Secret Lives (29 page)

Sharon bit her lip and looked away from
him.

“Look, I'll go in and talk to Joan and Pat in
the morning,” he said.

“It's not that simple, Ben. They have a legal
responsibility to call.”

“Sharon.” He looked down at her. “How long
have you known me?”

“Nine years.”

“Have you ever known me to lie to you?”

“No.”

“Then I'm asking you to believe me now.”

She started to cry again. “It's my fault,”
she said. “Things haven't been good between us since the surgery.”
He sat down again, moving his chair next to hers so he could hold
her. He understood what she was saying. A year ago she'd had
surgery on her back, and for a long time afterward they couldn't
make love. When her doctor finally gave his okay she seemed to have
lost interest. But he'd viewed it as a phase. Marriage was
cyclical. Eventually sex would be good again. It was true, though,
that the lack of physical closeness had spilled over into the rest
of their relationship. And it was true that he looked forward to
seeing Bliss in the evening more than he did Sharon.

He pressed his lips to the smooth, freckled
skin of her neck. Her skin was warm, her scent comforting. “I
didn't do anything to Bliss.” He lifted his head. “But even if I
did, it wouldn't be your fault. I know you haven't felt like
yourself this past year.”

She looked up at him. “I'm so scared,
Ben.”

He felt none of her fear, though looking back
later, he knew he should have been terrified. He was naïve, a true
innocent who trusted that everything would work out. He kissed
Sharon and was surprised by the heat in her response. He led her to
the bedroom and they made love, hungrily, the way they had when
they were new to each other. He was inside her when she came, her
body reaching, arching. But then she began to sob and her muscles
fell limp, her arms slack on the bed, her legs lifeless when only a
few seconds earlier they'd been gripping him. And he couldn't go
on, not with her like that, her face turned away from him in
disgust. He pulled out of her carefully, went into the bathroom,
showered, dressed, and came back to sit on the edge of the bed.

She'd pulled the spread over her and she lay
on her side, weeping into a tissue. Her ponytail was coming loose
and he gently tugged out the rubber band and smoothed her hair over
her throat. “Let's go get Bliss,” he said. “Let's straighten this
whole thing out before it goes any further.”

“Oh, God, Ben.” She rolled onto her back to
look at him. “Why would she say you did it if you didn't?”

He felt a fury in his chest, like something
trying to escape, to explode. “I did nothing!”

She stood up and pulled the spread around
her. Her chin quivered; her wet cheeks glistened in the light from
the bathroom. "I love you so much, Ben, but I…” She shook her head.
“I can't sleep in here with you tonight. I'm sorry, I just…" She
pressed her hand to her face as though she might be able to hold
back her tears.

“Sharon.” He reached for her, but she stepped
away.

“I'll sleep in the guest room,” she said, and
he watched her gather the spread around her shoulders and turn her
back on him.

He was tempted to drive over to Alex and
Leslie's and talk to Bliss himself, but he thought better of it.
Later on he would berate himself for not going. That had been his
only chance, the last time he wasn't helpless to save himself.
Could he have talked to Bliss, understood what she was trying to
say? Could he have turned the entire tide of this nightmare right
then? If he'd been able to see the future, he would have gone to
see Bliss that night. But he never dreamed the devastation that lay
ahead of him.

He had nearly finished teaching his two
o'clock class the next day when he spotted a police officer in
uniform standing outside the open door of his classroom. He tried
to slow things down. The dismissal bell rang, but still he talked
to the class, droning on as the minutes passed. His students
shifted in their seats, their books piled on their desks, ready to
make their escapes. They looked at each other, asking with their
eyes, What's Alexander up to? Finally he let them go. Then he sat
down at his desk and waited.

The officer identified himself and said, too
loudly, “You are under arrest for the sexual abuse of your
daughter.” He read Ben his rights and, although Ben said he would
go quietly, handcuffed him. He was led out that way, through the
interminably long hallway of the science building, past openmouthed
students, many of them his. He wanted to smile at them
reassuringly, offer a joke or two, but his throat was dry. He kept
his eyes focused on the stream of sunlight pouring through the door
at the end of the hall.

