Blind Faith

  “Well, if I hear much more of it, Dad, whoever I hear it from is going to find himself flat on his back looking up.”

  Rob frowned. “Don’t talk like that, Roby. It’s not polite. Remember, especially at a time of stress like this, you’re a Marshall. That means a great deal in Toms River. You have a lot to be proud of and a lot to live up to. Just stay tough, for my sake. And hold your head high, whatever happens.”

  “Okay, Dad. But nothing much better happen. Nothing bad, I mean. I don’t think, as it is, that I’m going to be handling all this very well.”

  “Sure you will. You’re tough. You’re strong. You’re my son.” He put his glass down and reached out to squeeze Roby’s shoulder. “And always remember—Felice and I will be there for you, to help you over the rough spots.”

  Roby could feel his cheeks color. Involuntarily, his fists clenched. “Listen, Dad,” he said. “I’ll be strong and tough and proud and all that. But there’s just one thing you’d better know. Man to man.”

  Rob smiled at his son benignly, if just a trifle blearily. “What’s that?” he said.

  “From now on,” Roby said, “I don’t ever want to hear the name of that bitch spoken in this house again.”

  On his way to bed that night—what was it, the third night since Mom was killed? The fourth? The thousandth?—Roby was walking through the kitchen when a business card tacked to the bulletin board caught his eye.

  The name on the card was that of the director of admissions at Stockton State College, where Maria had taken Roby in late August to preregister for fall semester classes.

  It had been a difficult summer for Roby, after the trouble at Villanova. His father had seemed pissed at him for three straight months. As if his one-semester suspension was the worst disgrace in Marshall family history. Even if it was, there was nothing he could do about it.

  Now, he realized that there had been other sources of stress contributing to his father’s irritability. Like an affair. And planning to split. And being however deeply in debt he really was. But at the time, which was all summer long—until Friday morning at 3 A.M., which was the start of an entirely different, and much longer, season—his father had been cold and unforgiving. It was his mother’s love and understanding that had sustained him.

  Roby took the card down from the board. To attend classes at Stockton State he would have to drive, twice a day, past the Oyster Creek picnic area on the parkway. Roby knew he would not be able to do that. He dropped the card in a wastebasket. As it fell, he saw handwriting on the other side. His mother’s handwriting.

  He bent down and retrieved the card. He read the writing. It was a message from his mother to him. It said:

  Our greatest glory consists not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.

  Crying once again, Roby Marshall went to bed. Wondering if his mother had somehow known that by the time classes started she would not be there to offer inspiration in person.

  8

  At noon the next day, Sal Coccaro got a call from Rob, asking him to come to the house right away.

  “I’m in trouble, buddy,” Rob said. “I need you.”

  Sal left his office immediately and drove to Crest Ridge Drive. He didn’t know what it might be and he didn’t want to think too much about it in advance.

  He found Rob bleary-eyed from sleeplessness and apparently only a few minutes past a recent episode of crying.

  “Come in, Sal, come in. Let’s go into my office. We’ve got to talk.”

  Sal almost said no. Whatever was coming, he didn’t want to be the one to hear it. Especially not when it was just he and Rob alone.

  But he did follow Rob into the office and took a seat. Rob, as usual, seated himself behind his desk, though it struck Sal that the attempt to maintain a business-as-usual façade was pathetic.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Rob said. “I just had to talk to somebody. I’m going crazy.” He began to cry again. “Sal,” he said, “Sal. You’ve got to help me. I just can’t go on this way. Sal, Sal, I miss her so much.” Then the crying overcame him and he could no longer speak.

  Sal got up and moved behind the desk and put his hands on Rob’s shoulders.

  “Oh, Rob,” he said, “I know it must be so hard for you. To lose her so suddenly like this. And in such a horrible way. And now to have to deal not only with your own pain but with the boys’, too. I feel for you, Rob, believe me. Maria was one of a kind.”

  Rob’s crying subsided. He shifted in his chair so that Sal’s hands were no longer touching his shoulders. Then he looked up.

  “Sal,” he said. “I’m not talking about Maria. I’m talking about Felice.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Sal said softly, backing away from the desk.

  “There’s no way I can get through this without her,” Rob said. “I need her. I need her right now. Sal, if only there was some way for me to let you know the depth, the beauty of our love. Someday, maybe you’ll be able to appreciate how unique, how glorious it is.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Sal repeated, this time not quite so softly.

  “Sal, I physically ache from missing her.”

  For Sal, this proved too much. He looked Rob squarely in the eye and made a suggestion.

  “Try jerking off,” he said, and walked out of Rob’s office, slamming the door behind him.

  Roby left the house in early afternoon. As he stepped toward the yellow Mustang in the driveway he was approached by several reporters, who, again, had been waiting at curbside all day.

  “Do you have any comment?” one of them asked.

  “About what?”

  “About the rumor that your father is about to be arrested.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Roby said.

  “How do you know?”

  “No comment. I believe in my father. That’s all I have to say.”

  “Did you know your father was having an affair?”

  “What about his gambling?” another called. “Was he deeply in debt to the casinos?”

  “Did your mother know about the affair?”

