complicated; it accepted, like an animal. Innocent. I got in a fight once to stop a kid from killing kittens, but what I’d done to Billy was so much worse than killing kittens. All that pride I took in knowing right from wrong and refusing to do wrong had turned out nothing but hooey. Accidental cruelty is just as evil as doing it on purpose.
The emergency room doctor was Egyptian, I think. He looked Egyptian and wore a name tag that said Dr. Faroub. He walked with that straight-up way you never see in Americans.
He came toward me, fingering the stethoscope in his jacket pocket. “Your son, he will live.”
My stomach unclenched. “Not my son. His.”
Dr. Faroub turned to Billy. “The boy suffered a grand mal seizure, which brought on heart failure. He should lose weight and receive counseling. Counseling is a help for the children.”
Billy shook the doctor’s hand. “Thank you for saving him.”
“Suicide is illegal, you know.”
“How can you tell he did it on purpose?” Daphne asked, which might have been a meaningless question if anyone but Clark had stepped in a wired bucket of water and stuck their finger in a light socket.
Dr. Faroub looked from Daphne to Billy. “The boy had a note in his pocket saying he wanted his body going to the Duke Medical School…so his father couldn’t touch him.”
Daphne raised her hand to her cheek. Of all my extended family members, she was the one who’d been left in the dark. “Clark idolizes his father,” she said.
Dr. Faroub shrugged and repeated, “Counseling is a help for the children. Will you proceed to the front, there are forms.”
“I already gave them my insurance card,” Daphne said.
“There are always more forms.”
After the doctor clicked away, Billy’s legs kind of went out from under him and he sat down quickly.
“It’s my fault,” he said.
Cameron looked at me. “No, it isn’t.”
“Why would Clark be mad at you, William?” Daphne asked.
Cameron stood up. “The doctor said something about forms, Daphne. Don’t you think you should take care of that?”
Daphne’s eyes traveled from Cameron to Billy to me, where they stayed a long time. The woman may have been dressed by Wal-Mart, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew a story lay beneath the facts, only she was Southern enough not to demand explanations in public.
“Okay,” she said. “Billy, you want a Coke?”
He shook his head, no.
I don’t know if they’d been waiting for word on Clark or for Daphne to leave the room, but as soon as she left, Skip and Cameron turned nasty.
“I hope you’re happy,” Skip said.
Women use that sentence when they’re pissed. Generally, men only say it when they mean it.
“Why should I be happy?” I said.
Cameron turned sideways, away from me. He seemed to be addressing the television. “You wanted to place our lives in upheaval and now you have. Your goals are met, but I promise you, the price will be heavy.”
“I never wanted to place your lives in upheaval.”
“Then why seduce Skip’s wife? Why drive Billy’s son to suicide? There can be no motivation other than harming us.”
“Skip’s wife seduced me.”
Skip doubled his fists and took a step toward me. “Katrina told us how you got her stinking drunk and had your way with her, then you blackmailed her into an affair.”
“She made me eat her in the sauna.”
Cameron turned to stare in my direction. “Your relationship with Gilia stops now.”
“I’m afraid so,” I said.
Billy suddenly let out a sob. “Why does Clark hate me?”
“Simple,” Cameron said. “This…person turned him against you.”
“I hope you’re happy,” Skip said. The evening had cut off his ability to vocalize bile.
I felt terrible about Clark and Gilia and everyone else who suffered because of my existence, but these men were persecuting me for events they had set in motion.
I said, “I’m not the only one to blame. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t raped Lydia in the first place.”
There was silence, then Billy said, “Raped?”
“Why can’t any of you take responsibility for your actions? I’m nothing but the product of this crime, you’re the cause.”
“Nobody raped your mother,” Cameron said.
“She was a slut,” Skip said.
“Bullshit. You got her drunk on vodka shot into oranges with a hypodermic needle, then the five of you raped her over and over and when you were done you stood in a circle and urinated on her body.”
Billy’s face was twisted in pain. His voice came in a choke. “That’s a lie.”
“My mother wouldn’t lie about something so important.” A Whitewater roar started in my ears. My mouth tasted of tin.
“Your mother was a slut,” Skip repeated.
“Babe Carnisek admitted you all raped her.”
Had he? I couldn’t remember if the word rape was used or not. Cameron was watching me like an owl on a mouse. When he spoke, his voice was deliberate. “Your mother gave us each some fudge and a tumbler of her daddy’s scotch. After we drank, she offered us two dollars apiece to have sex with her.”
“No.”
“We were sixteen- and seventeen-year-old boys. What did you expect us to do?”
“I don’t believe you.”
“We were all virgins,” Billy said.
Skip said, “I wasn’t.”
Billy went on. “We were all virgins and scared to death, but she insisted. I was so frightened I couldn’t get erect. She called me a ‘worm’ and made me give back the two dollars.”
This didn’t make sense. All the relationships of my life had been shaped by Lydia’s rape. “Why didn’t you tell me that when I came to your house?”
Billy looked down at his hands. “I couldn’t admit I’m a worm.”
“Your mother was a slut,” Skip said for the third time.
“Face it,” Cameron said. “You’ve been had.”
“I need to use the telephone.”
Didi answered on the eighth ring.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
“Is Babe home?”
“Whenever the phone rings at midnight, somebody’s died.”
“No one died, Mrs. Carnisek. This is Sam Callahan, I need to ask Babe a question.”
“He goes to sleep after the weather and sports.”
“Could you wake him up? It’s important.”
The phone was silent a long time. A short black man in a white uniform came down the hall, sliding a floor buffer from side to side in rhythm to music only he could hear over a pair of earphones. He was smoking a cigarette, but instead of using the sand ashtrays at either end of the hall, he let the ash get long until it fell from its own weight and was swept under the floor buffer. I concentrated on breathing.
“What?”
“I’m sorry to wake you, Babe, but I have to know what happened on Christmas Eve 1949.”