The policeman pushed him into the backseat of
the car with a growl of disgust. Everyone was taking this very
seriously, and for the first time he thought that maybe something
had happened to Bliss. If that was the case, it had to have been
someone other than him. He trembled in the backseat of the car. His
wrists burned where they were cuffed. He could not tolerate the
thought of anyone touching her.

He ran down the list of people Bliss spent
time with. Joan Dove. Sam and Jen. Alex and Leslie. Bliss's
occasional baby-sitter, the elderly Mrs. Blayton. None of them fit.
What about the kids in the neighborhood? There were a few older
kids that were pretty rough with the younger ones. Maybe when Bliss
was playing at another child's house? Someone else's daddy? Or
maybe the young maintenance man who worked at Bliss's day care,
that ferret-eyed, seedy kid that Ben had never liked to see around
the children. It would all have to be looked at, wouldn't it?

He used his one phone call to reach Sam at
the clinic. Sam was in a session with a patient, but Ben told his
service it was urgent, to interrupt him, and he sounded desperate
enough that the woman put him through.

“I've been arrested,” Ben said. “I need you
to post bail.”

Sam was quiet on the other end of the phone.
What could he be thinking? Ben in jail? Ben, who had never even had
a parking ticket?

“Why are you there, Ben?” Sam's voice was
quiet, gentle. Ben pictured Sam's patient sitting in the brown
leather chair, imagining that Sam was talking to another patient, a
fellow sufferer.

“I don't want to go into it over the phone.
How soon can you get here?”

“I have one more patient and then I'll see
you.” Sam chose his words carefully. “About six-thirty. And Ben?”
There was no euphemistic way for Sam to ask this question. “How
much do I need?”

“One thousand.” Ben shut his eyes. Sam could
afford it, but that didn't make the asking any less humiliating.
“I'll pay you back tomorrow when I can get to the bank.”

“No problem. See you later.”

He sat in the passenger seat of Sam's
Mercedes, staring at the streetlights, their white glow blurred by
a freezing rain. He'd told Sam he couldn't go home, that he wanted
to go to Sam and Jen's instead. But he didn't tell him why. He
didn't tell him he was not allowed to be in the same place as
Bliss. “If you want to stay at home, your daughter will have to go
into foster care,” they'd told him. That hardly left him a
choice.

He was quiet as they drove, dreading the
moment he would have to tell Sam the truth. He didn't want to see
the same revulsion in Sam's face that he saw in everyone
else's.

Sam pulled up at a red light. He looked over
at his brother. “C'mon, Ben. Get it out.”

Ben met his eyes. “They think I hurt Bliss,”
he said. “Molested her.”

Sam's jaw dropped and Ben quickly resumed
staring out the window. “Jesus,” Sam said.

“I didn't do it.”

“Of course you didn't.” Sam started driving
again. “I can't believe anyone would think you did.”

“Even Sharon thinks I did.”

Sam nodded. “Well, that's good. That's
healthy. Bliss is her baby. She wants to protect her at all costs
to herself. She can't think straight about you right now. What
evidence do they have?”

“A rash. But it's worse than that—Bliss told
them I did it.”

“What?” Sam looked at him and Ben thought he
saw a glimmer of doubt about him in Sam's green eyes.

“I didn't do it, Sam.” His jaw ached. He was
close to tears.

Sam shook his head. “She's such a
happy-go-lucky kid.”

“She used to be. She's changed, though.
Sharon and I noticed it but we didn't make much out of it till
now.”

“She seemed fine when we saw her last
weekend. The only problem with spending time around Bliss is that
it upsets Jen, she's so hungry for a baby.”

“How's the adoption process going?” Ben
thought of the hours Jen and Sam had spent having their lives
scrutinized to see if they'd make suitable parents. He wondered now
if he'd be a liability for them.

Sam sighed. “Another year or two of waiting.
I'll be forty by the time we get the baby. Forty!” He shook his
head.

“I hope this doesn't screw anything up for
you,” Ben said. “I mean, if the adoption agency discovers you have
a brother who—”

“Shut up, Ben. We're calling a lawyer friend
of mine the second we step inside the house. You'll come out of
this thing smelling like a rose.”

