Chapter 12

“How could she know?” groaned Bob. Chastity had just repeated the conversation she’d had with her mother.

“She said Brendan looks just like you, and that Maeve has your features. She said she saw that right away.”

“Why didn’t she say something? Why aren’t I in jail?”

“She said she saw a lot of that in Africa ... that it was normal, there.”

“I don’t understand this. She could ruin us.”

“I’m not doing a good job of describing things,” said Chastity. “I don’t think she wants to ruin us. She’s changed. She realizes how horrible she was and knows she let us down. I think she wants to make amends.”

“Not Trudy,” said Bob, firmly. “Trudy has always thought she was right all the time, and that if you didn’t agree with her, you were an idiot. She must have dropped this bomb to force us into negotiating with her.”

“I’m not getting that from her now,” said Chastity. “Maybe you should talk to her, yourself.”

“She won’t talk to me,” snorted Bob. “You saw how she acted towards me since I got back.”

“She was calmer today, more thoughtful,” said Chastity. “I think seeing Buster’s shocked her back to ... I don’t know - normal isn’t the word I’m looking for, but I can’t think of a better one.”

“You still got those contacts at the club?”

“What?” Chastity thought, and then got it. “I don’t think we really need to go that route.”

“What’s the difference if I go to prison for incest or murder? It’s still prison.”

“As a student of the law, I can tell you there’s a huge difference. Let’s not talk about the nuclear option yet. Just talk to her. You’re older and wiser than I am. You’ll know if she’s actually changed or not.”

“If she’ll talk to me,” said Bob.

“I think she will. He said her initial reaction to you was based on habit, not intent. She also said she knows she was stupid to divorce you. In any case, she’ll either say yes, or no. Either way we learn something.”

“Where is Chastity?” asked Trudy. They were in the “lounge” of the homeless shelter, which consisted of a battered couch and an old fifteen inch CRT television in a ten by twelve foot room. The walls were painted mustard yellow and, for some odd reason, the table the TV was sitting on was painted the same color. Everything in the room had been donated to the shelter by people who didn’t want it anymore ... including the paint.

“She thought we should talk alone,” said Bob. “Assuming you want to talk at all,” he added.

“I don’t want to talk, here,” said Trudy.

“Neither do I,” said Bob.

“If we go somewhere else, you’re not going to take me out in the boonies and murder me, are you?” Her question was entirely serious.

“I thought about it, but, no,” said Bob, who was also serious. “Chastity wouldn’t let me.”

“She’s the only thing we did right,” sighed Trudy. “Look at her. In college, going to be a lawyer. I’m so proud of her.”

“Me, too,” said Bob. “Do you really want to talk?” He looked around. “To me?” he added.

“If you’re not going to get rid of me, we have to,” said Trudy.

“Coffee?” asked Bob.

“That’s one of the things I missed,” said Trudy. “We’ll get it to go. I don’t think either of us want people to overhear us.”

Neither spoke as Trudy got into his car and they drove to a coffee shop that had a drive through window. Bob ordered the house coffee, black, for himself, and one with two sugars and two creams for her. She didn’t comment on the fact that he remembered how she liked her coffee, even after all these years. Once they were on the road again, Bob cut to the chase.

“What do you want to do?”

Trudy looked out the window and, at first, Bob thought she was going to stonewall him. Finally, she spoke.

“I’ve made a mess of things. I have to find work, but I have no idea what or where. I need to move out of the shelter. They’ll let you stay there for a while, but not permanently. As nice as it is, I don’t want to live there, anyway.”

“You think it’s nice?”

“Compared to a refugee camp, it’s Club Med,” she said.

“I thought Africa was modernized, now.”

“Not in the places I was sent to work. The big wigs lived in the city, but not us worker bees.”

“So ... it wasn’t what you expected,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“If you’re asking me to admit I made a mistake, I admit I made lots of them. But we did a lot of good, too. A lot of people are better off because I went there.”

“And some people here suffered.” He couldn’t help himself. He was trying to be non-confrontational, but it was hard.

“I know that,” she said. “I had lots of time to think. What almost drove me crazy wasn’t what I had to deal with there. It was what I knew I had left behind. It’s possible that did drive me crazy.”

“Why didn’t you come back, then?”

“The contracts they have you sign include clauses that say if you quit, you’re on your own. I never had the money to buy a ticket. And I was stubborn.”

“True, that,” muttered Bob.

“What?”

“I was agreeing that you were stubborn.”

“Look,” she said, turning sideways in her seat. “Africa gave me perspective. I thought my life was horrible when we were still married. That was driving me crazy, too. I had no idea how good I had it, back then, and by the time I learned that, it was too late. I had already burned all my bridges. Divorcing you seemed like the only way to get out of what I thought was hell. And things were better at first. Not for Chastity. I knew that even then. But it saved my sanity.”

She stopped and, suddenly, tears rolled down her cheeks.

