Salem Falls

  When Jay looked at him again, his face was completely impassive. "Catherine Marsh said the two of you have been having an affair."

  "Catherine Marsh said what?" Jack took a second look at the spare room, the tape recorder, and Jay's expression. "Am I ... you're not arresting me, are you?"

  "No. We're just talking now. I want to hear your side of the story."

  "You couldn't possibly think ... for God's sake, Jay ... she's--she's a student. I swear--I've never touched her. I don't know where she'd get an idea like this." In spite of himself, his heart was racing.

  "On the basis of the evidence we have, we'll be bringing charges against you," Jay said stiffly. Then his voice softened. "You may want to get yourself a lawyer, Jack."

  A curtain of rage ripped across Jack's vision. "Why did you want me to come in here to talk if you're going to arrest me anyway?" The accusation hung between them, and Jack suddenly realized exactly why Jay had asked for his side of the story--it had nothing to do with their friendship and everything to do with catching Jack in a confession that could be used against him in court.

  Loyal was a picture-perfect town, complete with a general store, a requisite wooden bridge, and a row of white clapboard buildings that flanked the town green, mirroring the architecture of Westonbrook Academy. Jack's home was a little cape. From his front porch, he could see the house where Catherine Marsh and her father, the Right Reverend Ellidor Marsh, lived.

  What Jack had liked best about the town was that he could not walk through it without saying hello to someone he knew. If not a student, then the woman who ran the general store. The postmaster. The elderly twin brothers who had never married but served as bank tellers at side-by-side windows.

  Today, though, he walked with his head ducked, afraid of seeing someone familiar. He passed kids and felt their heads crane to watch him walk by. He veered around the broom of a shopkeeper, his face lighting with embarrassment as she paused in her sweeping and stared. I am innocent, he wanted to scream, but even that would not make a difference. It wasn't truth that held their interest; it was the fact that rotten luck might be catching.

  Catherine Marsh's house was gaily laced with pink roses that grew skyward on a trellis. He rapped sharply on the door, falling back a step when Catherine answered.

  She was young and pretty, with skin that seemed lit from the inside. In that first moment, Jack saw all the times he'd hugged her after a particularly fine goal on the field, all the times he'd noticed her jersey straining against her sports bra. A wide smile spread across her face. "Coach!"

  He opened up his mouth to speak, to accuse her, to ask her why, but all the questions jammed. A face appeared behind hers: Ellidor Marsh, in all his fundamentalist fury.

  "Reverend," Jack began.

  It was all Ellidor needed. His face revealed an internal war for the briefest moment, and then his fist shot out and clipped Jack in the jaw.

  Catherine cried out as Jack tumbled down the steps, landing in a tangle of rosebushes. Thorns cut into the summer-weight wool of his trousers. He spat out blood, then wiped his hand across his mouth.

  Catherine was trying to get to him, but her father had pushed her behind his own body. Jack narrowed his eyes at the chaplain. "Did the good Lord tell you to do that?"

  "Go," Ellidor said precisely, "to hell."

  A few weeks before, Jack had been teaching the Peloponnesian War to the summer term fourth-formers. He stood in front of his classroom, his shirt sticking to his chest in this July heat. "The Spartans weren't happy with the peace treaty they'd signed, and the Athenians were getting a little power hungry themselves. ..." He'd glanced over the rows of flushed faces of students cooling themselves with hastily folded looseleaf-paper fans. "And not a single one of you is listening right now."

  Jack winced as one girl's eyes actually drifted shut. He was not a big fan of Westonbrook's summer session, offered so students could pump up their academic credits for college applications. The hundred-year-old classrooms at Westonbrook, sweatboxes all, were not conducive to learning.

  Catherine Marsh sat in the front of the class, her starched collar neat against the edge of her uniform cardigan, her legs crossed primly at the ankles. "Dr. St. Bride," she whined, "what's so important about a war that happened twenty-four hundred years ago in a different country? I mean, it's not our history. So why do we have to learn it?"

