“She’ll be wonderful.”
She will be. She’ll probably tear up the house the first time my back is turned. But that’ll be okay. I can fix the house. It’s the rest of life that is beyond control. While I was making love to Amy this past weekend, I thought of Rainey, whose naked body I never saw. Clan, who scores a perfect ten on the domestic misery index, told me yesterday that he has dreamed of Gina for the past three nights.
“Let’s go inside, Mindy Jessie, and sign your papers,” I pretend to grumble.
In the Blazer going home Sarah chatters about her first-semester exams and turns in her seat to reassure Mindy Jessie, who seems to be wondering what she is getting into. As we cross the line into Blackwell County, she becomes quiet, and I ask her what she is thinking about. She leans back against the window and begins to finger a patch of curls above her right ear.
“I heard some gossip about what really happened between Dade and Robin,” she says.
“You have?” I say, instantly alert, but reluctant to sound too interested lest she decide to clam up. I had not counted on Dade’s being acquitted and consequently had not prepared him for the media, and he shot off his mouth more than he should have to a TV reporter about the university’s lack of support for him, a fact particularly galling to Coach Carter. I read in the Democrat-Gazette only last week that Dade may make himself available for the National Football League draft and not return for his senior year. Since I spilled the beans on myself, I know I have no chance to be his agent.
My daughter shifts uncomfortably in her seat.
“This may not be true, but it’s what I heard. About a week after the trial, Robin supposedly told Shannon that she and Dade both had lied, but that he had raped her.”
The word “rape” hangs in the air between us like a poisonous cloud. It is too ugly a sound to pretend it doesn’t affect me.
“So what did they lie about?” I ask, staring straight down Interstate 40.
“Supposedly, Robin admitted that she had gone out to that house on Happy Hollow Road not really caring whether they worked on Dade’s speech or not. They had started to make love, but she changed her mind and told him she didn’t want to. He made her anyway.”
Poor Robin. My heart feels as if it is about to stop. I cut my eyes over to Sarah. I can’t tell her that I have been guilty of the same behavior. It feels uncomfortably hot in the Blazer, and I crack the window on my side.
“Do you believe that’s what happened?”
Sarah nods.
“Shannon’s her best friend, and she doesn’t have a reputation for making stuff up.”
“Who’d she tell?” I ask.
Sarah presses her lips together, then mutters, “I can’t say.”
I understand. She probably has told me too much, certainly more than she ever wanted to.
“Given Robin’s promiscuity and the fact that she lied,” I ask, “do you think Dade should have been punished?”
Sarah says angrily, “He still raped her. Dad! Of course he should go to jail.”
I check the rearview mirror and stare into the soulful eyes of Mindy Jessie, whose main virtue is that she isn’t interested in this conversation.
“But under the circumstances, which I doubt if Shannon knew, it probably wasn’t all that easy for Dade to restrain himself.”
“Come on. Dad,” Sarah scoffs.
“When a girl says “Stop!” anything else is without her consent.”
To shut her up, I nod, “You’re right.” I don’t have the appetite to argue the point. If her father had been dealt with the way she wishes Dade had been, she wouldn’t have been born. I’m not up to it. I want my daughter to love me, not judge me. Prison. Not a great start for a college kid. If I had gone to Cummins for a year, my life would have been totally different. No Peace Corps, no Rosa, no Sarah, no law degree. It seems like a good argument to me, but one I’ll forgo for the time being.
As the traffic on the interstate begins to build, Sarah asks, “Do you think we’ll see the Cunninghams again?”
“I don’t know,” I say, slowing down behind a truck hauling lawn fertilizer.
“I liked his mother,” Sarah says, “and I liked Dade until I heard this. I had really felt a bond after we went over to Bear Creek.”
Unless Lucy told her at the trial, Sarah doesn’t know that I took Dade’s case because I wanted to be his pro agent.
“One wrong act in a person’s life shouldn’t condemn a person for life, should it?” I ask.
“It depends on what it is,” Sarah says stubbornly.
I go on around the truck.
“Mindy Jessie,” I say, deter mined to change the subject.
“She’s gonna be a fine pet.”
