Keith Ablow - Compulsion

"I've been in this business long enough that most things don't get to me, you know?" Rossetti had told me. "But when Garret broke down, crying how he still loved his father but couldn't understand why, I almost got choked up myself."

"Almost," I had said.

"Honestly, Franko, the only time I really lose it is when I lose at the track. I drop more than a grand, I cry like a baby. Anything else, it's no skin off mine, if you know what I mean."

"So you did get choked up," I said.

"Pretty much," he said.

When Garret returned home, I sat down with him. "I talked to Carl Rossetti," I said. "I know how hard it was for you today."

"I didn't think it would be," Garret said. "I thought it would be easier than last time. Maybe it's that we're getting closer to the trial."

"And the trial itself will be even harder," I said. "With everything Darwin has done, it's normal for you to feel a strange sort of devotion to him."

"That's what I don't get," he said. "Why would you worry about what happens to someone who's tortured you?"

The answer to that question brings up another strange human calculus. Most children would rather preserve the fantasy of a loving connection with their fathers and mothers, at all costs, even if it costs them their self-esteem. When you're three or seven years old, it's less frightening to think of yourself as an unlovable, disappointing screwup than to recognize the fact that you're living with a monster. "Questioning your love for Darwin would mean questioning whether he ever loved you" I said. "That's a tough one, at seventeen or forty-seven. Take it from me."

"Was your father… abusive?" he asked.

"Yes," I said. "He beat me."

"Shit," he said. "I'm sorry."

"Thanks," I said.

He shook his head, took a deep breath, let it out. "With everything Darwin did to me, I've always assumed he didn't really mean it. But he must have. He couldn't have cared about me. Not in any normal way."

I could hear the guilt in Garret's voice. He was about to put his father away for life, after all. "It's not a question you can figure out in one sitting," I said. "But if you keep coming back to it, you'll get closer and closer to the truth. And you'll be less and less afraid of it. Even when it hurts."

We sat for several seconds, without saying anything else.

Garret broke the silence. "I'm glad you're here-living with us for a while, I mean," he said.

I reached out, squeezed his shoulder. "I am, too," I said.

Julia's mother's house was vintage Martha's Vineyard-an oversized, rehabbed barn on a lush hill within walking distance of the sea. The guesthouse where I was staying was a weathered, gray 1852 cottage that had been moved from Edgartown at the turn of the century. Wild blueberries and gooseberries and grapes grew all around the place, and the scent of sweet pepper bush filled the air.

The first couple of weeks there were Eden. Not only were Billy and Garret coming to me for advice on everything from sports to girls to careers, letting me play the good father, but Julia was combining her neediness and sensuality more magically than ever. There were evenings she wept in my arms over vivid memories of Darwin's cruelty and could be comforted by no one else. She would mix her tears with surprise caresses, the warm wetnesses mingling into a potion that leached to the center of my being. She might whisper she was scared at one moment, that she needed me inside her at the next. And when we made love, it was with such intensity that I lost the boundary between my pleasure and hers, so that I was moved equally by each. Transported.

Those days were like a drug, a drug I wished I could stay on forever. But on Sunday, July 21, just shy of three weeks after Darwin Bishop's arrest, the high ended, and everything began to crash.

The day had been my best on the Vineyard. Julia, her mother, Candace, the boys, and I had lingered over a late, gourmet brunch that drifted effortlessly into an easy day of Julia reading on the porch while I played a lazy game of catch with Garret and Billy, the three of us cooling off in waves that seemed custom-made for body surfing. As evening approached, Julia said she was feeling more herself and suggested we celebrate with her first real excursion- a sunset stroll along the cliffs at Gay Head. I agreed, and we drove there together.

The faces of the 150-foot bluffs glowed like the center of the earth in the day's last light. The tide was low, rhythmically washing the velvet sands below, leaving behind fields of iridescent bubbles.

Julia wrapped both her arms around one of mine as we walked. "For the first time in my life," she said, "I feel safe."

I stopped, turned to her, and kissed her forehead. Her emerald eyes literally sparkled. "Same here," I said.

"You do?" she said.

I nodded.

"You trust me?"

"Of course I trust you," I said.

"Then close your eyes," she said, with a sly smile.

I glanced at the edge of the cliff, three feet away. "If you're already bored with me, you can just tell me."

Julia laughed like a little girl. "You said you trusted me." She kissed me deeply and pressed herself against me, moving her hand to my crotch and moving us a foot closer to the edge. Two more steps, and I'd have been parasailing without a sail. "C'mon, close your eyes," she said, massaging me. "It'll be fun. I promise."

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes until Julia was just a shadow. One of my knees bent automatically, bracing me. An exhilarating combination of passion and fear gripped my heart. Beads of sweat ran off my chest, down the center of my abdomen. I could feel them pool in my navel, then spill over.

Julia's warm, quick tongue moved up my neck, then into my ear. "Keep them closed," she whispered. She let go of me.

I stood there several seconds in a kind of trance, listening to my own breathing and watching Julia back up several feet.

"Don't cheat," she said. She turned to run away.

I lost sight of her in the sun's glare. Fifteen, twenty seconds went by. All I could hear was the wind and rustling grass.

"Okay," Julia called to me, from a distance. "Find me."

I opened my eyes and looked around. The colors of the grass, ocean, sky, and cliffs seemed even more brilliant than before. The sun was a burning, red-orange beach ball hovering on the horizon.

Julia was nowhere in sight.

"Where are you?" I called out.

No answer.

A quarter-mile of low hills stretched before me. Julia could be lying in the wavy grass almost anywhere. I walked away from the cliffs, scanning the ground for footprints. When I'd gone about fifteen yards, I turned to face a small grove of tall, flowering sweet pepper bushes about ten, twelve yards to my right, a subtle path of matted grass leading to it. I had a feeling she was squirreled away inside. I walked toward the bushes. When I had closed to within several feet, I heard her giggle from inside the foliage. I slowly walked the rest of the way and cautiously pushed apart the screen of leafy branches. Then I stood there, staring at her.

Julia was lying on her back on a bed made of her clothes, naked, her feet planted wide apart, her knees bent and touching. She looked like a mermaid in a secret garden, resting between tides. Her silky, black hair moved in an easy breeze that rustled the branches all around her. She smiled bashfully and let her knees drift apart. "You gonna come inside?" she said.

We got back to the house just after 10:00 p.m. Garret's bodyguard, Pete Magill, was strolling around the front yard. We greeted him, then went inside.

Julia's mother, Candace, was sitting on a well-worn leather couch in the great room, reading a magazine. Beside her, a lighted curio cabinet held a sampling of each of her children's toys. An original Barbie. A GI Joe. A metal race car. A cap gun. She looked up when we walked in. "Did you two have fun?" she asked.