The Most Dangerous Thing

they could do without arousing Tally’s suspicions. And Gwen, as always, was the bolder one. Sean was scared to death of being caught.

“You went to watch us, but we weren’t there. We hadn’t been there for a while. What did you do, Mickey?” There is no doubt in Gwen’s mind that Mickey, not McKey, is the person to whom she needs to talk, the one who has the answers. “What did Chicken George see?”

“Nothing.”

“Mickey-”

“A game. Just a game.”

“A sexual game?”

Mickey’s eyes skate, looking for a safe place to land. She decides on Sean. “I guess you could call it that.”

“He was nine. You were almost fourteen.”

“There was no law against it.”

“There is now.” Gwen has no idea if this is true, and she looks to Tim for confirmation. But he and Sean seem mainly bewildered, unsure of how to react. “You had to know it was wrong, otherwise you would have admitted it. Chicken George knew it was wrong. Even Go-Go must have known. That’s why he followed your lead, when you lied and said Chicken George molested him.”

“ He pushed Chicken George. Go-Go. From behind. All these years, I was protecting him.”

But not even Mickey sounds convinced of what she’s saying, and Tim comes back to life. “Oh, come on.”

“He did. I was covering for him. That’s why he was willing to lie, because he was the one who hurt him. We weren’t doing anything bad. We made each other feel good. What’s the big deal?”

“He was nine,” Gwen repeats.

“Most nine-year-old boys would be thrilled to have a girl touch them.” She appeals to the two men in the room. “Am I right?”

Sean starts to stammer something, then stops. “Don’t ask him,” Tim says. “He’d pay a crack whore to initiate his son into sex if it could keep him from being gay.”

“Fuck off, Tim. Duncan’s not-”

“ Out, Sean. Not out. But everyone knows he’s gay. His cousins get it, even our littlest. Mom has figured it out. Everyone but you. Has it ever occurred to you that Duncan hasn’t come out because he can sense you’re less than thrilled, that he’s being solicitous of your feelings?”

Gwen sees Mickey’s eyes gleaming. She has distracted them, divided them. She’s winning.

“What about the boys?” Gwen asks her.

“What boys?”

“The high school boys. The ones that Go-Go told Father Andrew about.”

“As I said, maybe he liked sex with boys.” She tries to give a blithe shrug but can’t pull it off.

“Did it appear that he liked it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I think you were there. You made it happen. If it was just you and Go-Go, that one time, then he might figure out one day that he really hadn’t done anything wrong, but you had. So you made sure that he had other things to be confused and ashamed about. You came up with more games, knowing that Go-Go would always want to do whatever the big kids were doing.”

Mickey curls into herself. She crosses her arms, brings her feet beneath her. She’s like the turtles she used to torture, poking them with sticks so they withdrew all their limbs, even the snapping turtles. Gwen can tell that she’s not going to talk, not to her. And not to Tim. Gwen looks to Sean, who is flushed and angry. Over the comments about his son or his brother?

Gwen asks: “Why? Why did you do it?”

Although it is Gwen who is pressing her, she addresses herself to Sean. “I didn’t think it was wrong. I wanted to be with you, but you chose Gwen. So I chose Go-Go.”

Tim says: “If you had wanted to fool around with one of Sean’s brothers, I would have been glad to oblige.”

If he meant the joke to distill the tension in the room, he has failed. Not even Tim seems amused by this brief return of his lummox self.

Sean asks: “Is Gwen right, Mickey? About the boys? Did you do that to Go-Go?”

“Hockey mask,” Tim says. “It’s in the attic, too.” Sean nods. Gwen has no idea what they’re talking about.

Mickey shakes her head. “I gave him that. I got the money out of my stepdad, telling him it was for school stuff.” She looks small, sitting on her sofa. Gwen remembers the girl she met almost thirty-five years ago. So pretty, so scruffy, so lacking in things that the others, even the Halloran boys, took for granted. A girl who would be your best friend for a drawer full of candy.

“You know something?” Gwen is speaking to the Halloran brothers. “Go-Go never said anything about Mickey. Even to Father Andrew, whom he told about the high school boys. He lied about Chicken George to protect her. All these years, he’s protected Mickey, for whatever reason.”

“Because they’re responsible for a man’s death,” Sean says.

Mickey-and she is undeniably Mickey again to all of them, so young and vulnerable she reminds Gwen of Annabelle after being caught at something, miserable not at being caught but about being bad, which no one ever really wants to be-picks at the lush, embroidered flora of her gown, which is riotous with green tendrils and scarlet blossoms. Pretty, Gwen thinks again of the silk robe. Not the gown of a femme fatale, but of someone who wants love and romance. She is repelled by what Mickey did but can’t disavow her.

Yet it is Tim, the father of three girls, who goes to sit next to her. “Talk to us, Mickey. Tell us everything that happened. We won’t turn our backs on you.”

“But you did,” she says. “You all did. Except Go-Go. You left me.”

“We’re here now.”

She takes a sip of bourbon-from Gwen’s glass. “For all these years-for all these years-we felt responsible. Chicken George grabbed me, and I pushed him to get away. He fell. It was our fault, even if we didn’t mean to do it. Then this priest comes along and Go-Go wants to tell everything. Everything . For his own sake, not caring what will happen to me. I told him it was too risky to talk at all. We were responsible for Chicken George’s death and that’s something that never goes away.”

“Not legally,” Tim says.

“Not in any way,” Mickey says.

“What about the high school boys?” asks Tim. “The ones that Go-Go told Father Andrew about?”

“I met some guys when I went to the new school. Seniors. They wanted to mess around, and I was cool with it. Go-Go wanted to play, too. You know how he was. He always wanted to do what we were doing. So he wanted to do this, too.”

“No,” Sean says. “That I don’t believe. You forced him.”

“He didn’t know enough to know he shouldn’t like it,” Mickey says. “And, yeah, they gave him money sometimes. Gifts. Bribed him, I guess, so no one would tell. But they were more interested in watching Go-Go and me do things together than in doing things to him. They laughed at us.”

“But they did do things.” Not a question on Tim’s part.

“Nothing-nothing invasive. I mean, you can probably guess. Then they got bored. It was no more than three, four times. And, okay, it fucked Go-Go up a little. But he managed. He kept going, more or less-until your mom told him what your dad did. That’s when he went off the rails. Yes, I went to AA to watch him, make sure he didn’t break down and confess. Mr. Halloran was dead and had nothing to lose. If Go-Go started telling people about what happened-I wasn’t sure where it would lead. I didn’t know what to do.”

“Here,” Gwen says. “We ended up here.”

Tim puts an arm around Mickey, tender and careful. Gwen sees in that moment something she will tell Tim later: She didn’t choose you because she looked up to you, because you were more of a father to her than any of the men who passed through Rita’s life. She needed someone she could control, and that was Go-Go. She was trying to hurt all of us through Go-Go. She did-herself included.