Sins of Innocence (36 page)

“My fucking stepfather,” Ginny said. “The father of my kid.”

Jess let out a bloodcurdling scream. She fell to her knees, her hands covering her face.

“And if you ever tell anyone what I just said, I swear I’ll break your fucking neck.”

Miss Taylor, Susan, and P.J. all appeared at the same time.

“What on earth …?” Miss Taylor stopped abruptly. She stared at the body. P.J. screamed.

“Holy shit,” Susan said. “Somebody get the police.”

“NO!” Miss Taylor yelled, and tightened the knot around her chenille robe. “Call the doctor. NOW!”

“He’s dead,” Susan said. “We need the police. It’s too late for a doctor.”

Miss Taylor stooped beside Jess and cradled her in her arms. “We need the doctor for Jess and Ginny. I’ll take care of the police.”

“Looks like you already have,” Ginny said.

Through the doorway to her room came Bud Wilson. His hair was disheveled, and his T-shirt hung crookedly from his saggy pants. He looked at though he’d dressed in a hurry.

“Frances,” he addressed the housemother. “What in the name of thunder is going on here?”

Ginny couldn’t believe her eyes. So this was why Miss Taylor had been alerted the night she’d sneaked out. Old bleach head was sleeping with the fucking sheriff! Christ, Ginny thought. Christ.

“Ginny, what happened?” Miss Taylor asked as she cradled Jess.

“I think I’d better ask the questions, Frances,” the sheriff barked, then pointed around the room at the girls, shaking his finger. “Don’t anyone touch anything, and don’t anyone move. You”—he pointed at P.J.—“call the operator and tell her we need the M.E. here immediately. And don’t dare leave the house. Any of you.”

P.J., who had remained standing in the doorway, nodded and disappeared. Susan threw him an angry look. Jess simply stared ahead. Ginny looked at the sheriff.
Asshole
, was the only thought that came to mind.

“The fucker tried to kill me,” Ginny said. Miss Taylor winced. “Jess saved my life. My motherfucking stepfather tried to kill me.”

“Oh, dear God.” The color drained from the housemother’s face. She turned to the sheriff. “How are you going to handle this? Oh,” she moaned, “this is not good for Larchwood.”

The sheriff scratched his stomach. “Now we’re all gonna leave this room. Together.”

Miss Taylor shot him a glare. “At least go downstairs so the girls can put on their robes.”

He grudgingly left. Miss Taylor helped Jess to her feet and escorted her from the room. Ginny looked at Susan.

“It would probably look better if somebody stuck his prick back in his pants.”

Susan stared at her.

“Don’t look at me,” Ginny said. “I’m not touching the slimy thing.”

“Jesus, Ginny, was he trying to rape you?”

Ginny shrugged. “Nope. He had to take a leak and thought this was the bathroom.”

Susan stared a moment longer, then said, “I’ll only do this because it would be worse for Larchwood if I didn’t.”

“I didn’t know you cared.”

Susan stooped down and slowly turned the body onto its side. Ginny saw his prick. It was half-stiff. Creamy white fluid oozed from the tip. Susan started to touch it, then drew back. She looked at Ginny. Ginny stared back. Susan took a deep breath. With partially closed eyes she quickly lifted the puckery flesh and stuffed it inside his pants. She zipped the fly. She pulled at the hip, and the body flopped back onto its stomach. Then Susan puked all over the back of his legs.

* * *

A few minutes later the girls sat in the dining room, sipping weak tea, avoiding eye contact with each other. Jess still had that faraway look in her eyes; Susan looked in control but a little green; P.J. simply looked terrified. Old bleach head nervously played with the chenille tie on her robe. The sheriff was at the head of the table, fully dressed in his uniform, a small notebook poised in one hand, a ballpoint pen in the other. It was a scene straight out of a grade-B movie.

“I’ll need to speak to each of you separately,” Bud Wilson said.

“Why?” Ginny asked. “I told you what happened. My stepfather tried to kill me.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“He found out about the baby. He was tear-assed mad. He also found out I stole money from him to come here.”

The sheriff raised his eyebrows and scribbled in his notepad, then looked at Jess. “And then what happened?”

Jess cleared her throat. “I heard noise,” she whimpered. “It sounded like someone was hurt.”

“He was trying to strangle me,” Ginny said quickly, feeling Susan’s eyes penetrate her. The bitch had better not say a word. “He taped my mouth.” She rubbed at the rippled flesh around her lips. “I kicked him. He fell on the floor. That must be what Jess heard.”

