Age of Consent (4 page)

June says, “It's fine, Mary, thank you,” then smiles at Mrs. Campbell, who slips through the door and disappears, her footsteps making clacking noises in the hallway.

Clearly, the two know each other. Bobbie wonders if this was why the innkeeper had seemed so nervous earlier, because she knows exactly why Bobbie is in town. She knows about the trial and that Bobbie is the other “girl” who has raised a charge against Craig Kirtz, a local celebrity whom she is testifying against. The public has mixed feelings about people like her. She has heard that a radio station conducted a phone-in on the subject, the public calling in to state how they felt about bringing charges against someone for a crime committed so many years ago and for which, as one listener correctly remarked, “there was no body.” She's been called an opportunist. She's been called a “middle-aged woman with a vendetta.” She has been accused of waging war against her family, especially her stepfather. For that is what Craig is now—her stepfather.

“I'll just close the door,” June says, and now it is only the two of them, standing together in the small room. “Oh Bobbie—”

Bobbie can see that her mother's eyes are filling, that June is as overcome as she is. During the decades she has been away, Bobbie has wondered what it would be like to meet her mother once again. She never imagined it would be quite like this, that she would feel the connection so urgently, or that there would be so great a sorrow for all the lost time.

“You look good,” she tells her mother. She thinks she ought to say this, ought to say something anyway.

“They tell me you are testifying against our Craig. I can't understand this,” June says.

All at once, Bobbie feels a combination of tenderness and rage—that her mother could command such love from her, that her mother could sully that love by talking about Craig. Talking about Craig
now
. Over the years she has convinced herself that her mother had made a mistake. That was all, a simple mistake that had cost more than it ought to have. But if June's effort to track her down before the trial is about him, then it is a mistake she is still making.

“Don't say his name,” she tells June.

“Don't say his
name
?” June is astonished.

Bobbie looks at her mother's left hand and sees a gold band. The sight of the ring infuriates her, as though Craig has branded her mother with an iron. “It's not my fault you married him,” she says.

“What kind of thing is that to say?
It's not my fault…
You were invited, you know! Not that we expected you'd show up. If we'd known where you were, we'd have sent an invitation!”

“I wouldn't have come.”

“Can you imagine what it was like for me, living in that house without you? Getting married without you? I told Craig then, I said to him, ‘How is it a wedding without my daughter here? She should be here, with us. She should be my maid of honor.' ”

Bobbie shakes her head. She thinks of her mother in a white bridal dress beside Craig. In her head is the mother she remembers, round and young with a ruddy brown bob and clear, green eyes that had the luminous quality of stained glass. In front of her this new version of her mother, with her thin over-dyed hair and the tribal jewelry, seems another person.

June says, “And now, just when Craig is recovering from this last pack of lies from that girl, you come along and accuse him? You're saying Craig
molested
you? You let thirty years pass to tell the world this?”

June smells like sour wine, Bobbie now realizes. Her mother has reached a time of day in which all the hours topping up her wineglass are showing a cumulative effect.

“
Molest
isn't one of the words I used,” Bobbie says.

“But it amounts to that, doesn't it? Molested you as a child?”

“I guess so. Yes.”

“Well, that is impossible! I think you are mixing things up,” June says. She steps toward Bobbie. “Is that it, darling? Did something happen to you after you left home? Did someone hurt you and now you think it was Craig? Because I've heard of such cases!”

June smiles at Bobbie. She is on Bobbie's side if only Bobbie will let go of this idea that Craig—Craig, of all people—ever hurt her. She stands with her arms outstretched, inviting Bobbie to come and hug her. But there is something preposterous about the gesture. And an oddness, too, about the way June is smiling. Close up, Bobbie sees that her mother's eyes seem slightly dead, as though that part of her face is not participating. She feels a flash of concern, considering perhaps her mother has suffered a stroke. But then she detects the same unusual aspect to June's forehead, too. She sees the skin there is like smooth putty, and she knows at once it is the copious use of Botox, not a stroke, that has frozen her mother's face. She hasn't lived in California all these years without acquiring a little expertise in that area.

