Chapter 5

After stopping for a drive-through Italian beef sandwich, Miles pulled in to his reserved parking place outside the parish office at about half past noon. His head ached, and his tentative plan was to touch base with Donna, check his messages, make whatever phone calls were necessary, and head back to the rectory for a beer and a nap, and—dared he hope?—some perspective or solace with respect to his morning meeting at the diocesan office. Miles had never been given to depression, per se, but he was surely not immune to being in a depressed mood, and, this afternoon, he was in a depressed mood. But the office door was locked and the lights were out. So much for touching base with Donna. Where could she be? He glanced at the answering machine on her desk and noticed the indicator light reading “02”. There were two messages. The first one was from Donna; she was home trying to fend off a migraine. Miles was grateful that the pain emanating from within his own skull was less crippling in scale. On to the second message. “Dad, it’s me.” She did not need to identify herself with any more precision; the voice was Rachel’s. “I don’t know where you are, but you and I need to talk.” There was an edge to her tone that made him subliminally uneasy. What could be wrong? She did not sound wounded and weepy like on the night she announced her separation from Greg. Was she angry? No, it was more like a matter-of-fact urgency. “I’m just going to take a chance and roll into Grove Lake about two. I’ll check at home first, then come to the church if you’re not there. This is important. I…” There was a pause as Rachel considered whether to release the thought that was next in the queue that had formed in her brain. “I…this is important. I’ll see you…when I see you…today…this is important.” Incoherence of expression was highly uncharacteristic of his daughter, and Miles was mildly alarmed. He stepped back out of the office, returned to his car, and drove home. Rachel had said that would be her first stop, and he wanted to be there when she arrived.

When the Coverdale family moved to Grove Lake, Rachel had just turned eleven. She and Brian, as yet pre-adolescent, suffered only minor emotional trauma in negotiating the transition from one milieu to the other—their new house was more commodious than their old one, and a school is a school is a school. Sharon and Miles found her a piano teacher, Louis Ewald, who had actually had a brief professional career as a concert artist in the 1930s—a career blocked by the Great Depression from reaching critical mass for a sustained life. By the time he took on Rachel as a student, Mr Ewald was a kindly man of seventy-something. For the first dozen or so lessons, Rachel was uncharacteristically dour about the new arrangements, missing Brenda Duncan in Porterville, the only teacher she had ever known, and insisting the she was uncomfortable with Mr Ewald, and couldn’t Mom and Dad look a little further afield for a different teacher? But Louis Ewald came so highly recommended—and weren’t they so fortunate that someone of his caliber lived right in Grove Lake?—that Miles and Sharon were steeled to hold their ground with the protestations of their eleven year old. In time, Rachel settled in, stopped complaining about going to lessons, and continued to progress as a pianist.

During the summer after Rachel’s freshman year at Northwestern, Louis Ewald died suddenly, but peacefully, in his sleep. He was not an Episcopalian, but he was not much of anything else either (his parents had been Christian Scientists, but he had never embraced their religion), so his daughter, having flown in from her home in the San Francisco Bay area, and knowing of his late-in-life star pupil, asked Father Coverdale to preside at a community memorial service to be held in the auditorium of Grove Lake High, with the added request that Rachel perform on the occasion. It would be a musical eulogy. Miles happily accepted the engagement, both on his behalf and his daughter’s; it seemed an eminently natural and appropriate request. But Rachel, for reasons inexplicable at the time, balked. She did not lack for excuses—no appropriate repertoire at a polished stage, too much emotional involvement, a left thumb jammed slightly in a volleyball game six weeks earlier, even the “time of the month”—but none was entirely plausible.

