The Snow Garden

  “I’m done arguing my case, Tim. You either want this story or not.”

  Tim seemed disappointed that the sparring was over with. “I’m not going to tell you this isn’t tempting. But if I agree, my number-one priority would be Lisa Eberman. Not your conscience and not Eric’s reputation. That said, we should go to Richard now—”

  “No!”

  “Randall, look—”

  “Tim, there’s one thing that you would have that Richard and the police don’t.”

  “What would that be?”

  “Me. The guy Eric lets into his house every weekend.” Tim’s eyes brightened and Randall felt a tinge of relief as he realized he’d hooked him. “And I’ve already got something to show you.”

  “These are test results,” Tim said.

  The file Randall had stolen from Eric’s satchel was open on Tim’s desk. On the other side of his locked door, Sharif and John were arguing over who had ignored the prominently placed note inside their fridge and drunk all of John’s Japanese beer. Tim had slid the essay aside and gone straight for the medical printout. “What kind of tests?” Randall asked, rising from the bed.

  “Christ, this is the five-hundred-dollar test.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A guy I used to date back in Chicago called it the third-date test. It’s a full STD panel. It’s everything. HIV, gonorrhea, herpes. ..” Tim lifted the sheet from his desk as Randall sidled up behind him, reading over his shoulder. “Lauren Raines. Fit as a fiddle. You know her?”

  Randall straightened. “Yeah. She lives in my dorm. Kathryn used to hang out with her.”

  “Does Kathryn know?”

  Instead of answering, Randall removed the test results from Tim’s grip.

  “Wow. So there is something you guys don’t tell each other,” Tim said.

  Randall was done thinking of comebacks to Tim’s jibes, finding refuge in an obsessive focus as he picked up the essay. “Alan Raines was my father’s brother,” he read off the first page. “Lauren wrote this.”

  Tim furrowed his brow as he examined the essay. “You found this in Eric’s house?” he asked as he flipped pages.

  “Yeah.”

  A strange glint in his eyes, Tim looked up at Randall. “You haven’t read it?”

  Randall shook his head. He felt a surge of anger when Tim smiled slightly, sensing Randall’s need for a partner’s complicity. As Tim skimmed the first page, Randall turned to the window. “It’s about her uncle. He’s a drunk. He comes to live with her family ...” Tim’s words trailed off and Randall turned to see his face had gone lax. “Lord,” Tim whispered.

  “What?”

  Tim took a deep breath and began reading aloud. “The details of what my uncle did to me are of no real importance now. How was a nine-year-old supposed to know that something that felt so good, something that was not accompanied by violence, was wrong? At the time, it was not clear that my uncle’s affections came from an adult world that could potentially render me-a nine-year-old girl with no knowledge of her sexuality—powerless.”

  Tim glanced up at Randall as if checking to make sure he could handle it. Randall gave a weak nod, praying that his face didn’t betray the sudden clenching in his chest, the strobing memories of wandering hands and prying fingers. Not nine, fifteen, he told himself, And I was never powerless. I knew exactly what I was doing. But as Tim continued reading, Randall found his own words hollow as Lauren’s words jabbed at the parting in a curtain he had dropped between Atherton and the past.

  “I have wondered whether or not that at the age of nine, I had any sexuality to speak of at all. Now, I believe that I did, but that it was dormant, lying in wait for the right moment to emerge. My uncle’s hands brought it to life before it had a chance to be properly born. As a result, my sexuality is the equivalent of a premature baby with a permanent birth defect. It can grow all it wants, but it was brought to life with only poison as nourishment, and no amount of growth can bridge the hole in its heart.” Tim’s voice had gone from detached sarcasm to toneless shock. “Uh . .. God,” he grunted.

  “Keep reading,” Randall commanded.

  Tim shot him a wary glance. “Please tell me what this has to do with anything,” he said. But his eyes had returned to the paper in front of him, like a motorist unable to look away from a roadside accident.

  “What the hell was it doing in Eric’s house?”

  Tim just shook his head, reading silently for a second. He sat forward suddenly, staring down at the paper as if the text had blurred. “What?” Randall asked sharply.

  “I do not hate my uncle,” Tim read. “I believe he Was diseased. And such a diseased man usually ends up infecting others. By the time I came to Atherton, I believed I had come to terms with what he had done to me. Then I met Jesse Lowry.”

  Randall froze, standing over Tim. After a moment, he removed the essay from Tim’s hands.

  “Jesus. If she slept with Jesse no wonder she got tested for every STD under the sun,” Tim said.

  “Jesse uses condoms,” Randall told him. Tim arched his eyebrows. “I’ve seen the box,” Randall added.

  “I thought you might be working double—Sorry, make that triple time.” Tim crossed to his fridge and pulled out a beer.

  Randall sank down onto the bed, reading;

  “Randall, maybe you shouldn’t be .. .”

  Randall ignored him, and Tim drank from his beer.

