Off Season (14 page)

Everyone started bustling around the room like they were playing musical chairs because there were four of them plus the camera guy and only three chairs.

“Just you and me,” Mindy said. “I don’t want Grandpa here. Or Dr. Reynolds.”

Everybody stopped.

“I’m ten years old. I don’t need baby-sitters.”

“But, Mindy,” Dr. Reynolds protested, “I think it would be better for me to—”

She shook her head. “You already know what happened. You, too, Grandpa. Just let me do this so we can go home.”

Everyone but Mr. Winkman and the cameraman finally left the room.

•   •   •

Jill’s marriage was falling apart.

How could her marriage be falling apart?

Two weeks ago she was more in love than she’d ever dreamed possible. She’d hated every second that she and Ben had to be in separate towns, in separate rooms, in separate beds. Now, even though her heart would not stop aching, she looked for excuses to be somewhere else, anywhere, where this darkness might not follow.

The “somewhere else” she’d chosen now was the studio, where Jimmy and Devon were finishing the edit. She sat at her desk, the FedEx envelope nagging at her elbow, the contract as yet unsigned. In case she changed her mind.

For the who-knew-how-many-eth time, she scanned the paragraphs.
On air Monday through Friday, February 1st through 28th. Availability for preview publicity photos in December—date and location TBD
. There was no mention of a longer-term commitment, no hint that signing this could be the ruin of her marriage, the end of life as she now knew it. There was, of course, the standard morals clause. But Jill hadn’t been the one accused of “questionable” behavior that could reflect negatively on the show’s production or its image.

She wanted to ask Rita if she should do it. But that would open up that can of troublesome, forbidden worms.

“How many dubs?” Jimmy, who now stood beside her, asked.

Quickly, she tried to cover the contract with her hand, to hide those worms. “The same as for the Vermont piece?” There was no sense pretending that anyone but the feeder services would be interested in her work. There was no sense pretending that going direct to the networks—to
20/20
or
Dateline
—would work.

Jimmy nodded and went to the refrigerator and pulled
out a case of tapes, which they often stored there, safe from the island dampness. Before he shut the door, Jill noticed the bowl of blueberry buckle, partially eaten. She stopped herself from asking if they’d enjoyed it. Then she wondered if Amy really would have been worse off in L.A., where she might at least have had the chance to meet more kids her age, all of whom could not be bad.

Would Amy be angry if she signed on the dotted line? But Jill could not ask Amy, for her daughter would not know all the details.

She could not ask Amy and she could not ask Rita. She could only listen to her own heart and know that unless Ben got a better lawyer, the risk was too damn high.

Picking up the pen, she hesitated only briefly before signing in triplicate.

“We need to talk, Ben,” Jill said that night after a dinner of pot roast and carrots that they barely touched. Amy was at the tavern; now was as good a time as any.

Ben lowered his head. “I’m listening,” he said without enthusiasm.

She wanted to shout that she needed him to do more than listen. She needed him to stop acting defeated, to stop behaving as if she were not completely on his side. But shouting had never been Jill’s style. Nor was Ben the type of man one shouted at.

“Honey,” she said quietly, “I know you’re upset about the contract.”

He took his napkin from his lap and set it on the table. “What I’m upset about is your deceit.”

A twinge of guilt—
deserved
guilt, she knew—fluttered in her heart. “I know,” she replied. “And I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to deceive you.” Well, perhaps a little, but with good reason, she admitted only to herself. But now was not the time to mention that, or that she fully intended to
secure him a good lawyer. Nor was now the time to challenge him about which of the two of them was feeling more betrayed.

“I’m only afraid you think this is going to blow over,” Jill said, “as if you’ll wake up some morning and it will all be gone.”

Silence hung in the kitchen amid the lingering aromas of pot roast and onions and ten or twenty thousand meals Jill’s mother had cooked long before Ben sat here, long before Jill had known that she would, one day, truly fall in love.

He put his elbows on the table and looked straight into her eyes. “Don’t pretend to know how I feel,” he said, “because you don’t have a clue. Take today, for instance. You walked into the tavern right after I told Amy that I would try and convince you to let her rent Charlie’s apartment. She was so excited she gave me a hug and a kiss. Then I saw you standing there and the first thing I thought of was that you were wondering if you’d interrupted something … that if this man you’d married really was a … pervert.”

