The Whole Golden World (25 page)

36

D
inah walked into the Den with her daughter in tow. Janine was behind the cash register, and Dinah flinched at the shock of their bold public appearance registering so plainly on Janine's face.

It was a slow time, just before eleven. After the kid crowd and before the lunch rush. Dinah could not stand to be under house arrest another moment, so she declared it Take Your Daughter to Work Day and dragged Morgan out to the car.

Morgan, wordlessly, as she did everything lately, stomped through the center of the Den and made for the stairs up to Dinah's office.

Dinah had been sweeping the floor for ten minutes—Janine and the crew had gotten so lax in her absence, it was a mess of raisins and muffin crumbs—when she remembered the computer and Internet connection upstairs.

She slapped the broom against the nearest wall and took the stairs two at a time.

Morgan was in Dinah's wheeled office chair but pushed back away from the desk, her hands gripping the edge, like she was holding on to a precipice. Dinah couldn't see her expression behind that long sheet of dark hair.

“Honey . . .”

“I am not . . .”—the words were eerie in their calm and deep, almost growling, register—“his victim.”

“What are you reading?”

“The so-called news.”

“I should have warned you not to look . . .”

“Oh, why, because it might make me faint? Because you'd have to break out the smelling salts? And thanks so very much for deleting my Facebook, Mom. I know it was you.”

Dinah winced. “You didn't see what they were putting on your page. It was horrible.”

She turned to face Dinah at last. “Why do they hate me? What did I do that's so terrible?”

Dinah ran forward, crouched, and let Morgan tumble forward from the desk chair and lean on her. She let her daughter sob, and she stroked the back of her head as she had the whole of Morgan's life.

“Oh, baby. It wasn't your fault. You didn't mean any of this, I know.” Dinah stepped carefully around any “victim” language.

“It's not my fault I'm young. I'm not as young as my years.”

Dinah, having no response, only squeezed her thin frame, feeling Morgan's shoulder blades poke at her arms. In some ways, what she said was absolutely true. Morgan had been treated as someone older than her age her entire life. At least, since the twins were born. Serious toddler-Morgan would waddle over to Dinah with diapers or wipes or the burp cloths she needed. Little Mo-Mo even learned how to switch on the button of the vibrating bouncy seat if it stopped humming while Connor was in it and he started screaming. Barely out of diapers herself, she was already an apprentice mother.

Finally, Dinah ventured, “But can't you see that it wasn't right? He's married. And your teacher. It's not an equal playing field.”

“We weren't playing. We were in love. Are in love.”

Dinah swallowed against her desire to scream that it's just sick for a grown man to screw a teenager. “What makes you so sure?” she asked instead, unable to keep the sharpness out of her voice.

Morgan shoved back from Dinah, the chair's wheels catching on a rug and almost toppling. She jumped up and pointed at her mother, looking so eerily like her own younger self that a chill pricked the hairs on Dinah's arms.

“I'm sure because I just feel it. I just know it. And anyway, he just turned thirty, which is not much different than Granny and Gramps's age difference and she got married at what, nineteen? We had bad luck to meet when we did, the way we did! I have never felt this way about anyone before, ever. And he loves me, he said he did.”

“Then why is he married? Why did he keep going home to his wife?”

“People make mistakes. He married the wrong person. Anyway, she stopped loving him when she couldn't have a baby. He was wrecked about it.”

“Or . . . he's not telling you the truth.”

“He's not a liar.”

Dinah sucked in a galvanizing breath. “He told countless lies to keep seeing you. And he's lying now, telling the police he didn't touch you.”

Morgan drew herself up taller, more rigid than ever. She seemed to Dinah lately like blown glass: inflexible but fragile. One sharp blow would mean a thousand tiny shards. “He's saying what he has to say to beat this stupid case.”

Dinah uttered the words that had been swirling around in her mind since Morgan first admitted it was all true: “You lied, too. Again and again.”

Morgan tossed her hair, then self-consciously pushed it back in front of her scar. “I can't stop thinking about him. I needed to see him. He needed to see me. I thought about him every second I wasn't with him. I had no other choice.”