  “Listen,” Roby said, the politeness so deeply ingrained by Maria all that stopped him from pushing the reporters out of the way and getting into his car and slamming the door. “Listen. I don’t have any comment about anything and I really wish you’d all leave the family alone. But I will tell you one thing. My father didn’t have anything to do with my mother’s death.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “If you met him,” Roby said, “you just couldn’t think stuff like that.” Then he spoke in a softer voice that was less of a plea and more of a recollection. “You just had to see him and my mother together. It was like something out of a storybook.” He stood in the driveway, gazing off into space. The reporters could see tears in his eyes. The questions stopped.

  Late that night, in his office, with the door closed, Rob switched on a tape recorder containing a blank cassette and placed next to it another recorder that was playing a song.

  The song was “Lady,” sung by John Denver, one of Rob’s favorite romantic vocalists. After thirty seconds of music he turned off the song and began to speak, using a low, intimate voice.

  “Hi, babe,” he said. “I couldn’t think of a more appropriate song, or words, than this one. I do still love you so. I wanted you to have some communication from me and I guess, if you feel comfortable, this might be the only way we’ll be able to communicate for a while.

  “I know your attorney has told you not to have any contact with me, and Ray DiOrio has indicated that it’s best that we not, either. I did ask him about a tape and he said—the way he puts it is, whenever a question like that is asked, he asks what good can it do and what harm can it do, and he couldn’t think of an answer on either side. He said, ‘I’m not going to tell you to do it and I’m not going to tell you not to, so you do what you want.’

  “I felt that I had to communicate to tell you that I love you—” He sobbed. “So m
uch. And I feel so terrible—” Here, his voice broke. “About all of this. What happened to you, being picked up by the police and confronted with all that evidence that we didn’t even know existed. And the horrible scene that I’m sure happened at home with David…

  “The rumors are flying hot and heavy out there, but you must know, babe, that much as we were going to hurt Maria by my leaving, I could never hurt her that way. Never. She had to be around to care for the boys. No one can do that as well as she could. But I’m here now by myself, with them, and I’m hoping of course that we’ll still have a life together when all the dust settles.

  “I want that more than anything, anything in the world. I want to care for you and I want your love, and the most wonderful thing is, on Saturday I guess it was, I sat Roby and Chris down and I told them about you and me and I told them that the problem was there before you and I met—that Mom and I were having difficulties and that we probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer in any case, and then I told them about my feelings for you and how they evolved and how special the relationship was, and they really did understand. They were incredibly supportive.

  “Roby said, ‘Dad, if that’s what you want then that’s what we want.’ And Chris backed him up. Johnny, I explained it to him from a slightly different angle, without quite so much detail, of course, but Johnny was—of course they all cried.”

  Here, Rob, too, began to sob again. “It’s difficult for them to understand.” (Sob.) “I realize that. But they said they did and they said they still loved me and they said they loved me more now than before because I told them. It was unbelievable. You’d be so proud.” He sobbed a little longer this time.

  “I told them, too, that you would never, ever try to take Mom’s place but that you wanted to be a friend, a friend of theirs, and that I hoped that they would be your friend, and they said they would try. And I think that as time goes on that’s what will happen, honey, and it will be a good relationship for all of us.

  “I won’t tell you now, I don’t think it’s worth any—it needs telling, but you can imagine how difficult it was for me to come home and tell first Roby, and John, and then drive up to Lehigh and tell Chris. It was so horrible. I—but at the same time, of course, I feel anguish for you, too, because of what you went through. And now this separation—our separation—amplifies everything, all the hurt.

  “Hearing the rumors that are being spread around, I’m being looked at very carefully, and I’m being implicated. Ray DiOrio and Gene Leahy have said that the fact that we’ve had an affair for the past year and the fact that there’s insurance and that I’m in debt all of course enhance a reason to be involved—provide motive, in other words.

  “But it’s purely circumstantial. And, assuming that that’s all they find—and that’s all they could find—they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, bring it to court. They’re digging real hard trying to find more, obviously.

  “We’re public information now, babe, so we’re going to have to grit this one out. I’m truly sorry for that happening but it would have happened anyway in another week. The ironic thing is that I found out that Maria was going to confront me with all the evidence she had, documented evidence. And the ironic thing is that if anybody had told me, none of this would have happened. They didn’t. It did. And here we are.

  “The purpose of this tape is not to review all of that, though, but to tell you that—how much I love you and how much I’m thinking about you and how terrible, of course, I feel about Maria.

  “I want you to know that—I want you to try to think of a way you can respond, either by mailing tapes to the office if you want, or we’ll get another post office box—that occurred to me—because the key was in the car, and also the safe deposit key.

  “I’m not even going to see the car again. I told Pete Critelli that when they release it to just sell it, get something else. And you have to tell me also what your status is as far as a car. Let me know, and if you need something we’ll work that out, too.

  “What I plan to do is give Pete the station wagon back and get something smaller for myself, and if you need a car, babe, we’ll take the value of the two cars and we’ll get something for each of us. Let me know what you want to do.

