Teddy shrugs. “Well, I think I get what you mean, about your project. You make your head a hospitable enough place to be, why would you ever want to leave?”
I see something cross his face, dark and fleeting. It occurs to me that he might actually understand. That maybe he does something that feels like the List and puts effort into looking like he doesn’t.
“I’m really glad you’re here,” he says. He reaches out, brushing my arm, and grabs an unopened straw. Taps the wrapper down to the tabletop, leaving a perfect crimped paper roll. The straw is inserted into his beer, beer suctioned up, dripped onto the paper. It unfurls, quick and alive.
“Look, it’s a snake,” he whispers to me.
Mel and the boys have left behind three empty pitchers and two plates of hot-wing bones, and have moved on to a vintage Mortal Kombat console. Tatum and Ryan watch the screen as Mel’s shoulders flex under the denim jacket she has stolen from Tatum; she is winning. “Yeah, motherfucker,” she hollers, then turns, lets rip her best Axl Rose, pointing with both hands. “Sha na na na na na yeah!”
“They’re in love with her,” Teddy says.
“She’s been eating pussy since 1999.”
“Oh well. Want to go for a walk?”
“Sure.”
Outside it’s breezy and chill. There’s the smell of car exhaust and toasting leaves. We approach crosswalks and stop, waiting through two signals, talking, distracted. “So about this list,” Teddy says, leaning over and jostling me with his elbow. “Am I on it?”
“You’re number one,” I tell him.
His face lights up. “Really?”
“Of course.”
We’ve arrived at a little circular park. A sign posted at its entrance reads OLD EPISCOPALIAN BURIAL GROUNDS. Teddy leads me to a stone bench under some chestnuts. We sit.
“How did it happen?” I ask him.
He lifts his eyebrows. He knows, immediately, what I’m talking about. He takes a deep breath. “All of it? Oh Jesus. There’s probably a pretty exhaustive Wikipedia entry somewhere.” He rubs his palm over his chin and sighs, smile fading. I’m not sure whether he’s joking. “Did you follow it at all in the papers? The trial?”
“I tried not to.”
“What a luxury,” he says. “I wish I could have slept through that part of my life. There’s nothing more damaging to your sense of well-being than hearing about your parents’ sex life in court. The whole unbearable, nasty story. All three-ways and body hair and 1970s key parties. Though that sounds pretty cosmopolitan for them.”
“The seventies were gross,” I whisper.
“The seventies were disgusting,” he agrees. Then he goes quiet, picking at his jacket. “You know how being in our heads is sort of a refuge for us? Well, sex was sort of a refuge for my parents. And for Dad, it was an illness, something that made him dangerous. I think the weirdest part of the trial, for me, was hearing about these details from my mom. When she was giving testimony. Like, her acknowledging that she had always known something was wrong. That for my dad, it was more than, you know, swinging, having multiple partners. All in legalese.”
“So you were there for the entire trial.”
“Oh yes. I was twenty. I was there for it. The whole goddamned ordeal,” he says. “Apparently Mom didn’t think him having a thing for young girls meant he was dangerous, or a pedophile. That was her defense. Her argument? All men do. Can you imagine? But you remember that van?”
I inhale sharply.
He lifts his chin, looks ahead, not at me. “You do,” he says. “He really committed to the cliché. Big gray van, tinted windows, rolling down the street. Don’t mind me. No child molesters here. Beep-beep.”
We both laugh, a touch uncomfortably.
“I was three or four when he bought it. It’s like, come on, Mom. The van wasn’t a tip-off? The extended work trips? Or the fact that he always kept it locked? That wasn’t an indicator? Well, one day she pried her way in. And under the passenger seat, she found a pair of panties that were very, very small.”
I feel something cold and unpleasant shoot up my spine.
“So. In a move she can’t quite describe to this day, even in her version of the story, my mom picked up and left. She claims she could barely take care of herself back then. Had undiagnosed hep C, drank a lot. But I think she was in panic mode. She realized that what was going on really was her worst suspicion. That she was married to a predator, a really sick guy. And her instinct said run. She says she planned to come back for me. Thought I’d be okay in the meantime. And I guess I was. Physically, anyway.”
“The pictures,” I say.
He turns to me, looks hard.
“You remember showing those to me?”
He shakes his head.
“I remembered those when I saw the news report back in college,” I say. “It just hit me. Like I had forgotten. Actually, I think I had.”
I can see his face drain in the dark. “I showed those to you?”
“You don’t remember that?”
He shakes his head. Exhales. “No. Oh Christ. Sharon, I am so sorry.”
“Well, what else were you going to do? You were a kid.”
I see him swallow and close his eyes. “I can’t believe I did that.”