Her refusal, which eventually softened into mere reluctance, carried for those who might have had ears to hear—though, in fact, no one did—an undertone of desperation. She indeed delivered a performance of Beethoven’s Apassionata sonata that plumbed the depths of the composition as thoroughly as might be hoped. Afterward, she was visibly disturbed, though always more than adequately functional, for several weeks. She surprised her mother by agreeing to spend the last six weeks before school resumed, save for a couple of weekend trips home, at the Wisconsin cabin. What was startling about this was that the cabin contained no piano, meaning that Rachel spent a month and a half without practicing. For an aspiring virtuoso, this was a remarkable breach of discipline. Sharon wondered about it, but was so happy to have her daughter’s company at the cabin that she didn’t bring it up. Miles was mildly uneasy over his presumptuousness in committing Rachel to the funeral performance, and for being the primary source of subtle pressure on her to execute the plans she had no part in forming, but by the time the women in his life departed for their northern retreat, he was sufficiently distracted by the demands of breaking in a new curate, mollifying an irritated organist, holding the hand of the Sunday School director during the annual scramble for enough volunteer teachers, and otherwise seeing to the administrative details of the impending program year, that he did not have room for a second thought about Rachel’s just barely noticeable—but uncharacteristic, nonetheless—docile and taciturn disposition. Truth to tell, Rachel was herself sufficiently adroit at concealing the signs of her own distress that her father’s propensity for overlooking it could be forgiven by any charitable person.

Miles had unconsciously filed away the memory of the events of that summer—six years ago, now—but as he sat on the couch in his den, beer can in hand, waiting for Rachel to arrive, he retrieved it all, just as unconsciously as he had once consigned it to storage. The memories simply presented themselves, as if on a tape cassette, and Miles dutifully pushed the “Play” button. It did not, at the time, occur to him to wonder why. Later, he would wonder how he could possibly have missed the significance of this premonition.

Rachel’s car pulled into the driveway just as the grandfather clock in the rectory foyer chimed two. Miles got up to greet her at the door. All the elements of the standard ritual of greeting and hospitality were present—smiles, an embrace, offer of refreshment, inquiry after health—but there was a steeliness in her demeanor that the amenities could not conceal. He began to brace himself emotionally as they took seats in the den—father in the recliner, daughter on the end of the couch about three feet away. There was a moment of excruciating silence, which Miles instinctively broke when he noticed Rachel’s eyes flitting everywhere in the room but toward his own.

“Hey, call me psychic, but you walked in here with some pretty heavy baggage, and I have a feeling I’m not going to find looking through it much of a picnic.”

She still did not look at him squarely when she responded, and her words were just as oblique, though they did move the conversation unambiguously in the direction of the purpose for her visit. “You know, of course, that I’ve been seeing Dr Newhouse.”

“Yes…” Miles hesitated, then continued, “Please forgive me, Rachel. I’ve neglected to ask how that’s been going.” Is that what this visit is about? To goad him into an appropriate parental interest in the status of her troubled marriage? How could he have let this one slip through the cracks? He had been so absorbed by the prelude and postlude to his meeting earlier that day with Bishop Landry that he had pushed his daughter’s crisis to the periphery of his awareness. It was the sort of lapse which, when made in connection with the pastoral care of his flock—though this was rare—was the occasion of severe remonstrance from his own conscience. Now Rachel, it seemed, was one of the proverbial cobbler’s barefoot children. “I’ve always thought Audrey is superb. Does she want to see you and Greg together yet? Do you think he would agree…”

“Dad!” It was not exactly a shout—at least, not according to the decibel meter. But it was still a verbal slap; there could be no mistake. “This isn’t about Greg. This is about us. This is about me and you.” She paused for an instant, taking a resolute breath. “Mostly you.”

“Oh, wow.” Miles’s response was not an exclamation, but a quiet acknowledgement of the gravity of what had just passed his daughter’s lips.

Rachel’s voice quavered. “I’m going to try and not lose control here. I promised myself I would keep it together.” She paused, then continued, almost laughingly. “I even rehearsed it in the car mirror on the way here!” All the while, her own eyes never locked on to her father’s.

