The Unforgiven (15 page)

“I thought you were crying before,” he said in a husky voice.

Maggie shook her head. “I never cry,” she told him.

“Are you worried about something?” he asked.

She hesitated a moment, then shook her head. “Do you know,” she asked with a forced buoyancy, “how many years in purgatory we could get for this? Fornication is a very serious offense. It’s probably about a thousand years.”

Jess laughed, relieved. “Oh, is that it? Well, I just hope we can do our time together.”

“Mmmmm, maybe,” she murmured distractedly.

“Hey,” he said, grabbing her fingers and curling them under his own, “you don’t mean that seriously, do you?”

“No,” she said.

He looked at her thoughtfully. “I didn’t know you’re a Catholic.”

“I’m not. Anymore. I was brought up a Catholic, but I don’t believe.” Even as she uttered the blasphemy, the eyes of Sister Dolorita rose up unbidden in her
mind, glittering black beads boring into her, the pasty face distorted with rage.

“So was I,” he said. “I still believe.”

There was a silence between them.

“But,” he murmured soothingly, kissing her damp temples and arranging strands of her hair, “I don’t think I’ll go to hell for making love to you, if that’s what you mean. No, I don’t. This can’t be wrong. How could it be?” he whispered.

He rolled toward her and rested his head on her breast. She could feel all her senses stirring again. Desire was returning, impatient to sweep away all anxious thoughts, the fears whispering inside her.
Perhaps,
she thought,
I’ll think of some way to keep the truth about the past from him. There’s no need for him to know,
she rationalized.
Not right away.
The rising and falling of his breath accelerated with her own. She stroked his hair. Her body began to hum. She ran her fingers down the smooth skin of his back. Aroused by the awaited signal, he moved his mouth to hers.
It’s too late to stop it,
she thought.
It’s already too late.

10

Maggie lay in her bed, in the darkness, listening. The only light in the room came from the bone-white cross that glowed on the wall opposite her bed. She was waiting for the familiar sound of his steps on the stairs. It was just the two of them, alone in the house. Her mother was not home. But she could not remember where she had gone. Maggie was waiting for her father to come and tuck her in. As he always did.

Then she heard him coming. But she felt a vague sense that something was not right. His tread was heavy on the stairs. He pushed her door open and stood in the doorway, looking at her. For a moment she felt scared. But she didn’t know why. He knelt sadly beside her bed. “No story,” he breathed in the darkness, ignoring her whispered pleas. She was surprised. He never could resist her childish requests. She fell silent. She was aware of their breathing, hers quick and light, his heavy and shuddering. He kissed her cheek, and then he put his face on her chest. She could not see him clearly in the darkness. She grabbed at his red curls and twisted them. He did not push her hand away. Instead, he climbed up on her bed and lay in the dark beside her.

She felt a tiny surge of fear, but mainly she was happy. He had never done that before. His breath came in sad sighs now. He put his hand on her leg, beneath her nightgown, and stroked it gently. “Oh, my little girl,” he said. Then he let out a sob.

“Don’t cry, Daddy,” she told him. She began to pepper his face with kisses.

Suddenly, something she did not understand began to happen. His hands began to move over her, his weight felt as if he were going to crush her. He guided her hand with his own. She squirmed and whimpered a little, but at the same time she felt a giddy delight. He was calling her name, kissing her. She looked up. Beyond his vast shoulder the cross pierced the darkness, and she could see nothing else. From downstairs, like a rifle shot, the front door slammed.

He jerked himself free of her little arms. By the light of the glowing cross she could see the naked terror on his face. There were footsteps on the stairs.

“Oh, my God,” he whispered, fumbling with the buttons of his shirt.

“Daddy,” she was wailing now.

Ignoring her, he bolted from her bed, stuffing his shirt in his pants with trembling hands and zippering them up. He smoothed down his curls with his hands and threw open the door of the room. Weeping and rubbing her eyes, she trailed behind him, pulling down her nightgown. Through the balustrade she saw them. Her mother, standing on the stair, staring into her father’s florid, guilty face. On the step below her stood Sister Dolorita.

Her mother’s face was a frozen mask as she stared at her father.

