Faithless: Tales of Transgression Page 37

  “So I drove to Buckhannon, grateful to be invited if it was only for overnight, and I loaded the van with some of my new quilts to show Carlin, who’d always been a strong supporter of my work, even if it was totally different from his own, and there was Janessa opening the door for me in this weird Disney-type theme house; ‘West Virginia gingerbread classic-Victorian’ was how she described it in interviews, ‘an exact duplicate of Carlin’s family home lost in the Depression’—bullshit you’d think Carlin would be ashamed of, but he had to endure it; and instead of my enemy Janessa was now my friend, or so it seemed—hugging me with her strong, fleshy arms, dazzling me with her perfume and a wet high-school-girl kiss right on the mouth. ‘Rafe Healy! We’ve been missing you! Come in! How long can you stay!’ (Like she hadn’t worked it out with me that a single night was the limit.) You’d have thought the scene was being televised: here’s Mrs. Carlin Ritchie the gracious hostess, in some long, floor-length, swishing Indian skirt, layers of gauze and silk, red hair tumbling down her back, welcoming an artist-friend of her husband’s, a woman who’d sacrificed her professional photography career to tend to a crippled husband she adored. And Rafe’s a sap, a sucker, she kisses me on the mouth and pokes me with her tongue and Jesus!—I feel such a charge I’m thinking I’ll forgive this female anything. It’s a total surprise to me that the mood between us is completely different from what it had been in New York, in that elevator—which I understand now is typical of a certain kind of psychopath, the most devious kind, who aren’t predictable from one occasion to another but are coolly improvising, trying out different methods for deception, manipulation, and control. (This would explain what Carlin’s children said of her that sometimes, when they’d spoken with their father on the phone, on the days she’d allowed it, they could hear Janessa screaming at him, or at someone, in the background; while at other times she was cooing and welcoming, saying how nice it was of them to call, how happy their father would be hearing from them—‘And that makes me happy, too!’)

