His gaze moves from Jet to Paul, to me, then back to Paul once more. Survival instinct burns like phosphorus behind his blue-gray eyes.
“Come here, Paul,” he says in a paternal tone. “I need to tell you something these two can’t hear.”
“Don’t, Paul!” I say sharply, surprising myself. “He can say anything he wants from right there.”
Max’s eyes cut to me for a furious instant.
“Something’s wrong,” I think aloud. “Get your weapon up.”
“Fucking drama queen,” Max mutters, his eyes finding Paul’s again. “I hoped I’d never have to tell you this. But they’ve left me no choice. You want the truth? All right, yes—Kevin’s my son. Anybody with eyes can look at that boy and see it. I never told you because I knew it would break your heart.”
Paul’s mouth is hanging open. “How do you know he’s yours?”
“I had a DNA test done when he was a baby. On a hair from that baseball cap I gave him. He’s mine, Paul, same as you are. Kevin’s your brother.”
“Half brother,” Jet corrects him. “You son of a bitch.”
Paul’s face has gone slack with horror.
“But,” Max goes on, “I never raped her. That part’s a goddamn lie. I never stole pussy off a woman in my life, and Jet’s no different.”
Every atom of Paul’s being resists this claim. “You’re telling me Jet slept with you because she wanted to? She had an affair with you?”
Max shrugs. “That’s not how it started. At first I was doing you a favor, strange as that may sound now. You and Jet, both.”
“A favor?” Paul just looks at him. “Tell me about this favor you did me.”
Max rakes his left hand over his stubbled chin. “It’s not complicated. Jet told me how much trouble y’all were having conceiving a child. She was worried you might kill yourself. I was too, I won’t lie. I know what war does to men. And your mother was a nervous wreck, worrying about you. Those were tough times in the Matheson house. Jet told me you wouldn’t get your plumbing checked by the medics and you didn’t want to adopt. Which I totally get, by the way. These days they wanna give you a Mexican baby or even a nigger. We figured the only way to pull you out of your tailspin was to give you a son. Your own son. A blood descendant. A reason to live. Best one there is. And we did.”
Listening to Max now, it’s tough to imagine Jet deciding to sleep with him to get pregnant. But that was thirteen years ago, and Max has probably changed a lot since then. A lot of friends I grew up with have begun to become their parents as they age: Gen X slackers morphing into racist xenophobes they would have hated in their twenties.
“It was that easy, huh?” Paul says, avoiding the third rail of this conversation. “One roll in the hay, and you did what I couldn’t do in four years?”
Max struggles to portray an emotion he’s never actually felt: compassion. “There’s no fault to that kind of thing, Paulie. It’s just medical. Like who gets cancer and who doesn’t. There’s no reason to it.”
Paul knows as well as I that Max doesn’t believe that. More than once I’ve heard him tell a father of only daughters: “Lemme know if you need some help getting a son over at your place.” Usually on the sideline at football practice.
“You’ve all been lying to me,” Paul says. “For years. I want out of this goddamn nightmare. I want straight answers.” He turns to Jet. “Did he force you? Or did you give yourself to him?”
“He raped me,” Jet says with conviction.
Paul turns to me. “You believe her?”
“I saw him try to rape her again last night, on Parnassus Hill.” This, I realized earlier today, is not strictly true. I saw Max attack Jet, and I later saw her ripped blouse. But I can’t be sure he was trying to rape her. He may have been trying to kill her. But the truth will not save us now.
As Paul turns back to his father, Max restates his basic argument. “I’ve been with a lot of women in my day, Paul. You know that. But I’ve never forced one yet. Not once. I damn sure never raped your wife. And I can prove it.”
How the hell can he prove that?
“You shouldn’t have lied about me,” Max says to Jet, who suddenly looks afraid again.
“How can you prove it?” Paul demands.
Max lowers his head like a priest preparing to deliver last rites. Then he looks up, his eyes hard. “How do you think? I can tell you what she likes between the sheets.”
The room temperature drops ten degrees.
“All right, I’ll bite,” Paul says. “Let’s hear it.”
Max looks directly at Jet while he answers. “When you go down on her . . . she likes to open the hood herself, so your fingers are free to work up her tailpipe.”
A shudder of recognition goes through me, leaving nausea in its wake. As Paul and I stare at each other, white-faced, Max nods with triumph. “She comes harder that way. Right? Would I know that if I raped her?”
Jet’s face has lost all color.
As crudely as Max spoke, he told the truth. In the first moment our eyes met, Paul and I shared the certainty that we’ve both serviced Jet in this way, and at her request. Apparently, Max has, too. What Paul feels I can only guess. But what’s devouring me from the inside is the knowledge that less than an hour ago, Jet lied to me when she “confessed” how Kevin had been conceived. The “pragmatic” transaction she described as undertaken solely to produce an heir has turned out to be something else entirely—as Tallulah intimated to me this morning.
“My automotive analogy confuse you boys?” Max asks with a fraternal smile. “She likes to part the curtains herself so you can work on her backyard plumbing.”
“Shut up!” Paul yells, but he’s looking at Jet, who is crumbling before our eyes. Red blotches have appeared on her face and neck, and tears are pouring down her cheeks. It’s a reaction to what she sees in our faces, I realize, a reflection of shame and revulsion.
“He’s lying,” she says in a tiny voice. “I mean . . . not about that. You’ve both been with me. But I’ve never done that with him. Never. How can he know that?”
“How indeed,” Paul says in a dead voice.
“Please,” she beseeches us. “Please believe me! He must have watched us with cameras or something. He’s been stalking me. You can’t believe him.”
Paul looks back at her with something akin to pity. “I wouldn’t have. But there’s no other way he could know that.”
“There has to be! This is sick. Please—”
“Boo-fucking-hoo,” Max says in a mocking voice. “At least now we know where we stand. All that matters now is Kevin. And I know one thing: this whore is never getting custody of that boy again.”
Jet looks wildly from Paul to me, like an accused witch in search of a champion.
“She’s his mother,” I say quietly.
“Lots of whores are mothers,” Max observes. “What’s your point?”
“Help me,” Jet begs, looking from Paul to me.
Max steps toward the back door. “Time to put an end to this bullshit. Come out to the patio, Paul. I don’t want these con artists to hear what I’ve got to say to you.”
Alarm bells are clanging in my head. “Don’t do it, Paul. Do whatever you want about Jet, but send Max home. Something’s not right.”
“You ain’t right, Goose,” Max says, raising his gun and aiming across the table at me. A trace of a smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. “The only person in here who follows your orders is Jet, and you were third in line, ace. I wonder who’ll be next. You look like you might have soured on her a little bit.”
He looks at Jet, contempt written on his face. “Can’t say I blame you. She’s been aging out of her prime for a while. She might perk back up after we relieve her of her motherly duties, though. Get a little nip and tuck where it counts.”
“You won’t get Kevin,” she says with the last remnant of her defiance. “I’m the best lawyer in this town. I’ll stop you.”
Max grins. “I’d say that depends on the judge, darling. And I own the judges in this town. Not to mention, I’m the boy’s father.”