Laura Lippman: The Most Dangerous Thing

“Only because I was closer to him. Go-Go was faster. I went to the cabin. I saw Chicken George touching Go-Go. He chased us.”

“I think you took the guitar that night and that’s why he chased you. It never made sense for him to run after you with it, as you said.”

McKey smiles. Why is she smiling? “Suit yourself. But, as you recall, your brother and I agreed on what happened. What little boy would tell such a story if it wasn’t true? As for the high school boys-I don’t know what that’s about. Maybe Go-Go thought that was more credible. Maybe Go-Go liked sex with men.”

Sean has been listening intently, trying to catch up. He is uncomfortable, Gwen knows, with having the least information of anyone in the group, and now he breaks in. “That’s ridiculous. Go-Go wasn’t gay.”

“I’m not saying he was.” McKey’s tone, when talking to Sean, is earnest, sweet. She’s trying to create teams. With only four of them, they can go two-on-two. “I’m just playing Tim’s game. He’s making stuff up. I’m making stuff up, to show him how ridiculous it is. Look, I’m truly sorry about your dads. It can’t be fun, finding out your fathers are killers. It was easier on everyone when we thought this was an accident.”

“Rick was there, too,” Tim says, even as Gwen tries to parse McKey’s grammar, her tenses. It was easier on everyone- She already knew this part. She knows about what Tim Senior did. Yet Go-Go didn’t even tell his brothers. Why would he confide in McKey? Because she’s as responsible as he is for whatever happened.

“Yes. Well, Rick wasn’t my father. It’s different. Still, they did what they did. Don’t make this about me.”

“Go-Go told Father Andrew-”

“According to Father Andrew. And who knows what Go-Go would say on any given day?”

Something tugs at Gwen’s memory. Tim said something about picking pockets. She hears a squeal of brakes, a woman’s laugh. She is standing on the steps of the private detective’s office. No, it’s not that moment. It was something from earlier in their conversation, something about her methods, which even she found deplorable.

“You went to AA to spy on Go-Go, just like the private detective’s operative did. No, not spy, because obviously he saw you and knew you were there. You wanted him to see you, wanted him to know you were watching him. You wanted to make sure that he didn’t talk in AA, the way he did to Father Andrew. Why did you care, McKey? What secret did you need Go-Go to keep? Chicken George’s death? Something else?”

McKey drops her eyes to her lap and picks at the embroidery on her robe. It’s pretty, feminine, the kind of thing that Tally used to wear. In fact, it’s a dead ringer for an old robe of Tally’s that was in Gwen’s dress-up box. They played dress-up on the rare days they spent indoors, and McKey, who lived in overalls and cutoffs, always chose the frilly, girly items.

Gwen thinks about the cabin, the night of the storm. Why would McKey and Go-Go have gone there together? It has never made sense, McKey stumbling on him there, two of them winding up there independently. No one went there alone-except Sean and Gwen, and she didn’t want to go anymore because she thought someone was watching them. Tim said straight out that he tried to watch them only once, in the Halloran basement. So if someone was watching-

“Did you spy on us, in the woods. You and Go-Go? Did you watch us?”

McKey’s posture is defiant, but she won’t meet Gwen’s eyes. “It was an accident. We went there to play and you were… already playing. Anyone would do what we did.”

“But it wasn’t just the one time, was it? You went back. You went back again and again. You went back the night of the storm, but we weren’t there.” No, she and Sean were in her bedroom, trying to figure out how much they could do without arousing Tally’s suspicions. And Gwen, as always, was the bolder one. Sean was scared to death of being caught.

“You went to watch us, but we weren’t there. We hadn’t been there for a while. What did you do, Mickey?” There is no doubt in Gwen’s mind that Mickey, not McKey, is the person to whom she needs to talk, the one who has the answers. “What did Chicken George see?”

“Nothing.”

“Mickey-”

“A game. Just a game.”

“A sexual game?”

Mickey’s eyes skate, looking for a safe place to land. She decides on Sean. “I guess you could call it that.”

“He was nine. You were almost fourteen.”

“There was no law against it.”

“There is now.” Gwen has no idea if this is true, and she looks to Tim for confirmation. But he and Sean seem mainly bewildered, unsure of how to react. “You had to know it was wrong, otherwise you would have admitted it. Chicken George knew it was wrong. Even Go-Go must have known. That’s why he followed your lead, when you lied and said Chicken George molested him.”

“ He pushed Chicken George. Go-Go. From behind. All these years, I was protecting him.”

But not even Mickey sounds convinced of what she’s saying, and Tim comes back to life. “Oh, come on.”

“He did. I was covering for him. That’s why he was willing to lie, because he was the one who hurt him. We weren’t doing anything bad. We made each other feel good. What’s the big deal?”

“He was nine,” Gwen repeats.

“Most nine-year-old boys would be thrilled to have a girl touch them.” She appeals to the two men in the room. “Am I right?”

Sean starts to stammer something, then stops. “Don’t ask him,” Tim says. “He’d pay a crack whore to initiate his son into sex if it could keep him from being gay.”

“Fuck off, Tim. Duncan’s not-”

“ Out, Sean. Not out. But everyone knows he’s gay. His cousins get it, even our littlest. Mom has figured it out. Everyone but you. Has it ever occurred to you that Duncan hasn’t come out because he can sense you’re less than thrilled, that he’s being solicitous of your feelings?”

Gwen sees Mickey’s eyes gleaming. She has distracted them, divided them. She’s winning.

“What about the boys?” Gwen asks her.

“What boys?”

“The high school boys. The ones that Go-Go told Father Andrew about.”

“As I said, maybe he liked sex with boys.” She tries to give a blithe shrug but can’t pull it off.

“Did it appear that he liked it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I think you were there. You made it happen. If it was just you and Go-Go, that one time, then he might figure out one day that he really hadn’t done anything wrong, but you had. So you made sure that he had other things to be confused and ashamed about. You came up with more games, knowing that Go-Go would always want to do whatever the big kids were doing.”

Mickey curls into herself. She crosses her arms, brings her feet beneath her. She’s like the turtles she used to torture, poking them with sticks so they withdrew all their limbs, even the snapping turtles. Gwen can tell that she’s not going to talk, not to her. And not to Tim. Gwen looks to Sean, who is flushed and angry. Over the comments about his son or his brother?

Gwen asks: “Why? Why did you do it?”

Although it is Gwen who is pressing her, she addresses herself to Sean. “I didn’t think it was wrong. I wanted to be with you, but you chose Gwen. So I chose Go-Go.”

Tim says: “If you had wanted to fool around with one of Sean’s brothers, I would have been glad to oblige.”

If he meant the joke to distill the tension in the room, he has failed. Not even Tim seems amused by this brief return of his lummox self.

Sean asks: “Is Gwen right, Mickey? About the boys? Did you do that to Go-Go?”