Reality," he said as the host sat quietly climbing out of his skin with boredom. "And that's what my new show is about. Real crimes. Real mysteries. Murders. Disappearances. In which the investigation is still open, and the guilty party has not. Yet. Been found."
In other words, I'm a fat, has-been boozehound who couldn't get arrested in show business, and one of these True Crime show rip-offs was the only job I could find.
I changed the channel. There was a building blowing up: an ad for a movie. I gazed at it, but I didn't watch it. I just stared, thinking about Lauren, about Serena.
Look at her, Jason. Look at her.
Lauren had kept saying the same thing to me, kept waving the framed photograph of her daughter in front of my face.
Anyone can see she's yours. Look at her.
Oh, come on, Lauren.
I was so upset, I almost shouted at her. I pushed back from the table, stood up from my chair.
Don't pull that crap on me. Come on! How stupid do you think I am?
But she kept holding out the photograph, kept saying,
Look at her.
And I did look at her. And my breath caught and my stomach felt as if it were circling the drain.
Her story was plausible. It was very plausible, knowing Lauren, knowing me. She said she had sensed, those many years ago, that I was going to break up with her. It was plain enough to see with all the changes I was going through. So she stopped taking her birth-control pills. She wanted to get pregnant before I had the chance to tell her I was leaving. That way, it would seem like an accident; it wouldn't seem as if she had done it on purpose to hold us together. She wanted to fool herself in this as much as me.
But she waited too long to speak up. Even though her period was already one week late, even though the test she'd gotten at the drugstore was positive, she wanted to be completely certain before breaking the news. Then came that day out by the harbor when I told her it was over. That changed the whole scenario. Now, she couldn't tell me about the baby. Now it would be obvious even to herself what a desperate ploy it was. She was too proud for that—too proud to go through with it once she could no longer lie to herself about her own motives. So she walked away grandly without saying a word, taking her fetus with her.
She had planned to have an abortion, she said, but the affair with Carl started up so soon after our breakup and he was so enthusiastic about the idea of being a father that she didn't see anything wrong with telling him the baby was his.
It's not like I'm asking you for child support,
she said to me.
Shit, Jason, I'm not asking you for anything. I just need you to go talk to her, that's all, before something bad happens. Come on, man. Please. There's no one else I can turn to.
I didn't know whether to believe any of this or not. I didn't know whether the sick swirling certainty in my gut was an intuition that she was telling the truth or just guilt and fear. Because,
I mean, what if it was true? What if Serena was my daughter? How was I going to break it to Cathy?
And what was I going to do now?
I thought about it, sitting on the couch with the TV going. And then I stopped thinking about it. I stopped thinking about anything, stopped seeing anything. I stared into space as evening came on outside the shuttered windows.
Now, it always kind of worried me when I did that: zoned out and stared into space like that. My mother used to do the same thing. It was the first sign of her madness.
When I was small, she would sit with me in the grass in our backyard. She would hold me on her lap and we would look at things together. She had light red hair that fell around her face and teased her mouth when the wind pushed at it. Her skin was pale and freckled. She had clear green eyes. I don't remember thinking she was beautiful, though I know she was. What I do remember is feeling that she was part of the landscape: the grass, the dandelions, the whispering leaves, my mother. Anyway, we
In other words, I'm a fat, has-been boozehound who couldn't get arrested in show business, and one of these True Crime show rip-offs was the only job I could find.
I changed the channel. There was a building blowing up: an ad for a movie. I gazed at it, but I didn't watch it. I just stared, thinking about Lauren, about Serena.
Look at her, Jason. Look at her.
Lauren had kept saying the same thing to me, kept waving the framed photograph of her daughter in front of my face.
Anyone can see she's yours. Look at her.
Oh, come on, Lauren.
I was so upset, I almost shouted at her. I pushed back from the table, stood up from my chair.
Don't pull that crap on me. Come on! How stupid do you think I am?
But she kept holding out the photograph, kept saying,
Look at her.
And I did look at her. And my breath caught and my stomach felt as if it were circling the drain.
Her story was plausible. It was very plausible, knowing Lauren, knowing me. She said she had sensed, those many years ago, that I was going to break up with her. It was plain enough to see with all the changes I was going through. So she stopped taking her birth-control pills. She wanted to get pregnant before I had the chance to tell her I was leaving. That way, it would seem like an accident; it wouldn't seem as if she had done it on purpose to hold us together. She wanted to fool herself in this as much as me.
But she waited too long to speak up. Even though her period was already one week late, even though the test she'd gotten at the drugstore was positive, she wanted to be completely certain before breaking the news. Then came that day out by the harbor when I told her it was over. That changed the whole scenario. Now, she couldn't tell me about the baby. Now it would be obvious even to herself what a desperate ploy it was. She was too proud for that—too proud to go through with it once she could no longer lie to herself about her own motives. So she walked away grandly without saying a word, taking her fetus with her.
She had planned to have an abortion, she said, but the affair with Carl started up so soon after our breakup and he was so enthusiastic about the idea of being a father that she didn't see anything wrong with telling him the baby was his.
It's not like I'm asking you for child support,
she said to me.
Shit, Jason, I'm not asking you for anything. I just need you to go talk to her, that's all, before something bad happens. Come on, man. Please. There's no one else I can turn to.
I didn't know whether to believe any of this or not. I didn't know whether the sick swirling certainty in my gut was an intuition that she was telling the truth or just guilt and fear. Because,
I mean, what if it was true? What if Serena was my daughter? How was I going to break it to Cathy?
And what was I going to do now?
I thought about it, sitting on the couch with the TV going. And then I stopped thinking about it. I stopped thinking about anything, stopped seeing anything. I stared into space as evening came on outside the shuttered windows.
Now, it always kind of worried me when I did that: zoned out and stared into space like that. My mother used to do the same thing. It was the first sign of her madness.
When I was small, she would sit with me in the grass in our backyard. She would hold me on her lap and we would look at things together. She had light red hair that fell around her face and teased her mouth when the wind pushed at it. Her skin was pale and freckled. She had clear green eyes. I don't remember thinking she was beautiful, though I know she was. What I do remember is feeling that she was part of the landscape: the grass, the dandelions, the whispering leaves, my mother. Anyway, we
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