  After arriving at Atherton, Lauren Raines had found it almost impossible to sleep, plagued as she was by nightmares. She went to a guidance counselor seeking prescription sleeping pills. But the counselors at the health center weren’t even licensed to give out aspirin and were reluctant to make referrals, believing most student problems had to do with too much raw independence, too much stress, or just too much drinking. But the counselor was a “sweet guy” and after several sessions, Lauren told him about her molestation. Further sessions were devoted to coming up with ways to exorcise her memories. According to the counselor, whom Lauren didn’t name, the more she tried to repress the memories, the more likely they would spring up when she tried to sleep.

  Randall thought the counselor’s final solution was insane. He continued reading with increasing disbelief.

  One of my favorite classes is Workshop in Creative Writing I. It is also one of the hardest. Everyone is very tough on each other’s work. Most students don’t like reading aloud. Me included. But I believed that by placing my story in a fictional context and forcing myself to read it aloud to the entire class, I would experience what my counselor called a catharsis.

  The story was called “Hands,” and Lauren worked on it for weeks, altering all the major details. “Hands” was a success, but she speculated on whether or not the story’s subject prevented the other students from hissing their usual poison. The story’s reading was followed by a sober class discussion on the nature of molestation. Lauren noted that the class’s conclusion was the same as her own: while molestation was essentially about manipulation and control, the real sin inflicted upon the child involved was the period of disillusion during which the child believes that the actions of their molester are a new and valid form of showing love.

  One student didn’t contribute to the discussion. Jesse Lowry.

  At first, Lauren thought the guy was silently revolted by the proceedings, but as soon as the class let out, Jesse approached her, showering her with praise. By the time he asked her out to dinner, Lauren had convinced herself that her reward for facing her demons was the sudden attentions of the strikingly handsome classmate she had secretly been ogling for weeks. As self-conscious as Lauren’s essay was, even she went into a kind of swoon when she described Jesse, with his “proportioned athletic body in which every muscle moved in fluid union” and “All-American good looks with a flash of boyish playfulness lighting up his smile and his perceptive eyes.”

  “Give me a fucking break,” Randall muttered.

  “Huh?” Tim asked.

/>   “Nothing,” Randall answered and continued reading.

  Lauren’s opinion of Jesse was unchanged after their first date. Jesse was charming, honest, and most important, didn’t make a move after dinner. This struck Randall as especially odd; he didn’t remember Jesse going on a single date. Usually, he either didn’t need to, or didn’t care enough to devote even that amount of time to a potential sexual conquest. To Randall, Jesse had only mentioned Lauren in passing, as he had the many girls who stumbled out of their room in various states of undress.

  I decided I was ready to make love to him. I was the one who took the initiative. After making sure my roommate would be out for the evening, I invited him up to my room. I wasn’t exactly subtle about it, but that didn’t seem to be a problem. He started performing oral sex on me. He was very good at it.

  Lauren’s cold frankness in describing the sexual act drove home the fact that Randall was eavesdropping on a private pain. But a potent blend of horror and curiosity drove him to keep reading. He hoped it wasn’t the voyeuristic pleasure of hearing what Jesse was actually like in bed.

  “Are you done yet?” Tim asked.

  Randall shook his head. “In a second.”

  I’ve never been so ready for someone to enter me before. He was gentle, he was affectionate, and as soon as he was inside me he whispered in my ear, “Just like your uncle, Lauren.” I experienced an immediate orgasm I could not prevent.

  “Jesus!” Randall tossed the essay aside and rose from the bed.

  Tim shot out of his desk chair and retrieved the essay off the bed.

  It took him a few minutes to finish, and when he did, he dropped it to his lap and looked to Randall, who was staring out the window. “How well do you really know Jesse?”

  “I’m starting to think Kathryn might know him better.”

  “Huh?”

  “She wouldn’t be surprised by a single word of this. She’s always thought Jesse was some kind of... predator. I always thought he was just a big hornball and that she was just attracted to him and had to take out her frustrations on him, but that’s not it. She always sensed that he was using his body, using how attractive he is to ... undo people.”

  “Very Dynasty,” Tim commented wryly.

  Randall ignored him. “It’s almost like Jesse thinks the only honest thing in his life is his body and the pleasure it can give him. And he’s always trying to convince everyone else. I can see him ... I can hear him saying that to Lauren. And believing it.”

  “I repeat,” Tim said, retrieving his beer off his desk. “It has nothing to do with what we’re looking for.”

  “What was it doing in Eric’s house?”

  “You said you thought Mitchell Seaver dropped it off. Maybe he left it with the paper he hadn’t graded by mistake. Maybe Lauren is friends with him. I don’t know, Randall, but you asked me to help find out if he killed his wife, and this shit is not helping.” Tim took a slug of beer. “Better luck next time.”

  “I have the bottle,” Randall said, turning from the window.

  Tim nodded. “That’s a start.”

  “Maybe. We can’t exactly take it to the medical examiner’s office and ask them to run a few tests without telling anyone except us what they find.”

  “I could take it to Richard. He’s covered the police beat here for twenty years. Maybe he’ll know some doctor who can run tests or something.”

  “That’s ridiculous, Tim. He’s a reporter. You don’t think he’s going to want to know why you’re bringing it to him?”