  The chorus of agreement swept like a wave. Jack glanced from one flushed young face to another. "Okay," he said, "we're taking a field trip."

  He did not really have a plan in mind, beyond getting them out of those godforsaken uniforms and into something more comfortable. Swimsuits were the most obvious choice ... each girl had one roped to her gym locker. But he also had a very good sense of the mind of sophomore girls--who would rather cut off their left arm than show off physical flaws in front of classmates who were curvier, thinner, taller ... or in front of a male teacher. Suddenly, Jack brightened, imagining a modest way to make the kids more comfortable--a way that could even be construed as part of their daily lesson.

  He led them to the cafeteria, where arthritic townies were chopping heads of iceberg lettuce into salads. "Ladies," he said in greeting, "we have need of some tablecloths."

  He was directed toward the main hall, where first-formers through sixth-formers took meals together. Neatly folded linens were stacked in piles. Jack took one tablecloth and tossed it to a student. He reached for another, and another, until every girl in his class was holding one. "When in Rome, do as the Romans do. And when in Greece ..." He grabbed a cloth and wrapped it around his own body. "Voila. The toga."

  He led them to the girls' locker room. "I want you all to put on your swimsuits, and then drape your toga. Carry out your uniforms, just in case."

  "In case what?"

  Jack grinned. "In case we need to beat a hasty retreat from the fashion police." Or the headmaster, he thought.

  "Might as well paint an L on my forehead right now," a student murmured. "Loser."

  But in spite of the grumbling, they filed inside and then emerged one by one, each holding a stack of clothes. "You see?" Jack said. "Don't you feel better already?"

  The last girl to come out was Catherine Marsh. She was wearing her toga, too ... but no tank suit. Her bare shoulder, smooth and tan, brushed Jack's arm as she passed by.

  Jack hid a smile. Girls this age--especially girls with crushes--were about as subtle as steamrollers.

  He marched them to the soccer field, had them set down their bundles, and then line up. "Okay. At first, you're all living in harmony, thanks to a peace treaty the Spartans signed." Then he split the girls into two groups. "You Spartans," he told the first bunch, "you want to fight a land war, because that's what you're good at. And you"--he pointed to the Athenians--"you want to fight a naval war, because that's what you're good at."

  "But how do we know who to kill?" one girl called out. "We all look the same."

  "Excellent question! Someone who's your friendly neighbor one day is an enemy the next, simply because of a political issue. What do you do?"

  "Ask before you draw your sword?"

  Jack reached behind the girl who'd spoken, and pretended to slash her throat. "And in that second you hesitated, you're dead."

  "Stay with your own kind," one student shouted.

  "Watch your back!"

  "Strike first!"

  Jack grinned as his listless group grew more animated, engaging in mock combat, until they were all rolling around the field, grass stains marking the knees and bottoms of their togas. Exhausted, they lay on their backs, watching cirrus clouds stretch across the sky like the long limbs of ballerinas.

  A shadow loomed over Jack, and he looked up to find Herb Thayer, the headmaster of Westonbrook Academy. "Dr. St. Bride ... a word?"

  They walked out of earshot. "God, Jack. You trying to get us sued?"

  "For what? Teaching history?"

  "Since when does the curriculum include stripping?"
br />   Jack shook his head. "Costuming. There's a difference. Kids this age are like puppies; they need to get their blood moving before their brains kick into gear. And the classrooms are brutal in this heat." He offered his most engaging smile. "This is no different from staging Shakespeare."

  Herb wiped a hand across his brow. "For all I care, Jack, you can put them through basic training to help them remember what you're teaching. Just make sure they're fully clothed before you send them out on the obstacle course." He started off, then turned at the last minute. "I know what you're doing and why. But the guy who's crossing the street over there, who came in during the second act--he sees something totally different."

  Jack waited until Herb left. Then he approached his class again, curiosity playing over their faces.

  "Who won?" Catherine Marsh asked.

  "Well, Dr. Thayer is in favor of our mock battles but highly recommends that you do it in uniform."

  A groan rose from the group, but they began to gather the small bundles of clothing they'd carried out to the field.