Maggie looked from her mother’s face to the awful face of Sister Dolorita. She did not want to look. But her eyes felt as if they were being drawn by a magnet to the blazing black eyes.

“No,” she cried out. “No, please.”

“Maggie, wake up!”

Struggling to the surface of consciousness, she saw Jess leaning over her, holding her wrists and frowning with deep concern.

She relaxed in his grasp and fell back, tossing her head from side to side on the pillow. Jess let go of her wrists. Her heart was pounding madly in her chest. She could feel the tears running down her face.

“You almost gave me a shiner,” he said, pointing to her clenched fists. “What was the dream?”

For a moment she stared at him uncomprehendingly. She could not remember what she was doing there with him, so disconcerting was the dream. The hours she had spent in his arms flowed back to her, making her feel sad.

“Don’t you want to tell me?” he asked.

“Tell you what?”

“The dream.”

“Oh, God.” She stared off to one side. Outside, the rays of the morning sun were shining weakly through the window. She wiped the dripping tears away with her fingers.

“I thought you didn’t cry,” he said, sitting up against the headboard of the bed.

“It was about my father,” she said.

He did not say anything in response. She lay there, thinking about the dream. She felt as if the dream was forcing its way out of her, as if she had no will to control it. That she finally had to tell someone about it. She began to speak. “I was a child again in the dream. And he came up to my bedroom. To tuck me in. He just meant to say good night to me. But instead, something happened…”

The room was silent. Jess watched her without speaking.

“Instead, he got into bed with me. He began to do things to me. Things he shouldn’t have…”

“Sexual things,” Jess said quietly.

Gratefully she accepted the words which he had supplied. She would not have been able to say it. “Yes. My mother came home. My mother and Sister Dolorita, one of the nuns from the church. They could tell what had happened.” Maggie’s voice was flat, deadened by the memory.

For a while, Jess did not speak. When he did his voice was low. “That really happened, didn’t it.” It was a statement.

Maggie could not look at his face. “They didn’t actually catch us,” she said. “But they knew.”

“I see,” he said. Then, after a brief silence, he spoke again. Her face, rigid with tension, was still turned away from him. “What a terrible burden,” he said.

The lack of judgment in his voice shocked her. She turned to face him. He gazed at her sympathetically. All at once, she felt eager to explain.

“He didn’t want to hurt me,” she said. “He really didn’t. I know that. But it was terrible anyway. The way my mother would look at me. And Sister Dolorita. They blamed me. Then he had his heart attack not long after that. I was left alone with them.”

“You must have been relieved, though, in a way,” he said. “What an impossible situation for a child to be in.”

“I don’t know,” she said miserably. “I guess so. But it wasn’t any better afterward. They never forgave me.”

“And you missed him,” Jess said quietly.

Maggie sat up and stared him in the eye. “Yes. Yes, I did. I know what he did was wrong. But he loved me. He was the only one who did. I did miss him. Does that sound sick to you? Could you ever understand that?”

Jess nodded and put one hand over hers.

She hung her head. “I didn’t want him to die.”

“Of course not,” he said simply. He drew her to him.

They sat quietly for a moment. She shivered in his arms. Finally, she spoke. “Thank you,” she said.

“For what?” he asked.

“For letting me tell you that. For making it possible to say it.”

“I’m glad you told me. Actually, it helps me to understand something. About you.”

She pulled out of his arms and looked at him in surprise. “What about me?”

“Well,” he said. “Why you’ve been so reluctant. Why this has all been so difficult for you. I mean, you don’t have to be Dr. Freud to figure out that sex is kind of a
loaded issue for you. After an experience like that, you must have felt a lot of guilt.”

Maggie looked away from him, thinking of all that he didn’t know. “I suppose,” she said.

“Listen, Maggie,” he said. “You should know that you can tell me anything. Really. Anything at all. You don’t need to be afraid of what I’ll think.”

She looked into his eyes. He gazed back with a grave sincerity. For a moment, she was tempted. He knew she had secrets. But he didn’t judge her. Maybe she could just tell him about Roger, and the prison, and all of it. Maybe he would understand that, too. He wouldn’t flinch. Then she looked away. It was impossible. It was too much to expect. “That’s good to know,” she said.

