The Abortionist's Daughter (16 page)

“Was it about Ben?” she asked. “Were you fighting about him?”

Frank leaned forward on the sofa and rested his forehead against his fingertips. From the back, his shoulder blades poked up like little tents. He cleared his throat.

“When your brother died,” he said gruffly, “it was like my skin got ripped off.”

She’d been at camp. She and Ben had both had pneumonia that summer, but she recovered, while Ben went from bad to worse. At night she listened to her parents argue about whether she should go, with Ben so sick; her father prevailed and off to the mountains she went. She was nine; Ben was four.

That was the year he ate so much paste he had to have his stomach pumped. The year she taught him to use a pair of scissors, only to have him happily cut holes in everyone’s clothes. The year he wanted a trumpet for his birthday, and they gave him a bugle with a kazoo for a mouthpiece, and he woke them up every morning with his high-pitched buzzy whoops. The year he wore a satin princess gown for Halloween.

“So you blamed Mom? And stayed mad at her for the last ten years? People get grief counseling for stuff like that, Dad,” Megan said. “Did you ever think of grief counseling?”

Frank rubbed his eyes with his fingertips. “Oh, we tried. It helped, somewhat. But we still had you to raise. And it wasn’t that you gave us a lot of trouble,” he said. “You were just like any kid. You tested the rules. You pushed our buttons. The problem is, when you’ve had your skin ripped off, you don’t have a lot left in reserve. And your mother and I had very different ideas about how to raise a child—
any
child, even one without a disability.”

Megan had witnessed this. With just about every issue her parents had sat on opposite sides of the table. They even asked her to keep secrets.
Don’t tell your father,
her mother would say,
but this is some very high-quality pot.

Frank rose from the sofa and went and opened up the little refrigerator. This time he chose the clear bottle of gin. He unscrewed the cap and poured it onto the pebbles of ice that remained in his glass.

“Look,” he said. “I don’t want surprises coming out during the questioning. Your mother and I fought that night, Megan. No question. Knock-down, drag-out.”

Megan was suddenly tired and hungry, and she thought her father should have offered to share the gin. “When are you going to tell me exactly what happened?”

“That night?”

“That night.”

“I’m telling you now,” said Frank. “We fought.”

“And you threw a glass at her.”

“Yes.”

“Did you grab her?”

“Yes.”

“Shake her?”

“Yes,” he said. “I did.”

“And then what happened?”

“I left,” he said.

“And where’d you go?”

“Out,” said Frank.

“Where?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me. It’s going to matter to the police too. Aren’t you going to have to tell
them
where you were?”

“Don’t go there,” he warned.

“Oh, right,” she said. “Keep Megan in the dark. Treat her like Ben. Retardo daughter here.”

“Megan.”

“Then tell me where you went! Tell me what you were fighting about! Tell me why you threw a glass across the room! She’s dead, Dad! Tell me, so I stop wondering whether or not you did it!”

She stopped suddenly, frightened that she might have overstepped the boundaries. Every muscle in her father’s face seemed to clench up. Slowly, carefully, he set his glass on the arm of the sofa and sat down again.

“Okay,” he said. “You want to know what we were fighting about? Here’s what we were fighting about.” He leaned forward and hit the mouse pad with his forefinger. Then he typed in a Web address and hit the return key. On the monitor a picture began staggering into focus.

Megan stood behind the sofa with her arms crossed. “What?” she said sullenly.

“That,” he said, sitting back.

Color bled down the screen. When she was able to make out the image, she raised her hand to her throat.
The hot night air, cool on her skin. The blanket, soft beneath her. Raising her head to the moonlight.

“I didn’t believe it at first, either,” he said. “Then I saw the mole.”

Megan sat down on the sofa. Her mind began to race. She
knew
how to work a digital camera. She
knew
how to delete a frame. She knew how to delete
multiple
frames. Each time she had deleted everything. She was positive.

“What bothers me, of course,” her father was saying, “is not that these ended up on the Internet but that you let someone take them in the first place. Who was it? Bill?”

Megan stood up. The fury made her shake. She got her jacket from the closet.

“Where are you going?” her father asked.

“Out.”

