My son is building a solid house. I know he drinks on the weekends. I am certain it is moderate. He does not use drugs. I know this because I know drug users. I can tell in thirty seconds when someone is high. I see them enough to know. It’s not rocket science, just experience. My daughter, whom I also love deeply, built her own good house, though she is more like her mother. She doesn’t want to be bothered thinking about things that do not have an immediate impact on her life. But she is funny and fun loving and brought a lightness to our family before she left for college.
My wife keeps a close eye on our son. She is more suspicious than I. If he is doing something to undermine his house building, she will find it. So far, her covert operations have revealed nothing more than some Internet pornography. She set up various Internet restrictions. I had a long talk with Jason. That was that. Julie’s diligence gives me great comfort. And when she is worried, I know there is cause.
I turned off the radio and let my wife’s fears enter me. I felt them trickle in and then multiply until my mind was reeling. Jason had already been interviewed by the police. We had spoken to him as well about that night and what it meant and how he needed to be safe—both from being harmed and from harming others. We spoke to him about consent and about being with girls who are intoxicated. When it happened, when we learned of the rape of Jenny Kramer, my wife was thinking about our daughter off at college, and what we would do if this had happened to her. I had not thought about this until Julie put the idea in my head, and it stayed there for weeks as a most horrific, unbearable thought. She was also the one who was thinking about Jason, and what if he knew who did it but didn’t want to say, or what if he was falsely accused? This thought had been less troubling. I knew my son. He would be the last person on anyone’s list of suspects. Still, my wife’s fears were contagious.
There is one kind of love that is not amorphous, and that is the love of one’s own child. I spoke about this when discussing Tom Kramer’s childhood, if you recall. Both from an experiential standpoint as well as a clinical one, I know—it’s not just a belief—that we are genetically designed to die for our children. And if we are willing to die for them, we must feel in our bones that they are worthy of our death. And by the course of reason, we must see them as more worthy than everyone else we are not willing to die for. For most of us, with the exception of soldiers who are trained to die for others, that “everyone else” is truly everyone else in the world. We say we would die for our spouses, or at least some people say this, but I do not believe it is true. I do not believe, in that moment of truth, there is any husband who would throw himself in front of that proverbial bus to save his wife. Nor is there a wife who would jump out to spare her husband. Only for a child.
Only for a child.
This is what I was thinking as my wife’s fears grew inside me. Jason. I have to protect my son. From what, I did not yet know.
Chapter Fourteen
I did not call my wife. Instead, I called Detective Parsons. I have his private cell phone, and he always picks up when he sees my number. For the first time, I lied to him.
“I heard you’ve made an arrest. That’s wonderful news,” I said. He confirmed the reports. He was beside himself with relief.
“I was hoping you could fill me in on everything you know. I’m sure you can imagine how important this could be for Jenny.”
This was not untrue. The lie was in the motivation my words implied. I was not unconcerned with Jenny. But my wife’s fear was raging inside me.
Parsons told me about the arrest, about Cruz Demarco and how he’d “lawyered up.” They were waiting for him to get an assignment from the public defender’s office. I told him I did not want any of the Kramers to see his face, either in person or in a photograph. He said there’d been no release of Demarco’s name or picture. He promised to speak to the Kramers before releasing any information to the press. I agreed to call them as soon as we hung up to take added precautions. Jenny could not have her memory compromised by suggestive influences.