No Path to Forgiveness

“Who is that?”, said Lorraine. She was looking over her boyfriend’s shoulder at his iPhone. It was a pretty girl with shoulder-length red hair and bright blue eyes, a sparing touch of lip gloss, standing, devil-may-care, on a rocky waterfront, pine trees in the background, somewhere along the coast, somewhere local. She was pretty and thin, had good skin too. 

Conrad swiped upwards and the girl disappeared.

“Who is that girl”, said Lorraine, “She’s very pretty”. Too pretty, like she existed for the purpose of being looked at and nothing more. The girl's copper toned hair seemed familiar to Lorraine, but she wasn’t a customer at the salon. The girl must be an influencer, she thought. Perhaps she'd seen her on Conrad’s laptop, or his phone?

“Oh, it’s nobody… just some woman,” said Conrad. He seemed distracted, bored, slumped on the clean sofa in grubby clothes, staring at his phone. Always staring at that damned thing. He was always somewhere else. 

“Well, it must be somebody,” said Lorraine. Conrad seemed shifty, avoiding eye-contact.   The girl had bright blue eyes, almond shaped. “Have I’ve seen her before? The color of her hair,,,”

Conrad interrupted her. “I dunno, Lo, these things just end up on my phone”. He turned the phone off and stood up from the sofa. He looked at his watch, he looked out the window.  “I’d better get going. I need to get stuff from the hardware store and dump the trash at the transfer station”.

“Wait, wait up a bit”, said Lorraine. She waddled across the kitchen. The baby was getting big and none of her clothes fit properly anymore. She felt ugly and heavy. “Can we talk?”. She wanted to look him in the eyes.

“No. Lo, I've really got to go”.   Busy. Stay busy. If he stayed busy long enough, everything would work itself out, somehow. Talking was tricky, questions were traps.

The front door slammed shut and moments later his pickup truck coughed smoke and roared out of the driveway. 

+++

Lorraine was too much for Conrad.

Too much flesh, too much personality, too much of everything. All these questions; they made his head hurt. That big needy face and the way she looked at him like everything was urgent and important. Too much woman already, and now a baby too! He pulled the truck over alongside a pile of wooden pallets. The transfer station was a good place to stop and think without Lo pestering him.

Beth. Beth was her name. He met her on a dating app; she was so pretty, and so sad. She gave him her cellphone number and sent him some photos. She was so interesting, so interested… in him, in his work, sports and stuff. He sent her some photos. She sent more photos, videos, explicit. She really liked him.

What harm could there be in flirting? He sent her some photos, a video, explicit. 

“We should hookup sometime”, Beth messaged him, “you are a very kind and good-looking man.”

“I’m not sure” he replied, “I’m in a relationship, sort of…you know how it is?”

Beth knew how it is.

“How about we video-chat?” Beth replied, “try this website”. She sent him instructions.

He logged onto the website, entered his personal information, his credit card number. 

That was a week ago.   

A car drove by; its trunk was jammed with trash bags.  Maybe he should delete Beth from his phone, from his laptop? Maybe. He swiped through his favorite photos of her. Maybe, but later.

+++

Lorraine slumped in the chair at the back of the hairdressing shop; this might be her last week of work; she’d miss the money and she would miss the small-town gossip. 

Gloria was sitting opposite her, phone in hand, chewing gum, and reading about Princess Diana’s love affairs; flick, flick, flicking at her screen while Lo babbled on about her good-for-nothing blockhead boyfriend. The first time she met him, this Conrad, he came and picked Lo up from the shop in his rusty old truck, and from the get-go she could tell that he was much more interested in her – Gloria – than in Lorraine – delusional - but six months later, and there’s a baby on the way…

“He doesn’t touch me anymore”, said Lorraine.

“Well, you are pregnant”, said Gloria, “I mean, what is he supposed to touch?”.

“That’s ridiculous Gloria… I mean, it’s not just about sex,” said Lorraine. 

“Is that right?” said Gloria. Single, decidedly single. She still had her figure; she still had the glam.

“He doesn’t even talk to me anymore, except bullshit stuff.”

Gloria chewed, open mouthed. She was losing interest in Lorraine’s predicament. Lorraine would be gone soon, lost in the confines of motherhood. 

“Are you going to get married?  How long’s it been now, a year? And now the Baby?”

“Yeah. We’re going to get married in the Spring, after the baby has settled in”.

“Are you sure about that?“ said Gloria. It was an absent-minded question and she wished she’d not said it, but then again, there was something about Conrad that she really didn’t like. She set her iPhone aside.

“What do you mean?” said Lorraine, huffed up and defensive.

“Well, Lo, he never takes you out, he never talks about you, and he’s got a wandering eye”, said Gloria.

“Anything else I should know?” said Lorraine, vexed.

+++

Conrad had been out drinking at the local bar last night, or that’s what he said. Lorraine stayed up, waiting, but he was in no state to talk. She’d hardly slept. 

“You were talking in your sleep” said Lorraine “You kept moaning about Beth”.

“Fuck, Lo, it was only a dream,” said Conrad. He was groggy and his breath was foul. Did she say “Beth”, or did he dream that too?

“It must have been a good dream”, she said, observing a swell in his pajama pants.

“It’s not like I can control my dreams… they don’t mean anything, either”, said Conrad. He turned his back on her.

“The internet girl, her name is Beth”, said Lorraine. 

“I don’t know what you are talking about”, he said.

“You left her up on your laptop screen”, said Lorraine.

“Chris’ sake, Lo, can’t I get any fucking privacy?”, he said, angry now.

“There’s a big difference between fucking privacy and fucking secrets”, said Lorraine.   

+++

Lorraine opened the door and collapsed into the arms of a giant.

