Lookaway, Lookaway (16 page)

“Don’t let Norma hear you talk like that.” Politely, a glass of ice water was set down half an arm’s length away from Jerene. And while she appreciated the subtlety of the bartender’s observations (that she wanted a drink of something), it also meant every word they exchanged was being heard and taken note of. She leaned closer to whisper, “Speaking of women you are fond of abusing.”

“If Jarvis
mère
is in attendance tonight, I will not be—you know my policy.”

Jerene’s phone rang again. It was Jerilyn.

“I’ll castigate you later,” she said, drifting back from her brother to take the call privately.

“Mom.”

A mother knows from one syllable something is wrong. Jerene spotted a remote table near the window, out of public hearing. Jerilyn was babbling, there were false starts, and an attempt at empty small talk, before Jerene cut her off, “Now Jerilyn, you’re going to have to tell me exactly what is wrong.”

Her daughter was vague, but confirmed certain things had transpired.

“Did some boy do something to you?”

Silence.

“One of those frat boys talk you into something you wish you hadn’t done?”

More silence, maybe a stifled sob.

“Did you let him?” She listened. “Did you tell him no? But what? Did you have your clothes off? If you’re rolling around on top of each other naked, Jerilyn, you cannot stop a boy from doing what boys—”

Jerilyn imparted more muddled information.

Jerene momentarily remembered from her own Theta Kappa Theta days a blur of faces—or maybe the same face—but differing physiognomies, boys with beer guts, or short and compact, tall and gangly, vodka breath and aftershave, all with eight sets of hands, moving and taking possession of body parts through her ball gowns and knit sweaters, a legion of onslaught furiously repulsed at the vaginal redoubts. “Are you saying he…” They would have to work up to the word
rape
. “… are you saying he forced you?”

More nonsense.

“Jeriflower, he either did or he didn’t. I’m coming down. Yes, that’s right, it
is
the night of my thing, but that’s not important.” It was a two-three-hour drive to Chapel Hill, two-three back … plenty of time. “My land,
yes,
I’m coming down and we’ll sort this business out. But you have to stay put. No showers, no changing clothes. Try not to engage in any more
orgies
until I get there.”

Her baby girl was in bad shape.

“And no tears. We have to think and act with great precision about these kind of things.” Jerene and Duke had taken different cars to Charlottetowne, and Duke’s Mercedes was the nicer of the two. She decided Duke would figure out that she had taken it, and she got into the Mercedes. It might come in handy.

*   *   *

Her daughter was not back at her dorm but now at the sorority house where she went to cry herself to sleep and pass out after the unfortunate encounter. Sensing she was fragile, and possibly aware of what happened, the girls had let Jerilyn lie down in Tylerlea Bumgardner’s big room upstairs. Jerene wondered just what gossip had spread and how far.

It was Sunday so parking was free on the street. Jerilyn pulled the Mercedes to the curb and gathered up her purse. She gave a wistful look to her former home, Thetahouse, then proceeded to step across the flagstones, past the construction toward Sigma Kappa Nu’s porch. She was aware she looked like a minor British Royal Family member, moving importantly in a conservatively cut Chanel mauve pastel with a perfectly matching Prada clutch. Jerene approached a wide-open front door and was only asked once who she was and if she could be helped (“I think Jerilyn is upstairs … that is a gorgeous purse, Mrs. Johnston!”), but she had the run of the house if she wished. There was noise from the backyard, lots of whooping and hollering; she glimpsed a few Sigma Kappa Nus, all in ratty sweatshirts and gym pants. Jerene permitted herself a small tour, the dining salon, the main living area and their beaten-down barely presentable furniture, the smell of beer, perfume, Febreze carpet cleaner …

Jerilyn was asleep when her mother knocked on the door. Jerilyn let her in and then returned to lie on a bunk bed, curled up in several blankets with Tylerlea’s teddy bear within reach. Her mother leaned against the desk, preferring to stand for the most unpleasant part of their discussion.

