The Whole Golden World (29 page)

42

M
organ kept sipping her bottled water, for something to do, trying to keep her hands from shaking, as her mother drove her west into the rural area surrounding Arbor Valley. Her mom was chattering to fill the silence—one of her most annoying habits—but today, Morgan didn't mind. She was telling her about how it used to be all forest here, hence the name when they bulldozed the forest to make way for the town.

Morgan's stomach turned when they passed a country club and golf course. He had mentioned it once, that night at his brother's house, talking about his hobbies. He'd said they'd spent a whole day out there, his brother bragging the whole time in subtle ways about his big house and fancy vacations, and how they went without a golf cart, so his knees throbbed, but he wouldn't give his brother the satisfaction of quitting before eighteen holes.

After another half hour, the car began slowing near a park entrance, and Morgan's blood rush sped up as the car slowed, then rumbled over a gravel drive, and approached a wood gazebo looking out over a still wetland.

Morgan had stayed home “sick” from school for this excursion, and Dinah had arranged for help at the Den to “stay home” with her.

So the park was deserted this midday in May. Except for a lone figure at a picnic table near the gazebo.

She did not look up right away as Morgan and Dinah got out of the car and approached; she seemed absorbed in the novel open in front of her. The first thing Morgan thought was that she looked so young.

Then she looked up, drew herself up straighter, and folded her book closed without marking the page.

Morgan and her mother drew to a stop a couple of yards away. Morgan looked at Dinah and watched her eyes dart back and forth. No one dared speak. The birds were loud in the human quiet.

She finally said, “I heard you have some things you want to know.”

Morgan could only nod.

“Sit down, then.”

Morgan felt her mom nudge her forward, and so finally she walked across the long grass—still damp from being in the shade of the trees—making her flats wet and tickling the tops of her feet.

She settled on the opposite bench of the table from her, slightly to one side. Dinah did the same, and together they made a triangle.
Isosceles triangle,
Morgan thought, thinking of math class, and him, and she had to grip the side of the table to keep herself from running back into the car.

It was too late now. They'd already crossed a line. In fact, just by agreeing to meet, they'd left that line far behind.

The wife spoke first. “My name is Rain. TJ is my husband. I've been thinking about what I'd say, and my first instinct was to apologize. But I'm not responsible for his behavior. So then I was thinking, this might be a terrible idea, and she might jump up and run away, or they might do something to me . . . By the way, I have pepper spray in my purse.” At this she narrowed her eyes and set her jaw. “And I'm serious. I doubt you're totally insane, but I can't take that kind of chance. But since I'm doing this insane thing, what is it that I hope to gain? That's what my gran used to ask me when I was trying to decide what to do. To think about what I wanted to accomplish.” She glanced down for a moment, then back up with a glare, straight at Morgan. “So this is the thing I have to know. How did it start? How did you go from a kid in his class to his . . . lover.”

Her voice squeaked on that word, and Rain closed her eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath in through her nose and letting it out in a quick poof of an exhale.

Morgan wanted to die, right then, hoping she would just be struck dead by the hand of God at the picnic table.

She was so pretty, and young. Morgan had seen her picture more than once, but somehow in her mind she'd distorted the image to be someone old, cold, and dried up. Here was a woman not that much older than her, now in pain over . . . what happened.

This was not how the story went.

“Um. I mean. I guess the same way it always happens.”

“Oh? This always happens?”

Dinah interjected sharply, “That's not what she meant.”

“Mom, stop. I just mean, we just kind of were friends at first. We talked about stuff. I'd broken up with someone who was in the class. One time he took a call . . . well, from you, I guess. And seemed very sad.”

“When?”

“Um. September. Maybe early October.”

Rain nodded, her eyes down on the picnic table, as if she were watching this scene play out there.

“And . . . well, I'm sure you read about all this. I told the cops and they wrote it down. I'm sure someone showed it to you.”

“Yes, I've heard the facts. This happened, then this happened, then this. I know where, and when, and approximately how often. But how did it . . . evolve? How does such a thing happen?”

“I don't know,” Morgan whispered. “I don't know.”

“That's such a line to cross. How does one even approach that line, much less cross it?”

Rain's gaze was up over Morgan's shoulder, somewhere in the trees behind her, and she seemed not to be directly asking Morgan anymore. Her expression was dreamy. Disconnected. As if she would start to float up from the picnic table and drift away over the pond.

Then she snapped her gaze back to Morgan.

“Did you ever do it in my bed?”

Dinah reached out to hold her daughter's hand. “You don't have to grill her.”