“That's not love, it's obsession.”

Morgan's beautiful face crumpled into a sneer. “What would you know about love, anyway?”

“What the hell does that mean? I love your father.”

“You tolerate him. Barely.”

“Love isn't always fireworks and rainbows. Mature love is quieter, but it's there.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

Dinah had lost her again. For a few moments, Morgan had let her back in, and now she was back to the sneering contempt. Dinah could see as clearly as she could read the headline on the screen behind her that it was all a front. She recognized it so well because she lived it herself. Dinah was always at her most furious when she secretly worried, many strata beneath her outrage, that she was, in actual fact, wrong.

Not having anywhere to storm off to, Morgan settled for flouncing onto the old thrift store couch along the far wall of the office, under the eaves. “Don't forget to lock the maiden in her tower,” she said drily, and she shoved in her earbuds.

The headline that remained on the glowing screen was the first story that had hit the news, sending ripples of titillated outrage all over town:
TEACHER ACCUSED OF SEX WITH STUDENT; ALLEGED VICTIM IN HIS CLASS AT AVHS.

 

Dinah resumed her cleaning downstairs in the weird stillness of the Den. That's when she noticed the ambient music had stopped, and there was no chatter to fill the space. In fact, as she leaned on her broom and looked around, there wasn't a soul in the place and it was nearly noon.

“Why is it so dead in here?” she asked, to no one in particular, but Janine answered.

“It has been for a while. There was a surge of business right after . . . I think people were coming in to see you.” She hastily added, “To support you. Some people said some nice things. You know, chin up and stuff like that.”

“Yeah, right. They were coming to gawk. How long has it been dead like this? Why didn't you say anything?”

“And do what? I thought about it, but what are you going to do? You can't force people in here.”

“I could run a special or something. Put a coupon in the paper.”

Janine cocked an eyebrow, and Dinah spat, “If you have a better idea, genius, let me know. If this place shuts down, you'll be out of a job, too.”

Janine pressed her lips into a thin line and threw down the rag with which she'd been polishing the countertop. “You abandon me here to run this place without you, to deal with a bunch of temps and high school kids who are lazy and eating all the pastries, in the midst of this . . . controversy, and you're mad at me?”

“It's not you. I'm mad at the whole damn world.”

“It's tough all around.”

“I'll say,” Dinah muttered, sweeping up her last crumb pile. As her anger cooled, she cringed to hear her own angry words echoing in her memory She turned back to Janine. “I'm sorry. It's not you, really. It's everything. I just can't . . .”

Dinah failed to finish her sentence. Can't what? It was too big to even name.

Janine shrugged by way of response, her jaw still tight, polishing the countertop much harder than necessary.

Kelly came in, haloed by a summer-warm glow on this bizarre March day in the weirdest spring of Dinah's life. “Hey, I just read the paper. I'm sorry.”

“Oh, what now?”

Dinah's stomach lurched, and she whipped her head around, looking for a newspaper. Kelly offered it, her face looking pained, but Dinah thought she could detect a bright, thrilled gleam in her eye.

The headline read
“LOLITA MOM” BLASTS PLANNERS OVER BIAS AGAINST PROJECT
.

Dinah loosed a blistering stream of curses and stormed to the storeroom with her cell phone, shakily dialing the newspaper offices from the number on page two.

The editor on the other end sounded about nineteen years old and apologized profusely, claiming that headline was a placeholder, that he had already nixed it and told the staff to write something else, but it got late, and someone sent it to press without replacing it . . .

Dinah interrupted, “I should sue you for defamation. And supposedly you have this policy against naming victims of sexual assault? Well, by naming me, what do you think that does for my daughter's privacy? Why not mark her with a scarlet A? As long as you're using literary allusions to tear apart her reputation, college kid, what year did you graduate?”

The apologetic voice grew cool. “I hardly think that's relevant.”

“Neither is Nabokov.”

She punched the off button and lowered herself to sitting on a box full of napkins.