“Jerilyn, darling. The worst thing in life is feeling like you have no control over things. I try to avoid those situations at all costs. It’s like my committee work.” Jerene breathed, knowing she was stalling for time. “I’d rather be president and run the whole show, even if it takes a year off my life, or do nothing at all, but I can’t abide being somewhere in between where I don’t have any power yet am supposed to do things for everyone to look at and judge.”

Jerilyn just stared at her mother, waiting to hear something that applied to her situation.

“You have to make a decision today. And it’s one of those decisions that you have to live with your whole life. A job you can quit, a boyfriend you can break up with. Even a marriage you can get out of, as your sister has amply demonstrated, though we don’t approve of that sort of thing. Almost anything can be undone, but some things
cannot
be undone once committed to. They can merely be decided upon. And you have to make such a decision—a decision which will
absolutely
conclude the matter in question. Do you understand?”

Jerilyn did not understand, but gave up a nod as if she did.

“Either you accuse this boy of a crime…” The word
rape
still need not be said, for once released into the air, Jerene sensed, it might have a life of its own. “… and have him arrested and put on trial, for which you will have to single-handedly take the stand and convict him—starting right now by our going to the police and filing a report and having a doctor examine you … intimately. Or, you chalk this up to a misunderstanding and never think about it again.”

Jerilyn mumbled, “But couldn’t we—couldn’t I—”

“Darling, those are the only options. Prosecute this boy and spend the next few years, and few trials, I suspect, since he’ll appeal and all that, devoting yourself to punishing him for what he did last night or call it a learning experience and never, ever mention it to anyone.”

With her daughter thinking it over, Jerene gently paced the room, to the window and back. “If,” Jerene began again, “you wish to take this boy to court and put him in jail, your father and I will support you. We will spend whatever it takes on lawyers, and it will take a lot, Jeriflower, a whole pile of money, since I suspect his parents are well off, that could be better spent sending you to Europe or buying clothes for a job interview—you name it. What does this boy’s father do, by the way?”

“I don’t know.”

Jerene, her back to Jerilyn, stopped pacing. “Darling, in the future, you may not invite to a bed any young man about whom you do not know his father’s profession, his eventual means, his status in this world. That is a one-way ticket to the mobile-home park. These are most important details. I did not…” Jerene now stood by the window, looking down on the spectacle in the backyard. Young sorority girls in cutoff jeans and tube tops washing cars for charity, lathered up, wet, receiving the hoots and catcalls of the university boys, who were bringing their sports cars, their Audis and Saabs and father’s Lexuses down the side lane to wait in line to offer up their dollars for a car wash and a nudie show, with these girls, like the harlots of the Old Testament, splaying themselves on the automotive idols, all but mounting the hood ornaments … “I did not,” she continued, a little absently, “approve of your being here, spending this sort of money and wasting time. I did not want you to drop anchor in a place like this but now that you are here you must promise me to cast an eye for only the best, most wonderful men of good family and, yes, fortune if you can find it.”

Jerilyn said, “Mama, all the other girls—”

“Many of the girls here are whores. Their mothers were probably trash, too, whatever their pedigree. You can direct the men who can’t behave themselves to those girls who’ll spread their legs gladly. It hardly matters what they do, it only matters what you do.”

Jerilyn’s one gasp of rebellion: “I pledged Sigma Kappa Nu because I, for once, wanted to have a little fun.”

“Jeriflower, let me clarify your mission here at the University of North Carolina. You’re at Carolina to pick up facility with some subject so you can work until you get married. Learn to do something you enjoy for a little while then retire to a nice home with a nice husband and have some nice children. There are many fine men to attach yourself to. Marry a future surgeon, a lawyer, at least. Trade your good looks and good name for an even better life than we have, darling. So
your
daughter can do as she pleases.”

“Why can’t I do as I please?”

“Because you are
my
daughter.” Jerene pulled the curtains closed, as a duel with the garden hose broke out, shrill squeals and hard nipples through cotton tops for all to see. She turned to Jerilyn, offering her daughter a more loving countenance. In a few hours, three or four at the most, this whole episode would be behind them. Jerene said gently, “You will not get pregnant here, you may not be the girl everyone whispers about having had an abortion. You may not be the sorority tramp—”

“Mama, I wouldn’t!”

