The Guilty One (27 page)

But that wasn't the whole story. This was the point, in the occasional recounting of Karl's childhood, when Ron usually gave a self-deprecating laugh and segued into his kindergarten escapades. Karl, in kindergarten, showed an early aptitude for things mechanical and proved it by disassembling everything he could get his hands on: a pencil sharpener, the stacked bookcases, plush toys with internal speakers, a child lock on a small refrigerator. These were the sort of “safe” anecdotes suitable for dinner parties and other gatherings, getting the point across that one's child was exceptional without actually claiming superior aptitude. Deb, who was better at this sort of thing than Ron, would gracefully take his handoff and run with it, freeing him to recede back to silence, until the couples gradually separated into groups: women in the kitchen, men by the wet bar or the television.

This, however, wasn't that kind of occasion. As they talked, Ron had the sense that they were coconspirators, refugees from the vapidity of the other parents—who were no doubt now finishing their onion flowers and umbrella drinks and headed back to watch the late show in their rooms.

And the conversation deepened.

Maris circled around some revelation about her marriage, and though it was clear to Ron that she wouldn't reveal the details, no matter how much she drank, she was in the mood to test and examine its secret depths. She too seemed to be feeling the odd freedom of their circumstances: this dim hotel bar, this aimless evening. Her murky hints and intimations lifted a corner on the curtain of her life and Ron was eager for the view.

“He's not the person I thought I married,” she finally summarized, a bit slurringly, after a series of vague hints and parries.

Ron, who'd never formed much of an opinion of Jeff—he was away a lot, working in other cities, the kind of smugly successful guy who was a dime a dozen in Linden Creek—felt paradoxically moved to defend him.

“None of us are, though,” he interjected. “It's impossible to reveal your whole true self to someone you love, if you want to keep that love alive.”

Where had that come from? Slightly embarrassed, Ron looked down into his whiskey, shaking the ice against the glass; the bartender had poured the last couple a little stiffer after Ron had slapped a ten down on the tray for a tip.

“Oh, I don't know.” Maris frowned. “Some people can. Some can't. I mean, I'm pretty much the same as who I was before I got married. I didn't hold anything back. I mean I know people change, and I've changed some, I guess. But the core—that's still the same.”

“But there must be things, you know, things that happened or that you did, that you didn't tell Jeff about. That you didn't tell anyone. I mean, come on, we all have that, parts of ourselves that we grew out of or, I don't know, mastered.”

Maris gazed at him thoughtfully over the rim of her glass. “But that's just what I'm talking about, with Jeff. I feel like there are . . . parts of him, that he, that maybe he covered up or disguised or whatever. That he
kept
from me.”

“But, Maris.” Maybe, if he hadn't been drinking, if the chemistry between them hadn't seemed so strong, he would have simply changed the subject. But here was the perfect opportunity to explore something unsettled within him—with this woman who had grown not only more attractive to him but far more interesting, with her melancholy and her self-deprecation, the sense she gave him that she not only wanted to hear but wouldn't judge him for anything he said.

And it was suddenly very tempting to talk. There were things, deeply hidden things, that Ron had wearied of keeping buried. He didn't need a confessional, that wasn't it exactly; the burden he carried wasn't something he thought he could divest himself of by telling. It was the hiding that galled him, the fact that having made the decision long ago to keep a part of himself in shadow, he'd unwittingly committed himself to a lifetime of careful masking. Which could be pretty fucking exhausting, really.

“Say Jeff had some things in his past that he wasn't proud of. Not telling you—in a way, that's a high-order compliment. Or, no, that's not exactly what I mean.”

“It's the whole gender thing,” Maris said. “The strong-and-silent stereotype, is that what you're getting at?”

“Well—yeah. But I mean, with these things, it's always possible to look at them a few ways. Dr. Phil and his whole crew want men to vomit up all kinds of revelations all the time. It's like an epidemic.”

“The emasculation of the American man.”

“You laugh, but there's something to it. A man wants to be strong for his family, his wife . . . the people who look up to him.”

