Sins of Innocence (6 page)

Beep
.

“Susan? Is this Susan Levin? Well [long pause], I hope I have the right place. Your mother gave me the phone number. I talked with her today, I guess she lives in Florida? Anyway, Susan, this is Jessica Bates. You may not remember me.” Susan didn’t. “Jess Bates. From Larchwood Hall.” Susan stopped stretching. She stared at the little black machine. It kept talking. “I know, this is a surprise, right? I’m calling because I’d like to talk with you. Your Mom told me where you live, and that you’d be home tonight.” Jess Bates. Larchwood Hall. Sweat formed over Susan’s lip. The tape kept turning. “I’d like to drive up and see you …”

The machine clicked off. End of message time. End of messages. In the kitchen the teakettle began to whistle.

Susan couldn’t move. She stared at the mute answering machine. Jess Bates? Why in hell was she calling Susan? And what, in God’s name, was the rest of her message, cut short by the $49.95 mail-order, deluxe-model, answer-phone system?

Susan wrapped her arms around her stomach and hugged herself tightly. Jess Bates. Larchwood Hall. Jess had been the quiet one, the rich one. The very rich one. Jess had been the one they could hear crying in the middle of the night.…

Why in hell was she calling Susan? That was the past. That was over. It was more than another time, it was another life. Susan felt her breath quicken. It was youth. The time when she believed that such a thing as happiness really existed. The time when it had. With David. Susan closed her eyes and felt the swell of two decades of tears.

David. Nineteen sixty-eight. Vietnam. Sit-ins. Psychedelic and leather and Students for a Democratic Society. A string of images unlocked in her mind, like frames of celluloid, poised, ready to be projected, eager to return Susan to a time when life was lived for consciousness-raising and peace-making. Dylan. Hashish. Janis Joplin and the draft. The assassination of a second Kennedy. Then the dreams came tumbling down. The tabloid photo of Ted Kennedy crept eerily into her mind. Then it vanished, replaced by only one thought:

David.

She opened her eyes. Why in hell was Jess Bates calling her? Susan pushed back the memories, grabbed the phone, and punched in the numbers for Palm Beach.

“Hello?”

God, why did her mother always sound so synthetic?

“Mother, it’s me.”

“Oh, Susan, well, I’m glad you made it home safely. How was your flight? I really wish you’d let your father pay for first-class tickets.…”

“No, Mother. The flight was fine.”

“But your legs are too long for those dreadful coach seats.…”

“Mother,” Susan cut her off. “Mother, did someone call for me there today?”

“What? Oh, yes. Wouldn’t you know, it wasn’t a man.”

“Mother, what did she say?”

“Why?”

“Did she tell you her name?”

“Yes. I didn’t write it down, though. A friend of yours from college.” Thank God. Jess had had the sense not to tell the truth. “I gave her your number. Shouldn’t I have?”

“No, no. I mean, yes, that was fine. But,” Susan stumbled, looking for a way to probe deeper without getting her mother off on one of her tangents, “my answering machine cut off the message. Did she leave her number with you? I’d like to call her back.”

“No. She didn’t leave a number, no.”

Susan thought fast. “Did she say where she was calling from?”

“Well, no. Well, I don’t know. I don’t remember. What difference does it make? If it was all that important, she’ll call you back.”

Not if she thinks I got the message, Susan thought. She stared back at the answering machine, as though it would provide her with a clue. “Yes, I suppose you’re right, Mother. Well, good night. Mark and I had a nice vacation.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something else?”

“Oh. Yes. Tell Daddy I said thanks too.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Susan fidgeted with the phone cord. Now what, she thought.

“What is it, Mother?”

“You forgot to say ‘Happy New Year.’ ”

“Oh. Yes. Happy New Year to you too.” She hung up before her mother could say anything else.

“Mom!”

Susan looked up at Mark, standing at the bottom of
the stairs. “Jeez, Mom, didn’t you hear the kettle whistling? I heard it all the way upstairs.”

“I’m surprised you can hear anything over your own racket,” Susan said, and hauled herself off the couch to make her tea.

She hadn’t seen Bert since summer school had ended three weeks ago. She hadn’t felt any burning desire to see him before she and Mark had left for Florida; in fact, she had almost dreaded starting another semester with Bert following close on her heels. But now Susan lumbered across campus in the darkness toward Bert’s apartment with an urgent need to be with him, to be with her friend. And he was her friend, first and foremost. Bert would understand. Bert would help her figure out what to do.

