Magnificent Vibration (16 page)

The sheriffs wait until she’s gone.

“Now, son,” begins the “good” cop, with some condescension. “We understand this is difficult for you, but we need you to tell us the truth. Do you understand? This is off the record for now—we’re just gathering facts, okay? Nothing you say will be held or used against you.”

I nod, white-faced. They’re probably recording it.

“This conversation is about Virginia Whiting, Reverend Whiting’s wife,” he continues. “We’ve heard from quite a few boys now that Mrs. . . .”

“Boys?” I squeak. He just lost me.

The “bad” cop chimes in and I flinch. “They’ve come forward about Virginia Whiting’s alleged sexual advances,” is the shocking answer. I am already reeling. She’s been telling people about us???!!! And telling young BOYS??? What the hell!!!

“Good” cop continues. “Young men, around your age. Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen.”

I am having serious trouble following all this. Why would she tell other people when she was always admonishing me about the necessary secrecy of our trysts? My shaky little-boy voice asks the big, mean men, “What did she say about me?”

The “good” cop looks puzzled. They both seem to be getting impatient with how thick I apparently am, so they decide to spell it out for yours half-wittedly. “Virginia Whiting has allegedly been having sex with a number of young men,” is the unbelievable response from the “good” cop. “Men both attached to her husband’s church and outside it.
As young men will do, some of them have been bragging to their friends about their sexual encounters with Mrs. Whiting. A concerned mother overheard something that was said and came to us. Our investigations have turned up quite a few boys, both under and over the age of consent, that Mrs. Whiting has allegedly been sexually involved with.”

I am fucking stunned!!! My Virgi . . . Mrs. Whi . . . the Reverend’s wi . . . SHE has been having sex with other guys??!!

It finally lands in my lap. The cuckolder (me) has been cuckolded. A lot.

I am devastated.

I have to ask. “Is it illegal to have sex with a Reverend’s wife in this state?”

They seem amused by this. “Good” cop says, “We’re investigating Virginia Whiting for having unlawful sex with young men not of consenting age and also abusing her office.”

So I’m off the hook?

I am deeply relieved that they are investigating her and not me. But still devastated. Yes, quite devastated.

And although extremely grateful, I categorically deny any sexual involvement with the Reverend’s apparently very horny and oversexed wife. The sheriffs both look doubtful.

“Son, we’re aware that Mrs. Whiting has spent a lot of time in your home . . .”

“I never touched her,” I lie like a bastard.

“HORATIO!” my mother reprimands from the kitchen. Damnit, she’s been listening the whole time.

They both look at me expectantly. I look back. “Nothing happened between Vir . . . Mrs. Whiting and me.”

I’m no stoolie. And I’m sure as hell not going to testify in some court
of law, in front of a jury of my peers, that I have been snaking the Reverend’s missus. The sheriffs give each other a look and both rise. They call to my mother, who enters so quickly she must have been standing right by the friggin’ door.

“Bad” cop hands her his card. “If your son changes his mind, please give us a call. Thank you.”

Apparently I am dismissed.

The men in brown exit the premises without me in handcuffs being shoved unkindly ahead of them. I am momentarily relieved.

Then my mother enters the living room after seeing them out and stands before me with her righteous hands on her righteous hips.

“You’re as bad as your father,” she begins as I hightail it out of there and head for the border like every bad guy does. But my south of the border happens to be my sister’s bedroom.

“Sho,” she cries as I enter her room. She is wearing a sweet and goofy smile for me and I sit with her while she stares at I know not what.

“Don’t you walk away from me while I’m talking to you!” yells mother after me. “We have more to say about this, you and I, Horatio! You can lie to the police but you cannot lie to me. I was there. I saw that harlot in your bedroom and I can just imagine what was going on before I got home. Under your sister’s very nose and in MY HOUSE!!” She drones on and on but I tune her out now that I am in Josie’s room, secure in the fact that at least it was not under my sweet girl’s nose that these heinous acts were committed. I am back in the safety of her world and reading to her from an old “Tales from the Crypt” comic book. This room has become the only place I really feel safe. It’s time to come back to some sense of normalcy. Start getting my life back on whatever track it was on before this whole “Thou shalt not commit adultery nor prong the Reverend’s freaky wife” thing began. Set about doing stuff for just Josie and me. But it doesn’t happen.

Three days later, my mother walks into the kitchen, where I am heating up a frozen pizza in the lethal microwave, and announces that she is finished with us men. All our lying and cheating. All the secrets and the sex. All our irreligious behavior and denial of the Holy Scriptures. (???) She has had it and will brook no more wanton conduct. She is divorcing my father, and as soon as my school year is up I must move out and get a darn job. She is done with all of us. I ask her why she is lumping all the bad behavior of us male Cottons into this one act of divorce. Well, two, counting the moving-out-and-getting-the-darn-job thing. But she won’t talk about it anymore. Her mind is made up. My father has heard from her and has agreed to the divorce. Now all that’s left is for me to do the school/job dealy. She has HAD it!!! She storms from the kitchen and out of the house. The front door slams shut as a kind of exclamation point
on her monologue and I hear the car engine cough and turn over. She takes off with a small but angry squeal of burning rubber. I traipse out after her as the frozen pizza turns into radioactive goo in the nuke. But she is gone.