Even Jen believed him. At least she did until
she drove over to his house to get the clothes Sharon had packed
for him. When she came back she was very quiet. A few times he
caught her staring at him. Just before bed she hugged him and said,
“It's hard for me to believe you could do it, Ben, but even if you
did, you can get help. Sam knows people who could help you. And
we'll stick by you no matter what happens."

He backed away from her, disappointed. “I
didn't do it, Jen.” He turned and walked into the guest room to
spend the first of many nights alone.

–
29–

It was dusk when she reached his cabin.
Darkness already filled the forest and was spilling into the
clearing, and the stillness of the air sent a shiver through her.
She slipped the picnic basket over her arm and knocked on the
door.

Several minutes passed and she knocked again.
Ben's truck was parked in the clearing, so he was here. She thought
of the Valium in his bathroom and put her hand on the doorknob, but
it turned in her hand as he opened the door.

He looked at her without interest, as though
he was neither surprised nor pleased to find her there. He still
wore the sweaty blue T-shirt he'd had on in the pit, and in the
dusky light she could see a smear of dirt across his cheek.

“Can I come in?”

He stood back to let her into the room. The
smell of whiskey, faint but unmistakable, teased her as she passed
him. There were no lights on in the cabin, but in the triangle of
gray light from the open door she saw the stony mask of his face.
She knew that mask. She'd seen it in the mirror any number of
times.

“I've been worried about you,” she said.

“I don't want your charity.”

“Kyle and Lou think you're innocent.”

He sighed, and she heard anger in the sound.
“Fine.”

“Ben…” She spotted the open whiskey bottle on
the apple crate by his bed and didn't finish what she'd started to
say. “I'd like to use your bathroom, please.”

He shrugged and closed the door. “Be my
guest.”

The Valium was still on the sink. She poured
the pills into her hand and counted them. Twenty. She dropped them
back into the container and left the bathroom.

“I brought some food with me.” She nodded
toward the basket. “You probably haven't eaten yet.”

He picked up the bottle of whiskey and sat
down on the bed, his back against the wall. “Why are you here?” he
asked.

She took the bottle from his hand, screwed
the cap on, and set it on the crate. “I want to hear your side of
what happened.”

Even in the failing light she could see his
cheeks redden as he leaned forward. “What gives you the right to
come here and tell me that I can't drink and I have to spill my
guts to you? Do this, Ben, do that. Jump through this hoop and then
maybe I'll believe you.”

Eden spoke quietly. “Because I need to
believe you. I trusted you. I let myself feel something for you and
I haven't done that in a very long time.”

Ben looked down at the blue-and-white quilt
and smoothed his hand across it. “I thought by some miracle you
might say to me, 'Ben, I know you couldn't possibly have done it.'
“

She sat down on the edge of the bed. “Please
tell me everything, Ben. Please convince me you're innocent.”

His laugh was bitter. “I couldn't even
convince my lawyer I was innocent.”

“Maybe I have a bigger investment in
believing you than your lawyer did.”

“Well, Sharon certainly had an investment in
believing me and even she…” He shook his head.

“She thought you did it?”

He screwed up his face. “I never did figure
Sharon out. I felt sorry for her. I know she loved me and I think
deep down she believed I was innocent. I'd watch her on the stand
and she'd say nice things about me. But every good thing she'd say
would be turned around by the so-called experts until I looked like
the biggest pervert that ever walked the earth. The evidence was
very convincing. I would have been convinced myself, so I can't
blame her for assuming I'd done it.”

He'd had a good marriage once, she thought.
There was still caring in his voice when he spoke about Sharon.
“Tell me everything.” She moved next to him on the bed. She could
just make out the line of his nose, the white of his eyes.

And he began to talk.

His voice was quiet as he described the
change in Bliss's behavior, the day-care teacher's suspicions. It
was hard for him to get the words out, and pauses stretched between
his sentences like silent bands of pain.

“The thing I feel guiltiest about is that her
teacher picked up signs that we completely missed. Like the
masturbation. We thought it was best not to make an issue of it.
What would you do if Cassie started masturbating a lot?”