“Okay, Lone Ranger,” Maris said. That smile, both elliptical and encouraging. “So what are you covering up?”

Looking back on it much later, Ron would identify this moment as a turning point, a sea change launched by one crossed line. What he would never understand was why it felt so right to say what he did next. Of course he had fantasized about telling someone, some fair and gentle confessor who would remind him that he was still a good man. Someone who would still respect him, after. But why this woman, why this night, this bar, when he was far from home and so much time had gone by, so much water under the bridge? When the statute of limitations even for one's own inner voices, the harshest critics of all, should surely have run out?

And besides: there was something overtly sexual about her invitation. She wanted his story . . . but her encouragement was shaded with the promise of more. It was something far different from the pleasant guilty rush that came from imagining one of the women at work—Renee Baker, most often, from HR—with her skirt hiked up in his office.

It was the being seen. Being
understood
.

“Well.” More rattling of the ice in his glass. “Before I was married—hell, before I turned eighteen—I got into some trouble. Sealed juvie record kind of trouble. And I've never told anyone since. Not even Deb.”

One finely shaped eyebrow went up. “What happened?”

“I . . . beat up a guy. It wasn't just me, there were four of us. It was after a football game. State championship, us against De LaSalle. They were full of themselves even back then, came down in a rented bus like they thought they were rock stars. Only after the game, these two jokers stuck around. They wanted trouble. Came looking for us; we were leaving a party they must have heard about. They had bats, they started on the car, smashed a couple of windows. Later they said that was all they were going to do. But one of them took a swing at one of my friends.”

Ron had managed to put this episode in the past for the most part, but there was still the dull vague pall that fell over him every fall, when the kids put the hand-painted banners up around school, the home games and snack shack and all of that. Gale's team was mediocre, but Ron had still been relieved when Karl picked water polo over football. Having to sit in the stands, that would have been tough.

“So there was a fight?” Maris asked. Her lips were stained red from the wine, even after she licked them.

“Well . . . okay, yeah, I guess. The truth is, though, I went kind of nuts. I took a swing at the guy and I just got lucky, no other explanation, he dropped his bat. My friends took the other guy down. But I just kept going.” He swallowed, tiny beads of perspiration popping out on his forehead. “I got him on the ground. He was big, solid, not too fast and kind of drunk, but I just couldn't seem to make anything connect, you know? I mean he was
meaty
, I kept hitting him but it felt like it wasn't really hurting him.”

Until he really hurt him.

Ron gulped his drink before continuing. “He was on his back on the sidewalk. His legs were kind of flopped over in the street. And I . . . I—I broke his shin. Both bones.”

“Oh my God.” She winced, and Ron had to look away. “How?”

“Uh, well, I pretty much put all my weight on his leg.” Jumped on it, a fact that even his friends seemed shocked by. The sound, the cracking of bone and the screaming that followed, instantly killed whatever rage had built up inside him. “I knew right away it was the worst mistake of my life up until then. I stayed with him while the other guy went to call the ambulance. My friends took off but I . . . I stayed.”

“Wow.” Maris sounded more awed than horrified. “I can't really even imagine. Was that the end? Or did it happen again?”

“It . . .” Was he really going to do this? It was tempting, because Maris hadn't recoiled from him. It felt like absolution and it felt like something more. Maybe he was conflating the two; maybe, when sober, he would realize that he'd mistaken a hard-on for an opportunity to unburden himself. “There was one other really bad time. I mean, I had the temper, I guess you'd call it, all through my younger days, but I mostly managed to stay on top of it.”

His better sense took hold as he teetered on the brink of telling: about the fury that would surge for no good reason; how a bad day, a snub or slight or provocation, could seem like the world turning on him, and how tempted he was to respond with violence. But Maris's sweater had dipped again, showing the creamy expanse of her neck, her fine collarbone, the black lace of her bra. The wine was gone; so was his drink.