Miles instantly began groping for an emotional toehold. Should he let himself react spontaneously? Should he adopt his practiced demeanor of pastoral attentiveness? Should he remain passive, and try to listen well, or actively attempt to help Rachel along in the agenda which was apparently so clear—or had been, at least—in her own mind, maybe even injecting a little playfulness (sarcasm?—sometimes too fine a distinction) into the conversation? It was in this latter spirit that he offered, “I believe I am on the receiving end of what is known in the psycho babble trade as a ‘confrontation.’"

If it was his intent to move Rachel beyond form and into substance, he could not have been more successful. “Dammit, Dad! Don’t patronize me. Don’t trivialize me. This is hard enough already. I need you to … I need you to just shut up and listen. It’s my turn to talk. My turn.”

Silence.

Rachel took a slow, deep breath, exhaled, then continued. “This thing with Greg—I think it’s finally gotten through to me—or Audrey has helped me see—at least I couldn’t have done it without her—anyway, my trouble with Greg, that’s not the real trouble. That’s not what this is about. What it’s about is…” She paused, as if to build up engine pressure for climbing a steep hill. “What it’s about is, I’m really screwed up, and I think you and Mom played a big part in getting me where I am, but Mom’s dead, so I can’t criticize her, but you’re here, so you get dumped on, but you deserve it—God, I hate to say it!—but you deserve it. There are some things you probably have no idea about. I know this is unfair, and you’re probably going to hate me, but better you hating me than me hating you, huh? I know this is unfair, but I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do this. I promised Audrey…”

“Promised Audrey?” Rachel had paused just long enough for Miles to insert this question without feeling like he was interrupting. He must not sound defensive, though. That would definitely be a bad move. “What did you promise Audrey, sweetheart?”

“I promised her…you know…that I would do this, that I wouldn’t continue to just sweep my issues with you under the rug.”

“I see.” Miles made a conscious effort to attend to his body language—shoulders back, legs uncrossed, palms open, lots of eye contact—all indicating his volitional intent, even if his emotional inclination lagged behind, to be disarmingly open to absorbing whatever bombs his daughter needed to lob his way. “Well, I agree with Audrey.” He was only lying a little. His agreement was alloyed with resentment toward his friend and parishioner for apparently making Rachel more confused than she already was. “Whatever you and she have dug up, let’s have it. I certainly don’t want anything to fester.”

“OK. You’re not making this any easier, by the way, by being sweet. I’m trying hard to be mad at you.”

“Don’t worry,” Miles reassured playfully. “I’ll yell at you when you least expect it.”

“Please do. Well, let me see if I can, as Brian would say, ‘bottom-line it’ for you. The reason Greg left me, so he says, is that he got fed up with me being emotionally distant—‘ice princess’ was his exact label, to be precise. I thought he was full of shit until I talked to Audrey. She asked all the usual shrink questions about whether I had a happy childhood and all that, which I didn’t think was going to lead to anything, but I played along, you know, just to be cooperative. It was so nice of her to see me, and she was being so kind, that I didn’t want to be a hard case. And then—wham!—out of the blue, it hit me. It hit me in one question she asked me. Do you want to know what that question was, Dad?”

“I have a feeling I’m going to find out whether I want to or not.”

“You’re damn right you are!” Rachel’s serene demeanor of the previous minutes evaporated. “OK, the sweetness and light isn’t going to cut it anymore. I’m officially pissed again. Just thinking about it puts me back in touch with my feelings. Here’s the deal. Audrey asked me, ‘Do you think your parents loved each other?’ and I said, ‘Of course they did.’ But then she asked me, ‘Well, how did they show their affection for one another?’ and I was stumped. Completely stumped. I wracked my brain, but the sad fact is, the pathetic fact is, I could not think of one time when I saw you and Mom demonstrate whatever it was I always assumed you felt for each other. I never saw you kiss, I never saw you hold hands, I never saw you walk arm in arm. Honestly, Dad, now that I think about it, I wonder how Brian and I are even on this planet. Are you sure we aren’t adopted?”

“Rachel!” Miles was profoundly pained. “Is this really necessary?”

“Yes, Dad, it is. I’m afraid it is necessary.”

