Jonathan Dee - Palladio

“No, Dad. I honestly didn’t think anyone would ever find out about it.” She paused, and in the pause reminded herself of her resolve to leave nothing unsaid. “That was the whole point of doing it. To not get caught doing it.”

Roger sighed, and walked to the window. “So you weren’t in love with him.”

“No,” Molly said, and couldn’t quite suppress a small laugh that went along with it. He spun around.

“Don’t you laugh at me,” he said, his voice shaking. “Don’t you do that. You think I like asking these questions? The only reason I’m doing it is because I still think it’s important for some reason that I know more about what’s happened to my family than the woman at the drugstore or my secretary at work or your classmates at school.”

Molly’s strength wavered. She’d never seen her father like this — suffering beyond his ability to try to pretend otherwise. Still, while she was genuinely sorry for the pain she had caused him, she also couldn’t help thinking that that pain was outsized, misdirected, that for some reason she couldn’t figure out he was intent on making this an even bigger deal than it really was.

“But I couldn’t expect you to give a damn about that,” he said. “How you can sit there, with that blank expression on your face—”

“I can’t help the expression on my face.”

“—and just blithely ruin two families, and you don’t even seem sorry about it.”

“Ruin? How are we ruined?”

But he didn’t pay attention to that. “Dennis Vincent was a friend of mine, you know.”

“I never heard you—”

“I considered him a friend of mine. Which just makes the whole thing that much—” He stopped himself. “Well, this whole thing is my fault somehow, I won’t run from that. But the point is I don’t see how we can stay here now. I’m laughed at everywhere I go.”

“Daddy, I don’t—”

“I can quit work, of course. What are they going to do, fire me? But it’ll probably mean turning down the job in Armonk.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s the worst possible time to sell the house, of course, but we’ll have to take the hit—”

“We were ruined already!” Molly said. Her own calm was in pieces now. Roger, his eyebrows low, folded his arms and stared at her. She had found her way through his defenses, to the anger at her there, and she was no longer so sure that candor would be their salvation. But she pushed on.

“I mean, what is it you think you’ve lost? You’re not friends with the Vincents anymore, that’s true; and I’m not a virgin, that’s true too, but if it makes any difference to you, I wasn’t one before either. As for the rest of it, this town will be a ghost town in a year, everyone knows that. I really can’t believe that all the people in Ulster who are going to be broke and unemployed soon, if they aren’t already, are as concerned with your daughter’s sex life as you think they are. What do they care? And this house is breaking up anyway. Richard’s gone, I’m almost gone, you’ll sell it in a year either way. There’s not much left of it to break up. All these things were already happening. So why are you making such a big thing about me and Dennis?”

His arms were still folded, but the look on his face was now more like fright. He couldn’t believe, quite apart from the truth of anything she was saying, that she would have the disregard for him to say them at all.

“I’m very sorry that you and Mom are in such pain because of me, but I can’t help it, I don’t know why you care so much what everyone else thinks.”

“All I care about,” he said softly, “is you.”

She winced at the onset of tears. He still can’t say what he means, Molly thought. All I care about is you. He could have picked that up in any of a hundred places. She stood up and put her arms around him, carefully, as if he were much older than he was.

“I’m fine,” Molly said earnestly. “I’m perfectly okay. Nothing bad has happened to me. So why can’t that please be the end of it?”

The best reason to go to school, really, was to get away from this conversation, and from the problem of how far to go, out of pity for her family, in apologizing for things she didn’t really feel sorry for. But school was breaking her down as well. She wasn’t as impervious to their rejection of her as she had thought; not that she minded being an outsider, but why return day after day to a place just to show that you didn’t belong there? To make matters worse, she was now constantly propositioned, in all sincerity, by the same boys who taunted her in public. There was little difference between the taunts and the come-ons: she was viewed as a source, as a locus of dreamily unfettered sex, and they were never going to leave her alone now, never going to stop trying to stumble on to the secret of something they had no hope of understanding. Finally one Monday just a month before exams she stayed home; she had her father call the principal’s office to say she had mononucleosis and would like her homework assignments sent to her at home until further notice. They knew he was lying. They sounded grateful about it.

She had a fantasy that Annika would be the one to deliver the assignments to her: but it was only a freshman boy who lived at Bull’s Head, drafted into this extra duty by the principal himself. The boy smiled nervously, involuntarily, whenever the Howes’ door was opened to him, as if he were visiting the home of a celebrity.

When she couldn’t take it any longer she went and presented herself to her mother, sitting patiently on the end of Kay’s bed, staring searchingly at her, waiting to be spoken to. Her parents were more alike than she had ever understood. Barely speaking to each other, they had nonetheless between them frothed up this scandalous incident until it grew large enough to contain the explanations for all the damage life had done to them. The fundamental difference between them — which held their marriage together as effectively as a similarity might have done — was that Roger felt he must be responsible in some way for every bad thing that happened, while Kay felt that the whirlwind of bad things around her was responsible for the wreck of her own early promise.

Kay lay on the bedcovers in a blue sweatsuit. Molly had never seen her dressed this way before: she must have decided that this was the garment of the woman who had been brought too low to care how she looked anymore.

“How could you do this to me?” Kay said wearily.

“I didn’t mean to do anything to you, Mom. You can’t take it all so personally. It’s something I did, not something I did to you. I’m sorry if it hurt you.”

“We’re ruined in this town! Our reputation is destroyed!”

“But why do you care? I’ve never heard you say a good word about this town or the people in it my whole life. Why does their opinion mean anything?”

“Don’t get smart with me! This is my home, that’s why!”

“All my life all you’ve told me—”

“Don’t tell me what I’ve told you!” she said, raising herself on her elbows. “All the hard work I put into raising you right, just so I could be the mother of the town slut?”

“Mom,” Molly said, trying not to cry, “can’t we forget everyone else just for a few minutes? If this is the last time you and I ever talk, can’t we at least find a way to say what we mean?”

But Kay went on talking about how she had been victimized until Molly realized her mother wasn’t even speaking to her anymore — she was speaking more to posterity. She never got it all talked out. She did not understand her judges.

On 17 April the mail brought Molly’s acceptances to Bennington, Reed, and Tulane; she was rejected by Columbia and Stanford. A few more rejections came in over the next few days. Molly had no one to share the news with; she no longer knew what connection these letters had to her future anyway.