Mortal Fear

another man’s protection. Erin leaves the room with her.

When she returns, she is alone. She clicks on the overhead light, stretches out on the chair and ottoman, and studies me as if I am some nonhuman creature of trifling interest.

“Now,” she says. “What are you doing here?”

I grope for words that will not sound pompous, but find none. Talk about a fool’s errand. Content to let me suffer in silence, Erin says nothing. Who are we? I wonder. Two people who three years ago thrashed around a bed in Chicago for three days and somehow produced the beautiful child who now stands unknowing in the eye of a gathering emotional hurricane?

One thing is certain: whatever we shared is finally gone. A few nights ago, when Erin sat down on my bed and began crying, I felt a response, a pulling toward her. Even through her despair, I sensed desire, a possibility of consummation, however mad it would have been. But today there is nothing. If a landscape of her emotions could somehow be superimposed upon this room, we would be sitting in a blasted gray ruin, devoid of vegetation and fast running out of water.

“It’s probably good that you’re here,” she says finally. “It’ll make things simpler.”

“How?”

“Patrick and I have been having some discussions.”

“Violent ones.”

“That’s completely irrelevant and all my fault.”

“I doubt that.”

“Don’t.”

“Has my name come up during these… discussions?”

A faint smile touches her lips. “God, you’re so predictable. All you’re worried about is yourself. Or maybe Drewe’s precious illusions being shattered. Right? That’s all anybody ever worries about.”

“I’m worried about you too. And Holly.”

“Spare me, okay? You’re here because Drewe told you to come, and you couldn’t get out of it without telling her the truth about us. Right?”

She doesn’t wait for verification. “Let me put your mind at rest. Your worst fear is right on target. The problems between Patrick and me are about Holly’s father, nothing else.”

I’m not sure what is happening to my face, but it must be funny in an awful sort of way, because Erin is laughing at me. “You’d better sit down,” she advises.

I back gingerly to a sofa and drop onto it.

“It’s all going to come out,” she says in a matter-of-fact voice.

I peer across the shadowed room at her face, a study in self-possession. “Why is that?”

“Because it has to. We were stupid to ever think it wouldn’t.” She makes a steeple of her long fingers and studies me over it. “You’re terrified that Drewe can’t take the truth, aren’t you?”

“You think she can?”

Erin suddenly begins speaking in Drewe’s voice, quoting lines I’m sure Drewe has never spoken. “ ‘Erin screwed every good-looking guy in school, but dear sweet Harper was above it.’ That’s what she thinks, isn’t it?”

“She knows I’m not above that.”

“Oh, you diddled some cheerleaders. But that’s not the same, is it? After all, Princess Drewe wasn’t putting out, was she? But to come to me, that’s another thing.”

“I didn’t come to you, Erin. You came to me. And it was ten years after high school.”

“In her eyes that’s worse, stupid. You weren’t a horny little seventeen-year-old then. You were supposed to be committed to her. You were supposed to have judgment.”

“I think Drewe may know us better than we think. I doubt the attraction between us was as secret as we always thought. I think maybe she’s knows we’re not above it, but she hopes we wouldn’t do it.”

“But we did, didn’t we?”

I say nothing.

She shakes her head. “You still think about it, don’t you?”

“What? Chicago?”

“I know you, Harper. You tell yourself you’d sell your soul never to have done it. You lie awake at night, sweating, promising the dark that if only something would make it all unhappen, you’d never do anything like that again. And five minutes after that you’re standing in the bathroom making yourself come, thinking about how it felt to be inside me. How it felt to have supermodel Erin sucking your precious weenie.”

“Erin-”

I gape as she hikes the lilac sundress up to her hips with a fierce flourish. “Well? There it is. That’s what it’s all about for you, isn’t it?”

She is wearing sky-blue panties, but they are sheer, and the black tangle beneath them is obvious. In spite of everything, my eyes lock there with three million years of evolutionary focus. Then the lilac veil falls and she is up on her feet with her hands in the air.

“That’s all men ever think about with me!” she cries, turning away in anger. “Because I’m not the girl you marry, am I? My past is just too much. Except for someone like Patrick. Sweet, hardworking, rich, impotent Patrick.”

My mouth falls open again.

“Oh, we’re way past spats in the kitchen,” she says, turning back. “When his obsession hit critical mass, Patrick’s plumbing stopped functioning. In the last two months we’ve made love twice. If you could call it that. Both times he came home drunk at midnight, climbed on top of me, and started flailing away before I could even wake up. If I hadn’t known what was making him crazy, I would have hit him in the head with the telephone. But you know what I did? I told him I loved him and begged for more. And as soon as I did that, it was over. He couldn’t finish. He doesn’t have meanness like that in him.” She leans back and touches her bruised eye, and I realize she is on the verge of tears. “And you know what?”

“What?”

“He deserves better than me.”

“That’s not true, Erin.”

“Better than what I’ve been giving him, then. I was a fool to make him promise never to ask who the father was.” She laughs. “I actually thought he was Dr. Pretorius.”

She’s lost me. “Who’s that? Somebody from New York?”

“No, stupid. Dr. Pretorius was Cary Grant.”

“What?”

“It’s a movie. I thought you knew every movie ever made. Cary Grant plays this wonderful doctor who marries a woman who’s pregnant by another man. And it all works out.”

“Oh.”

“I was actually dumb enough to think a Cary Grant movie could come true. But men aren’t wired that way. They can’t handle something like that, and I should have known it. God knows I know everything else about them.”

“Erin-”

“Oh, don’t stop me now. Maybe I did know that about men. But I made Patrick promise not to ask anyway. You know why? To protect Drewe. I didn’t want Drewe’s illusions shattered any more than you did. And I knew if Patrick found out about you and me-about Holly-Drewe would eventually find out everything. In the heat of some family argument, it would explode.”

“That’s where we are anyway, isn’t it?” I point out. “Except you’re the one who’s about to explode.”

She shakes her head slowly, and I sense sadness flowing into the place where her anger had seethed. In a voice stripped of all hostility she says, “Do you believe in sin, Harper?”

At last I understand her strange intensity. She has finally flipped out. She is born again, saved, or whatever they call the manic grasping at straws that occurs when people who’ve damaged their lives beyond all repair hurl themselves into lunacy in the quest for one more chance, for that mythical clean slate.

“I know you’re not religious,” she says calmly. “I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about a sin against yourself. Against people you love. People who trust you. Do you understand what I mean?”