“Then please tell me where the hell you’re going with this, because I’m confused. What happened to your promise to bottom-line it?”

“You want the bottom line? I’ll give you the bottom line! I’m the Ice Princess because my father and mother are the Ice King and the Ice Queen! And I married a hot-blooded Italian who doesn’t know what to do with ice, and now he’s left me for a warmer climate and I’m desperately in love with him and I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get him back. That, my dear father, is the bottom line.”

Miles sat motionless. Then his lips parted and his jaw dropped slightly as he exhaled audibly. “Rachel, I don’t know what to say.” But after voicing that standard disclaimer, he suddenly thought of a great deal to say. “Your mother and I loved each other very much. You yourself just said you assumed we felt something for one another. Well, you were right—we did. And you must have gotten that impression from somewhere, huh? I know it’s bad form for me to get defensive—you’ve made it clear that this is your show—but I’m not sure but that Audrey Newhouse has got you chasing a shadow.” Now he was not only being defensive, but seeming to attack Audrey. Did he really want to be doing this? He continued nonetheless, “I am really sorry for what’s happened between you and Greg. I will do anything in my power, and then some, to get the two of you back together. But I will not start by apologizing for my marriage, for the way Sharon and I showed affection. We were true to ourselves, true to who we were. We were comfortable with that.” Once again, his prevarication was slight. Sharon and he had indeed been comfortable with their relationship, but a clean master bedroom closet was ample testimony to his own more recent doubts and second thoughts. “Maybe, for your sake, we should have been more demonstrative. I don’t know. We did what seemed to come naturally at the time. But what good would it do, anyway, for me to beat myself up about it now? Your mother is gone, Rachel. She’s gone. What’s done is done.”

Rachel wasted no time framing her rejoinder. “That’s where you’re wrong, Dad. It may be ‘done’ for you, but it’s certainly not ‘done’ for me. I’m still in the middle of it all.”

“I can understand that, Rachel, I really can.” Was she going to calm down now? Was the attacking over? “Tell me. Have you talked to Greg about any of this?”

“No, not yet. Audrey wanted me to do this first. She says it’s important…”

“Audrey again?” Miles was fully aware that an interruption would be costly, but his irritation at hearing Dr Newhouse mentioned yet again got the best of him. (Where was this coming from? It wasn’t quite rational.) “What is she doing—scripting your life for you now?” A tight smile only accentuated, rather than concealed, his perturbed state.

Now it was Rachel’s turn to be momentarily nonplussed. “Scripting my life? I don’t think so.” The monosyllables were detached and articulated, for emphasis. “She has helped me make some connections that I never would have seen otherwise—the main one being that I’ve tried to import into my marriage some communication patterns—the only ones that were ever imprinted on me—that can only be described as dysfunctional. They may have worked for you and Mom—I don’t see how, but I’ll have to take your word for it—but they sure as hell don’t work with Greg DeFronzo. I’m damaged goods, and it’s because of the way I was raised, and I had no idea, none whatsoever, and now that it’s as obvious as the nose on my face, it kind of pisses me off.”

Miles had recovered, by this time, enough of his composure to resist the impulse toward a sarcastic retort (like “Thanks for sharing”). “And that’s something I’ll just have to take your word on. Geez, Rachel, this is heavy stuff. I apologize for getting testy a minute ago. I don’t want to demean you at all. And I don’t want to seem to put down whatever Audrey is doing with you, though it does sound like a lot of psycho-babble to me. But I don’t know what else to say right now. You’ve had some time to process this—I haven’t.”

“I know, Dad, I know.” These pro forma words of comfort were uttered perfunctorily, without expression. Rachel’s mind was already on her next move, and her eyes stared across the room toward the french doors leading to the back patio. Throughout the whole conversation, her own gaze had yet to lock on to her father’s. “But there’s more.”

“More?”

“There’s another shoe to drop, I’m afraid. My God, I feel like Super Bitch for doing this to you, but it was hard enough for me to do this at all, and if I don’t get it all out now, I don’t know if I ever will.”