  “Look, we’re fairly limited in what we can do here, all right? Now unless you think you can dig around the house again and find some diary or something, then you might start considering my suggestions.”

  “I’ve got a suggestion of my own,” Randall said. “Her sister.”

  “What about her?”

  “Lisa was spending every weekend with her. I’ll bet she wasn’t bothering to pack a suitcase. Anything she wanted to keep from her husband, she would keep there.”

  “The woman’s got cancer, Randall.”

  “That didn’t stop you the first time.”

  Tim flounced down onto his bed, holding his beer against his chest and draping an arm over his forehead to indicate a splitting headache. Randall knew what was coming, more poking and prodding at his real motive. Maybe he hadn’t given a good enough performance the first time. He inhaled deeply and took a seat next to Tim on the mattress. Tim opened his eyes when he felt Randall’s weight on the bed, and Randall met his gaze, infusing his voice with the necessary gravity.

  “You want to know the truth, Tim? I would love to go the police tomorrow morning. And then I’d go straight to Richard Miller and tell him everything I know about Eric. But if I did that, I would be out of here faster than you can blink.”

  “Why?”

  “My parents don’t even know I’m gay, Tim. If they find out that I’ve been sleeping with one of my male, married professors they would yank me out of Atherton the next day.”

  “And back to Park Avenue where they’d lock you up in a room padded with Frette couture and throw away the key. Poor baby.”

  “So I’m a baby. No one’s arguing with you on that.” Forced self-pity had brought a slight quaver to his voice. The sound of it emboldened him, and he continued, “But that’s not the point. If I’m locked up in their apartment, there’s no way I can find out who killed Lisa Eberman.”

  Tim propped his back against the wall and stared at his bent knees as he gave consideration to Randall’s suggestion. “I’ll call Paula Willis. Tell her I’m doing a follow-up on Atherton’s continued grief. She’ll like that—the idea that the whole town’s still mourning her sister’s death.”

  Randall nodded, collecting the contents of Lauren Raines’ file.

  “It’s weird,” Tim continued distantly. “She talks so fast, it’s like she’s trying to get everything out before she goes.”

  “Call me if something works out,” he said, heading for the door.

  “Randall.”

  He turned around. Tim looked older, drawn. “If she grants me another interview, you’re going with me.” Randall was silent. “To see her,” Tim added. Realizing that Tim was also going to play both judge and jury, Randall managed a curt nod before he shut the door.

  Someone had opened his window to share the sound of Moby with all of West Campus. Randall slowed his steps as he followed one of the winding pathways through the labyrinth of red brick walls. He found an empty bench just off the pathway and lit by the blue light on top of one of the campus emergency phones.

  He flipped to the last page of Lauren’s essay.

  I did not hit him, I slugged him. It was like hitting a brick wall.

  “So it wasn’t just a story?” he asked me.

  He was so calm. So unfazed by the fact that I was coming apart right in front of him. I was practically sobbing by the time he got his clothes on. And the whole time all he kept saying was that it wasn’t wrong of me to enjoy what my uncle did to me. He told me that my uncle hadn’t been the one to fill me with poison—that job had been accomplished by the therapists who had to tell me it was wrong after the fact.

  Lauren’s story all but proved Kathryn’s suspicion that there was some darker motive beneath all of Jesse's sexual maneuverings. But Randall had resisted the idea for so long not because he liked Jesse and wanted to believe of him better than that. Randall’s path to Atherton had been paved with the sexual secrets of men. He had learned them and exploited them to the best of his advantage. But he had done it to survive. For Jesse, it was like a game. No, a pursuit, Randall thought. But why?

  Why was Jesse so desperate to show Lauren that the memory of her molestation would result in an orgasm?

  He continued reading in hopes of finding something that might spark an answer.

  I can’t claim to know Jesse Lowry. All I know is that I allowed him to violate me. I was lulled into a state of complacency by the lust I felt for him, a
nd that lust comes from the same place my uncle poisoned. The sad reality is that Jesse might be half-right. How can I embrace my sexuality when all it wants to do is sink its teeth into me? My fate has been predetermined. I will never be someone capable of making love.

  As for Jesse, I’m only left to wonder what incident in his past would give him the conviction to attempt insight into mine. I can only speculate.

  So can I, Randall thought, lifting his head from the essay, wondering if he had just found the secret he had searched for on Jesse’s side of the room that morning.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  SUNDAY AFTERNOON HAD TURNED INTO SUNDAY EVENING, AND Kathryn had rewritten the E-mail twice already. Only one sentence had survived: “I know it’s probably too late to get a ticket.” It was not an E-mail she wanted to write or a trip she wanted to make, but after two days of not speaking to him, she assumed Randall had forgotten their trip to Boston. She had just started Rewrite Number Three when a knock on her door startled her. Randall ducked his head in. Before her face could betray her anger, she forced a weak smile and returned her attention to the computer, hoping the sight of her back communicated the anger she didn’t have the energy to voice.

  “Friday night,” Randall said. She waited for him to continue. He didn’t.

  “Yeah?” she asked without turning.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Friday night?” she repeated, her tone clipped.