Strange Fits of Passion (32 page)

But the answers he was looking for are ones only Mrs. English, or "Mary Amesbury," can reveal now.

Perhaps Willis Beale put it best: "Before Mary Amesbury came here, this was a peaceful little town. Then she came, and it was like a hurricane had blown through. I'm not saying she tried to cause trouble. It's just that she did, didn't she?

"By the time she left us, we had one murder, one suicide, and three kids had lost their mothers.

"She's got something to answer for, doesn't she?" ■

Night had fallen by the time I returned to the dormitory. I had guessed at how long it would take Caroline to read the notes and transcripts. Now I would have to let her confront me.

The corridors were quieter than they'd been earlier. I didn't announce myself by calling up to her room. Instead I simply knocked on the door.

She said at once, "Come in."

She was standing by the only window, holding a small doll made of yarn and bits of cloth. She looked straight at me when I entered. Although I could see at once that she was shaken, she didn't avert her eyes from mine. The notes and transcripts were in a neat pile on her desk.

"You've finished it," I said.

She nodded her head.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

She nodded again.

"It wasn't so much the article that upset me," she said, setting the doll on the windowsill. "I had guessed about that. It was the pattern of my mother's words. That was how she spoke, did you know that?"

I hadn't known the mother well enough to be able to answer that question.

"Have you had dinner?" I asked, gesturing toward the door. "We could go to a cafe or something, have a late supper."

She shook her head quickly. "No," she said. "I'm not hungry."

I edged closer to the center of the room. I felt uncomfortable in my coat and scarf. Although I didn't want to stay long—indeed, I wanted this interview to be over as soon as possible—I thought it would be better to sit. So I did, again on the only chair in the room.

She herself did not move to sit down, but instead rested her weight on the sill.

"I'm not sure I understand why she wrote all of that to you," she said. "Why did she tell you all that? Why did she contradict what she'd said in court?"

I shifted in my chair, unwound my scarf from my neck. It was hot in the room—a fact I hadn't noticed earlier in the day.

"I've often asked myself that question," I said to her. "I'm not sure what your mother's motivation was in sending the material to me. I think that at first she was trying to comply with the interview process, but on terms she could manage. Later the process itself became a kind of catharsis for her and may have brought her some relief. So she wrote in great detail, almost as if she were writing a memoir. I think she wanted to tell her story once and for all, and it was for herself that she did this. And because it was for herself, she had to tell the truth."

"The truth? But you didn't accept it as the truth! It's outrageous what you did!" she screamed. She sat up quickly and wrenched her hair out of her ponytail. "Outrageous! How could you have done this to her?"

I turned my head away and looked at the wall. Oh, yes, I wanted to tell the daughter, I had known her mother's story was the truth. In spite of what I'd done.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I know that's not much, but I
am
sorry."

She shook her head violently, as if to toss away my apology. Her hair fell all around her face.

"Why?" she asked, gesturing with her hands. "Why did you do it?"

I took a deep breath. The answer was complicated.

"That's a complicated question," I said.

I paused, searching for the answer.

"The truest reason, I suppose, is ambition," I said. "I know that's inexcusable, but that's the truth. I was looking for a cover and a book contract. I knew that to get a book contract, I had to leave the reader with unanswered questions—make it seem like a real puzzle. I knew I also had to suggest that I had more material from your mother's notes—material I could reveal at a later date."

She looked down at her feet. Her lips were pressed tightly together.

"But there are other reasons you should know too. Not to excuse myself. You should just know them."

She didn't speak, so I went on.

"It's true that my article was different from the story your mother told in her notes. But I don't think that when I wrote the article I deliberately set out to hurt her. It seemed to me, at the time, that the truth of the story lay in its complexities—in its different voices, different angles."

It was now extremely hot in the room, so I took my coat off.

"And there's something else," I said. "There's the process itself. It's hard to explain, but in the process of writing an article, a writer has to pick and choose. He has to edit a person's words, select some quotes and discard others, perhaps even change what a person said to make the meaning clearer. When you do this, it's almost impossible not to change the story in one way or another...."

Outside, in the corridor, I could hear students talking.

"And another thing," I continued. "The article was a product of its times. It couldn't be written today. We didn't know a lot then about domestic violence. I mean, we didn't know
anything
about domestic violence. Wife-beating wasn't part of our thinking in 1971. To a lot of people it wasn't even considered all that terrible...."

Truth was sometimes relative to the era in which it was spoken, I was tempted to add, but I didn't think the girl in front of me would find that much consolation.

"She was in there twelve years!" Caroline shouted from across the room. "That was my childhood!"

I leaned my head back, looked at the ceiling.

"I know," I said.

My article had gotten more play than anyone had anticipated. It had been picked up by the wire services, had been quoted on TV. Judge Geary, in rendering his verdict, had said he had not been swayed by recent reports in the media. But I had wondered. Judges are not required to sequester themselves during trial, because it is thought they have the professionalism to remain immune to publicity. But I didn't think he had remained immune when he had found Maureen English guilty of first-degree murder and was then required to sentence her to life in prison, with a possibility of parole in twenty years. Basically, he'd thrown the book at her.

Today, I thought, she'd have gotten five years for manslaughter, if that.

I'd been afraid when the article had come out that Pickering would subpoena my notes. But he hadn't. After Geary had found Maureen English guilty of first-degree murder, what was the point?

Maureen English's sentence had been commuted by the governor of Maine after she'd served twelve years. I knew that Julia Strout, along with various feminist groups, had lobbied for the commutation. I had even thought of joining their efforts, but I didn't.

When I looked down at the girl across from me, I saw she'd been crying. She took a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose. She'd been crying earlier, too, I suddenly realized.

"She wasn't complicitous, was she?" Caroline asked in a small voice after a time.

