Malice (40 page)

“Are you kidding?” Charles said in disbelief. It happened to her the most when she was alone or with the children. Grace complained to Charles about it constantly. A woman had walked up to her that day at the gas station, and out of the blue shouted “Bang, ya got him, didn't you, Grace?” “I feel like Bonnie and Clyde.” She had to laugh at it sometimes. It really was absurd, and although people mentioned it to him sometimes too, they never seemed to ask as much or as viciously as they did of Grace. It was as though they wanted to torment her. She had even gotten a highly irritated letter from Cheryl Swanson in Chicago, saying that she was retired now, and she and Bob were divorced, no surprise to Grace, but she couldn't understand why Grace had never told her she'd been in prison.

“Because she wouldn't have hired me,” she said to Charles as she tossed the letter at him to show him. There were lots of letters like that now, and crank calls, and one blank page smeared with blood spelling out the word “Murderess,” which they'd turned over to the police. But she'd had a nice letter from Winnie, in Philadelphia, offering her love and support, and another from Father Tim, who was in Florida, as the chaplain of a retirement community. He sent her his love and prayers, and reminded her that she was God's child, and He loved her.

She reminded herself of it constandy the day of the interview. It had all been carefully staged, and Charles's P.R. people had reviewed the questions, or so they thought. Mysteriously, the questions they'd approved for the interview had disappeared, and Grace found herself asked, first off, what it had meant to her to have sex with her father.

“Meant to me?” She looked at her interviewer in amazement.
“Meant
to me? Have you ever worked with victims of abuse? Have you ever seen what child abusers do to children? They rape them, they mutilate them … they
kill
them … they torture them, they put cigarettes out on their little arms and faces … they fry them on radiators … they do a lot of very ugly things … have you ever asked any of them what it
meant
to them to have boiling water poured on their face, or their arm nearly ripped out of its socket? It means a lot to children when people do things like that to them. It means that no one loves them, that they're in constant danger … it means living with terror every moment of the day. That's what it means … that's what it meant to me.” It was a powerful statement, and the interviewer looked taken aback as Grace fell silent.

“Actually I … we … I'm sure that all your supporters have been wondering how you feel about your prison record being revealed to the public.”

“Sad … sorry … I was the victim of some terrible crimes, committed within the sanctity of the family. And I in turn did a terrible thing, killing my father. But I had paid for it before, and I paid for it after. I think revealing it, in this way, scandalizing it, sensationalizing the agony that our family went through, and tormenting my children and my husband now, serves no purpose. It's done in such a way as to embarrass us, and not to inform the public.” She talked then about the people giving interviews, claiming to know her, whom she had never even seen before, and the lies they told to make themselves important. She didn't mention the tabloid by name, but she said that one of them had told shocking lies in all of their headlines. And the interviewer smiled at that.

“You can't expect people to believe what they read in tabloids, Mrs. Mackenzie.”

“Then why print it?” Grace said firmly.

The interviewer asked a thousand unfortunate questions, but eventually she asked Grace to tell them about “Help Kids!” and her work with the victims of child abuse. She told them about St. Mary's and Saint Andrew's, and “Help Kids!” She made a plea for children everywhere that they never had to go through what she had gone through. Despite their probing and the lack of sympathy with which they had handled much of it, and the spuriousness, she had turned it into a deeply moving and very sympathetic interview, and everyone congratulated her afterwards. Charles was particularly proud of her, and they spent a quiet evening after the cameras had left, and talked about all that had happened. It had been a terrible time for Grace, but at least she had said her piece now.

They spent her birthday at home, and Abigail had friends over that night. But only because her parents had insisted. It was her birthday too. And Grace was very quiet as she sat at the pool with Charles. She was still feeling shaken and withdrawn, and she hated going anywhere. People were still harassing her, even in bank lines and public rest rooms. She was happier at home, behind her walls, and she dreaded going out, even with Charles. In spite of his campaign, it was a very quiet summer.

