Sins of Innocence

Jess

Jessica Bates Randall stepped from her dressing room into the bedroom. She adjusted the satin sash of her robe, took a deep breath, and walked toward the bathroom. She knew she had to get this over with, and now seemed as good a time as any.

“Charles?” she called.

On the other side of the closed door Jess heard the jets of the Jacuzzi rumble. Her husband didn’t answer.

She went to her bureau and looked at the collection of framed photographs that covered the top. Jess on her wedding day: peau de soie and pearls, crepe de Chine and
calla lilies. The kids’ first-day-of-school pictures: Chuck, Maura, and Travis—tousled hair slicked down, pencil boxes, tentative smiles. The family Christmas photos: Charles in velvet smoking jacket, kids in bright flannel PJs. Then her eyes came to rest on one special picture: Jess holding Chuck—Charles, Jr., their oldest—three days after he was born. She touched the edge of the sterling frame and smiled. The baby’s face was nearly invisible, his body bundled by a new mother’s need to swaddle him in not one but three receiving blankets, edged in spun silk. She hadn’t wanted him to be chilled, never mind that it was July.

Jess picked up the photo and held it to her breast, remembering how she’d felt when the nurse first brought Chuck to her. She had looked down at the tiny infant with only one thought:
I wonder if he looks like her
. And though she had known this baby was hers—hers and Charles’s—she was plagued by nightmares until she left the hospital—horrid black dreams in which she asked the nurse over and over to let her see the baby, but the nurse kept laughing and saying “No, Missy, this one goes up for adoption too. All your babies gonna go for adoption.” In her dreams the nurse had looked like Mrs. Hines, the crusty old cook at Larchwood Hall.

Jess felt tears running down her cheeks now. She set the silver-framed photo back on the bureau and wiped her eyes. Now it was her daughter who was pregnant. Maura. Her sixteen-year-old daughter. And the most important thing to Jess was that no one was going to put Maura through what Jess had gone through, not even Charles. No. No one was going to take Maura’s baby away.

The jets of the Jacuzzi were silenced. She heard Charles splashing quietly. He was washing his hair now, Jess knew. Twenty years of marriage and no secrets. Well, almost none. Charles had known about her illegitimate child, but he didn’t know everything. Everything that had happened at Larchwood Hall.

She adjusted the sash of her robe again. Now was the best time to tell him about Maura: He was at his least defensive
when he was naked. And in the last few months it seemed the only time she saw him that way was when she walked in on him bathing.

She crossed toward the split master bath: To the right was her shower, vanity, makeup area, and toilet; his was to the left, complete with steam shower. Connecting the two rooms was the large Jacuzzi room, resplendent with greens and a built-in CD system, lit for relaxation by the recessed lighting that glowed from the raised ceiling. And, like the entire thirty-acre, prime-location, Greenwich, Connecticut, estate—complete with riding trails, stables, swimming pool, guest/bath house, and eight-thousand-plus-square-foot home—the master suite was compliments of her trust fund.
Her
money had bought all this, Jess reminded herself. Not his. And no matter how hard Charles tried to give the country club illusion that he was a successful investment banker, Jess knew the truth.

She turned the knob on the door and entered the room. “Charles?”

He was lying back, stretched to his full six-foot length in the enormous tub, his head resting on a vinyl pillow, his blond hair wet and slippery. He looked about twenty-five, not forty-three.

He opened his eyes. “This better be important,” he said. “I was meditating.”

Jess stifled a scream. Sometimes she detested the way he made her feel so trivial. “Yes, Charles,” she said. “I need to talk to you.”

He groaned and shifted to a sitting position, water spilling out of the tub, onto the black marble deck. “What,” he demanded. Charles never asked. He demanded. Had he always done that? Or was it yet another side effect of two decades of sameness?

Jess swallowed. Suddenly she heard Maura’s words:
Please don’t let Daddy hate me, Mom
. Dear God, Jess quickly prayed, let me say this the right way. “It’s about Maura.”

Charles snorted, picked up the bar of soap, and began lathering his arms. “And I thought you came in here to wash my back. I should have known better.”

Jess stared at the bubbles as they grew on his arms.

“So what’s the problem?” he said, snickering. “Her boyfriend meet some other sweet young thing?” He picked up the washcloth and drizzled water over his arms. God, Jess thought, why can’t he just rinse himself like normal people?

“No,” she answered. “Michael hasn’t met someone else.”

“I know. Don’t tell me. He has to work at the gas station Saturday night, and she hasn’t got a date for the prom.”

Jess gritted her teeth. “The prom isn’t until spring, Charles,” she said, then loathed herself for playing his stupid game. She took a deep breath. “Maura has a very serious problem. One that involves all of us.”

Charles squeezed the last drops from the washcloth. “Why do I get the feeling you’re about to tell me something I don’t want to hear?”

Jess twisted her diamond-and-emerald ring. “She’s pregnant,” she said.

His face froze for a moment, as though someone had snapped a shutter and another photograph had sealed off time, ready to take its place atop the cherry bureau. Then his eyes darkened to an odd shade of gray. He pitched the washcloth against the mirror and pulled himself up from the tub, splashing water across the deck, the carpeted step, and all over Jess.

“Just what I fucking need,” he shouted. He bolted from the tub, his body pink from the water, his face flaming with anger. Jess saw his penis shrivel into its skin.

Charles grabbed a bath sheet from the heated rack and stormed off toward the bedroom. Jess took another towel and wiped the water from herself, then reached over, pulled the plug, and began sopping up the mess.
Just what I fucking need
. His words stung her mind.
What about the rest of us?
she wanted to shout.
What about Maura?
She tossed the towel down and followed him into the bedroom.