“This was your idea,” Rain retorted. “And if you want something from me, you have to give me something, too. And if you don't answer another single question, I want to know. Did you have sex with my husband in my own house, and in our bed?”

Morgan remembered being on the floor and seeing the wedding picture. How mad he was she'd been looking at it. She cleared her throat and replied, “Not in the bed.”

Rain closed her eyes, and something like a quiver passed across her face.

She opened her eyes and spoke. “Your mother wants me to say that TJ loved me. That he can't be in love with you because he loves his wife. I have no idea what to think anymore, but you answered my question, so I'll give you this much. He swore on his knees to be a better husband to me. He was crying with joy when our baby turned out to be okay, after a scare, and he swore that he would be a good father . . .”

“Baby?” Morgan said.

At this, Rain rose from the table, revealing herself to be pregnant. Definitely and visibly pregnant. Morgan shot a glance at her mother. Dinah's jaw was dropping open in shock, too. How had her mom missed that detail?

“When?” Morgan finally gulped out.

“Not that it's your business. Since January. Are you satisfied with yourself?”

Dinah rose, too. “Now wait, I didn't want you to tear into her . . .”

Rain wheeled on Dinah. “What did you think I would feel like, when confronted by the girl who slept with my husband?”

Dinah put a protective hand on Morgan's shoulder. “She's just a kid!”

“Not just a kid. Not hardly.”

Dinah croaked out, “That's not fair.”

Rain snatched up her book. “None of this is. Not a damn bit of it. This was a stupid idea. Don't contact me again or I will call the police.”

She ran with more grace than Morgan would have thought possible to a car on the other side of the gazebo, which Morgan recognized as the one he'd been driving when she got into the car with him that frigid December night, and they'd kissed, his mouth tasting of beer and breath mints.

 

On the drive home, Dinah muttered to herself about it being a crazy idea, and wrong, and begging Morgan's forgiveness, repeating about ten times that Rain had been in a baggy sweatshirt and she hadn't noticed the pregnancy, had been just as shocked . . .

“We can't tell anyone we did this,” Dinah said, thumping the steering wheel.

“Mutually assured destruction,” Morgan muttered.

“Not mutual for her. All she'd have to do is look at the judge with those big blue teary eyes and talk about how we, like, accosted her or something. Of course, I have the note she sent with her cell number. Oh, that's right. I have the note.” Dinah exhaled a shaky breath. “That feels better. But still . . . we can't tell . . .”

“We won't. No one will.” Morgan felt sure of it, though she couldn't say exactly how. Rain was so very calm. Unlike her own mother, who had set them on this crazy path. Morgan's stomach cramped. She curled up in the seat. Why had she herself agreed to it?

Because she wanted to hate her, that's why, she admitted to herself as soon as she thought it. She wanted to see a mean-spirited, cold fish of a woman who would be nasty to Morgan and then she'd feel certain that it had been a miserable marriage and he'd never go back to her . . .

But . . . he'd sworn his love to her. She was pregnant with his baby. Picturing her belly, picturing him on his knees weeping, made her chest hurt as if she were drowning.

He'd sworn to be a better father, and a better husband, but there'd been some problem with the baby, and then he'd been relieved. Maybe that's all it was, relief. Morgan herself knew that kind of relief, when something you love is almost taken from you, and in the shaky aftermath you'll say anything. One of her earliest memories was of being mad at the baby brothers who kept her mom away so often—so mad that she wished they'd never come home from the hospital. Then she felt worse than horrible and promised to God to be the best little girl anyone had ever seen if he would just keep her brothers safe.

A new tenderness bloomed for him now, having nearly lost something precious, and how strongly he reacted. Of course in the heat of that emotional moment, he would feel powerfully moved.

Yes, they were having a baby, but the baby had been her number one project, and in fact, Morgan was remembering now, they were doing treatments with a specialist. She remembered him complaining once, he “wasn't even in the room” when his wife was trying to conceive. It was a detail she'd shoved out of her mind, the notion of his wife and syringes or test tubes and all that.

Rain had agreed to meet for a reason, and Morgan straightened in her seat, realizing that the wife must have had a very specific agenda: convince Morgan to give up on him; that's why the dramatic belly reveal from behind the table.

Dinah said, again, “Are you okay, honey? I'm so sorry I put you through that. I didn't know she'd react like that, though I should have. Stupid.”

“No, I'm fine,” Morgan said, smiling now and smoothing her shirt. “It's obvious.”

“What is?”

“She's losing him. I can see it all over her face.”

Dinah pulled the car to the shoulder, rocking Morgan in her seat with the abruptness of the swerve. “No, honey, that's not the sense I got at all. She was saying how he was on his knees and swearing . . .”

