I walked in front of the television and blocked his view. He tried to operate around me, looking left, then right, his fingers clicking away on the remote. Finally he looked at my face and knew the time had come for the talk his mother had told him was coming—the reason he was not out already on this weekend night.
I gotta go, he said to his friends. He clicked more buttons, then put down the remote. His avatar disappeared. I turned off the television.
I won’t bore you with the details of what each of us said. I will simply say that I told him about Cruz Demarco. The man in the blue Civic. I told him that he saw a person in a blue hoodie with a red bird go into the woods right at the time of the rape. I laid out the facts that would make him a suspect if they were ever known. The shaving. The bleach. The sweatshirt. It was the last one we could do something about.
I could see him processing the information. I could see his mother’s brain and not mine inside his skull.
“Do you see what I’m saying? They will question you again.”
I know that. They’re bringing in the whole swim team.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” I said. “I know you didn’t do anything to hurt Jenny Kramer.”
I didn’t! I could hear the fear in his voice.
“I know. But you can see how this will look. They will ask you if you shaved—not just your legs, but everywhere. And they will ask about the sweatshirt.”
He didn’t say anything then, and that’s when I knew. He had shaved everywhere. He had worn that sweatshirt to the party.
“Jason. You couldn’t possibly remember that far back, could you?”
He looked at me strangely, but then he started to understand. I gave him my speech about the world being unfair. I told him the things that would be used against him, and I could see that he knew what had to be done. We discussed morality and the very few times it was acceptable to cross the line, to be an animal. Self-preservation was one of them.
“You are innocent and you deserve to be treated as an innocent. That’s the bottom line.”
Okay, Dad.
“Now. I just want to know one thing about that night so we can make sure we have thought of everything. I need to know what you were doing in those woods.”
My son lied. He looked me square in the eye as he did it. He thought he could deceive me. I am underestimated in my own home.
I wasn’t near the woods. I never left the house.
“Jason. Please. You were seen.”
I wasn’t there! I swear!
“And there’s not one person except that drug dealer who will say otherwise?”
No! I swear!
“And the sweatshirt. Why was it on the floor of your closet?”
I don’t know. My room’s a mess. I throw stuff in the closet when I get home sometimes.
I was again struck by the power of my bond to this weak, mediocre liar. I was disgusted by him in that moment. And yet I still persisted in my plan to protect him at all cost. At very dear cost. I could feel self-loathing creep into my bones. And I could not bear to think about the effort it would require to forgive myself one day. So I did not.
We agreed on what had to be done. He went to his room to delete any photos of himself in that sweatshirt that might be on any social media anywhere. He seemed to understand the boundaries I had set. The limits on my willingness to lie for him and cover for him. The fact that I was doing this only because I believed him to be innocent of the rape. I did not tell him it would not have mattered. Or that his mother did not share my conviction.
He left an hour later to meet his friends. I don’t know what came over me, but I had a large glass of scotch and then I took my wife upstairs and fucked her like Bob Sullivan fucked that secretary.
We did not linger in bed. My wife kissed me and smiled, then got up to shower. Blood was surging through my veins and I pleaded with it to bring me the thought that I knew was hiding inside me. Torturing me. Fucking my wife like an animal had not chased it away.
I closed my eyes and let it emerge from the shadows. All this time I had been worried about my son being in those woods because he might be accused of being the rapist.
My son was in those woods. My son was in those woods with the rapist.
I let out a loud gasp.
Dear God, I thought.
My son could have been the victim.
Chapter Twenty-three
The weekend was awkward and emotionally painful. My wife cried several times, mostly in the bathroom with the water running. She would come out with a red face, red eyes. My son was unusually quiet and spent most of his time training at the pool and then going out with his friends. He did not want to be around us.
As for me, I wrangled my fear and put it in a box on a shelf the way my wife does. My son had not been raped, and it was a waste of my mental resources to dwell on what might have been. I focused my concern on what was still posing a threat to him.