This time, maintaining a posture of openness required more effort on Miles’s part than it had before. He was ready for this conversation to be over, but his strength of rational will yet managed to trump his visceral impulse. He shook the empty beer can in his hand. Did he need another one? Perhaps so, but the thought of delaying the end of this meeting by even a few seconds was potently distasteful. “All right, sweetheart, I’m braced. Let’s have it.”

“It’s about Mr Ewald.” This arrested Miles’s attention, simply because he could not imagine how his daughter’s deceased childhood piano teacher could relate to the crisis which threatened her marriage. But he remained silently attentive, and Rachel continued. “You probably remember that I was not too happy with him at first.”

“Yeah. You were actually quite a little brat about it. Brenda Duncan in Porterville spoiled you with indulgence. Your mother and I didn’t blame you, though. It must have been really hard to adjust.”

Rachel’s facial muscles were taut, and she continued to stare out the french doors. “It had nothing to do with Mrs Duncan spoiling me. It had nothing to do with adjusting to a new teacher. Dad, the man was a pervert. He was molesting me. I was sexually abused by my piano teacher.” The volume and intensity of her voice leapt upward as she delivered the punchline. “The piano teacher that you and Mom forced me to continue seeing even when I told you I wanted out!”

In a synchronized autonomic response, father and daughter each sucked in a load of air. This seemed to consume all the oxygen in the room for several seconds; there was none left to facilitate speaking. Both sat motionless, but for the first time in this conversation their eyes locked on to one another. A single tear fell slowly down Rachel’s cheek; she made no effort to wipe it away. Miles was the first to recover his balance, but the best his vocal cords could manage was a whisper. “Rachel…we had no idea. I’m so sorry.”

If Miles sought some indication of understanding or forgiveness on his daughter’s part, she was not accommodating. “I know, Dad. I don’t doubt that you’re sorry.” The volume and intensity of her voice grew with each passing word. “But ‘sorry’ when I’m twenty-three doesn’t help me much when I’m eleven, does it?”

Was that when it happened? Was it when she was eleven? How long did it go on? What exactly did that creep do to her, anyway? ‘Molest’ can mean a lot of different things. Maybe all he did was kiss her, or pat her backside a couple of times. God, please let it be just that. That much is bad enough, to be sure, but it’s information that a father can at least process without emotionally collapsing. But what if it was intercourse at every piano lesson—once a week for seven years? What if that son of a bitch had fucked his daughter a couple or three hundred times? The atheistic bastard was already dead, so Miles couldn’t kill him again. He could wish him to be burning in hell, though; that much he could certainly do. But before Father Coverdale could petition the Almighty for a rise in the temperature of hell for the particular torment of Louis Ewald, he needed more information. He was, after all, a priest, a pastor, one who was supposed to be compassionate toward sinful human souls. It wasn’t Louis Ewald’s soul that was of concern to Miles at the moment, however. It was, rather, a corporeal part of his anatomy. He needed to know more.

“Rachel…sweetheart…forgive me if I’m incoherent…you’ve at least had some time…time to process…prepare…with me, more like a bolt of lightning…Rachel…I don’t even know how to put this…”

Mercifully, Rachel intervened. “You want some details, don’t you? Audrey told me you would. I’ve practiced this…I’m going to talk about it this one time…I’m a big girl, so I’m just going to say it straight out, and then you can deal with it. But I don’t want to play ‘twenty questions,’ okay?”

“Absolutely. Okay. You don’t need to tell me anything you don’t want to…”

“Thank-you, Dad, but I do. I don’t want to, but I do have to tell you this, for my sake as well as yours.” Rachel paused just long enough to take a deliberate breath. “We never had intercourse. He would feel me up—my breasts (even before I had any!) and my rear end—but always through my clothes. He never undressed me.” Miles felt the muscles in his jaw palpably relax. This was nasty stuff, but it could have been worse. His relief was slightly premature, however. Rachel continued, “But he did make me undress him…from the waist down, that is. He wanted me to touch him…play with him. That’s how I knew every lesson was over. He would take my hand and put it on himself. He would already be aroused; I just finished him off and went on my way.”

