The Abortionist's Daughter (15 page)

The clerk had already printed out a yellow form for Frank. Hastily he signed it and handed it back. Nobody asked who they were. My god, we’re famous, Megan thought.

“Lesson number one,” her father said as they hurried toward the elevators. “You don’t volunteer anything to reporters. Ever. Not one word. Do you understand?”

“We’re famous, aren’t we?” she said, catching up.

The elevator doors opened. He tossed his bags toward the back and waited for her to get in. When the doors had closed, he turned to her. “Let’s get a few things straight,” he said. “It’s not our goal to be famous. We’ll cooperate, we’ll be civil, but it’s not our role to volunteer information. Regarding the press: not another word. Do you understand?”

“I’m not ten, Dad.”

“Then quit acting like it.”

“This isn’t exactly what I expected to be doing over Christmas break.”

“Nor I,” said her father grimly. “Roll with the punches, Megan.”

Quickly Megan stole a glance at him. In the sallow elevator light, the pads under his eyes sagged loosely, like his skin was one size too big. In a few seconds the elevator jolted to a stop and the extra flesh on his neck quivered. The doors slid open. Megan and Frank each picked up a duffel and headed down the hallway.

“That herpes thing,” she murmured. “It was a joke, you know.”

Her father hesitated in front of their door and looked at her, and it seemed like he had something important to say. But if he did, he changed his mind. He fed the magnetic key card into the slot on the door and pushed.

If there was one thing she hated, it was having the last word.

—————

Their third-floor suite had two bedrooms, a living area, and a kitchenette. As in all hotel rooms, the air hummed and smelled of disinfectant and electric charge. Megan carried her duffel into the smaller of the two bedrooms. The curtains had been drawn, and in the dim light she scraped her shin on the corner of the bedframe. Angrily she found the light switch. She threw her duffel onto the bed and took out the tops and sweatpants that Sandy Goldfarb had lent her and stuffed them into the bureau drawer.

For the next few weeks, this would be home.

She went back out to the living area, where her father was attempting to set up the espresso machine on the tiny counter in the kitchenette.

“I need clothes,” she announced.

“Didn’t Sandy give you some of hers?”

“They’re huge, Dad.”

“What about stuff at your dorm?”

“It’s closed until the fifteenth. All I have is these jeans and two sweaters, and that includes the one you gave me.”

“I don’t have a fortune to spend right now,” Frank said. “You happen to know where this tube thingy goes?”

Megan thought it strange that her father was concerned with the cost of clothing. “Are new clothes that I have to buy because our house has been declared a crime scene covered by insurance?”

Frank looked up. For the first time in weeks, his eyes crinkled and he laughed out loud.

“That’s a good one, Megan. We’ll file it.” He tore open a plastic bag and a small part went flying in the air. “Go buy whatever you need,” he said, squatting down. He ran his palm over the rug. “Damn thing isn’t very simple, is it?”

So that afternoon Megan went out and bought a dozen pairs of underwear, some tops, another pair of jeans, some shorts and a T-shirt to work out in in the hotel gym, and some loose pajama pants. She bought some toiletries and some cheap suede slippers from the drugstore, and while she was there she took a moment and looked up Eve Kelly’s phone number. It wasn’t listed. Finally she went to the bookstore and bought the Thomas Hardy novel she was supposed to read for the course on nineteenth-century British lit that Natalie had talked her into taking. Leaving the bookstore, Megan wondered what her roommate was doing in California at the moment. Swimming in the ocean? Lounging by the pool? Maybe she was reading Thomas Hardy. Then again, maybe she’d picked up a
National Enquirer
at the grocery store and was now reading about whether the sperm in Diana’s vaginal cavity belonged to Frank or to someone else.

When she returned to the hotel suite, she saw a new laptop sitting on the coffee table. She thought of what her father had said about money, then recalled that he’d had to turn his old laptop over to the police. Megan sat on the sofa and was in the process of logging on to her e-mail when her father came out of the bedroom, yawning.

“Are the reporters still down there?” he asked.

“Most of them,” replied Megan.

“Did they ask you anything?”