“No you’re not,” he said. “You sit right back down.”

“What are you going to do, Dad? Take away my allowance? Ground me?”

“Sit down, Megan,” her father warned. “I do not want you driving in this state.”

“I’m
fine.
” She had her hand on the door when he grabbed her shoulder. She wrenched herself free but lost her balance, and he grabbed both shoulders and pushed her back into the room, where she staggered against the sofa.

“You can’t go driving in this frame of mind,” he said.

“You pushed me.”

“I didn’t push you, Megan.”

“Oh my god.”

“Megan—”

“I can’t believe you just pushed me. Get out of my way,” she said, for he was standing in front of the door now, barring her from leaving. “If you don’t get out of the way, I will call the police.”

“Oh Megan, come on,” he began. “You just egged me on a little. I overreacted. I’m sorry.”

“Is this how it happened that night?”

“How what happened?”

“
She
probably egged you on. Are you going to smash my head in too?” Not waiting for an answer, she stormed into her bedroom, where she unzipped her duffel and opened the drawers and threw everything—the new jeans, the new tops, Sandy Goldfarb’s oversize tunics, everything—into the bag and zipped it shut. She went into the bathroom and gathered up her shampoo, toothpaste, toothbrush. She got the Thomas Hardy novel and zipped everything else into one of the side pockets. Then she went back out to the main room. Her father was still standing by the door.

“Where are you going?” he asked, stepping aside.

“None of your business.”

“I can’t let you do this,” he said. “You’re not in any shape to drive.”

“You can’t stop me,” said Megan.

“Don’t go.”

But Megan stepped out into the hallway. “Oh, and by the way,” she said, “I guess I do want my own attorney.”

—————

She made it to the small college town up north in just under forty-five minutes. On campus she careened into the parking lot of the squat brick building where Bill lived. Screeching to a stop in the handicapped zone, she cut the ignition and ran into the dorm and up the stairs to the second floor and down the hall to room 213. She stopped momentarily, took a deep breath, and pounded on the door.

Bill’s roommate opened it.

“Where’s Bill?” she demanded.

“Wow,” he said. “Are you Megan?”

“Where is he???”

“In the shower.” He pointed past the stairwell. “Hey. Chill.”

Megan ran down the hall to the door marked “Men.” Without knocking, she stormed in, sending the hot steamy air into a roiling fit and startling a barely pubescent boy into frozen panic at the sink. She glanced one way and then another, then followed the sound of shower spray to a stall halfway down the row. She whipped back the curtain, only to catch another boy with a look of astonishment on his sudsy face.

“What are you friggin’ doing?” he exclaimed.

Megan dropped the curtain. “Branson!” she yelled.

In the next stall, the water suddenly shut off.

“Megan?”

“Get out here!”

“Just a sec.”

“Oh, spare me the modesty,” she said, pushing back the curtain. There he stood, hairy and dripping. “Get out of the fucking shower.”

Bill stepped out, wrapping the towel around his waist. “What brings you here this evening, Megg-Ann?”

“You fuckhead,” said Megan.

“Could you
please
take it down to your room?” said the priggish boy in the next stall.

“You asshole,” Megan said. “You fucking asshole.”

Bill tightened his towel. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Don’t touch me.”

“We’ll just go to my room.”

“I said don’t
touch
me!”

“Fine. Have a cow why don’t you.” He pushed open the door, and Megan stormed ahead of him and out into the hallway, where she crossed her arms over her chest.

“How much did you get for them?” she demanded.

“For what?”

“I’m going to sue the shit out of you,” she said. “You know goddamn well what I’m talking about.”

“No, I really don’t.” He walked down the hall, and she hurried after him. In his room he switched on the light. His roommate had left. Two blanketless cots lined the far wall, and clothing carpeted the floor. Megan thought she smelled skunk.

“Shut the door,” she said.

“Relax.”

“And put a robe on,” she said. “I don’t want to look at your fucking chest.”

“You have to tell me what’s going on,” he said, plucking a T-shirt from the floor, “or it’s going to be really, really hard for me to answer your questions. Want a beer? Look, we bought a refrigerator—cool, huh?”