A tiny pool of acid bubbled up inside her throat. “I did not think that, Ben.” She lied because she felt she had to. She lied because she hated her doubt. “How can you even say that?” she asked, underscoring the lie, punctuating its existence into a greater sin.

He studied her, his wonderful gray eyes now sad and tired, not the eyes of a villain, but those of a man who’d been through too much, who was worn out from grief. “I knew what you were thinking because you are my wife. And because I’ve loved you long enough to be able to read the look that was on your face.”

She wanted to crumble. She wanted to scold herself for not being more like her own mother, the dutiful wife who held back her own thoughts, her own needs, to keep her man the master, lord of the house.

Though Jill was not her mother, she knew when to let go and when to be supportive, even when she did not feel quite like doing it. “Perhaps what you saw was your own fear, honey. The fear that no one will believe you.” She did not add that he might be right. Which was all the more reason they needed the best lawyer in the world.

“So you took the job in L.A.” He did not mention Christopher this time, and for that she was grateful.

“Only to jump-start my career. To reopen doors that Addie closed. Remember when you said I’d been blackballed? Maybe this will end it once and for all. Trust me, Ben. Please.”

“And what about us?” he asked. “I did trust you, Jill. Then you went behind my back. How can I trust you again?”

Her head was aching now; her heart was filled with tears that wanted to come out. She dropped her chin and began to cry. “Oh, God,” she said, “I can stand most anything, Ben. What I can’t stand is arguing with you. I can’t stand fighting with each other. I feel like you’re a victim and Mindy is a victim and so am I. I feel like my marriage is falling apart because of a spoiled kid.”

Ben was quiet, then he spoke. “She’s not spoiled, Jill. I told you. She’s misguided.”

She raised her head. “And what can we do to change that?”

“We can’t. We can only take care of ourselves. One step at a time. Which I suppose means we—I—have to forget about
Good Night, USA
. The deal is done. I’m not going to let my petty insecurities get in the way of your career.”

She lowered her eyes. “I am so sorry, Ben. For not telling you first.”

He touched her cheek. “I’m sorry for a lot of things, honey. But I want us to get through this, and maybe we
can if you leave Addie Becker and her connections out of it. Deal?”

She could not agree. But she knew that if she wanted to save what was left of her crippled marriage, she’d better act as if he were right. Then she could hope and pray that later he would come to his senses. Later, but not too late.

“Speaking of lawyers,” Ben continued, as if he didn’t realize she had not answered, “I called Rick back. He said they did Mindy’s video deposition today. I have a right to see it. He said once we know what we’re up against, we’ll be better able to decide how to proceed.”

She sucked in a small breath. “You can see it?”

“Ten o’clock tomorrow. At Rick’s office. You’re welcome to come.” He ran his hand through his hair. “If you want.”

She studied the edge of the tablecloth and knew there was no way she could say no, not if she wanted to salvage what might still be left of her marriage. She blinked back tears and raised her head and offered a small, well-intentioned smile. “Of course I want to go,” she replied.

“I did chores almost every day all summer,” Mindy said into the camera in response to a question posed by a nameless inquisitor in a gray cardigan. “I cleaned up after the kids, I swept wood shavings, I picked up litter in the yard. Soda cans, ice cream wrappers. Stuff like that.”

“Did Mr. Niles pay you for these chores?”

“Oh, sure. He gave me ten dollars, twenty sometimes if I did extra work.”

“That’s a lot of money for a ten-year-old.”

Mindy raised her chin. “I deserved it. I worked hard.”

Despite the circumstances, Ben smiled. She was a feisty kid; he’d known that all along.

“Did he give you anything else?”

She was silent for a moment. “He didn’t give me the money, Mr. Winkman. I earned it.”

“Okay. Did you ‘earn’—or did he give you—anything else?”

“He let me work on the crafts. Tying brooms, pegboarding floors. And he brought food sometimes. Homemade cookies and cakes. One time his friend Rita brought homemade fudge. But it was for everybody, not just me.”

“Did you ever meet Rita?”

“No. She’s not his wife, though.”