  “This visit with Carlin, this final visit, was painful to me, but very powerful, memorable—it was like I was in the presence of a saint, yet a saint who was also a good-hearted guy, a friend, with no pretensions, no sense of who he was, what stature he’d attained. Just Carlin Ritchie I’d known since we’d been kids together at Shenandoah, groping our way into our ‘careers.’ It shocked me to see how he’d lost more weight, and seemed to have resigned himself to the wheelchair. His legs looked shriveled; even his socks were baggy. But his mind was clear, sharp. He told me he was supposed to be taking a certain medication, Janessa would be upset if she learned he’d skipped it that day, ‘But it makes my head fuzzy, and my tongue so thick I can’t talk—so the hell with it, right? For now.’ We spent most of the visit out on the veranda where Carlin could lie back on a wicker divan; it was a mild May evening, and it pissed Janessa off that Carlin wanted just to eat off plates, no formal dinner like she’d planned in the dining room, and no Polaroids—‘Janessa is the most posterity-minded individual I’ve ever known,’ Carlin told me, winking, ‘—she’d snap me on the toilet if I didn’t lock the door.’ Janessa laughed, hurt, and said, ‘Well, somebody’s got to be posterity-minded around here. This is a living archive, and you’re ‘Carlin Ritchie,’ lest you forget. You’re not nobody.’ Looking sort of bold-provocative at me, like she’s saying Rafe Healy is nobody. After a while Janessa got bored with us, and went inside; I’d catch glimpses of her through a curtained window, drifting around, talking on a cellular phone, simpering, laughing so it seemed to me she must have a boyfriend, sure she’s got a boyfriend, a female like that, and poor Carlin a cripple. But I was grateful she’d let us alone, and I could see Carlin was, too. He’d never say a word against that woman but there was a sad-ironic tone of his, a way he’d shrug his shoulders when she said some preposterous thing, his eyes locking with mine like we were boys and some adult female was bullshitting us. But then he’d say, a few minutes later, talking about his new work, ‘Rafe, I don’t know how I would continue, without Janessa. She hires my assistants, she screens my calls, my business—the world.’ I wanted to retort, ‘Well, Laurette would know, if you don’t.’ But I didn’t. I knew better. The vampire had her fangs in him deep; there must’ve been an anesthetic effect, a comforting delusion. I get drunk for more or less the same reason, maybe I shouldn’t judge. We just sat out there on Carlin’s veranda and talked. Must’ve been three hours—and Janessa fuming and stewing inside. Carlin wasn’t supposed to drink, but he had a couple of beers, and I put away a six-pack at least. It was like we both knew this might be the final time we saw each other. I said, ‘Carlin. I wish the fuck there was something I could do, y’know? Like donate a kidney. A spleen transplant. Hell—half my cerebral cortex.’ And Carlin laughed, and said, ‘I know you do, Rafe. I know.’ ‘It’s a goddam thing. It’s fate, it’s unfair. Like, why you?’ I said. My eyes were stinging with tears; I was about to bawl. Carlin groped out for me with his left, good hand and said, like he was feeling a little impatient with me, he’d worked through this logic himself and was impatient I hadn’t yet, ‘But my fate was to be “Carlin Ritchie” one hundred percent. It’s one big package deal.’ Then he started telling me how ‘we’—meaning himself and Janessa—were making ‘plans of expediency.’ For when, finally, he got too sick. Which might be coming a little more quickly than he’d hoped. Stockpiling pills, barbiturates. It would have to be, Carlin said, without his doctors’ knowing. Without anyone ‘legal’ knowing. No one in his family—‘They’re old-style Baptists, they don’t hold with taking your life, let alone your death, in your own hands.’ I was shocked to hear this. I said, ‘Carlin, what? You’re planning—what?’ Carlin said, lowering his voice, ‘I don’t want to be a burden on Janessa. Not any more than I am. When—if—I become ‘incontinent,’ as it’s called, I know what to do.’ ‘Carlin, I don’t like to hear such talk. You’re young, for Christ’s sake—not even fifty.’ ‘That’s the problem, man, I’m young enough to be around, in a vegetable state, for a long time.’ ‘You’ve got more work to do—lots of work to do. What the fuck are you telling me, you’re thinking of pulling out?’ ‘Rafe, I didn’t tell you what I did, I didn’t share it, for you to condemn me,’ Carlin says, with dignity, ‘—I didn’t invite you even to have an opinion. I’m telling you. That’s that.’ So I sat there, shaking. I’m an aggressive guy, I’ve been told—I talk before I think—so I tried to absorb this, tried to see Carlin’s logic. I could see it, I suppose. Back inside the house, which was lit up like a movie set, Janessa was watching TV and it sounded like she was still talking on the phone. Carlin said apologetically that he’d been thinking, a few years ago, of asking me to be his estate executor if something premature happened to him—‘Laurette was real enthusiastic’—but now of course things were different; Janessa was to be his executor. I swallowed hard, and said OK, I could see that, I understood. Carlin said, embarrassed, ‘You know how Janessa is—she loves me so. She’s a little jealous of me and some of my old friends. I can’t blame her, she’s a hot-blooded woman, y’know? She’s an artist, too. She gave up her art for me.’ ‘Did she.’ ‘She gave up the possibility of having children, she said, for me.’ ‘Did she.’ ‘She doesn’t want me to suffer, she says. She’s worried sick about me, it’s almost more upsetting to her than to me, that I might suffer. “Interminably” as she says.’ ‘So you’re stockpiling barbiturates for her,’ I said, sort of meanly, ‘—you don’t want her to suffer.’ Carlin blinked like he didn’t exactly get this, and I said, louder, ‘She’s rehearsing your death, is that it? She’s urging you to die? Has she picked the date yet?’ Carlin said quickly, ‘No, no—my wife isn’t urging me to do anything. It’s my own best interests she has in mind. If—when—it comes time I can’t walk, can’t move, can’t eat, can’t control my bowels, I don’t want to live, man.’ ‘But that won’t be for a long time. That might be never.’ ‘It might be next month.’ ‘I might beat you to it, Carlin. It’s like shooting
dice.’ Carlin finished his beer, or tried to—a trickle of beer ran down his chin. He said, shrugging, ‘O.K., I don’t want to die. Yes, but I’m ready. I want to be brave. Fuck it, I’m a coward, I want to be brave. Help me.’ ‘Help you? How?’ But Carlin laughed, and repeated what he’d said, adding something about God watching over him—‘If there’s a God but I guess there is not. We’ve got to grow up sometime, right?’ And I said, uneasy, not knowing what the subject was any longer, ‘Hell, no. Not me.’ And we both laughed.