  "No," Catherine said. "I meant, who won the war?"

  "The Peloponnesian War? Nobody. Both sides believed their strategy would wear down the other side and make them surrender. But after ten years, neither had."

  "You mean they just stayed at war because no one would give in?"

  "Yes. By the time they signed the Peace of Nicias, it wasn't about who was right or wrong ... just about not fighting anymore." He clapped his hands for attention. "Okay, now. Let's hustle."

  The girls trickled away. Beauty is truth, and truth, beauty, Jack thought, watching them. He took a step forward and felt something beneath his shoe. A wisp of fabric, a red satin bra accidentally dropped by one of the girls. Sewn along the inseam was a name label, de rigueur for any boarding-school student. CATHERINE MARSH, Jack read. Blushing, he stuffed it into his pocket.

  *

  Melton Sprigg's office was by no stretch of the imagination impressive. It was a walk-up above the Chinese restaurant in Loyal, and the smell of kung po chicken was thick. There was no air conditioning, and papers littered the floor and the desk and the one filing cabinet. "Keep meaning to clean this up," he huffed, moving a stack of journals out of the way so that Jack could sit down.

  For one brief moment, Jack considered bolting. He forced himself to flatten his hands on the arms of his chair, to relax.

  "So," Melton said, "how can I help you?"

  Jack realized he had never actually said the words before. They stuck like glue to the roof of his mouth. "I think I'm going to be charged with a crime."

  Melton grinned. "Good thing. If you said you wanted to order moo shu pork, you'd be in the wrong place. Why do you think you're going to be charged?"

  "The police said as much. They called me in to ... talk ... a few days ago. A girl ... a student of mine ... has implied that she and I ... that we ..."

  Melton whistled through his teeth. "I can guess the rest."

  "I didn't do it," Jack insisted.

  The lawyer handed him a card. "Let's cross that bridge when we come to it."

  In spite of the heat, Jack went running. He put on his old college soccer jersey and shorts and took off dead east from the porch of his house. He ran two miles, four, six. Sweat poured into his eyes, and he gasped great drafts of air. He passed the town line and kept running. He ran the perimeter of a pond, twice. And when he realized that no matter how hard he tried he could not outrace his fear, he collapsed at the edge, buried his face in his hands, and cried.

  Catherine Marsh remembered with vivid clarity the first time Jack St. Bride had touched her.

  She had been playing forward, her eye on the ball, so intent on firing it into the goal of the opposing team that she'd completely missed seeing the other player hurtling toward her with the same single-mindedness. They smacked heads with an audible crunch, the last noise Catherine could remember hearing before she was unconscious. When she came to, Coach was leaning over her, his golden hair haloed by the sun, the way it always looks in the movies when the hero comes along. "Catherine," he asked, "you all right?" At first she hadn't been able to answer because his hands were running up and down her body, checking for broken bones. "I think your ankle is swelling," he said. Then he'd taken off her cleat and peeled off her sock, examining her sweaty foot like Cinderella's prince. "Perfect," he pronounced. And Catherine had thought, Yes, you are.

  She knew that there was something special between them, from the way he kept her after practice to show her a drill to the way he sometimes slung an arm over her shoulders when they were walking off the field together. When she'd confided that she was thinking of sleeping with Billy Haines, Coach had been the one to drive her to the clinic two towns over, to get birth control pills. Oh, he hadn't wanted to at first--but he'd given in because he cared about her. And when Billy had dumped her two days later, Coach had let her cry on his shoulder.

  She wondered several times a day what he'd done with the bra she'd left behind after that Ancient History class. It had fallen out of her bundle of clothes completely by accident ... or maybe it was just fate, now that she got to thinking about it. She'd realized it was missing and had gone back to the field to retrieve it ... just in time to see Coach pick up her bra and pocket it. Something had made her turn away without asking for it back. Maybe he slept with it beneath his pillow. Maybe he just let the silk slip through his fingers and pretended it was her skin.

