The Impossible Fortress(71)
“No, I couldn’t have,” she said, and I knew Mary was right. I wouldn’t have understood. I didn’t even understand now. There was only one explanation for all of this, and yet it seemed impossible: “Tyler Bell?”
“Yeah.”
“Was it— You know— Did he force himself on you?”
She shook her head. “More like the other way around.”
“You forced yourself on Tyler Bell?”
Mary scrambled for the remote control and turned on the television. “Can you keep your voice down?” She raised the volume, concealing our conversation with an ad for Calvin Klein Obsession. “It was stupid, Will. I know it was stupid. He took me out on his motorcycle, and I thought we’d just kiss.”
“But you liked him? Liked him liked him?”
She didn’t answer right away. She looked like she was trying to remember something that happened many years ago.
“My mom had this thing about second chances,” she explained. “?‘Everybody deserves a second chance,’ she’d say. Even criminals. Especially criminals. Before she got sick, when she worked at the store, she’d hire part-timers who were straight out of prison. She said it was the Christian thing to do, that Jesus commanded us to forgive them. My father hated this idea. He thought she was crazy. Hiring thieves to stock our shelves. It was nuts, right? But Mom didn’t care. She hired ex-cons for years, never had any problems. And then after she died—”
Mary stopped, reached for a plastic cup, and took a long drink of water. “Maybe a year after she died, our part-timer quit, so now it’s Dad’s turn to hire someone. And he decides he wants to honor Mom’s legacy. He wants to do the Christian thing. So he goes to the cops and says, ‘Bring me a screwup.’ Meaning, bring me some kid who’s always in trouble so Dad can straighten him out. The very next day, a cop comes by with Tyler Bell.”
“Did you know him?”
“No, I’d never met him. But I’d seen him riding around Market Street on his Harley. Every girl in Wetbridge knows him by sight. They would come by the store and buy crap they didn’t need, just for the chance to see him. His hair and his eyes and the whole biker thing. To be honest, I’m not sure if I really liked him, or if I just liked him because everybody else liked him.”
She explained that the first few weeks passed without incident. Tyler did his work and kept to himself. “He was nice to me because he had to be,” Mary said. “I was the boss’s daughter, right? So even though he’s three years older, I felt really safe talking to him. Making little jokes. I guess it was flirting. But always when Dad had his back turned. Tyler didn’t mind, he just laughed. So every day I got a little bolder.”
Then one night Tyler invited Mary to take a ride on his motorcycle. She described how he drove them into the woods behind the Ford motor plant. They sat on blankets and smoked a cigarette. Then they started kissing and didn’t stop. “I was so mad at myself, Will. As soon as it ended, I knew it was a mistake. Tyler was nervous. He wouldn’t stop talking. He said that out of all the girls he’d been with, I had the nicest hair. Like that was a compliment, you know?”
I didn’t say anything. I felt like she was talking about a completely different person, some other Mary, like a character you’d read about in a book. I couldn’t believe I knew someone who’d had real sex.
“The next day was awful. He came to work and he kept touching me. Every time my dad turned his back. He wouldn’t keep his hands off me. And I just wanted to pretend it never happened. I wanted him to go away. But we were stuck in that store together, every day. So I made up an excuse to get rid of him. I said he tried to steal a lighter.”
“You lied?”
“He was so angry. Because no one believed him, you know? Not a single person. It was such a selfish, shitty thing for me to do.”
“Did you know you were—” I couldn’t bring myself to say the word aloud; I still couldn’t believe I was sitting in a maternity ward.
“No, I wasn’t sure for another six weeks. I kept hoping I was wrong. By the time I knew for sure, Tyler was long gone.”
Up on the television screen, three gorgeous women in cowboy hats welcomed Spuds MacKenzie to a country-western concert on a dude ranch. The dog hopped up behind the drums, grabbed the sticks, and began to play along.
“I waited until February to tell my dad. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him. I was too embarrassed. It was such a stupid thing to do.”
I thought of Tyler’s rampage during the robbery, thought of the blitz of destruction that never totally added up. “Does he know now?”
“My dad told him last week. At the police station. That’s why he didn’t press charges, by the way. He couldn’t send his granddaughter’s father to jail. He figures she might want to look up Tyler someday, find out who he is. And it wouldn’t be right if he was a criminal. So he told the cops to drop the charges, and they let you all go.”
Up on the television, the Bud Light commercial ended and a studio audience shouted WHEEL! OF! FORTUNE! It was seven thirty, and America’s favorite game show was starting. I wanted to change the channel, but Mary still held the remote; she seemed grateful to have something to watch, an excuse to stop or at least pause our conversation. Vanna White appeared onstage, resplendent in a designer gown, and the audience applauded as she twirled around, showing off the scooped back and her taut calves.