“My God, Mother, you can't wrinkle,” she says, and touches her own forehead with her hand.

June scoffs. “Oh please, you get to this age and watch your brow line crumple.”

“It doesn't look bad,” Bobbie says. “But why?”

“Are you going to start on a ‘love your wrinkles' campaign? Because having your daughter bring charges against your husband can cause a wrinkle or two.”

Bobbie finds her jeans and pulls them on under her nightgown, doing up the fly. “I don't think you are meant to talk to me before the trial. I'll drive you home.”

“Oh, please, sweetheart. I'm sorry if I've said the wrong thing.”

“You're only here to convince me not to go through with it.”

June says, “Don't be silly, I'm here because you're my daughter! I've barely heard from you for years. Don't you think that was unnecessary? You'd send little gifts but never make an actual appearance. Don't you think that was a little cruel?”

She might have said yes. It was cruel. Bobbie has sent birthday cards and Christmas cakes. For many years on Mother's Day she has arranged for bouquets of yellow roses to be delivered to the door. All of this, she understands, she did as much for herself as for her mother, little gestures that stemmed a tide of guilt that forever threatened to engulf her for making her mother worry, for being absent as June aged. For there is a part of her that still wants to protect her mother.

“You have no idea the kind of pain—” June is saying.

Bobbie hates making her upset. But she also doubts the woman is being honest. June's distress may only be a ploy, Bobbie thinks, and so she tries not to feel pity. Instead, she focuses on her mother's lash extensions. She hopes her mother's beauty efforts aren't all to please Craig.

“It's not legal for you to talk to me right now,” Bobbie says. “It's called tampering with a witness—”

“
Legal
,” June says, as though the word is a nonsense word made up by a child. “All I am asking you, sweetheart, is to
please
not do this.”

“Don't tamper, Mother. Just go home.”

“I will, as soon as you say you won't go through with this ridiculous trial. He's already been through one ordeal and now you want to put him through another?”

The other ordeal was in the form of a fifteen-year-old girl whose parents discovered Craig was having sex with their daughter. And even though he almost certainly had been doing just that, they'd lost the case. Bobbie takes a long breath, her eyes fastened on her mother's face. “I hope you are saying this because you think he's innocent,” she says.

“Of course he's innocent!”

Bobbie shakes her head. “Do you think I made up everything I said in my statement?”

June looks at her, assessing Bobbie's tone. “I think you are confused,” she says finally. “And I know you've never cared for Craig. He knows it, too, and it hurts him. But that is for another discussion. We can sort all this out as a
family
.”

“He's not my family.”

“You never gave him a chance—”

“A
chance
?” Bobbie scoffs. “Has it not occurred to you that what I am telling the jury tomorrow is actually true?”

“We can discuss all of that. Of course, we can. Meanwhile, you are behaving like this crazy girl did, hurling accusations at Craig. What we need to do is come together as a family and protect one another!”

Bobbie listens as her mother describes the girl, who had been seeing a psychiatrist and who self-harmed and had no friends, who was a truant and a loiterer and a shoplifter. “You have no idea what kind of family she was from! You don't want to be linked in any way with such people,” June says, shaking her head to emphasize the point. “People go after Craig because he's famous, you know. A public figure.”

“He's a disc jockey, so what?”

“That is quite an achievement, don't you think? A radio announcer? A
personality
?”

“Oh Jesus,” Bobbie says. The conversation is ridiculous, and so at odds with the pretty, scented room in which they find themselves. She turns to her mother now, eyeing her squarely. “I gave that statement months ago,” she says. “It's already done.”

“But it isn't too late to undo! The lawyer told me you could still withdraw it. Please, Bobbie, I'm begging you. I promised him I'd speak to you—”

“Did he drive you here?” Bobbie asks. “Where is he parked?” She thinks he must be outside somewhere, stewing in his car. She could imagine him there, slumped over the wheel, his temper ticking like a bomb.