“You don't get it, do you? She's desperate. That's why she agreed to this stupid idea, so she could plant that seed of doubt in me, so I will give up and leave him alone forever. But I know this for a fact: He risked everything for me. Why would he have done that if he just wanted to get laid? Sex is easy. Love is hard. Love is worth risking everything for.”

Her mother put her head on the steering wheel. “Oh, God.”

Morgan patted her mom's shoulder. “Say, you want me to drive? You seem upset.”

Her mother only shook her head, still braced on the steering wheel, so Morgan shrugged and leaned back in the seat, picturing that night he carried her up the stairs to the bedroom, telling her she was beautiful.

43

R
ain stopped the car at a rest area just a mile down the highway, unable to believe she could walk into the house with TJ there and act as if all were normal—even the bizarre standard of normal they had these days.

She parked facing a grassy swath with a picnic table in the center and let her eyes unfocus, feeling herself go inward, to her baby. She rubbed circles over her little one and in doing so calmed herself.

In that first moment seeing her, Rain had felt a spasm of revulsion. Not at the girl, no, at TJ. Because she'd seemed so very much like a girl indeed, not the womanly seductress she'd envisioned. Somehow, in fact, she could see now she'd conflated the perky and supple Layla from work with the girl in question.

She'd noticed that scar and hoped it didn't register on her face, the surprise of it, and she immediately wondered what had happened and how this girl felt about it, then she wondered what TJ had said about it. He'd probably been very sweet.

There was a falling-away sensation to it, like shingles off a rotting roof, her increasingly strained love for her husband, as she confronted this young, scarred girl whom he'd slept with.

Girl maybe, but child not exactly.

“Not in the bed,” the girl had said, at least having sense enough to look ashamed of herself. But that was the line this girl had drawn? Not at sex with a married teacher, not at kissing, not at making out, not at inappropriate texting, not at flirting . . . No, her big moral stand was that she didn't screw him in their marriage bed.

Where then, the floor? The shower? The couch?

Rain opened the car door, hung her head between her knees, and breathed shallowly over the parking lot, trying not to vomit.

TJ needed a psychiatrist, not jail. What would jail do for him, anyway? The idea of locking him up with murderers and rapists and drug dealers, where they would beat him to death the minute they smelled vulnerability, which they surely would, if he were locked away and had lost everything. And where would she be? Squeezing out their baby coached by her bossy baby sister, while her mother chain-smoked outside.

And living where, exactly? Greg had offered to help with their mortgage, and with reluctance she'd let him, her yoga teacher salary pathetic against the weight of their debt and TJ on unpaid “leave” and almost certainly fired. But that could not go on forever.

Rain felt her stomach settle along with her resolve, dropping back into place just as it had been before this insane errand. She pulled herself in and closed the car door, hard.

Mission number one: Keep TJ out of jail.

Mission number two: Get him help. Save him from himself. Her baby needed a sane, stable father, and that's what they would achieve, whatever the cost.

 

TJ was not in the kitchen, nor upstairs, nor on the elliptical. Rain drifted through the house, each step making her heart pound harder. She saw his cell phone idle on the kitchen counter.

The car was here. He'd been a runner way back when, though he was supposed to take it easy on his knees these days.

She walked to the back door, into the yard, and drooped with the snap of released tension: There he was. He was covered in grass clippings, his shoes stained green, and at the moment, a patch of sod and weeds was growing by his feet as he tugged away great handfuls of brush from along the back fence.

It had once been a patch of daylilies that had become overgrown with weeds from the field behind the house. Neither had had the energy to cope with yard work.

He yanked with ferocity. In fact, as she drew closer, she heard him actually growl.

She stood far enough back not to startle him as she said, “TJ?”

He startled anyway, stumbled backward, and tripped over a branch. Rain reached forward reflexively. His face was pink and sweaty. He laughed without mirth. “Ha. Clumsy me.”

It took him a long time to right himself, and Rain felt a pang of sympathy.

Then she noticed him swaying in place, like one of those old toys with the rounded bottom that would never fall down.

Rain put on a smile. “Hi, honey. I didn't find anything I liked.” She'd claimed to have been searching for nursery wallpaper. “You look like you've been working hard.”

“Something to do,” he muttered. Then he scowled at the ground, like the grass had wronged him, and kicked at it. “Greg called. Had their baby.”

“Oh,” Rain said, not bothering to sound jubilant, though on some distant plane she was happy for her friend and in-laws. “Everything is okay, I assume?”

“ 'Course it is, for good Dr. Greg. All perfect, what else?”

Rain put her hand on her hip. “We should be glad our niece is perfect, TJ. Does our perfect niece have a name?”