  Yesterday, Catherine hadn't gone to school. Her father wouldn't let her. And it was probably best that way, since she did not know what she would have said to Jack. She had heard through the grapevine that he had been taken off to jail in handcuffs, like he was some criminal. If Catherine had been there, she would have knelt at his feet and kissed every spot on his wrists the metal touched. She would have asked to wear them in his place. She would do anything to show him how much she loved him, anything at all.

  *

  Jack leaned so close to Melton Sprigg he could see the weave of the attorney's bow tie. "I didn't do it," he said through his teeth. "Doesn't that count for anything?"

  "I'm just saying that in today's day and age, there are ways to make a jury understand why a man of ... advanced years ... might develop an interest in a younger girl."

  "Good. You can use that defense for a client who's actually guilty." Jack sank into a chair, suddenly overwhelmed. Today, his best friend had charged him with felonious sexual assault. He'd been arraigned. His bank account was $5,000 lighter, thanks to posting bail. His wrist was bruised where the handcuff had pinched it while he was being led up to the courtroom. "We're going to fight this. That's what the system is about, right? Giving each side the chance to speak. And who's going to listen to what a fifteen-year-old says?"

  Melton nodded and smiled, for his client's sake. And did not tell him what he was thinking: that simply because Catherine Marsh was fifteen, everyone would be listening.

  "I'll cut right through the bullshit," Herb Thayer said. "This is downright awkward."

  Finally, someone who agreed with him. "Tell me about it," Jack said. "I had to walk into the station yesterday, so that Jay Kavanaugh could read me my rights! For God's sake, I played racquetball with him last Saturday, and here he was booking me." Once he began to speak, he didn't think he'd ever be able to stop. "It came out of left field, Herb. I have no idea what this kid is thinking."

  "You and Catherine Marsh have a close rapport," Herb stated.

  "You ... you don't believe what she said, do you?"

  "God, Jack, of course not. I'm just pointing out that I can see how ... others ... might have come to this conclusion."

  Jack got to his feet and began to prowl around the office. On a shelf behind him were four district championship trophies for girls' soccer, each of which he'd earned by means of the close rapport Herb was questioning now. "I never touched her."

  Herb gazed out the window to where several students were eating lunch. "You know," he said softly, "you're t
he best teacher in this school. You can turn kids on to learning like I've never seen before."

  Jack felt a rush in his bloodstream, the swift realization that things might not turn out to be quite as dismal as he'd believed.

  The headmaster picked up a pen, drummed it on the desktop. "Look, Jack. I believe you. But I've got parents who want to know what kind of school employs a teacher whose conduct is suspect. I've got Ellidor Marsh breathing down my neck--"

  "Ellidor Marsh is a fundamentalist asshole who has no place being a private school chaplain."

  "He's also a father who thinks his fifteen-year-old daughter was having sex with a guy twice her age who should have known better!" The accusation hung between them, black as smoke, hovering over the desk.

  "Nothing's been proven," Jack said, words that tasted like dust.

  Herb could not meet his eye. "Try to see it from my point of view, Jack. For the good of the school, I can't have a teacher here who's been accused of statutory rape." He walked around the desk. "If there's some other way I can help ..."

  "Don't do me any favors," Jack murmured, and left before Herb could say anything else.

  Annalise St. Bride actually knew Brooke Astor. She had a tiger-skin rug in her bedroom--her husband had shot the beast on safari; she kept a home on the Upper West Side that had been featured in Architectural Digest more often than had Gracie Square. But these were not the amazing things about Annalise. It was far more interesting that she shared her apartment with her husband's former lover, who was now her closest friend. Or that she knew just as many prostitutes as she did debutantes. She was best known for her decade-long crusade to fight violence against women. Twenty rape crisis centers dotted the seediest parts of New York City, thanks to Annalise's checkbook and iron resolve.

  So when Jack found his mother on the front doorstep of his home, he was stunned, to say the least.

  That she had come to support him--without knowing all the details--cracked his heart wide. Just looking at her, Jack felt the protective wall he'd been building around himself begin to tumble down. He leaned forward to kiss her cheek, but she ducked away.