But by August, finally, everything seemed to be back to normal. There were no more photographers camped outside, and she hadn't been on the cover of the tabloids in weeks.

“I guess you're just not popular anymore,” Charles teased. He actually managed to take a week off to be with her, and he was glad he had. Her asthma had gotten bad again, for the first time in years, and she was feeling ill. He was sure it was stress, but this time she suspected what it was before he did. She was pregnant.

“In the middle of all this furor? How did you manage that?” He was shocked at first, but he was happy too. Their children were what brought them the most joy in all their years together. He worried about her during the campaign though. The baby was due in March, and she was two months pregnant, which meant that she'd be campaigning all through the early months. She'd be five months pregnant at the election. He wanted her to take it easy, and try not to wear herself out too much, or get too upset over the press when they went back to Washington. And then he groaned as he thought of it. “I'll be fifty-nine years old when this baby is born, I'll be eighty when he or she graduates from college. Oh my God, Grace.” He smiled ruefully, and she scolded him.

“Oh shut up. I'm starting to look like the older woman in your life, so don't complain to me. You look like you're thirty.” He nearly did too. Not thirty, but forty easily. He had barely been touched by the hands of time, but at thirty-nine she didn't look bad either.

In September, they moved back to Washington. In spite of his campaign, they had had a quiet summer. They had only gone out with close friends in Greenwich, and because of the furor she'd caused in June, and her early pregnancy, he had done all of his campaigning without her.

Abigail started high school that year. Andrew went into his second year, and he had a new girlfriend, her father was the French ambassador. And Matt started third grade with all the usual commotion of new backpacks, school supplies, whether to have hot lunch or bring his own. For Matt, every day was still a big adventure.

They hadn't told them about the baby yet, Grace thought it was too soon. She was just three months pregnant, and they had decided to wait until after Matt's birthday in September. Grace had planned a party for him. And little by little, she started going out with Charles again. It was hard being seen again, knowing that her ugly past had become part of everyone's dinner conversation. But there hadn't been anything written about her in weeks, and she was feeling guilty about not campaigning with her husband.

It was a hot September Saturday afternoon, the day before Matthew's party, and Grace was buying some things they needed at Sutton Place Gourmet, like ice cream and plastic knives and forks and sodas. And as she stood at the checkout stand, waiting to pay, she almost fainted when she saw it. The latest edition of the tabloid
Thrill
had just been set out, and Charles hadn't been warned this time. There was a photograph of her nude, with her head thrown back and her eyes closed, right on the cover. There were two black boxes covering her breasts and her pubic area, and other than that, the photograph left nothing to the imagination. Her legs were spread wide, and she looked like she was
in
the throes of passion. The headline read “Senator's Wife Did Porno in Chicago.” She thought she was going to throw up as she gathered them up, and held a hundred-dollar bill out with a trembling hand. For a moment she didn't know what she was doing.

“You want
all
of them?” The young clerk looked surprised as she nodded. She was almost breathless. But her inhaler was her constant friend now.

“Do you have more?” she said hoarsely to him. And he nodded.

“Sure. In the back. You want them too?”

“Yes.” She bought fifty copies of
Thrill
, and the groceries she needed for Matt, and ran to her car, as though she had just bought the only copies in existence and she was going to hide them. And as she drove home, crying behind the wheel, she realized how stupid she had been. You couldn't buy them all up. It was like emptying the ocean with a teacup.

She ran into the house as soon as she stopped the car, but Charles was sitting in the kitchen looking stunned, holding a copy of the tabloid in his hands. His chief aide had just seen it and brought it to him. They had never warned them. The aide saw the look on Grace's face, and left immediately, and Charles looked at her with real shock for the first time. She had never seen him look as betrayed or as weary, and seeing him that way almost killed her.

“What is this, Grace?”