Ben glanced at Jill. He wondered if he’d ever told her Rita had sent fudge to the museum or if Jill had been out of town.

“How many times were you alone with Mr. Niles?”

She thought about it briefly. Then she shrugged. “Lots of times.”

“Only at the museum?”

“Sometimes he took me out to Gay Head.”

“Why?”

“To sit on the cliffs. To play the cloud game.”

“The cloud game? What kind of game is that?”

She sighed a small ten-year-old sigh. “We looked up at the clouds and tried to pick out different shapes. Indian stuff, mostly. Tomahawks and teepees. And canoes. Stuff like that.”

“Anything else?”

She chewed her lip. “We talked about owning our own purple souvenir shop on the cliffs. We figured the Indians made a lot of money that way.”

The camera jiggled, as if the person running it had bumped it.

“And at any of those times did Mr. Niles ever make you feel … uncomfortable?”

She paused again. Ben wondered why the hell she was pausing.

“Well,” she said, “sometimes.”

He sat up straight in his chair.

“Why?”

Mindy’s eyes darted to the camera, then back to the D.A. She did not reply.

Ben looked from Jill to Rick. He could not tell what they were thinking.

“What happened on the afternoon in question?”

The afternoon in question?
Suddenly this seemed ridiculous. The guy who looked like Mister Rogers was playing Perry Mason. Ben might even have laughed if he weren’t the one whose life was at stake, the Salem witch about to go to trial.

And then Mindy answered the question. Looking squarely into the camera again, she put her hands on her flat chest. “He touched me,” she said clearly and distinctly. “He touched me here.”

There was silence on the TV screen, silence in the room.

“Shit,” Ben said. His body sagged as if someone had drained the blood from his veins and the energy from his muscles, every muscle.

“What did you do when he did that?” the D.A. asked.

The camera zoomed in and got a close-up of her face, the way he’d heard Jill instruct when she wanted to make sure the audience was paying attention. “I screamed,” Mindy said evenly. “Then I ran home.” She hung her head in a way that you couldn’t tell, but would have bet, concealed a waterfall of tears.

Ben shifted in his seat.

Rick leveled the remote and clicked the picture off. “We’re in trouble, Ben,” he said. “She’s very credible.”

Yes, Ben thought. Even a fool could see that she was.

•   •   •

“Maybe you should go to England,” Ben said to Jill as they walked quietly through Edgartown on the way back home. “Visit Jeff. Get the hell away from this mess for a while.”

“This mess will be here when I get back.”

“Maybe not. Maybe the guilt fairy will come along and leave a calling card on Mindy’s pillow.”

They both knew that wasn’t funny. Or probable.

They turned onto Pease Point Way, avoiding Main Street in an unspoken quest for privacy. Despite the gag order, Ben had begun to sense that everywhere he walked, every shop that he entered or restaurant that he passed, heads turned and eyes followed as if they somehow knew.

“If I go away, it will look like I’m not supportive,” Jill said. “That maybe I don’t believe you.” Her high heels clicked on the sidewalk through the crunched fallen leaves. “I will not have anyone think that, not for an instant.”

Ben put his hands in his pockets. “Do you honestly believe I’m innocent?”

They took two more steps, then three. “You are an honest man, Ben. A good, honest man. And I do not believe for a minute that you could do anything so vile.”

Until that moment, Ben had not realized how badly he’d needed to hear her say those words. He had not realized it because he had not wanted to admit there was a chance that she might not say them.

She linked her arm through his. Her touch warmed him, calmed him. “I will go on the stand,” she said. “I will tell the jury you could not have done it.”

He smiled. “Even if Rick let you testify, no one would believe you.”

“Of course they will. I’m Jill McPhearson, remember? Media star?
News
media star—who has to have a
high believability factor to sit on the anchor desk. A trust factor.”

His stomach turned sour. The same way it did whenever he thought about February and
Good Night, USA
. “No one on the Vineyard cares about that, and you know it,” he said. “They won’t believe you because you’re my wife. But thanks for the effort.”

She slipped her arm from his. He wished she’d put it back, where it helped steady his walk, where it helped him feel less alone. “Well, anyway,” she said quietly, “I’m not going to desert you and go to England.”