The Sins of the Fathers

"What?"

"Do you suppose a psychiatrist could have helped her?"

"I don't know. Maybe she went to one. I couldn't find anything in her apartment to suggest that she did, but it's possible. I think she was helping herself."

"By living the way she did?"

"Uh-huh. Her life was a fairly stable one. It may not look like it from the outside, but I think it was.

That's why she carried the Maisel girl as a roommate. It's also why she hooked up with Vanderpoel.

Her apartment had a very settled feel to it. Well-chosen furniture. A place to live in. I think the men in her life represented a stage she was working her way through, and I would guess that she consciously saw it that way. The men represented physical and emotional survival for the time being, and I think she anticipated reaching a point where she wouldn't need them anymore."

I drank some more whiskey. It was a little sweet for my taste, and a little too smooth, but it went down well enough.

I said, "In some ways I learned more about Richie Vanderpoel than I did about Wendy. One of the people I talked to said all ministers' sons are crazy. I don't know that that's true, but I think most of them must have a hard time of it.

Richie's father is a very uptight type. Stern, cold. I doubt that he ever showed the boy much in the way of warmth. Richie's mother killed herself when he was six years old.

No brothers or sisters, just the kid and his father and a dried-up housekeeper in a rectory that could double as a mausoleum. He grew up with mixed-up feelings about both of his parents. His feelings in that area complemented Wendy's pretty closely. That's why they were so good for each other."

"Good for each other!"

"Yes."

"For God's sake, he killed her!"

"They were good for each other. She was a woman he wasn't afraid of, and he was a man she couldn't mistake for her father. They were able to have a domestic life together that gave them both a measure of security they hadn't had before. And there was no sexual relationship to complicate things."

"They didn't sleep together?"

I shook my head. "Richie was homosexual. At least he'd been functioning as a homosexual before he moved in with your daughter. He didn't like it much, wasn't comfortable about it. Wendy gave him a chance to get away from that life.

He could live with a woman without having to prove his manhood because she didn't want him as a lover. After he met her he stopped making the rounds of the gay bars.

And I think she stopped seeing men in the evenings. I couldn't prove it, but earlier she had been getting taken out for dinner several nights a week. The kitchen in her apartment was fully stocked when I saw it. I think Richie cooked dinner for the two of them just about every night. I told you a few minutes ago that I thought Wendy was working things out. I think both of them were working things out together.

Maybe they would have started sleeping together eventually. Maybe Wendy would have stopped seeing men professionally and gone out and taken a job. I'm just guessing, that's all any of this is, but I'd take the guess a little further. I think they would have gotten married eventually, and they might even have made it work."

"That's very hypothetical."

"I know."

"You make it sound as though they were in love."

"I don't know that they were in love. I don't think there's any doubt that they loved each other."

He picked up his glasses, put them on, took them off again. I poured more whiskey in my glass and took a small sip of it. He sat for a long while, looking at his hands. Every now and then he looked up at the two photographs on top of his desk.

Finally he said, "Then why did he kill her?"

"No way to answer that. He didn't have any memory of the act, and the whole scene got mixed up with memories of his mother's death. Anyway, that's not your question."

"It's not?"

"Of course not. What you want to know is how much of it was your fault."

He didn't say anything.

"Something happened the last time you saw your daughter. Do you want to tell me about it?"

HE didn't want to, not a whole hell of a lot, and it took him a few minutes to get warmed up. He talked vaguely about the sort of child she had been, very bright and warm and affectionate, and about how much he had loved her.

Then he said, "When she was, it's hard to remember, but I think she must have been eight years old.

Eight or nine. She would always sit on my lap and give me hugs and... hugs and kisses, and she would squirm around a little, and-"

He had to stop for a minute. I didn't say anything.

"One day, I don't know why it happened, but one day she was on my lap, and I-oh, Christ."

"Take your time."

"I got excited. Physically excited."

"It happens."

"Does it?" His face looked like something from a stained-glass window. "I couldn't... couldn't even think about it. I was so disgusted with myself. I loved her the way you love a daughter, at least I had always thought that was what I felt for her, and to find myself responding to her sexually-"