  “That visit in May of last year was the last time I saw Carlin Ritchie alive, though I tried to speak with him on the phone once or twice. But Janessa always answered the phone, saying in this breathy little-girl voice, ‘Who? Oh—you. Well, I’m truly sorry, Rafe Healy, but my husband isn’t taking calls today.’ ‘When do you think he will be taking calls, Mrs. Ritchie?’ I asked, trying to keep my voice steady, and she said, as rehearsed as if she was being taped for posterity, ‘That’s in the hands of the Lord.’ ”

  AT THIS POINT, my cousin Rafe paused. He’d come close to breaking down. And I was feeling kind of strange, myself—exhausted by Rafe’s story, but excited, too. And a little suspicious just suddenly.

  We weren’t at the tavern near the courthouse, or in the basement corridor of the old building. As it happened, we were having a few beers in a bar called Domino’s; it was early evening of the second day of jury duty, and our panel of jurors had been dismissed that afternoon still without being summoned to any courtroom. Since Rafe had begun telling me his story, though, the hours flew past, and neither of us seemed to mind our enforced idleness. I was so caught up in Rafe’s words I could feel pity for Carlin Ritchie, whom I’d never known, as intense as any I’d ever felt for anyone; and I could feel hatred fermenting in my heart for that woman Janessa. I could understand why Rafe hated her so but I wouldn’t have gone so far as to wish her dead—that’s a pretty extreme state after all.

  The evening before I’d come home late, past 7 P.M., having stopped at Domino’s with Rafe, and Rosalind was waiting for me, worried—“Since when does jury duty last so long? Were you called for a trial?” I’d decided not to tell her about meeting up with Rafe at the courthouse, and I knew it was futile to pretend to this sharp-nosed woman that I hadn’t stopped at a bar and had a few beers, so I told her, yes, I’d been selected for a trial, and it was a damned ugly trial, and we were forbidden to talk about it until it was over—“So don’t ask me, Rosalind. Please.” “A trial! You actually got chosen!” Rosalind cried. “Is it a—murder case?” “I told you, Rosalind, I can’t discuss it. I’d be in contempt of court.” “But, honey, who would know? I wouldn’t tell.” “I would know. I’ve given my word, I’ve sworn on the Bible to execute my duties as the law demands. So don’t tease me, I’m not going to say another word about it.” And I was feeling so nerved-up anyway, about the ugly story my cousin was telling me, it didn’t really seem that I was lying to Rosalind; there was a deeper truth, lodged in my heart; my cousin’s secret he was sharing with me, that I would never tell to another living soul.

  But Rafe was shifting his shoulders in that way he’d had when he was a kid, and you knew he wasn’t telling all of the truth. So I said, on a hunch, “Rafe, back up just a bit. To the last time you saw Carlin Ritchie. That visit in Buckhannon.” “Why? I already told you about Buckhannon.” “But was there anything more? Between you and Mrs. Ritchie, maybe?” “That’s a crude accusation,” Rafe said. “Fuck you, man.” “Well—was there? You’d better tell me.” “Tell you what, man?” Rafe was defying me, but his pebble-colored eyes were clouded and evasive, and I kept pushing, until finally he admitted yes, there was more. And he wasn’t proud of it.