"No," I answered as truthfully as I could. "But I didn't know that then. Your mother often describes herself in the notes as complicitous, but I didn't know in 1971, as I do now, that most victims of marital abuse feel as your mother did. I didn't know then, as I do now, that this sense of guilt and complicity is part of the destructive process that the victim suffers."

I paused.

"What did your mother die of?" I asked, changing the subject. "The obituary didn't say."

Caroline didn't answer me at first. Then she moved to the bed and sat on it.

"Pneumonia," she said finally. "She'd had it on and off when she was in prison, and was prone to it. Jack and I were always careful...." She trailed off.

Her face seized, as if she might be going to cry again, but she gained control of her features.

"I'm sorry," I said.

There was a long silence in the room.

I cleared my throat. "I was glad to see from the obituary that she'd been survived by Jack and yourself," I said. "I mean I was glad to see that she had married Jack in the end, and that she had been able to eke out some happiness for herself."

Caroline nodded dully. "They were happy," she said.

"If you don't mind my asking, I'm just curious, but I was wondering what happened to some of the people."

She looked up at me, her eyes vaguely unfocused. "Who?" she asked.

"Well," I fumbled, "Julia, for one."

She answered me, but she seemed preoccupied.

"I lived with Julia until I was twelve," she said. "My grandmother asked for custody, but my mother wanted me near her in Maine. And then, when my mother got out, she and Jack and I moved into his house. This was ... this was hard for me at first. I loved Julia. I thought of her as my mother for a long time.... Emily had left by then. She's an engineer in Portland."

"And you," I said. "Will you be a writer, like your parents?"

She shook her head slowly.

"No," she said. "No, I don't think so. I'm thinking about a program in architecture right now."

"Jack stayed a lobsterman?" I asked.

"Oh yes," she said, as if it were a silly question.

"Oh. And Willis?"

"I was taught to hate you," she said. There was a sudden anger in her dark eyes, almost threatening; but more than anger, there was confusion.

I'd been prepared for this, but the heat came up into my face even so. I made a small gesture with my hand. I couldn't remember how I had planned to respond.

"Well, not taught to hate you," she said, "but it was understood."

I nodded. It was all I could do.

"I've felt bad," I said. "I feel bad. It's why I'm here."

She looked away from me.

"Why do you do it?" she asked.

I thought a minute. Hadn't I already answered this?

She saw the incomprehension on my face.

"No, I mean," she said, "why do you write about violence, about crimes?"

I looked down at my hands. I twirled a gold bracelet on my wrist. It was a question I had, over the years, often asked myself—sometimes with alarm, sometimes with complacency. Why was I so drawn to other people's stories of murder, rape, and suicide? It seemed to me a question that went to the very heart of my existence, my life's work.

Could I possibly explain to this young girl the draw of the unnatural act unfolding naturally? Or tell her of my fascination with the violence and passion just beneath the veneer of order and restraint? Could I admit to this girl that it was precisely that excess, that willingness to permit—to commit—excess, that had so drawn me to her mother's story? Could I reveal to this child the trembling of my hands when the packages from her mother had arrived at my desk?

"I'm interested in the extremes to which people will go," I said.

It seemed to suffice.

"When I read of your mother's death in the
Times
last week," I said, "I spent an entire afternoon walking the streets. The memory of your mother triggered many powerful associations for me, many questions that I'd tried for years to brush aside. And when I got home, I went into my files and dug out this material and reread all of it. It's a very different thing reading something in the heat of ambition and then twenty years later.... When I had finished it, I felt you should have it."

She shook her head slowly back and forth.

"There was a book," I said.

She nodded. "I know. I've never read it."

"I have a copy here for you, if you want it," I said, bending and reaching into my briefcase. "Though it's just a longer version of the article, the same themes and so on."

But I saw when I looked up that she was shaking her head again.

"No," she said. "I don't want it."

I put the book back into the briefcase.

"The truth is," I said, "your mother's story made me rich."

I stopped. I looked down at my boots.

"She trusted you," she said. "Despite her reservations, despite what she knew of the process."

It was an indictment I could not protest. I gathered my coat into a heap on my lap.

"The title of your book...," she said.

"
Strange Fits of Passion.
"

"It's from Wordsworth," she said. "We read the poem last year. I'd heard the title years ago, from Jack or Julia, and was surprised when I came across it in class."

"He meant the phrase differently than in the modern sense. He meant it to describe grief," I began. But the mixture of gravity and grief in her own eyes stopped me.

"Look, this is difficult," I said, bending forward and reaching into my pocketbook. "But the truth is, I made a lot of money from your mother's story. My success with the book enabled me to write other books—have other successes. Over the years I've tried to share some of the income with her, but every time I sent her a check, the envelope came back unopened. I have a check here that will help you with your education. I hope you won't refuse it merely on principle. I believe that your mother should have shared in the money from the book."

I had no hope that she would take the check. I felt foolish as I held out my hand to her. I saw myself as she must have seen me—a middle-aged woman with a bribe. She stood at the desk a long time, longer than was necessary to humiliate me. So I was stunned when she took the check and put it into her pocket.

Stunned and then immensely relieved.

"I need the money," she said simply. "My father's legacy has run out. Jack hasn't much, and I don't like to ask."

She didn't thank me. I thought she understood and believed the money to be her mother's, and therefore hers.

"Well, I'll go now," I said, standing up and putting my arms into my coat.

Her taking the check, that was an unexpected bonus. There was absolution in that.

"There's just one more thing I have to ask you," she said.

"Sure," I said, perhaps a bit too flippantly.

I was thinking already of finding a place for a late supper and then returning to the motel room I had taken earlier in the day while she'd been reading. And then tomorrow I could return to my apartment and to my work.