straight A student and the football team’s star running back, he was the proverbial boy next door. Fathers, even those as strict as Corinne’s dad, trusted their daughters with him. The Ivy League was courting him. Yet no parent or admissions officer knew about the time he and his buddies had gotten drunk and taken turns with poor, dim-witted, desperate-to-please Margie Rittenhouse.
She could see him in her mind now, boasting of the incident at Doug Eastman’s barbecue out at the lake the summer after their junior year. She saw him perched on the nose of Doug’s sleek new Sunfish—as tall as Charlie but built like a young bull with the looks of an Olympian god. Naked except for a pair of faded cutoffs and glowing in the way of rich boys doted on by their mothers, all buttery shimmer and blue ice. Robert was belting down a Rolling Rock with one hand while cupping an imaginary breast with the other. Corrine had gone off in search of more beer and Robert was reenacting Margie’s rape (for that’s what it was) for the benefit of his leering audience.
‘Man, you should’ve seen the look on her face when Toomey walked off,’ he recalled with a sniggering laugh. Clearly, he hadn’t spied Mary, standing just within earshot. ‘She was begging for more, man, begging for it. But he told her he wasn’t into fucking cows.’
‘Beggin’ for mercy is more like it,’ hooted fat, pimply Wade Jewett, the most worshipful of Robert’s toadies. ‘I heard she was pretty wasted.’
The smile dropped from Robert’s face as abruptly as a sudden cold front moving in off the lake. With stunning casualness, he turned to Wade, sneering, ‘Like you would know. Christ, Jewett, if you weren’t so busy jerking off at home you’d have seen for yourself.’
That was Robert. Hot one moment, cold the next. Like ice that could as easily cause you to slip and break a bone as send you twirling deliriously in circles.
Mary shook free of the memory and looked up at Charlie.
He’d turned away from the door and was frowning at her in a thoughtful way. ‘Robert, yeah. Newcombe phoned him for a statement.’ Charlie’s jaw was clenched and a look of disgust had deepened the buried stitch between his brows. ‘You know what that creep said? “Jesus, the crazy bitch actually went through with it.”’
Mary must have jerked in surprise because Noelle’s eyes flew open, and she immediately resumed the crying jag she’d been on since five this morning. Mary began to weep as well. Loose sobs that billowed up from her depths like the drowned creatures, squirrels and raccoons mostly, found floating in the lake after the heavy rains that descended on Burns Lake each spring like a biblical plague. Even Charlie was at a loss to console her. He stood awkwardly by the door, his fists stuffed so deep into the pockets of his jacket she could see a white knuckle poking from its torn seam like a bone from a shattered limb.
Mary struggled to her feet, a hand cupped about the baby’s head. Noelle had worked herself into a state, her shrieks coming in short, sharp bursts punctuated by strangled gasps. As Mary paced the floor, she felt weak with despair.
‘Hush, it’s okay, everything’s going to be okay,’ she crooned as hot tears slid down her cheeks.
When her husband strode over to pry the baby gently from her arms, Mary was too tired to protest. Watching them, she was pierced to the core by the picture they made against the backdrop of the spartan living room furnished like a playhouse in castoffs: Noelle with her small red face bunched into a fist and her black hair standing up like an exclamation point … and Charlie, with a look of tender consternation on his old-young face, not unlike the expression he wore helping his mother upstairs to bed when Pauline was too drunk to manage it on her own. After several minutes of pacing, he stopped to put a hand to her forehead.
‘She feels hot,’ he said.
‘That’s because she’s running a
She could see him in her mind now, boasting of the incident at Doug Eastman’s barbecue out at the lake the summer after their junior year. She saw him perched on the nose of Doug’s sleek new Sunfish—as tall as Charlie but built like a young bull with the looks of an Olympian god. Naked except for a pair of faded cutoffs and glowing in the way of rich boys doted on by their mothers, all buttery shimmer and blue ice. Robert was belting down a Rolling Rock with one hand while cupping an imaginary breast with the other. Corrine had gone off in search of more beer and Robert was reenacting Margie’s rape (for that’s what it was) for the benefit of his leering audience.
‘Man, you should’ve seen the look on her face when Toomey walked off,’ he recalled with a sniggering laugh. Clearly, he hadn’t spied Mary, standing just within earshot. ‘She was begging for more, man, begging for it. But he told her he wasn’t into fucking cows.’
‘Beggin’ for mercy is more like it,’ hooted fat, pimply Wade Jewett, the most worshipful of Robert’s toadies. ‘I heard she was pretty wasted.’
The smile dropped from Robert’s face as abruptly as a sudden cold front moving in off the lake. With stunning casualness, he turned to Wade, sneering, ‘Like you would know. Christ, Jewett, if you weren’t so busy jerking off at home you’d have seen for yourself.’
That was Robert. Hot one moment, cold the next. Like ice that could as easily cause you to slip and break a bone as send you twirling deliriously in circles.
Mary shook free of the memory and looked up at Charlie.
He’d turned away from the door and was frowning at her in a thoughtful way. ‘Robert, yeah. Newcombe phoned him for a statement.’ Charlie’s jaw was clenched and a look of disgust had deepened the buried stitch between his brows. ‘You know what that creep said? “Jesus, the crazy bitch actually went through with it.”’
Mary must have jerked in surprise because Noelle’s eyes flew open, and she immediately resumed the crying jag she’d been on since five this morning. Mary began to weep as well. Loose sobs that billowed up from her depths like the drowned creatures, squirrels and raccoons mostly, found floating in the lake after the heavy rains that descended on Burns Lake each spring like a biblical plague. Even Charlie was at a loss to console her. He stood awkwardly by the door, his fists stuffed so deep into the pockets of his jacket she could see a white knuckle poking from its torn seam like a bone from a shattered limb.
Mary struggled to her feet, a hand cupped about the baby’s head. Noelle had worked herself into a state, her shrieks coming in short, sharp bursts punctuated by strangled gasps. As Mary paced the floor, she felt weak with despair.
‘Hush, it’s okay, everything’s going to be okay,’ she crooned as hot tears slid down her cheeks.
When her husband strode over to pry the baby gently from her arms, Mary was too tired to protest. Watching them, she was pierced to the core by the picture they made against the backdrop of the spartan living room furnished like a playhouse in castoffs: Noelle with her small red face bunched into a fist and her black hair standing up like an exclamation point … and Charlie, with a look of tender consternation on his old-young face, not unlike the expression he wore helping his mother upstairs to bed when Pauline was too drunk to manage it on her own. After several minutes of pacing, he stopped to put a hand to her forehead.
‘She feels hot,’ he said.
‘That’s because she’s running a
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