The sheriff looked back to Jess. “And so you took the scissors and went into her room? Just because you heard a thud of someone falling on the floor?”

“It … it was more than a thud. It sounded like Ginny was in trouble.”

“And you just happened to be awake.”

“I was sewing. I was making … Christmas stockings for everyone.…” Tears spilled down her cheeks. Miss Taylor reached over and hugged her.

“I think this is enough, Bud,” the housemother said.

Ginny looked at Jess, so tiny and shriveled in her robe that no one would have guessed she was eight-and-a-half months’ pregnant. “Jess saved my life,” she said. “He was trying to kill me.”

Ginny looked around the table. No one spoke.

“As for my mother, let me handle it. I’ll call her in the morning.” She smiled to herself.
But not too early
, she thought.
It’s not the kind of thing she’ll be able to handle with a hangover
.

“I didn’t mean to kill him,” Jess said. “I only wanted him to stop hurting her.…”

“It’s okay, dear,” Miss T. said. “Everything will be fine.”

Just then Jess let out a piercing scream and clutched her mounded stomach.

Miss Taylor jumped up. “Jess?”

“Oh, God!” Jess screamed in horror. “My baby! My baby is coming!” She doubled over and fainted.

What followed was a blur to Ginny, a blur that would become even more faint in the years to come. She remembered seeing Pop Hines carry Jess out of the house; she remembered seeing what seemed like fifty men with badges and notebooks and odd, disinterested expressions come and go, and hearing questions and answering them vaguely; and she remembered, just as the dawn was breaking, seeing the heavy black plastic bag being carried down the stairs, and knowing that her nightmare was over—the nightmare that had lasted for so many years. And Ginny thought of her mother, and was safe in the knowledge that she, too, was at last released from him, free to become her mother again, safe.

Susan

“Her water had broken by the time they got her here,” Susan said as she and P.J. walked down the hospital corridor. “And her baby’s so tiny. Just a little over five pounds.”

“I hope she’s okay. I hope they’re both okay.”

“I can’t believe I’d ever say this, but I hope Ginny’s okay too. I guess the sheriff’s going to drive her to Boston this afternoon to tell her mother.”

“How’d her stepfather get in, anyway? Weren’t the doors locked?”

“Miss Taylor said he smashed in the windowpane on the back door. He reached in and turned the key in the lock.”

P.J. shook her head. “Bet she won’t be leaving it there anymore. Did she call Jess’s father?”

Susan shrugged. “Don’t think so. I’ve gotten the impression he didn’t want to know from nothing until Jess had the baby and was home. Maybe not even then.”

“But after everything that happened last night?…”

Susan shrugged again.

They passed by a nurses’ station that was decorated with paper cutout turkeys and Oriental-looking pilgrims. “Miss Taylor also said Bud Wilson agreed to write this up as involuntary manslaughter,” Susan said.

P.J. looked quizzical. “Well, it was.”

Susan didn’t respond but continued, “He said that due to the fact that Ginny’s stepfather was trying to kill her and there was a witness—Ginny—it would be an open-and-shut case. No charges will be brought against Jess.”

“He probably figures the less attention called to this, the better.”

Susan nodded. “I’m sure his wife would agree.”

“His
wife
? My God, Miss Taylor’s fooling around with a married guy?”

“Hey, different strokes. It doesn’t affect me.”

They walked in silence, their low heels creaking on the tile floor.

“I guess it won’t be long before we’ll all be here,” P.J. said, as she glanced around the sterile corridor.

“I’ll be here before you. Hopefully.”

“You’re due the Fourth? God, what am I going to do alone at Larchwood for three weeks?”

“Ginny will be here.”

They walked in silence.

“Susan?” P.J. asked. “You haven’t talked to me about much since—” she paused—“since you found out about
David. Did you order furniture for the apartment? When are you moving to Boston?”

Susan sighed. “I guess I’ve been procrastinating. I just don’t know what to do.”

“I don’t want to sound sarcastic, but don’t you think you’d better hurry up and decide?”

“I know. It’s just that things keep happening. First David. Then your father dying. Now last night …” She stopped as a woman passed by in a wheelchair. “God, the time has flown. I hardly even paid any attention to the election.”

“I noticed.”

