“Whether I do or not isn’t the issue, Gene. The police know.”
“Oh, no—”
“Oh, yes.”
“But what could they know?”
I said nothing.
“Let me explain, first, Alex. Please. Okay?”
“No promises,” I said.
“You yourself said if I hadn’t told you about her—”
“But you did, Gene. On some level you wanted me to chase it.”
“Oh,” he said. His eyes narrowed, and one fist inched closer to me. “Now I’m on the couch. This is bullshit.”
I reached for the doorknob.
“Wait! You can’t bop in here like this and expect me just to capitulate—”
“I don’t expect a thing,” I said. “And frankly, right now, your peace of mind isn’t paramount to me. I just spent some time with a woman who’s been living a nightmare for over a year. Knowing but not knowing. Just like you told me the first time: ‘the ultimate parent’s nightmare.’ And guess what? She has something in common with you, Gene. You both despise the word closure. You think it’s pop-psych crapolsky, but she has a much greater understanding of the term’s inadequacy—”
“Alex, please—”
“She doesn’t expect a miracle, Gene. But she would like to say good-bye, visit her daughter’s grave from time to time, maybe leave some flowers.”
He bowed his head again, covered his eyes with his hands. “Oh, Jesus— Yeah, I wanted you to chase it. I guess—I don’t know what the hell came over me. I wasn’t planning to say a goddamn thing, and then you started telling me about that other girl—whom I really didn’t know, that’s the truth, Alex. And synapses just started clicking—memories, it’s been sitting here, all this time”—touching his belly—”but still, what the hell was I thinking? ‘Cause I remember you from grad school. The bulldog, they called you behind your back—jokes about your being a goddamn obsessive-compulsive. You never let go of anything. What the fuck was I thinking.”
Tearing at his hair. When he stopped I said, “Maybe you weren’t thinking. Guilt’s a great motivator. Maybe you were just feeling.” Knowing he had something else in common with Agnes Yeager. The great void. Holes that couldn’t be filled.
“Shit,” he said. “The police already know?”
I nodded. A lie, but he didn’t deserve better. And those big hands could do damage in close quarters.
“I didn’t— Okay, look, just give me a chance to explain. This is what happened: An accident, a goddamn stupid accident, okay?”
I stood there.
“Fuck. You can be a sphinx.”
“I’m listening, Gene.”
“Right.” His Adam’s apple took a joyride. His armpits had grown sodden, and pink scalp shined where he’d raised furrows in his hair. “Yeah, I was—we were having a thing. And don’t preach to me about that. She came on to me— Sure I could’ve resisted but I didn’t. Didn’t want to. Why would I resist? Marge and I never— Forget excuses, you don’t want to hear them. The truth is she was the hottest thing I’ve ever come across. I’ve been married twenty-three years, and I’ve been basically faithful. But this girl—Shawna—she was something else. Gave off a heat— She was the girl every guy wants in high school but can’t get unless he’s a … No need to get into that. We had a thing, it was mutual, she was madly in love with me—said she was. I knew that was horseshit, this was a fling—once she figured out I wasn’t going to leave Marge she’d end it. But in the meantime . . . she could do things with her . . . Also, she was smart as hell, not just a body. We could talk— Even at her age, she had things to say Number one in my class, so there was no conflict of interest, no trading grades for—”
He choked on his own saliva, endured a paroxysm of coughing, filled his mug with cold coffee and swallowed.
“We’re talking a month, five weeks tops, Alex.”
“Right from the beginning of the quarter.”
“Soon after, yeah. The second time she came in. Little white dress. Like a tennis outfit— She had this fresh clean smell—this perfume of youth. It happened, I can’t change that. But after that I was discreet. Meeting her only off-campus— We used to drive up in the hills above Bel Air. Find a spot.” He smiled. “Parking, she’d make a production of taking off— Oh, man, Alex, it was just what you wanted high school to be like. Then it got complicated. She was also— That’s the thing about her, she was also narcissistic. Seriously narcissistic, really into her looks, her brains, the whole bit. One time she told me she could have the president if she wanted.”