“Last night, apparently, you were well on the way. Now what’s it going to be? Shall we go to the police and let them insert some kind of kit into you, collect some … some sample or will we wrap this up here and now?”

Jerilyn wasn’t sad anymore, just exhausted, defeated. “I’m not going to sit through some trial and have some lawyer call me names.”

“That’s very sensible. But what about part two?”

“Whadya mean, part two?”

“I mean, are we agreed that this is finished
right here and now,
that you are not going to dwell on this? You cannot decide not to press charges and then gossip around creation that you were assaulted—that will have consequences, and not just for the boy. You must decide that it never happened.”

“Never happened.”

“I have no intention, Jerilyn, of paying for ten years of therapy as you
relive
and relive it, and—oh whatever you see on
Oprah
these days from people who can’t buck up and move on. There’ll be no hating yourself and turning to drink and pills…”

“Oh, Mama.”

“… and falling apart over what is really a small thing like this kind … this kind of miscalculation.”

“You don’t want me to even
think
about what happened?”

“I most certainly do not. Unless it stops you from doing something equally foolish in the future.”

“All right.”

“Repeat after me,” Jerene said, raising her hand as if administering an oath. Jerilyn raised her hand warily as her mother pronounced, “I am a Jarvis woman.”

“I’m a Jarvis woman.”

“There will be much in life that will not go our way.”

Jerilyn rolled her eyes, but said it.

“But we will make our choices clearly and never look back.”

Jerilyn dutifully repeated that as well.

“And this misadventure is now officially behind me.”

“And this misadventure, Mama, is now officially behind me.”

Jerene now sat on the bedside and put her arm around her daughter. “Now don’t you feel a little better? It’s
done,
and now you can move on. I might have thought a hundred times about whether I should have married your father. He should have married a Civil War cannon, I think.”

Jerilyn smiled again, then chuckled, the first laughter since the assault.

“But I made up my mind not to be one of those unhappy women. One of those women who is always second-guessing herself, trade up, do better, outthink, overthink—there’s no future in it. He’s who I married. I was there at the altar, I could have said no, but I said yes, and that’s the end of it. You cannot go through life regretting or second-guessing everything.”

“No, Mama.”

“You can control what you do from here on out, so let’s dwell on that, Jeriflower.” Jerene kissed her daughter’s cheek. “Oh your hair smells nice. It must’ve cost the earth whatever you put in it.”

“It’s just old bargain shampoo, Mama.”

Jerene retrieved the purse she had laid on the desktop. Jerilyn had two hundred-dollar bills pressed into her hand. “Well, no bargain goods for this pretty eligible young woman, with her debut coming up just around the corner. You buy the best thing there is for my best little angel, hm?” Another kiss, and a tighter hug. “Now who was this boy?”

Jerilyn faltered. “What does it matter? I thought it was behind us.”

“No, you’re putting it behind
you,
darling. It is not quite over for your mother. His parents shall be made aware of their son’s behavior—”

“Oh Mama, no.”

“I will have his name.”

*   *   *

This could have waited until another day, a late afternoon without Jerene’s Mint by Gaslight scheduled to begin in five hours, but the boy in question hailed from Durham, and the parents’ address was easily found with the help of a service station map. In any event, Jerene reflected that in another hour, three at most, this would all be behind them and then she could focus on her little speech tonight. A nice two-hour drive back home where she could rehearse and practice—just perfect.

Jerene pulled up into the driveway, 683 Grosvenor Lane, in an upscale neighborhood near the Southpoint Mall, not a mile from the interstate. Not a fine old district of columned houses and edenic vegetation, but something newer, something not there ten years ago. Jerene had seen more vulgar mansions—the inside would tell the tale. It wasn’t polite to just drop in. Manners, even in a crisis. Though yards from their front door, she called the MacArthurs’ number.

“My name is Jerene Johnston and I am parked in your driveway,” she began when Mrs. MacArthur answered. “I am sorry to disturb you on a Sunday but there is something we must urgently discuss concerning our children, my daughter Jerilyn, and your son Luke.”