June gives up and sits hard on the bed. She bends her head into her hands. She might be crying, Bobbie can't tell. She might be faking.

“If you saw this girl!” she pleads. “If you saw the parents! The mother was covered in tattoos! I am sure they put that girl up to this crazy accusation. She looks twenty-one, not fifteen. In fact, she's not fifteen anyway; she's sixteen. But she
looks
like an adult. And this thing she claims with Craig is outrageous!”

“You think so,” Bobbie says flatly.

“Who told you about that case anyway? I can't believe you read
our
local papers from wherever it is you live now.”

“California. And no, I don't.”

“Then who told you?”

She'd heard about it from Dan. Her mother would not even remember who Dan was; he was another bit of history about which her mother appeared to recall nothing.

“You are about to make a terrible mistake!” June says. “And what if he is found guilty? Can you imagine? What if he goes to—” She stops, unable to say the word
jail.
“I'm your mother. You can't just—” Bobbie sees how bewildered her mother is, how she cannot understand why her daughter had unfastened herself from her life, had escaped and was still escaping from her. “If you'd had children of your own you would understand the pain you've caused me,” she says. “I always thought that once you had your own children, you'd come back. You'd return and say you were sorry and we'd be able—”

“Oh stop it.”

“But you never had children, did you? I'd know if you had. There'd be a softness—”

“You're working yourself into a state—”

“—but instead just this shelly, brittle woman with exactly the shape a woman keeps when there are no children—”

“You're doing nobody any good. Mother, really. I'll drive you.”

June clenches her lips. “Fine, I'll go. But let me ask this question: Why must you take away Craig, too? You
want
him to go to jail, don't you? You want to destroy me. You
still
want to destroy me. You've come back only because you saw an opportunity to ruin the one thing—”

Bobbie goes to the window again. This time she raises the blind and peers out to where she suspects Craig lurks, waiting for June to convince her to leave him alone in court tomorrow. She wants to shout to him that she is going to stick this out. She is not going to sit on the sidelines. She won't lie, either. Here is what she thinks as she looks out the picture window, peering into the inky sky, studded with stars reflecting blue-black grass still waving in the night breeze: She thinks testifying against him is the least she can do. That it would have been better to kill him than to let him get this far.

Meanwhile, she can still hear her mother's voice, a mixture of whining and accusation. “Why did you wait until
now
?” she says. “If he'd done something so wrong you could easily have spoken up
years
ago!”

“That's a good question,” Bobbie says. When they ask her in court why she never brought a charge against Craig, why she kept quiet all these years, she might tell them that she never expected him to live this long. She might tell them that she believed—idiotically, she now understands—that she was the only girl he'd done this to. In the decades since she's last been here, she has rarely thought of him out in the world, alive. Hers is a life with deep shadows everywhere and it was easy to keep his memory in those shadows.

“Please, Bobbie, tell them you won't testify.”

Bobbie sighs. “If you read my statement, then you'd certainly know why I cannot just drop it.”

June shakes her head. “I haven't read the statement,” she admits. Now she begins crying in earnest. “I never read the statement because it was from you, your words, and I couldn't listen to that after all these years of silence.”

Bobbie feels the fight flow out of her. She wonders again if she made the right decision to come back, to get involved once again in such a mess. She would never tell June, but the reason she flew to New York first instead of flying directly into Washington was that she had wanted to have a last-minute chance to pull out of the case. She could always stay in New York, she'd convinced herself, and blow the whole thing off. That was how close she was to abandoning the idea. But in the end, it was too much to resist. She'd ridden Amtrak out of Penn Station. She'd arrived at Union Station and found the taxi. She is aware of the enormous effect her mother has on her even now, even after years of being without her. The desire to please her, the same desire as she'd had as a child, is remarkably strong.