Ron dug in his wallet for a few bills and tossed them onto the table, never breaking Maris's gaze. “My whole point is that we all have these things inside us, things we'd erase if we could,” he said carefully, as he slid his hand across the table and laced his fingers with hers. She didn't pull away, and the corners of her mouth twitched. “But we're all at the mercy of our emotions, wouldn't you agree? Of our hearts? Even if it's just in the moment?”

Maris slid her chair back and stood. She picked up her purse and smoothed her skirt.

“I'm in room 330,” she said. “Give me five minutes, in case the lemmings are still out of their cages.”

MONDAY MORNING MARIS
woke with a pounding headache and a horrible taste in her mouth. She brushed her teeth, and then brushed them again. She was showered and up to Norris's apartment by ten o'clock, but fifteen minutes into trying to work she realized it was hopeless: every time she leaned over a box, she felt nauseous. After writing Norris a note saying she didn't feel well but that she'd be back to work on the sorting tomorrow, she took the coffee he had left for her and went back downstairs.

She could spend the day working on her job search, revising her résumé and emailing it to Alana to look over before she started submitting it in earnest.

She stared at the job listings in the South Bay for a while before she finally got up the nerve to type
Oakland
into the search box. Just for fun. Just to see.

TUESDAY, SHE FELT
much better. While Norris was at work, she managed to go through the remaining boxes of the papers and organize them by type: several refinancings, years' worth of tax records, the titles to two old cars, medical records, insurance claims. And more unusual things: a set of blueprints for a one-story house labeled Cottage II, a receipt for cremation from Caring Pet Cemetery, a police report for a fender bender. She put them all in labeled folders and packed them into bankers' boxes where Norris could deal with them when and if he was ready.

There was still quite a bit to do, but Maris wanted to knock off a little early. She'd bought a new razor, shaving cream, tweezers—she still wasn't sure what she was expecting from her date with George, but she had decided to take a little extra time getting ready.

It was when she was moving a box of linens that she made an unexpected discovery. On top of the first was a quilt whose blocks were each embroidered with a woman's name, the sort of friendship quilt that Maris's friends' mothers back in Kansas owned, gifts from weddings or keepsakes from a place left behind. Maris suspected that it had belonged to Norris's mother, and she carefully unfolded it to see if she recognized any of the names from the paperwork.

After examining it, she folded it back up and was about to replace it when she noticed that in the box below the quilt was a large clasp envelope stuffed with papers that she had missed. She took it out and discovered that underneath it were baby clothes. Maris took them out and laid them on the bed: pinafores, bonnets, footie sleepers, ruffled diaper covers, all soft from washing—two of everything. She glanced at the two pretty painted headboards, one missing its mattress, and shook the papers carefully from the envelope.

A small plastic album fell out. Maris flipped through: there were photos of twin baby girls from birth through age two or three. If they weren't identical they were close, and in several of the photographs, one or both of them were being held by Norris.

She set the album aside and went quickly through the papers. There were more photographs, mostly school pictures once the girls got to be five or six years old. In the most recent, the girls were eleven or so, their hair fastidiously styled, braces on their teeth. Their names were Kayla and Keyna, and they were pretty, with their father's wide-set eyes and strong chin.

There were a handful of letters, painstakingly written in a childish hand:
Dear Daddy Thank You for the Presints.
A torn envelope with a return address in Bakersfield. And a handwritten ledger on a piece of lined paper, dated 2004, in which the months were listed down the page, next to figures ranging from $450 to, in December, $1,125.

Norris had had two daughters, and it seemed that he'd been careless enough to lose them.

Glancing at the clock, Maris refolded the quilt and laid it on top of the contents of the last box. She was cutting it close if she wanted to take her time getting ready. Besides, she needed time to think.

GEORGE ARRIVED AT
six and announced that he had cooked, and Maris pretended to change her mind and join him only because he promised homemade pasta. He lived in a duplex near the Berkeley border; his neighbors' yard was full of Big Wheels and Little Tikes basketball hoops, and while he worked in the kitchen Maris could hear a baby crying through the walls, a television blaring PBS. George was unfazed, soon setting a plate in front of Maris with enough spaghetti carbonara to feed her for a week.