“I told you Robbie had a fat file. Everyone wanted to write an opinion. Even more interesting was the consistency. They all said basically the same thing.”
“Not as much of a dope as you’d think?” I asked, reluctantly.
“A classic underachiever. Great scores on aptitude tests. High IQ, if you believe in that test, which I don’t, though it tells you something. He’d tend to sprint along getting good, or excellent, marks and then suddenly take a dive, mess up so badly it would shock his teachers. Usually accompanied by other behavioral problems. Acting out. Fights, vandalism, general obstreperousness.”
“Why do you think?” I asked her.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t?”
“Not without speaking with him, for which I’d need a time machine. Or a seance.”
“But you have a guess.”
“That’s all it would be,” she said. “Good enough for me.”
“He was profoundly disturbed.”
“There’s a news flash.”
“Something was troubling him beyond the turmoil of adolescence.”
“Maybe he knew he’d grow up to be a dickhead,” I offered.
“I know it’s not popular with some people to say so, but really bad teenage behavior is often a means of communication,” said Rosaline.
“Telling the world they need a kick in the ass.”
“Sometimes. Depends on how bad the behavior.”
“I remember a lot of high school hardballs. How bad was Robbie anyway?”
“I’ll let you decide. But you can’t blame me for telling you.”
“Why would I do that?”
She handed me a yellowed piece of Southampton High School letterhead. On it was a single paragraph titled “Incident on away-game bus.” The names of the two principals were blacked out. It took me a few minutes to read it and a few more to have it sink in.
“The boy is Robbie Milhouser,” I said.
“That’s right. And the girl?”
“Amanda?”
Rosaline nodded.
“The guidance counselor had her own notes in a private file. It wasn’t hard to cross-check. I think she wanted the whole story recorded somewhere. I’d do the same.”
“It doesn’t say what kind of sexual things happened.”
“Only that they were uninvited.”
“Joey Entwhistle said she was his girlfriend.”
“She might have been at some point. There was nothing about that in the file. And before you ask, no. No charges were brought against Robbie Milhouser, not even a suspension. The whole thing was dropped after Amanda disavowed the report, which by the way was given by one of her friends, and corroborated by a few others. But without the victim’s testimony, you got nothing. Especially in those days.”
I stood up and walked out to the condo garden. At closer proximity I could see the density of the plantings, some in bloom, others budded up, others barely emerging, all timed to maintain a constantly evolving profusion throughout the warm months. I admired the care and forethought and wondered if I’d ever want to do something like that on Oak Point.
Rosaline came up next to me and took my arm.
“You’re not mad,” she said.
“Of course not. I never shoot the researcher.”
“If you’re not mad, what are you?”
“Curious,” I said.
“Me, too.”
“About what?”
“Amanda didn’t seem like much of a quitter, if you read her file. The report itself made it sound like she gave Robbie quite a fight. Why stop there?”
“Not her style,” I said.
“I’m not sure what that means.”
“I’m not sure either. It’s just what came into my head.”
Rosaline put her head on my shoulder.
“I didn’t want to drop a mood wrecker at the start of an intimate dinner party,” she said. “But if I told you later I’d feel dishonest.”
“Not at all,” I said. “Disturbing revelation always whets the appetite. And speaking of wet,” I held up my empty glass.
“I never know what you’re thinking,” she said, taking my glass and pulling me by the arm back into the house.
Me neither most of the time, is what I wanted to say to her.
She’d put bowls filled with colorful stuff on the coffee table and a small plate of celery and carrots to dig it out of there. I chewed on that while I chewed on what she was telling me.
“I can hear the wheels going from over here,” said Rosaline, sitting across from me.
“Sorry,” I said, dipping another stalk into the green stuff, which I liked a little better than the maroon, black and yellow-speckled stuff.
“As much as I’d like to say we had a deal, I don’t think it’d be fair to make you honor it tonight,” she said.
I sat back and killed a few more seconds chewing the hors d’oeuvres.
“The truth is, Rosaline,” I said, “I really try not to think about what happened to me with Abby and my job. Do I know why I did what I did? No. I just did it. And then I looked back and said to myself, geez, man, what did you do?”
She listened to me very carefully, studying my face.
“Maybe your conscious mind doesn’t know. But what about the subconscious?”
“Oh, Christ, Rosaline. Let me get my five-pound sledge out of the car and you can beat me with it. That’d be a better way to spend the next hour than trying to psychoanalyze me.”
She smiled that smile of hers conveyed entirely through the eyes.
“I know that, Sam. What I mean is, you
There are people who actually pay to hear that kind of shit, I wanted to say, but couldn’t. It wouldn’t have been fair to Rosaline, who I knew thought she was trying to do a good thing. That’s the problem with the brilliant and well-intended. It’s hard to stop them when they think they’re on to something.
“Okay, Doc. I’ll cop to it,” I said instead, hoping a quick surrender would satisfy her.
“For all your combative and cynical behavior, I think you’re fundamentally tolerant of others. You endure their foibles and foolishness.”
“And alliteration.”
“But there’s something you cannot abide, something that reaches into a dark place, releasing another essential component of Sam Acquillo. The one you know is there, but refuse to acknowledge.”
“A something?”
She thought about that. Then shook her head.
“No. More an act.”
I knew she’d get to it somehow anyway, so I just asked.
