The Snow Garden (24 page)

     “Since when do I want to
ruin — ”

     “Don’t bullshit me, Tim.” Randall fought to maintain his steady volume and won.

     “Maybe I’m just returning the favor, Randall. You think I didn’t wonder why you suddenly waltzed back into my life after not returning a single phone call for a month? You wanted to know if anyone had a clue you were sleeping with him, didn’t you?”

     “I wanted to know if he killed her,” Randall said as flatly as he could. The coldness of the statement obviously struck Tim, because he shook his head and scanned the empty tables around them. Emboldened, Randall continued, “And I need you to help me find out.”

     Tim drew a deep breath, and Randall could see what was contending inside him—whether or not to believe Randall in the face of the realization that their renewed affair had been little more than an information-gathering mission, and the fact that a man he knew might have killed his own wife. “I’m listening,” Tim said finally.

     Randall looked to his water glass and summoned the nerve required to articulate his role in the narrative. “Lisa Eberman drank only scotch. She kept bottles of it stored in her liquor cabinet. You want to know how I’ve been filling my flask, Tim? You’re right, I haven’t found a liquor store that’s been sold on my fake ID. And since Lisa always seemed to have extra, I started borrowing from her. I filled my flask from the last open bottle three nights after she died. After three slugs of whatever was in that bottle, I threw up my entire stomach and couldn’t remember a thing the next day. Whatever was in that bottle, Tim, it wasn’t just scotch.”

     Feeling like he had just confessed a crime of his own, Randall worked to lock his eyes on Tim’s. Tim’s expression was fixed, intense. “You think he slipped her some of her own meds.”

     “That’s what I want you to help me find out.”

     “This is out of my league, Randall.”

     “This is exactly the story you were hoping for.”

     “And you?”

     “What do you mean?”

     “What do you get ,out of this?”

     “Nothing. This is about Lisa.”

     Tim smirked. “Nice try.”

      Randall fought his ingrained reflex against telling anything about himself that someone could read as motive. “I was in bed with him the night of the accident,” he finally answered, sounding as reedy as he had after a slug of poisoned scotch. “She left him a note.”

     “What did it say?”

     “That she knew about us. That she had seen us that night. Eric tried to make me believe that I was the reason she was driving like a maniac.” That was all Tim needed to know, Randall told himself, and even that admission felt like a giant one. Tim would serve a specific purpose and therefore require only specific information.

     “I see you’re not very good at feeling guilty.”

     “For what?” Randall snapped. “The
   
fact that Eric killed his wife?” 

     “You have to prove it first.”

     “We will.”

     “I haven’t agreed to anything yet.”

     Randall summoned his most acidic smile. “Sorry, I forgot. You’re way too busy covering the latest student outcry against the administration’s policy of not letting freshmen keep cars on campus.”

     Tim rolled his eyes. “It’s not like this isn’t tempting.”

     Randall waited for Tim to continue, and when he didn’t, Randall bent forward, one hand almost touching Tim’s across the table. “I don’t expect you to help me with this just so I can sleep better. And I’m not defending the fact that I had a thing with a married man. But Lisa Eberman’s death should not be on my back, Tim. And that’s exactly where Eric tried to put it.”

     “Go to the police,” Tim responded promptly. “Tell them you were in bed with him the night she died. That’s all they would need to take a second look. Unless. . .” Tim bent forward, mimicking Randall’s posture and bringing their faces within inches of each other. “Maybe you think if the two of us start playing detective we might prove your little conclusion wrong. Clearing the way for you and the good professor to live happily ever after.”

     Randall felt his jaw clenching, his top teeth grating against his lower ones. How desperate was he to put himself in this situation-enduring sermons from Tim? Tim Mathis had that undeniably gay male quality of being great at self-righteous indignation and all too eager to abandon his lofty principles when it came time to get on all fours. Randall had witnessed this sweaty, split-second disappearance of integrity in Tim and many men before him—too many to remember all at once. Randall coated the sting of honesty in Tim’s statement by reminding himself that a year earlier, if Eric had accepted Tim’s dinner invitation, the inconvenience of a drunken wife might have faded into the background for Tim as well. Randall clung to these thoughts as he spoke again. They gave him fragile moral ground and kept the full force of his anger from his words.

     “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.