He opened the door for her and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

“Welcome home,” he said.

“Thanks.” Susan noted the smell of marijuana on his breath. “Did you while away the hours of my vacation stoned?”

Bert smiled. It wasn’t a handsome face, but it was warm, comfortable. Bert was a giver both of his time and his feelings.

“I think it had something to do with Gardiner.”

Gardiner was Bert’s history-professor colleague who was competing with him for the department chair, a position Bert deserved.

“What happened?” Susan asked, trying hard to be interested.

“He won.”

“Oh, Bert. I’m sorry.”

Bert shrugged. “It was probably because of my beard,” he half joked. “You know these conservative New Englanders.”

Susan tugged the short-cropped graying curls around his chin. “I think it’s a lovely beard,” she said.

He motioned for Susan to sit down. She automatically shoved aside stacks of papers that were scattered across
the overstuffed couch. To her, Bert’s messy apartment always had a welcoming feel.

“Wine?” he asked.

“Please. Make it a large glass.”

“The bitch of the whole thing,” Bert called back to her from his galley kitchen, “is that now Gardiner’s my boss. Ice?”

“Sure. And bring a joint with you.”

“Don’t have much left.”

She heard the tinkle of ice.

“Don’t need much. Bring it anyway.” Leftover hippie, Lawrence liked to call her. So what? she thought. So what if she and Bert shared an occasional joint? Until she’d met Bert, it had been several years since Susan had smoked pot. After she’d left Lawrence, she suddenly had no need for the chemical mellowness, but before that, she had smoked with gusto. Pot and cigarettes. She’d started in college, with David. In many ways, she thought now, her life had started, and ended, with David.

Bert returned to the living room, handed her a glass, and tossed a thin joint onto the end table. She looked at it. The paper was wrinkled, the ends twisted tight. Exactly the way David had rolled them. She took a long drink of her wine and picked up the joint. Bert leaned over and lit it, then settled onto the floor in front of her.

“So what’s up? I didn’t expect to see you tonight. How’d things go at Joe and Freida’s?”

Susan took a deep drag and laughed, smoke spewing from her lungs. Bert had a way of making her laugh. “Will you stop calling my father ‘Joe’? That sounds so weird. No one ever calls him ‘Joe.’ It’s Joseph.”

“Whatever. How bad was it?”

Susan took another drag. Her mouth shriveled with dryness. Her head spun. “It was … tolerable. About what I expected.” She listened to the hollow sound of her voice as she held in the sweet smoke, letting the calmness begin to creep in.

“So?”

“So what?” She exhaled.

“So you must have trucked over here tonight for a reason. I’d like to think it was because of your passion to see me, but somehow I think it must be something else.” He smiled again, that warm, generous smile.

“Well, I did miss you,” Susan lied. Or was it a lie? She honestly didn’t know.

Bert took a sip of his drink. “Yeah, yeah. But what else. What’s bothering you?”

“Is that what you think?” Susan asked. Her head spun again, and she could have sworn she felt her heart skip a beat. She handed Bert the joint. She’d had enough. “You think I only want to see you to talk about my problems?”

“There could be worse reasons.”

Susan leaned back and toyed with her glass. It was a thick water glass, the kind the local bank had offered for ninety-nine cents with a twenty-five-dollar deposit, hardly the Waterford she’d been drinking out of last night at her parents’. But it felt more real to her, more honest.

“Okay, you win. There is something. When I got home tonight, there was a message on my answering machine that was pretty upsetting.”

“Don’t tell me. Gardiner called. Now he wants you to go out with him. He’s trying to get at me from every angle.”

Susan laughed. “Gardiner’s married.”

“That wouldn’t stop a man like him.”

“No, I suppose not. But, no”—she shook her head—“it wasn’t Gardiner.”

Bert was quiet, waiting for her to continue.

She reached over and plucked the joint from his fingers. One more hit, she thought. One more hit will make this easier. “It was an old friend. Not a friend really. Just someone I knew a long time ago.”

“Old flame?”