  “ALREADY BY 11 P.M., Carlin was exhausted. Where in the old days he’d stay up much of the night talking art and ideas and drinking, now I could see he was ready for bed when Janessa came to fetch him. She wheeled him away to a specially equipped room at the rear of the house, and when she returned she said with a sigh and a sad-seeming smile, ‘That poor, brave man. Thank you for making this pilgrimage, Rafe Healy.’ Pilgrimage! Like I was some kind of fawning pilgrim. I thought, Fuck you, lady, and should’ve gone off to bed myself (I was staying in a guest room upstairs) except I let her talk me into having a nightcap with her—‘Just one. For old time’s sake. So there’s no hard feelings between us.’ There was this coquettish way about the woman, yet an edge of reproach, too, as if she knew full well how certain people valued her, and was defying them yet wanted them to like her, at least be attracted to her, just the same. So she pours us both bourbon. She’s wearing a gauzy cream-colored dress like a nightgown, and her hair in ringlets like a little girl’s, and her eyes like an owl’s ringed in mascara, and there was this hungry, ugly lipstick mouth of hers I couldn’t stop staring at. Yes, I knew I should’ve gotten the hell out of that house. All I can say is, I was drunk, I was a fool. Janessa slipped her arm through mine and led me around showing off the house, which had been her idea, she boasted, a ‘shrine of memories’ for Carlin while he was still in good enough condition to appreciate it. I said, ‘Hell, he’ll be in good enough condition to appreciate lots of things, for a long time,’ but she wasn’t even listening. This cold, sickish sensation came over me that, to her, Carlin Ritchie was already dead and she was the surviving widow, the proprietor of the shrine, keeper of the legend. Executor of the estate. Heiress. She’d been drinking earlier in the evening, too. She showed me this display-case room, a parlor, which was papered in deep purple silk wallpaper with recessed lighting in the ceiling, photos of Carlin from the time he was a baby till the present time (except there was no evidence of Carlin with his first wife or his children), an entire wall covered with framed photos of Carlin and Janessa, posed in front of his artworks, or at public ceremonies shaking hands with important people. I flattered the woman by saying, ‘Is this the president of the United States?’ and she said, pleased, yet a little rueful, ‘Yes, it sure is. But it was Carlin he made a big fuss over, not me.’ I laughed, and said, ‘Janessa, the president would’ve made a bigger fuss over you, if it hadn’t been such a public occasion,’ and she laughed hard at that; she liked that kind of humor.

  “After that, things got a little confused.

  “I mean—I know how it ended. I sure do. But how it got to where it ended—that’s confused.

  “We were in the living room, which was mostly darkened. And having another bourbon. And this hot-skinned, good-looking woman is sort of pressing up against me like she doesn’t know what she’s doing. And I’m not supposed to catch on till it’s too late. She’s complaining how Carlin’s family is spreading slander about her, then she’s boasting how Carlin’s art was fetching higher and higher prices now it was being marketed more professionally—‘Thanks to my intervention. He’d be happy giving it away.’ She’s complaining, or boasting, how so many folks make the pilgrimage to Buckhannon, a lot of them bringing gifts like needlepoint-Bible pillows, glow-in-the-dark crucifixes, a hundred pounds of venison steak Carlin’s too kindly or too weak to decline—‘So it’s jamming our freezer. Can you believe it?’ ‘Well, if people love him,’ I mumbled, or words like that. Janessa starts saying how lonely she is amid all this commotion, and how frightened, ‘like a little girl,’ of the future. How painful it is, married to a man who’s not really a man any longer—‘My husband, but not my lover. And I’m still young.’ There’s the pink tip of her tongue between her teeth, and suddenly she’s in my arms, and we’re kissing, panting like dogs like we’d been waiting for this for hours, for all of our lifetimes and now there’s nothing to hold us back. Except—I’m pushing her away, disgusted. The taste of her mouth was like something rotten. Like you’d imagine old, stale blood—ugh! If I’d been drunk I was stone cold sober now, on my feet and out of there, upstairs to get my duffel bag and back down again and there’s this furious, shamed woman saying, ‘You! God damn you! Who do you think you are, you!’—she slapped at me, shut her fist and punched like a man, I pushed her
away and she lunged back like a wildcat, clawing me in the face, and I was a little scared of her, knowing she’d have loved to murder me, she’d been so insulted, but she wasn’t strong enough to do any real injury, didn’t have time to rush into the kitchen for a knife, shouting after me from the veranda, as I pulled away in my van, ‘You fucker! You sorry excuse for a man! Don’t you ever darken this house again! You’re no better than he is—cripple! Cripple!’ And a few weeks later, Carlin Ritchie was dead.”

  6

  ON THE THIRD DAY of jury duty, which was a Wednesday, our panel of jurors was taken at last upstairs to the fifth floor, to a judge’s courtroom, where there was an aggravated assault case to be tried. After a ninety-minute voir dire session, during which time neither JUROR 93 (Rafe Healy) nor JUROR 121 (Harrison Healy) was called, meaning that Rafe and I just sat, sat, sat in enforced silence, Rafe so tense I could feel him quivering, a panel of twelve jurors and two alternates was seated, and the rest of us were dismissed for lunch with a severe warning to be back in the courthouse in forty minutes. Rafe groaned in my ear thank God he hadn’t been chosen, he wasn’t in any mental state to be questioned by any judge.