Sensing that she had been on the verge of an admission and then stopped, Jess frowned briefly. “Well,” he said, getting up from the bed and tossing her bathrobe over to Maggie, “we’d better get ready to go.”

She watched him as he headed out the bedroom door to the bathroom. She knew he was vaguely hurt, but she had to keep silent. It was for his own good.

Evy trudged up the cellar stairs and put the latch on the door behind her. She turned and started at the sight of her grandmother seated in her wheelchair a few feet from the door.

“What are you looking at?” she yelled crossly at the old woman. “Get away from here.”

She walked over behind the chair and began to push it toward the kitchen. The old woman’s bruised
hand rested limply on the arm of her wheelchair as her granddaughter pushed.

Evy brought the chair to a halt beside the sink and lifted the tray off the arms of the chair. She removed the plate and began to scrape the lumpy mass of creamed corn and runny eggs into the garbage can. “What’s the matter with the food now?” Evy demanded. “All right,” she said. “Have it your own way. If you don’t like the food, you can go hungry.” She tossed the plate into the sink where it landed with a clatter. Then she turned back to the old woman. “Where’s it going to be today? The bed or the chair? The chair, I think.” She pushed the chair over by the kitchen window and locked it.

Then she wiped off her grandmother’s face with a dishrag and gave the bent shoulder a perfunctory pat. “I have a busy day today,” she said, as she walked to the hall closet and pulled out her coat. “I doubt I’ll be back for lunch. I told you you should have eaten your breakfast.” She slammed the closet door and began buttoning her jacket.

“I have a little invitation to extend today. I’m planning a surprise, you might say. For you know who.” Evy opened the refrigerator door and pulled out her lunch bag. “So you just stay there. I’ll see you when I feel like coming home.”

With that the girl opened the door and walked out. She went over to her car, which was sitting in the driveway. The gravel crunched beneath her feet. She slid into the front seat and put her lunch on the seat beside her. Then she turned on the ignition and began to back down the driveway.

Inside the house, the old woman watched her granddaughter through the grimy windowpane. She leaned over the arm of her wheelchair, pressing her knotted temple and the drooping pouches of her cheek against the cold pane, and observed her granddaughter disappearing down Barrington Street. Then the road was empty. It remained that way, except for the rare passage of a whizzing car.

The old house was quiet now that Evy was gone. The clock above the stove ticked, and there was the hum of the refrigerator turning on and off. For a while it was just those sounds.

Then it started again. The faint, almost inaudible moaning that came, intermittently, from the direction of the basement. Each time it came, the old woman in the chair shuddered uncontrollably. In between the moans were long silences. Lulls. As if it would not start again. And then it would begin anew, anguished and inchoate, reaching her ears, which she could not cover.

She stared out at the road for a long time, as if she were watching for someone to come. Her head rested, immobile, against the pane. Her eyes were so deep and lifeless that they looked like empty sockets in her skull-like head.

“You go on in. I’ll be right along,” said Maggie, sorting through the contents of her pocketbook with exaggerated deliberateness.

“Did you lose something?” Jess asked, making no move to get out of the parked automobile.

“I had a comb in here. I just wanted to fix my hair,” she explained, not meeting his gaze.

“You look fine,” he said gently. “Come on.”

“It won’t take me long,” she insisted. “You go ahead.”

“Maggie.”

She raised her eyes ingenuously to his.

“Sooner or later they’re going to know,” he said.

She chewed on her lower lip. “I’m aware of that,” she said. A frown creased her forehead. “I just don’t think we should flaunt it by showing up together at work.”

“Is it my fault that heap of yours wouldn’t start?” he protested. “Come on now. We’re adults. We don’t have to sneak in different doorways.”

He was right, of course. He had tried patiently, repeatedly, to coax the old Buick engine into turning over, while she stood in the driveway, watching with a sinking heart. The engine made grinding noises and refused to leap. Finally, Jess went into the house to call the Shell station, while Maggie stared under the hood. She slammed it down as hard as she could and kicked the front tire. The car sat, useless as a lump of wet coal, in the driveway.