  “If you want to write, or make a tape, you can send that over to the office, or get it to me some other way. I desperately want to talk to you this way, if we can’t talk any other way, just to—to hear your voice, to know that I can talk to you this way, which has always been so therapeutic for us, such a release, such a wonderful way to just communicate, just—stream of consciousness, as someone I love said.

  “Well, babe…” There was a pause. “I’m numb. I just—” A longer pause, and then he whispered, “I hope I get through this.”

  When he resumed, after another pause, his voice was stronger. “I’ve gotten closer to God,” he said, “closer, and I’m confident that with God’s help we can both get through this and see the light at the end of the tunnel soon. I don’t want you to forsake God. I want you to ask for help. Let’s do that together. I want our lives to be good and rewarding lives and to help people. I’ve made that commitment when I asked for God’s help to get through this. I hope you’ll join me in that commitment, babe. I love you with all my heart. But you know that.”

  A light drizzle was falling and there were still a couple of reporters in front of his house when Roby returned home Tuesday night. One of them, a young female in a raincoat, approached him.

  “How’re you doing?” she said.

  “Okay. Getting by.”

  “You want to take a walk?”

  “What?”

  “Take a walk. Just around the block. Look, I know how bad this must be for you. But I’m not like the rest of them. I’m not just trying to get a story. I’d really like to be your friend.”

  “My friend, huh?” Roby grinned. “Is that because of my rugged good looks or is it more my irresistible charm?”

  The reporter smiled back.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe a little of both. I just thought maybe you could use somebody sort of your own age to talk to. Not about this, if you don’t want to. Just about anything. Or nothing at all.”

  Roby stepped forward and reached toward her. Her raincoat was unbuttoned and he pulled one side open to reveal the tape recorder that had been partially concealed underneath.

  “Careful,” he said. “You don’t want that to get wet.” Then he went into his house.

  * * *

  On Thursday afternoon, September 13, Felice called Sal Coccaro’s office while he was out and spoke to his secretary. “Tell him it’s very personal,” she said. “I need to talk to him. He’ll understand. I can’t say who I am. I’ll call again tomorrow at four.”

  On Friday at four he was there, waiting for her call just so he could have the pleasure of slamming the phone down in her ear. He was thinking about how good a cold draft beer at the Office Lounge would taste. He planned to go get one as soon as he slammed down the phone.

  “Before you hang up,” she said, “can I ask you one thing? Will you give Rob a message for me?”

  “Felice,” he said, “I’m not making any moral judgments on anybody, but I’ll tell you the same thing I told Rob. I’m not going to be in the middle. David is a friend of mine, too, and running messages between you and Rob behind his back is not something I’m going to do. Does that answer your question?”

  Felice, however, was very persuasive in her dealings with men and soon persuaded Sal “just this once” to pass on “a very quick and simple message” to Rob.

  “All right, Felice, all right. What is it?”

  “Are you ready?”

  “Yes, damnit, I’m ready, Felice. What’s the message?”

  “Tell him I love him.”

  There was a pause.

  “That’s it?” Sal said. “You love him?”

  “That’s all, Sal. Tell him I love him.”

  “Jesus Christ, Felice, if that’s
all it is you could’ve sent him a fucking Candygram instead of all this cloak-and-dagger shit.”

  “Sal?”

  “What?”

  “When can you deliver it?”

  “Soon, Felice, soon.”

  “In person, Sal. It has to be in person. We think your phone is tapped, too.” Then she hung up. Well, Christ, Sal Coccaro said to himself, maybe Rob had a cold beer in the icebox.

  He got to Crest Ridge Drive at 4:30 P.M. just as Rob and Roby were returning from breakfast at Perkins’ Pancakes. Rob had resumed his old schedule of sitting up through the night and sleeping until afternoon.

  Roby went inside and Sal and Rob sat on some railroad ties that formed a bench at the edge of the driveway.

  “Felice called me,” Sal said. “She had a message.”

  Rob immediately began to shake. His face turned pale. “What’s the message?” he whispered.

  “‘Tell him I love him,’” Sal articulated loudly and clearly.

  “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” In what was becoming a familiar sight to Sal, Rob put his head in his hands and began to shake with sobs. Sal lit a cigarette and waited.

  “I’m so relieved,” Rob said, his face tear-streaked. “So relieved.”

  “What the fuck is she talking in, some kind of code?” Sal said. “Suppose she’d said, ‘Have a nice day.’ I would have had to call the fucking rescue squad.” He stood and tossed his cigarette aside.

  “Keep your voice down,” Rob said. “I really think the police are watching the house.” He looked up at the trees, which were still in full leaf. “At least now I know she hasn’t gone back to David.”

  “Hey, Rob. You ever heard of tranquilizers? You ever heard of maybe going to bed before midnight some night?”

  But Rob didn’t seem to be listening anymore. Still quivering, and gazing up at the thick green canopy that lined the street, he shouted: “Wherever you are—listen to this! I didn’t fucking kill my wife.”

  Upstairs, Roby opened a bedroom window and looked down at his father.

  “He’ll be okay,” Sal called up to him. “Just stick him in a cold shower for a while.” Then, wondering just how he had ever gotten to be a friend of Rob Marshall’s in the first place, Sal headed for the Office Lounge.