“I don't know.” She was crying as she sat down next to him, shaking. “I don't know …”

“It can't be you.” But it looked like her. You could see her face. Even though her eyes were closed, she was completely recognizable. And then suddenly, she knew … he must have taken off her clothes … he must have taken them all off. … The only thing she was wearing was a black ribbon around her neck. He must have put it on her, for sex appeal, while she was sleeping. The credit for the photograph said Marcus Anders. She went even paler than she was when she first saw it. And Charles had seen her look. He knew there was something to it. “Do you know who took this?”

She nodded, wishing that she could die for him. Wishing, for his sake, that she had never met him, or borne his children.

“What is this, Grace?” For the first time in sixteen years, his tone was icy. “When did you do this?”

“I don't know for sure that I did,” she said, choking on her own words as she sat down slowly at the kitchen table. “I … I went out with a photographer a few times in Chicago. I told you about him. He said he wanted to take pictures of me, and they wanted me to at the agency …” She faltered and he looked shocked.

“They wanted you to do porno? What kind of agency was this?”

“It was a modeling agency,” the life was going out of her. She couldn't fight this anymore, she couldn't defend herself forever. She would leave him if he wanted her to. She would do anything he wanted. “They wanted me to model, and he said he'd take some shots, like for a portfolio. We were friends. I trusted him, I liked him. He was the first man I'd ever gone out with. I was twenty-one years old. I had no experience. My roommates hated him, they were a lot smarter than I was. He took me to his studio, he played a lot of music, he poured me some wine … and he drugged me. I told you about it a long time ago.” But he no longer remembered. “I guess I must have passed out. I was completely out of it, and I think he took pictures of me when I was asleep, but I was wearing a man's shirt, it was no worse than that. I never took my clothes off.”

“How do you know that for sure?”

She looked at him honestly. She had never lied to him, and she didn't intend to start now. “I don't. I don't know anything. I thought he had raped me, but he hadn't. My roommate took me to a doctor and she said nothing had happened. I tried to get the negatives from him, and he wouldn't give them to me. My roommates finally said I should just forget it. He needed a release to use them, if I was recognizable, and if I wasn't, who cared anyway. I would have liked to get them back, but I knew I couldn't. At one point, he tried to make it sound like I'd signed a release, but then he gave me the impression that I hadn't. I don't see how I could have anyway. I was so stoned from what he gave me, I could barely see when I left.

“He showed the pictures to the head of the agency afterwards, and the head of the agency made a pass at me. He said the shots were pretty hot, but he said that I had a shirt on, so I figured nothing really terrible had happened. I never saw the pictures. I never saw him again. I never thought we'd be in this position, that I'd be married to someone important and we'd be vulnerable.” Now he could do anything he wanted. And they looked terrible. They looked like real porno. All she was wearing was a black ribbon she'd never seen before tied at her throat. And as she stared at the photograph, she saw that she looked drugged. She looked completely out of it, to her own eyes. But to a stranger, intent on seeing something lewd, it was everything they could have wanted. She couldn't believe anyone could do something like that. He had destroyed her life with a single picture. She just sat there, looking at Charles, her whole body sagging with grief as she saw the pain on his face. Killing her father in self-defense was bad enough, but how was he going to explain this to his constituents, the media, and their children?

“I don't know what to say. I can't believe you'd do such a thing.” He was overwhelmed, and his chin was quivering with unshed tears. He couldn't even look at her as he turned away and cried. Nothing he could have done to her could have been worse. She would have preferred it if he had hit her.

“I didn't do it, Charles,” she said weakly, crying too. She knew for a certainty that their marriage had just ended over Marcus's pictures. “I was drugged.”

“What a fool you were … what a fool …” She couldn't deny that. “And what a bastard he must have been to make you do that.” She nodded through her tears, unable to say anything in her own defense. And a moment later, Charles took the paper and went upstairs alone to their bedroom. She didn't follow him. She was beside herself, but she knew that on Monday, the day after Matt's party, she would have to leave him. She had to leave all of them. She couldn't keep putting them through this.