Megan kicked a pile of clothes off to the side. “The pictures,” she said, pacing in a small circle. “The pictures you took?”

“I remember those,” he said. “What about them?”

“They’re online.”

Bill waited.

“Did you hear me?”

“I heard you. But that’s impossible. You deleted them.”

“Apparently not all of them. Or maybe your camera’s got some kind of recycle bin. Where is it?”

“What?”

“The camera!”

“Home.”

“What’s it doing home?”

“I don’t use it much anymore,” said Bill. “It kind of lost its appeal, if you follow my drift.”

Megan hugged her chest to stop her shoulders from shaking. They were getting off track. “I just want to know how those pictures made it onto the Internet.”

“Well, I didn’t sell them,” said Bill huffily. “And I resent the accusation.”

“If you didn’t, who did?”

“Maybe whoever stole the camera.”

Megan froze. “What are you talking about?”

“Someone stole the camera,” said Bill with a shrug.

“I thought you said it was at home,” said Megan. “You’re not making any sense.”

Bill pulled out a chrome-legged plastic desk chair and sat down. “The original camera, the one we used, got stolen,” he said patiently. “I just replaced it with the same model. It wasn’t a big deal. My parents’ insurance covered it.”

“You never told me.”

“You think I felt some kind of obligation?”

“When did this happen?”

“I don’t know,” said Bill. “Sometime in the summer.”

“Last summer?”

“The summer before.”

“When we were still together?”

“Megan, Megan,” sighed Bill. “Can you please not open old wounds?”

Megan began pacing again. She thought again back to that hot night two summers ago, when they’d taken the ecstasy. She tried to remember getting up from the blanket, going into Bill’s house, going home—anything!

“Is it possible,” Bill asked, “that there were other pictures? Taken by somebody else? Like maybe Mr. Malone?”

It was a good thing there was not a knife available, Megan thought. She looked at him with pure disgust. “Get a life, Bill.”

“I take that as a no. By the way, are you sure the pictures are of you and not somebody else?”

“Yes.”

“Because people can do a lot with technology today, splicing these digital pictures. Maybe it’s your head and someone else’s cunt.”

“It’s me.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

Bill thought for a moment, then grinned. “Ahhh,” he said. “The mole. Well. That clinches it, I guess. Not too many people have a mole right there. How’d you come across these pictures, anyway?”

“I didn’t,” said Megan. “My father found them. Don’t even go there,” she warned. “He had a case. It was part of his job.”

“Still,” and Bill grinned again and raised his eyebrows.

Megan leveled a frigid gaze upon him. “You are slime,” she said. Then another thought occurred to her. “Have you been taking pictures of Amanda?”

“Oh no,” he said. “Really. Honest.”

Megan scrutinized his face. He looked her straight in the eye.

“Honest,” he said. “It was only with you.”

She didn’t know whether to be flattered or insulted. She stood up and headed for the door.

“Why leave now?” he said, rising. “The night is young.”

“I don’t think Amanda would be very happy to see me here in your room,” she said.

“She’s very open-minded,” said Bill.

“Like I could give a fuck,” said Megan.

Seeing that she was indeed about to leave, his eyes grew moist and pleading. “Don’t go. Please don’t go.” He reached out to touch her arm, but she wrenched it away.

“You still don’t get it, do you?” she said angrily.

“I can’t help it,” he said. “I can’t stop thinking of you.”

“What about Amanda?”

“There is no Amanda. I made it up. I thought I could make you jealous. I can’t do it without you, Megan,” he said. “We had such a good thing. It was so real. Tell me the truth—did you love anyone else like you loved me? Just answer that. Just tell me I was the only one.”

“You need help,” she said.

“Just say it,” he said. “Tell me there hasn’t been anyone since me.”

And right then, out of nowhere, she flashed on Huck Berlin. Honest to god.

“And you think that’ll help?” she said.

“It’ll give me something to hope for,” he said. She turned and started walking out of the room. “What about the pictures?” he called after her. “I can maybe help you find out who sold them!”

Megan turned back. “No, you can’t, Bill,” she said. “Just drop it, okay? We’re not going to find out who sold them. Not if your camera was stolen.”