“No. A woman.” She was aware of Bert’s captain’s clock ticking on the mantel. She took another drag, held in the smoke, then slowly released it. “Someone I knew in the sixties,” she said.

Bert whistled. “Wow. A blast from the past.”

She moved a magazine and put her glass on the end table. “She was someone I never thought I’d hear from again.” The joint burned hot now, nearly at its end. She took a quick last drag, then stubbed it out. She dropped her face into her hands. Why was this so difficult to tell Bert? God, this was the 1990s. “I don’t know about you, but there’s a part of my life I’d rather not remember.”

“And she was there?”

“Yes.”

“Did it have to do with Vietnam? The protests?”

Susan put her hands down. “Good guess. But wrong.”

“We all did some pretty stupid things in the sixties, Susan.”

She nodded and brushed the hair from her face. “I had a baby, Bert. I gave it up for adoption.”

He whistled again, but this time the sound was softer, more like a heavy rush of air. “Well,” he said, “that’s pretty heavy.”

“I was in a home for unwed mothers. The woman who called was one of the girls who was there with me. I thought we’d said good-bye twenty-five years ago.”

“What’d she say?”

Susan laughed. “That’s the weird part. She said she’d like to drive up and see me. That she wanted to talk to me. Then my stupid answering machine cut off the rest of the message. I don’t know if she left a phone number, or said when she’d arrive, or anything. I don’t even know what the hell she wants.”

“Were you friends?”

“No. She’s a few years younger than I am. At the time it seemed we were a generation apart.”

“She gave up a baby too?”

“Yes.”

“Then there’s a bond there.”

“I guess.” She drained her glass.

“Maybe she’s going through some sort of midlife crisis and wants to flesh out her past.”

“But why me, Bert? She hardly knew me.”

“Who knows? What are you going to do?”

“There’s nothing I can do. I have no way of getting in touch with her to tell her not to come.”

He crossed his legs and stared into his glass. “Does Mark know about this baby you had?”

“No. Why?”

“Maybe it would be a good idea if you told him. He’s old enough to understand.”

“Mark and I aren’t exactly getting along these days.”

Bert looked up at her.

“Long story. But, of course, it has to do with Lawrence.” She reached across the couch and tried to straighten Bert’s papers. “No. I don’t think now’s a good time to get into it with him.”

“Now might be your only time, Susan.”

“What do you mean?”

“Think about it. There’s a chance this woman has some news about your—what was your baby, a boy, girl?”

“Boy.”

“Who is now what, twenty-five?”

“Almost.”

“Maybe this woman knows something about him. It’s possible, isn’t it?”

Susan stared at him. That was, of course, what she’d feared, but she’d pushed that thought from her mind. No. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible. “Then again,” Susan needed to say, “maybe I’ll never hear from her again.”

He drained his glass. “Maybe not. But I think you need to be prepared.”

She tried to put it out of her mind. But the next morning, instead of working on the syllabus for World Lit II, Susan found herself doing busy, out-of-character things: cleaning out cabinets, scrubbing the sink, throwing away expired coupons that had been sitting in one of her many junk drawers for the past year. Mark had gone to school, and Susan was glad to have that much less tension in the house.

She was standing at the oak kitchen table, folding
clothes, when there was a knock at the back door. Without looking, Susan knew who it would be. She took a deep breath and held it a moment, then calmly finished folding the towel she held. She put it on top of the neat stack and slowly walked to the door.

Jess was there, on the other side of the glass, peeking through the ball-fringed café curtains. Age had only made Jess look more delicate, in an elfinlike way. Susan bet to herself that when she saw the rest of the woman, her body would be even slighter than it had been twenty-five years before.

She opened the door.

“Susan,” Jess said.

“Jess.”

They stood assessing one another, Susan conscious of her size as she loomed over the woman by a good eight inches.

“It’s been a long time,” Jess said. “I’m glad I found you.”

Susan looked past Jess at the silver Jaguar in the driveway, parked behind Susan’s old Volvo. There was no one in the car. Jess had come alone. She brushed the hair back from her face. “What do you want, Jess?”

Jess shifted the leather bag on her shoulder. “Could I come in?”

Susan stepped back from the doorway. “Sure. Of course. Have a seat.”

Jess walked into the kitchen. She stepped around an overflowing wastebasket and sat at the table. “I see I’ve come on laundry day.”