“Yeah, they asked how my herpes was,” she said as she typed in the password to her instant messenger account. When he didn’t reply, she looked up. “Don’t be an idiot, Dad, it’s a joke.” She had fifteen new messages. Bill wanted to know if there was any way he could help. Mr. Malone from the high school expressed his condolences. Natalie wrote
Are you okay??????
To which Megan replied
Be glad your mother is a librarian.

As she was scanning the rest of her messages, she heard the sound of a door creak open. On the screen a message flashed.
Billa-bong has just signed on,
it read. That would be Bill. Instantly she regretted signing on.

oh hi,
he wrote.

hi,
she typed.

can icu?

2 busy now.

w/what?

Megan deleted a slew of e-mails advertising hot horny girls. A pop-up screen presented her with a poll on whether Frank Thompson killed Diana Duprey. She closed that screen too.

i asked u a ?,
wrote Bill.

y aren’t u w/amanda

i m; want 2 no what wer doing?

no

whats the cops name again?

y

i hv some info

?

yr mthr owed a lot of $

what are you talking about???? 2 who?

a meth dealer

????????????????????????

& hes not a nice guy. I thot the cop wd like 2 no about him

she usd diet pills not meth!!!!!!!!!!!!

If u wnt 2 think that, fine

she ws a dctr!

whtevr

“You want some espresso?” her father asked.

“Sure,” she said over her shoulder.
get a life,
she wrote.

“Here goes,” and her father plugged in the machine and pushed the switch. There came the sound of underground water bubbling up. Frank stood back and wiped his hands on a paper towel. “Now
that’s
an espresso machine. How did you know I wanted one?”

“Mom said.” Megan turned back to the computer and saw that Bill had logged off, thank god.

“Is it hissing?” her father called from the bedroom.

“I think so,” she called back.

“Keep an eye on it while I use the bathroom.”

He’s trying to provoke you, she told herself. Forget about it. She scanned the rest of her e-mail: mostly junk, and she was about to delete it all, when one message caught her eye.

FROM: [email protected]. RE: SINNERS.

Megan glanced over her shoulder, then double-clicked on the message.

YOUR MOTHER DESERVED TO DIE AND YOU DO TOO. DON’T THINK WE’RE IGNORANT. GOD WATCHES ALL.

“I’m going to save so much money with this machine,” Frank said, returning from his room. “You know how much I spend at Starbucks on average per week?”

“Dad?”

“What’s that, honey?”

“There’s a message you might want to see.”

Frank came over and stood behind her with his hands on the back of the sofa. He smelled of soap, and she could feel his breath on her scalp.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Forward it to me, and I’ll forward it to the police.”

“It’s kind of creepy.”

The espresso machine abruptly stopped hissing. “Have you ever gotten messages like this before?” her father asked.

Megan decided that Bill’s mash notes didn’t fall into the same category. “This helps you, though, doesn’t it? Like, doesn’t it suggest it was someone else? How come the police aren’t going after the ant-eyes, anyway? Like Eve Kelly. Remember her? Why aren’t they investigating her?”

Frank was inspecting the espresso machine.

“I’d think you’d be totally psyched with an e-mail like this,” she said. “How come you’re not excited? Something like this should get everybody off your back.”

“Wish I could get this thing to unscrew,” said Frank, bearing with his shoulder to twist off the cap. “It didn’t even make the coffee. There’s no coffee in the cup. God damn it.”

“Leave it alone, Dad.”

“It just pisses me off when you get something new and it doesn’t work,” he said. “God damn it all.”

“Don’t touch the lid. We can return it,” Megan said. “I kept the receipt.”

“Pieces of junk nowadays,” Frank was saying, when suddenly the machine exploded with a loud
pop.

“I told you not to touch the lid!” Megan cried, jumping up. It looked like a small bomb had detonated in the kitchenette, with coffee-colored mud splattered all over the counter and cabinets. Her father had sunk to the floor and was squatting against the wall. He hung his head between his knees like a child. She squatted down beside him and put her hand on his shoulder.

“Did you burn yourself?”

“I’m fine,” he said in a muffled voice.

Megan looked around at the mess.

“Want to talk?” she asked gently.

