Blood in the Water(9)

She had coffee on the stove, but she didn’t want to drink it. She had muffins from the bakery in the refrigerator. She didn’t want to eat them. Michael ate almost nothing these days, and when he did eat what he ate was full of sugar.

“Listen,” she’d told him once—it was only a week ago now. She couldn’t believe it had been that recent. “Listen,” she’d said, thinking she was desperate. “There’s always one thing I can do. I can always go to the police.”

“Go to the police about what? The drugs? You’ve already gone to the police about the drugs. What good do you think it did?”

“I could go to the police about her,” Eileen said. She’d felt as if she were swimming through molasses. Sometimes she found it very hard to remember things. She remembered this from some kind of television program she’d watched, and she was desperately afraid that she’d got it all mixed up.

She’d gone on with it anyway. She’d had to go on with it. She couldn’t let her son disappear into the awful woman’s fantasies.

“I could go to the police,” she’d said again, piecing it together slowly. “I could make them charge her with rape. Because of the age difference.”

“You want to charge Martha Heydreich with rape?” Michael said. “Rape takes an unwilling partner. Hell, it takes a partner.”

“No, not unwilling,” Eileen had insisted. “It can be—it’s the age difference. I heard about it on television. If there’s enough of an age difference, the older person can be charged with rape. Something rape. There was a word for it.”

“Statutory,” Michael said. He’d sounded amused. “You’re talking about statutory rape.”

“Maybe,” Eileen had gone on. “If there’s enough of an age difference, the older person can be charged with statutory rape. Or some kind of rape. And they can be put in jail. And they can be put on the sex offender’s registry.”

“Only if the younger party is under eighteen,” Michael said. “And I’m not under eighteen.”

“She’s using you,” Eileen said. “You’ve got to see that. She’s using you. She’s got that silly husband of hers who’ll buy her anything she wants, and she’s got you to—she’s got you to—”

“To what?”

Eileen had turned her face away, to the wall. They were in the living room. It was a plain blank wall, without wallpaper. She had had nothing to take her mind off it.

“If you think she’s using me for sex,” Michael had said, “you’re out of your mind. I told you before about me and sex.”

Eileen had kept her face to the wall. That was a discussion she was not going to have again. Besides, she didn’t think he’d been telling the truth. It was the kind of thing he said when he was angry with her.

“I could go to the police,” she’d said, thinking only that if she said it often enough it would sink it, it would scare him somehow.

But nothing ever scared Michael. He had always thought of himself as invincible. He’d thought it when he was climbing trees and hanging down off them from his knees. He’d thought it when he was smoking marijuana and taking pills out of the medicine cabinet and going down into Philadelphia to buy things from people who looked like somebody’s worst nightmare on Law & Order.

“If you went to the police,” he’d said, “you’d look like a prime ass, and they wouldn’t be able to do anything anyway. It’s like I said. The younger party has to be under eighteen. But honestly, Mother, you don’t make any sense. One minute you’re insane because I’m gay, and the next minute you’re insane because you think I’m sleeping with a woman.”

“She’s not a nice woman,” Eileen had said. “And it’s not like—it’s not like you don’t have other opportunities. There’s that Marsh girl. She’s always mooning around after you. She’s always asking me about you. She’d go out with you if you asked her.”

“LizaAnne Marsh is a first-rate bitch and a tenth-rate everything else. I wouldn’t go out with her if she were made of gold and gave platinum when she came. You’ve got to be desperate if you’re trying to sic me on LizaAnne Marsh.”

“I’m not trying to sic you on anybody,” she’d said. She’d still had her back to him, but she’d known the conversation was over. He’d already started to sound bored. She kept looking at the paint as she listened to his footsteps walking away, walking across the carpet, walking across the tile of the foyer, opening the front door.