“Marjorie.” TJ said it at first through a sneer, then he shook his head a little and repeated it, this time sweetly, with a sad smile and watery eyes. “Marjorie.”

His gaze landed on his shoes, stained green. “Oh, crap. Ruined.”

“Oh, it doesn't matter. They're only shoes. Now these can be your yard work shoes.”

He nodded vaguely, his head bobbing like a buoy in waves.

“Why don't you come in? You can finish this later. Have a nice hot shower, and I'll make you some pasta.”

He didn't move, but Rain took his hand and led him inside as she might a small child, and he allowed himself to be led exactly where she wanted him to go.

Rain boiled some tortellini while the shower ran for a long, long time.

She shredded parmesan, and in this simple, caretaking act, she felt more peaceful than she had in weeks. This was what she was meant to do, care for her family, which for now included TJ and a baby. For better or worse, she'd sworn before God and everyone. Well, here was the worse. Stability had been the great gift of her youth in the form of Gran, and she would give that gift to their baby. She could be the anchor for her new family as she was from her family of origin. Being “the stable one” was hard, but what of it? It felt competent and strong, too. In fact, she felt nearly powerful now, having the fate of her family firmly in her grasp.

TJ emerged, damp and somber, if not sober. He walked to the fridge as if pulled there like a compass point, but she intercepted him. “I'll get you some water,” she said.

He nodded again, that vague bobbing, and sank heavily into the kitchen chair.

She placed the pasta in front of him. “Honey, I wanted to tell you something.”

He met her gaze. His eyes were swollen and red.

“If you need me to testify that you were here, of course I will do that for you. I want you to know I'm on your side. So you can be strong, knowing that, can't you?”

He smiled sadly, then even that wan attempt dried up and blew away.

She excused herself upstairs, while TJ ate the pasta with the grim determination of an inmate. Rain shivered and shook off the image. Upstairs, she called Alexandra.

When she got their lawyer on the phone, Rain said, “What's wrong? Has something happened? He's behaving so strangely today.”

“Strangely how?” Alex's voice had a sharp edge of warning to it.

Rain related the manic yard work, the vague attitude, the listless responses. She left out the drinking.

She could hear Alex tapping something, her fingers or a pencil on the desk. She replied, “I've seen this before. It's normal to be depressed when facing something like this. It's like grief, I've found. People grieve for what used to be. It's a genuine loss. Even after we get the verdict we want, nothing is ever quite the same for having gone through this. Sorry to be so blunt, but I believe in truth. Be gentle with him, and positive. And if he's drinking, try to stop him. The last thing we need is for him to engage in some drunk dialing or posting erratic things online, or who knows what? Drunk driving, God forbid.”

“Of course.”

“And Rain? I really think what you're doing is so commendable. Lots of wives with even a hint of anything like this would have run for the hills. The devotion is touching.”

Rain said good-bye and hung up and walked down the stairs. Her stretched hip ligaments pinched painfully, though she wasn't huge yet, but when she reached the landing and found TJ in front of the yellow glow of the TV set, curtains drawn, she forgot the lawyer.

On the TV screen was the Den. Dripping red spray paint blared “SLUT” and “WHORE” across the white clapboard of the front of the bungalow. The large picture window had been smashed in, so that the name of the place was no longer visible. A bland TV reporter was recounting the facts of the damage and that the owner, Dinah Monetti, could not be reached for comment, and husband, Joe Monetti, an assistant principal at Arbor Valley High, had declined to comment when reached at the school.

The reporter then launched into backstory as the wind tried in vain to disturb her sprayed-stiff hair: “Dinah Monetti's daughter is the seventeen-year-old girl prosecutors say had an affair with Arbor Valley teacher TJ Hill. His trial on a charge of third-degree criminal sexual conduct is set to begin June 6. Prosecutor Henry Davis released this statement: ‘This vicious and hateful crime shows a deep misunderstanding of the case before us. I have confidence that this isolated incident does not reflect our community, which has a reputation of caring for young people, not attacking them at a vulnerable time. The Monetti family has suffered quite enough already, and the police will investigate thoroughly and bring the vandals to justice.”

The phone rang again, and Rain knew without having to look it would be Alex. She handed the cordless to TJ, walked out into the backyard, and sat on an old lawn chair on the small patio, the sharp scent of torn weeds still hanging in the air.

She put her face in her hands and stayed like that until TJ ventured out of the house.

“Babe? That was Alex. She said what happened at the Den is bad news.”

“No shit,” she replied, enjoying, the tiniest bit, the shocked look on TJ's face at her casual and unusual curse.