“No!”

“Maybe you should.”

“I don’t want to talk! I just want a cup of espresso!”

He sniffled and looked up, and they both looked at the mess all around them, and they began to laugh. Megan leaned around him and opened the door of the small refrigerator. She took out a single-serving bottle of scotch and handed it to him.

“Better than espresso,” she told him.

He stood up and got a glass out of the cupboard and added ice cubes and poured the scotch over the ice and jiggled things around, and then he sat down on the sofa and took a sip. When he finally spoke, his voice was gruff, and he had to clear his throat several times. Megan knew something big was coming.

“She just . . . ,” he began, then paused. “She just knew how to push my buttons, you know? All she had to do was turn away. That’s all she had to do.”

“What do you mean?”

“She just had a way of dismissing the issue. Never listening! All these years!”

“What issue?”

He shook his head. “If you told me twenty years ago that I’d be in this position today, I’d have said you were crazy.”

What position? He wasn’t making sense. An uneasiness sprouted within her—not quite distrust but something like it. She plucked it like a weed and tossed it aside and waited for him to make more sense.

“But I did love her,” he continued. “Believe me. Even though I held a grudge. I didn’t even know it was there, to tell you the truth. I’m not the kind of person who usually holds grudges. I thought you’d go off to college and your mother and I would have this second honeymoon. Guess it wasn’t meant to be.”

Megan felt something take root in her. She went and got another bottle of scotch from the refrigerator and poured it straight up into a glass for herself. She was terrified.

“Dad,” she began. “I—”

“But here’s the thing,” he went on, as though he hadn’t heard her. “Here it is January and I’m getting along, I’m doing okay, I manage to get up and go about my day, the sun’s out, the sky’s blue, the traffic lights are green all the way down Broadway—and then I notice the gloves she was looking for that morning.” He gave an edgy laugh. “She’d asked if I’d seen them anywhere, and I ignored her because number one she’d been so crabby and number two it was a pair of gloves and I had other things to think about. But today! There they are! Right there on the floor of my car! Think of the aggravation I could have saved her if I’d noticed them that day.” He laughed ruefully. “All day long she wouldn’t have had to wonder where her gloves were.”

Megan didn’t get it.

“My point is,” he said, as though he’d read her mind, “marriage is a lot more complicated than you know, Megan.” He took the tissue she was handing him and blew his nose. She handed him another one.

Suddenly his face changed. “Hey. Off the subject. We’ve got the questioning coming up next week. Are you nervous?”

“Kind of.”

“Don’t be. It’s no mystery. We’ll go down to police headquarters. We’ll meet with those two detectives. They’ll ask us questions, and we’ll answer them.”

“Are we going to be in the same room together?”

“If I have my say, yes.”

“What kind of questions will they ask?”

“With you, they’ll probably ask what else you know about the threats,” he said. “With me, well, that’s different.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m a suspect.”

“Will they ask you if you did it?”

“Probably.”

“And what will you say?”

He stared at her as though she had just asked if the tooth fairy was real. Then he gave a derogatory laugh. “Are you kidding?”

“No,” she said. “Yes.”

“Oh, Megan,” he said, closing his eyes. “Megan Megan Megan.”

“Did you?”

“No, honey,” he said.

Megan took a another deep breath. Her father reached over and tousled her hair. “Jeez,” he said. “Megan. Don’t even think that way.”

She leaned away. She couldn’t decide whether he was being condescending or paternalistic or just sucking up to her. She felt herself getting nervous, and she recalled sitting in some Santa’s lap long ago where the feeling just wasn’t right. She reminded herself that it was just her father here. Same guy as always.

“What were you fighting about that night?” she asked.

“What? Oh good lord, honey, you don’t need to know.”

“Yes I do,” she said, her voice suddenly growing very small. “Why did you throw a glass across the room? What were you fighting about? Me? Money?” She thought for a moment and recalled lying in bed listening to her parents argue about Ben’s medical bills. Suddenly a string of unscripted images flashed before her: Ben crawling into bed with her at night, then snoring like an old man; the smell of cough syrup and vaporizers; her mother’s stomach right before Ben was born, big and white as the moon.