“It turns out I’m not very sane. The same thing is probably happening to me that happened to my mother.”

“I doubt that,” said Bob. “You’re only in your early forties. You have twenty more years before you have to worry about that. And Mona’s not really all that bad. She’s still pretty lucid, some of the time. Her problem is that everything she repressed over the years is no longer being repressed. If we weren’t afraid she’d burn down the house, she’d be living with us right now. She just needs more supervision than we can give her.”

“I’d like to go see her,” said Trudy, wiping her eyes.

“You want to go do that now?”

“Can we?” Trudy sounded astonished.

“It’s going to take time for you and me to work things out between us, assuming you don’t decide to destroy things by going to the police.”

There it was. The thing that had been uppermost in Bob’s mind ... had worried him the most ... was now out in the open. If she was going to use blackmail to get what she wanted, it would start now.

Trudy looked at him and sipped her coffee.

“Our daughter already made it clear that my options would disappear if I did that.”

“What options did you have in mind?”

“I’d like to be in the lives of my daughter and grandchildren some day,” she said. “I know it’s probably not possible, but I’d like to try to make amends to you, too.”

“Me?”

“I told you I figured out the divorce was a mistake. I know how horrible I was to you. I know how much I lost. I can only imagine what you and Chastity suffered, but I know how miserable I was. I can’t undo all that misery. I know that. But if I can’t figure out some way to earn back her trust, you won’t have to kill me. I’ll do it myself.”

“You know, talking about suicide makes you officially crazy,” he said. “Maybe you want to keep that between you and me.”

“Am I crazy?” she asked. “You knew me better than anyone else. Do I need to be put in a mental institution?”

Nothing could have shocked Bob more than that question. Her vulnerability, in that moment, was something he would never have expected.

“You have been under stress for a long time,” he said. “Clear back to when things went to shit with us. That kind of stress can cause people to do strange things.”

“Stupid things,” said Trudy.

“I’m trying not to be mean, here,” said Bob.

“I’m trying not to fly apart, here,” she replied.

“I think you could benefit from some help. I don’t know what kind, but if you got some help, I think it would ... help.”

“Really?”

“That would also show Chastity that you’re trying to make better choices.”

“You love her, don’t you,” said Trudy.

“Of course I love her,” he said.

“No, I mean like you used to love me.” Her eyes went far away. “I remember what that was like. That’s why I went crazy and divorced you.”

“You divorced me because I loved you?”

“No. I knew what it was like when you were there, and could love me every day. I craved that, and when you were gone, I felt like I was starving to death and choking to death and drowning, all at the same time. I thought if I divorced you, that would go away, but it didn’t. I hated you for not being there to love me before the divorce, and I hated you for making me divorce you when it didn’t do me any good at all.”

Bob knew talking about what he had gone through wouldn’t do any good. Talking about the Marines wouldn’t do any good. Talking about it now wouldn’t help. If they’d talked about it back then ... maybe. But not now. So, he said nothing and let her run down.

“So, you’re open to getting some help?” he asked.

She looked right at him, now.

“Bob, I’ll do whatever I have to do to repair my relationship with my little girl.”

“She’s not so little anymore,” said Bob.

“I know that.” Trudy blinked and her face smoothed. “You obviously know that. She says she seduced you.”

“I’d say that’s a valid description of what happened.”

“But babies? That was bold, Bob, even for you.”

“Neither of them was planned,” said Bob. “I kept trying to get her to go on birth control, and she kept forgetting to do it.”

“She didn’t forget,” said Trudy. “A woman doesn’t forget to get on birth control. She wanted those babies.”

“I have to admit I’m surprised you’re as forgiving about this as you say you are,” he said.

“What’s to forgive? I kicked you out. I lost my claim to you. If you’d have done this while we were still married, I would have had you thrown in jail and buried the key. But I cut you loose. I can’t complain that you fell in love again. Are you all upset about this?” She patted her bulging belly.

“Surprised, but not upset,” he said.

“Why would you be surprised? I liked sex when we were married. Why wouldn’t I like it after the divorce?”

“I’ll be honest. I couldn’t tell you liked sex back then. You seemed pretty hung up about it, like Mona.”

“I couldn’t just come out and beg you to take me to bed. I didn’t want to act like a slut.”

“When you’re married, it isn’t called being a slut. But that’s water under the bridge. What about that?” He gestured toward her baby bump. “Like you said, a woman doesn’t forget to get on birth control.”

“All our drugs were supplied by the NGO. Sometimes the supply chain was unreliable. Most of the time I was on the pill, but if they went bankrupt or the supply chain didn’t work, then there were lapses in coverage.”

“And the Africans didn’t have anything to prevent pregnancy?”

“They had lots of things. They use a lot of herbals for that, and local concoctions. There are lots of condoms floating around, now, too. They were rare when I first got there, but now they’re common.”

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