Their divorce is not a surprise to me, but the reality of it hurts like hell. I feel responsible. Like the whole Reverend’s-wife fiasco was the straw that broke the large, long-necked, arid-climate-dwelling ungulate’s back. I never see my father again. He moves his stuff out while I’m at school and doesn’t bother to contact me. “Boy” is off his radar. So is his more-loved daughter, I guess, now that she can no longer reciprocate what I think I always saw as his preening love for her. We’re on our own, kids!

I go through weeks of depression that thankfully Josie is spared. Our parents’ divorce at this late stage of the game would be exceptionally hard on her, were she aware. My girl is not. I thank heaven for small fucking favors.

Not much changes in the physical appearance of the house. The furniture—all selected by my mother—stays. The only thing that’s missing is the photo of them on the mantel by our Lord and the one in their bedroom. They are permanently retired from public view. His clothes are gone, too. The only shot that exists of my father and me remains on my desk. It was taken on our one and only trip to Disneyland when I was six years old. I’m smiling into the camera, as happy as a squirrel with an acorn hat while my dad stares distractedly off to the left of the frame as though he has no interest in being in a photo with his son. A few weeks later that photo magically disappears as well. Zap!

I don’t quite understand why I am so down about this dissolution of our parents’ laughingstock set of matrimonial vows. I knew their marriage wasn’t good, clearly headed for if not already on the rocks, but the
finality of it is almost as devastating as discovering that I wasn’t the only monkey who was getting his banana peeled by sweet Virginia, the Reverend’s horn-dog.

At school I begin to flirt with the mixed bag of pleasure that is marijuana. It makes me feel a lot less depressed and a little less lame, even though I know I’m deliberately lowering my I.Q. and flatlining my drive to succeed. The silly nonsense word-jumbles Josie has begun to babble now and then sound even funnier when I’m high. “Door up, down.” “Sho read curtain cabbage.” “Bathroom face.” “Daddy touch no-no.” Phrases that make absolutely . . . Wait!! Back up! . . . What was that last one??? Probably just her brain misfiring. Okay, we have enough shit to deal with, and at this point everything else is just more shit.

Unbeknownst to my mother, who has upped her intake of
her
drug of choice (red wine) I drop out of school so I can take better care of Josie. My grades were sucking anyway and I’m pretty sure the whole Nobel Prize–winning scientist career is off the table for good. I
have
mastered the G chord now on my guitar, so possible rock-star fame is still quite alive, although it could be coughing up blood. Not sure. Fingers really hurt too.

We all hunker down for the long winter that seems to be upon us Cottons. And life just keeps getting increasingly surreal.

One morning I notice that the left side of Josie’s face is looking a little slacker than the right side. Over the course of a week or so I’m alarmed to notice that instead of self-correcting, it begins to droop even farther. One morning, concerned that she may have had a stroke or something, I bundle her up, guide her into the car, and take her to see her doctor, hoping we’ll be back before mother realizes I am driving the car without her permission and without a license.

Her doctor is a nice enough guy, but whatever his specialty is, it doesn’t include asymmetrically drooping faces. So he refers us to a
neurologist, who then refers us to a radiologist, who then orders a series of MRIs of Josie’s head. By the time we get home it’s dark and our mother is well aware that I’ve taken the car without asking her or bothering to apply for a valid driver’s license. She’s convinced that I just took her sick daughter for a self-centered joyride.

I try to explain, but she has already hit the wine rack and will hear none of it. I’m just doing what I want, when I want, with no regard for anyone but myself, “You selfish little bastard!!”

I take Josie to the bathroom and then tuck her into her bed. I head to the kitchen to try again with Mom. She is still on her rant until I override her with a childishly shouted, “Josie’s face is lopsided. The doctor thought it could be bad!!!”

She falls silent. Her pinched, furious expression softens to a more dumbfounded look.

“What?” It’s as if the words I just yelled are taking their time to land.

“One side of her face is kind of sagging, so I took her to the doctor to check it out,” I say. But she’s off again.

“Without asking me if you could? You just take
my
car?! And with no driver’s license? Is there any illegal thing you will not do, Horatio?”

I stuff it down, doing my utmost not to go south with her. I try again. Equably.

“Mom. Just shut up and listen, okay? The MRI guy told me he saw something in her head.”

She stops one more time.

“In your sister’s head?”

We are finally on the same page.

“Yes.”

“Like what? What did he see?”

“Some kind of lump.”

“On an MRI he saw this?”

“Yes. He said he was only a technician and wasn’t supposed to say anything but I told him she was my sister and I really needed to know, now. He’s been doing this for fifteen years and seen a lot of MRIs and he said that we should get the results from the neurologist as soon as we can.”

It takes a few seconds for this to register but register it finally does. She slaps a hand to her mouth as if to shut herself up and stop any further discourse, then turns and bolts for Josie’s bedroom to be with her daughter, all anger and blaming gone. That is the part of her that is still our mom. It’s unexpected, but I start to tear up, seeing her run to her baby’s side like that. With the amount of stress and the blitzkrieg of crap we have all gone through, I lose it. I drop to a kitchen chair and burst into tears like I am six years old again.

A few days later we three journey in to see the neurologist on a cold and rainy November afternoon, as united as we’ll ever be at this stage of the game. Mom drives, of course, and I’m in the back with my bundled-up sister, who drools and doesn’t seem to see the bare trees as they fly past her window in a blur. What’s left of our family arrives at the doctor’s and we sit silently in the waiting room while the girl behind the front desk sexts her boyfriend on her cell. We are both, my mother and I, fearing some pretty bad news. But when we’re escorted into his office and the doctor finally enters, it’s not bad at all!! It’s fucking terrible. Beyond terrible.