Lolita Mom. All her life of fighting for her children, trying to do everything by the book and in their best interests, and she was reduced to a sneering nickname in the local paper of record. Not to mention her daughter.

The door opened and Morgan peeked her head into the storeroom. Dinah nearly thrust the paper behind her to hide it, then realized her daughter would grab for it then. So she acted like there was nothing of note in its pages, just the weather report, stock prices. All that stuff she used to give a shit about before everything went crazy.

“Mom? Hey, I was just looking at the calendar. It's almost the twins' birthday.”

Dinah put her head in her hand. “I know.” That date on the calendar had been stalking her. She hadn't the faintest idea what to get them, how to celebrate, and had no energy to do so, then was immediately choked by guilt. She knew no other way to react to negative feelings about parenting the twins; after all, she'd prayed for their very survival and had sworn she would give anything for them just to be alive one more day.

How dare she be frustrated? For even a moment?

Morgan said, “So, we should bake them a cake or something, right? Put up some streamers and stuff? Balloons? Or maybe they're too old for that stuff.”

Dinah finally looked up at her daughter's face. It was splotchy and pale from their recent fight, and there were pronounced blue smears under her eyes from poor sleep. But her expression seemed genuine.

“Yeah, that would be nice,” Dinah replied, hating herself for not being able to keep the curious note out of her voice.

Morgan seemed to read her thoughts. She looked down at the toes of her pink ballet flats. “I just noticed the date on the calendar and feel bad that . . . this”—she waved her hands in the air around her head—“might overshadow their day. That's not fair.”

“No, it sure isn't.”

Morgan plopped down on the box kitty-corner to hers. Dinah knew she should get out there and get back to work. She had so few days in the Den that she had to make them count. But the law of objects at rest staying at rest was most compelling just then.

“I have an idea for what to get them, Mom.”

“I'm all ears.” Dinah hadn't the faintest idea. Every year she warred between what the boys wanted—digital stuff, video games—and what she wanted to get them: educational toys, books, puzzles.

“We should get them an e-reader or a tablet computer–type thing.”

“An e-reader? For them? They just want to blow things up on their video games.”

“Duh. I know. But if you got them a computer gadget with, like, books on it, maybe they'd like the books?”

“Don't those things have Internet? Not sure the boys are ready for that.”

“They're on the Internet all the time.”

“No, I mean privately. In their room, where I can't check up on them.”

“Mom.” Morgan was using her flat, weary, patient voice. “Mom, you cannot control everything.”

“Obviously,” she could not help but say.

“I'm just trying to help.” Now her voice was brittle with impending tears.

“I know, Mo-Mo. And it's sweet of you. I just don't know if JC are ready for that. Maybe next year.”

“You haven't said that in a while. JC.”

When the boys were very little, when there was so much to do to keep them healthy and safe, “Jared and Connor,” or even “the twins,” felt cumbersome. “JC” evolved from a shorthand Dinah was using in e-mails to Joe—back in the days of AOL—and it crept into everyday speech.

“Let's just say I'm more nostalgic than usual.”

Morgan sighed and raised her chin slightly. Dinah could see where the makeup caked over her scar had started to flake. No matter how many times Dinah tried to tell her that fading, cakey makeup made it even more noticeable, Morgan would still spend several minutes, every morning, trying to spackle over her one physical flaw.

“So what are we going to get them, then?” Morgan asked, now bristling with impatience.

“I don't know. I'll think of something. Maybe a gift card, then take them shopping out at Best Buy or something.” Best Buy, off down the highway, where no one knew who they were. Where Morgan wasn't notorious. Outside the little bubble of their small, gossipy town, no one cared about them. Unless somehow the case went viral.

Thinking of a tablet computer, and the Internet, and viral videos reminded Dinah that, really, their story was a few outraged forwarded links from being national news. She herself had clucked her tongue in shocked disapproval at similar nationwide stories of teacher-student affairs: like that one teacher in Florida, who eventually married her young lover. Or was it Alaska?