfer over here. The medical boards have strict protocols in
such circumstances.”

My father’s logic took me aback. But after a moment’s hesitation, so certain
did I remain, I persisted: “God, you often hear of some guy in an operating room
performing surgery in a big hospital and he doesn’t even have a high school
diploma. If someone is sneaky and sly enough—I don’t think that should stop us.
Sure, I heard Mom and you talking about his name not even being registered over
there.”

“What?” He spoke directly to Mom. “For the love and honour of Christ, what kind
of ears does the young fella have on him? He hears every fu— every bloody thing
we say. Tom, listen to me. Apart from anything else, I’d be abusing my
association with the London office to send them on a wild goose chase like that
for purely personal, not professional, reasons.”

“We could make it professional. I’d pay for it out of my bank account. It could
be one of those headhunting things, checking out his background for a possible
job consideration here.”

“Coming up with weaselly reasons doesn’t improve the
situation.”

I felt frustration in the face of absolute stupidity welling up. “Well, one way
or the other I’m going to find out,” I said, heading towards the door. There I
turned back and bawled, “If I had suspicions years ago and let it all drop, I’ll
tell you one frigging thing right now, after Pagan and everything, I’d try to
make up for my stupid…” My mother’s face was aghast and it made me stop. Which
was fortunate, because I would have blurted out everything in my rage.

“What?” said my father. “What are you saying?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry I even brought the idea up. Shag it. Forget it.” I stomped
out and went into my room and closed the door noisily.

I lay on my bed and nursed my outrage at how goddamned moronic my parents were
and contemplated discussing my idea with Rosie. She could ask the police here to
check out Rothesay through their London counterparts. But if I was right about
him, there’d be a lot of pressure on her to co-operate in laying charges against
him. She mightn’t like that. But maybe charges could be laid back in England for
crimes he skipped out on. As my anger at my parents subsided, I expected one of
them, especially my mother, to knock on my door and come in for the usual
mollifying chat. But she didn’t and I started to become a little embarrassed.
They must have thought I was really nuts, barging into their room like that with
what had to sound like a demented idea. Within the hour I heard first Dad’s car
and then Mom’s starting up in the driveway and leaving.

I wandered downstairs in my pyjamas and had a glass of orange juice. I would
not go to school today. I felt too miserable. I had to admit to myself I did not
want to see Rosie. Not just yet. I had to take this day by myself in the empty
house and try to sort out my feelings and think things through. I heard a car
coming into the driveway and looked out the window. It was Mom, back for some
reason. I sat down at the table and put a sullen look on my face.

“Tom, I can’t stay,” she said, seeing me on entering, “we’ve got an executive
meeting starting in a few minutes at the hospital, but I couldn’t have you
thinking we are not concerned. Your father is going to do it. He doesn’t like it
and he didn’t want you or Rosie or anyone else to know he’s even doing it until
he hears back, and I’m trusting you to say nothing. He’s going to call London as
soon as he gets to his office this morning.”

FOR TWO DAYS
, I went around swathed in
hopelessness and unreality. The hopelessness stemmed from my confidence, now
that my mother had told me the investigation I’d demanded was going ahead, that
it would turn up nothing. The unreality came from everyone’s normal behaviour,
as if nothing had happened. Nobody, neither Rosie when she called my home at
recess time the first day to see if I was sick, nor she nor Suzy at school the
next day, nor Mom nor Dad at home both evenings, nor I, at any time, mentioned
the word Rothesay. Everybody talked about everything but that subject. Rosie
herself, because her mother asked her to, was going home to sleep tonight in a
house containing the man himself, as if sanity, lucidity, and soundness
prevailed. Then, on the third day, the universe itself went bananas.

The telephone call came at five to eight in the morning. I was just coming out
of the bathroom from my shower when I heard the ring. I stopped in the hall. It
might be Rosie calling to arrange a get-together in school or after. I heard my
mother downstairs saying, “It’s for you, Joe, long distance from London.”

With my towel around my hips in the upstairs hall, I stood rooted and listened.
Dad said, “Hello… oh hello, Warwick, it’s nice to… No, no, no, you did the right
thing calling me at home—I wanted to hear as soon as you had something.” Then he
remained absolutely silent for a full minute, not a “yes” or an “I see” or even
a grunt. Nothing. Standing there chilly in my towel, I was wondering if he’d
been cut off when I heard, “My God! That is incredible!” Then another silence
and, “Unbelievable, utterly unbe—Pardon? No, this oral report is sufficient for
now. I’ll let you know if we want a written one. Thanks for doing this so fast,
Warwick. My client will be forever grateful. Send the invoice to me, personally,
if you would. Bye for now… Jesus Christ, Gladys, you had the guy pegged years
ago. Where’s Tom?”