Miles had neither the motivation nor the means to maintain his composure. He just allowed the tears to flow. “The bastard! The low-life slime bag! Rachel, I am so sorry! I am so sorry! I had no idea!”

Rachel also let herself collapse emotionally, as she responded through her tears, “Oh, but you did! You did have an idea! I was eleven years old, Dad, eleven! You couldn’t expect me to spell it out for you then, could you? ‘Oh, by the way, Mom and Dad, my piano lessons are lasting a little longer than thirty minutes because Mr Ewald makes me give him a hand job before I go.’ I was dropping every hint that I could. I was trying to tell you, and you fought me every step of the way. You made me keep going back to him. It was as if it were okay with you, like you approved, like it was normal, all in a day’s work.”

“Rachel, please! I never…your mother never…we would never have approved. We would have strung the guy up by the…”

“It’s a little late for paternal histrionics, Dad. Too damn late, as a matter of fact. That water is way past the bridge by now.”

“I know, I know. Of course it is. But you’ve got to believe me…”

Rachel interrupted decisively. “Hold it! Hold it! Time out!” She gave the hand sign that a frantic basketball player would give to a referee. “That can’t be on the agenda today. What I believe or don’t believe can’t be on the agenda. Maybe later, maybe not, but what’s important today is not what I believe, but what you believe. You do believe me about all of this, don’t you?”

“Do I believe Mr Ewald molested you? Of course I believe. Why would you have any reason to lie to me about something like that, especially when the guy’s dead?”

Rachel worked her father methodically, like an attorney examining a hostile witness. “Not only that. That’s not good enough. Do you also believe you—you and Mom—are responsible for what happened?”

“Responsible?” Miles was trying to buy time to collect his thoughts. He desperately wanted to agree with Rachel, just because he was ready for this conversation to be over. He was claustrophobic, and felt like he was going to hyperventilate. He needed space, physical and psychic space. Rachel could have asked him to affirm that the moon was populated by little green men, and he would have been inclined to be compliant. But to admit that he and Sharon had been complicit in their own daughter’s sexual abuse? Is that what she was asking. This was over the edge, way over the edge. He had an intuitive flash. It may prove to be inaccurate, and Rachel would probably deny it in any case. But it was all he had to grasp at. “Is this something Audrey put you up to?”

Now it was Rachel’s turn to be momentarily nonplussed, but she recovered quickly. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that. No, on second thought, I’m not going to pretend anything! I’m not going to let you manipulate me. Where the hell do you get off being so patronizing? You’re the one that sent me to Audrey Newhouse. So now you’re going to dump all over her?”

Quickly filing away the observation that Rachel did not deny his accusation, Miles countered, “Aw, come on Rachel! I’m not trying to dump on anybody…”

Once again, Rachel wasn’t buying. She stood up, and began to root around in her purse for her car keys. “I can see this conversation is degenerating. I had hoped it wouldn’t. I had hoped it could end more pleasantly than this.” She found her keys and headed for the door. Miles chased her.

“Pleasantly? How in God’s name can a conversation like this end pleasantly?” Belle, who inferred from the activity in the foyer that she stood a good chance of being taken for a walk, began to yap as she traced tight circles on the floor. Rachel ignored the dog and spoke matter-of-factly as she moved toward the door, not bothering to look at her father. “I’m sorry to walk out like this. I guess I didn’t think through an exit strategy for this conversation. It’s really best that I just go. I’m sorry.”

She walked out the door and headed for her car. Miles remonstrated with himself and he stood in the open doorway and watched her, for not making any effort to dissuade her from departing so precipitously. He was traumatized and weary. Belle saw that her own hopes would not reach fruition and retreated to one of her accustomed stations underneath the living room coffee table. Miles closed the door, padded to the kitchen, and removed another can of beer from the refrigerator. He figured he deserved it.