Susan smiled. “Humphrey didn’t have a chance, anyway. I don’t care how close the popular vote was, he never could have pulled it off. Even Johnson’s last-minute halt to the bombing couldn’t—”

“Susan,” P.J. interrupted her, “that was weeks ago. I’m talking about today, tomorrow. About your baby and you.”

Susan looked at the white tile floor. “I know,” she said. Susan also knew she was procrastinating because she still didn’t know what to do. If only she could call her parents and talk with them. But she hadn’t spoken with them since her mother had told her about David, and as the weeks had passed, it became easier not to. She recognized that what she was doing was not much different from the denial Jess’s father was pulling on Jess, or P.J.’s mother on her. She had been so sure, so willing to take on the responsibility of her baby while knowing she might never find David. She had been so sure. Or had she? Had she only been living in the dream that they’d be together again? Had she been denying the truth—the way she’d once denied that she loved him? And now that David might never return, was it really wise for her to keep the baby? Was it really fair, to either of them?

They continued to walk down the hall, as if drawn toward the sounds of the babies crying. Suddenly they stood in front of the glass partition to the nursery.

Jess’s baby was there, wrapped in a pink blanket.
FRANCES BATES
, read the name pasted to the outside of the bassinet.

“Frances,” Susan said. “She named her after Miss Taylor.”

“She’s so small,” P.J. said. “And beautiful.”

Susan looked at the baby. She felt oddly displaced from her, detached. From around the corner came voices. Susan recognized Miss Taylor’s, then Miss Gladstone’s. She realized they didn’t know Susan and P.J. were there.

“The adoptive parents are so thrilled,” Miss Gladstone was saying. “They’re even more excited that she was early.”

“Do they understand the circumstances of the birth?” Miss Taylor asked.

“No. Only that she was born early, by cesarean section.”

“You have a nice job.”

“Well, this part of it, anyway. It’s wonderful to see people so happy. People who want a baby so desperately. It’s working with the girls that’s the hard part. I can’t begin to imagine how hard this is for them.”

“Neither can I,” Miss Taylor said. “It must be difficult to put their babies’ happiness above their own.”

Susan felt a gnawing in her stomach. She looked at P.J. P.J. said nothing, but Susan sensed what she was thinking. Susan must give her baby up like the other girls. She must give this child a chance to have a decent life. She must face the fact that she would probably never see David again. It was the least she could do for his baby. Give it up. Give it a chance. Give David up. The two people in the world she most loved, and because she loved them, she would let them go.

Six days later Jess went directly from the hospital back to Manhattan. Miss Taylor packed her bags and had them shipped to the Park Avenue town house.

“She thought it best not to return to Larchwood,” the woman told the others. “The memories … you know.” They had all nodded. They knew.

On Tuesday, December 5, Susan delivered a baby boy.
She cringed at the irony: It was the six-month anniversary of the assassination of Robert Kennedy.

When Miss Taylor came to see her, she asked if Susan wanted her to phone her parents.

“I don’t care,” Susan said, and realized she meant it. She had decided to move to Boston after all, alone. She would take her inheritance and support herself, put herself through grad school, be on her own. She was too old to go running back to Mommy and Daddy and be the perfect little Jewish princess and date the perfect Jewish boy. For now, anyway, she would be on her own. She might try to find David. She might not. But their baby would go to a loving home, where his two parents would cherish every breath he took.

“They’d just better appreciate him,” she said to herself, as she signed the adoption papers.

P.J
.

“Well, it’s you and me, kid,” Ginny said to P.J., as they watched the cab drive Susan away from Larchwood.

“Yeah,” P.J. answered. “Merry Christmas.”

They walked back into the house and flopped in the living room.

“Hey, I don’t know about you, but I don’t plan to stick around here till Christmas,” Ginny said.

P.J. shrugged. “I think that’s out of my hands.” She looked around the room. Pine needles had begun to fall. The red bows had begun to droop. “Besides, we already had our Christmas. The day before Thanksgiving.” She looked at Ginny. “Sorry, I didn’t mean …”

Ginny waved her off. “No problem.”

“So what are you going to do when you leave?”

“Go home. On our little trip to Boston to tell my mother about my stepfather, Bud Wilson told me a lot of things—things about A.A. He’s not so bad, you know. Maybe I can get my mother some help. Get her off the booze. I don’t know if it will work, but I’m going to give
it a shot. I’m going to start by trying to talk her into moving to L.A. Thankfully my stepfather left a bundle of money.”