“Show me what you found out”, said Lou Carrol. He was in uniform; the police cruiser was parked outside. He walked past her into the tiny apartment. It was a mess. An empty tub of ice cream on the kitchen table. She was a mess.

“I’m not sure about this”, said Lorraine, and she immediately started sobbing. 

Lou gave his daughter a hug, patted her back. She was getting big. The baby looked due anytime. 

“It’s going to be alright”, he said. He needed his daughter to calm down while he thought this through.

Lou tolerated Conrad as best he could. He’d sometimes see Conrad at the local bar, stand him a beer or two – family and all that – but he really didn’t like the boy. The way he leered at women when they weren’t watching. Those piggy eyes in that too-big head.

“You aren’t going to hurt him, are you?”, said Lorraine, between sniffles.

“Not unless he deserves it”, he said, “show me the computer, so I can see for myself”. 

Lorraine sat down at the kitchen table, opened Conrad’s laptop, entered the password that she’d found on the yellow Post-it note. A picture of a girl popped up on the screen, explicit. The sobbing resumed. Her world was falling apart. 

“You sure that’s the girl?” said Lou. The girl was pretty. Too pretty.

She closed the photo, to reveal another, this one of Conrad… then another, also of Conrad… Not so pretty.

“Oh Jeez… Ok, I’ve got the idea. Just close that thing down”, said Lou waving the laptop away with his hand. He’d seen enough of Conrad’s white flesh. 

“Daddy, I’m so sad!” said Lorraine, collapsing onto the table, crying uncontrollably now. "I thought we’d get married after the baby was born, but now, I’m scared Conrad’s going to leave me…and then what am I going to do?”

“He’s not going to leave you”, said Lou. This girl - this Beth, if she even existed - she was way too pretty for that deadbeat, “but I can make that happen, if you want”.

+++

Conrad was in his truck, sitting in the parking lot outside the local diner. He looked at Beth on his phone. He could be happy with this girl, and she would definitely be happy with him. Bairstow wasn’t so far away. He could be there in the hour, drive around and look for her in the pickup. A girl like that would be easy to find. Maybe she’d be hanging out at the waterfront, near those pines.

A message from his bank popped up on his iPhone screen: it was a fraud alert, covering Beth’s face.

+++

Conrad jumped when he opened the apartment door. “Holy Jesus! You scared the crap out of me”, he said. 

Lorraine’s dad, Big Lou the Police Chief, was standing in the apartment and he was wearing his uniform. Conrad looked back over his shoulder, but the police cruiser wasn’t parked outside.  Nor could he see Lorraine in the apartment.

Conrad had picked up a bunch of cheap hot-house flowers at the gas station.

“They’re for Lorraine. I thought she’d like them,” said Conrad. He grinned; Big Lou would catch the drift, Big Lou knew how things worked, but Big Lou didn’t look impressed. In fact, Big Lou looked downright hostile and his right hand wasn’t so far away from his gun.

“She’s at work”, said the Chief, “I’ve been waiting for you. You piece of shit”. His hand continued to hover around the magazine grip of the gun.

The blood drained from Conrad’s face. “Wait! Wait a minute! There’s some kind of mistake”, he said. The flowers dropped to the floor, and he held his empty hands up in front of him, “Chief, I ain’t done anything that I can’t undo, I promise.”

The Chief stepped away from the kitchen table, the laptop was open. The internet girl, Beth, was sitting cross-legged on a bed, wearing diddly-squat.   

“Oh Christ! That girl! She’s not real. She’s some kind of porn thing that I came across. Just once, but Lorraine’s gone and blown it out of proportion”.

“It isn’t the only thing blown out of proportion, is it?” said the Chief. He turned slightly and clicked on the mouse. It was a photo of Conrad; the kind that cannot be unseen.

Conrad rushed forward, and the Chief stepped aside, but didn’t go for his gun. Conrad slammed the laptop shut. 

“Please don’t show this picture to anyone. I beg you,” said Conrad, his face flushed.

The apartment was a mess, the sink was full of unwashed dishes, the kitchen table was piled high with unopened mail and old shopping bags, the sofa looked ragged and greasy, the floor was covered in filth. It didn’t look like the kind of place to raise a kid.  The Chief wrinkled his nose in disgust. This was not Lorraine; she was raised a neatnik, but then she met this man, this fool.

“You can’t fix this situation”, said the Chief, “only Lorraine can do that for you, if she has the heart for it.”

Conrad was shifty, looking around like he was trying to find a place to hide. 

“It starts with your state of mind. What are you thinking Conrad? I need to know, Son”. The Chief’s hand was hovering near his gun again.

Conrad felt exposed, vulnerable. What if Lorraine sent these photos to her friends? To women, no problem, but to other men? He'd never be able to show his face around town again.

“Embarrassed? Ashamed?”, said Conrad, scrambling for the right word, "Yes, that's it... I feel shame," he sounded relieved, like he'd found the answer that would make things right and convince Lorraine and the Chief to bury his little secret.

The Chief was unmoved. “Unfortunately, that isn’t enough. Shame is about how you see yourself; it’s not about what you gone done. It's not about right and wrong”.

Big Lou was talking in riddles. “I don’t understand,” said Conrad.

“No, you don’t, and that’s why there’s no path to forgiveness for you”, said the Chief.

” But I haven’t even cheated on Lorraine. I’ve never even seen that girl", said Conrad.

” It doesn’t matter,” said the Chief. There was a full-force finality in the expression, that ended things between them.

The Chief was looking for guilt, but there was none.

+++

The appointment at the pediatric clinic finished at noon. Lorraine was still getting used to the idea of going solo, but it was hard work. She bundled the baby into the back seat in the of her father's Subaru hatchback.

It was a gorgeous sunny day, so she made a quick detour into Bairstow town and stopped near the waterfront. The Baby would enjoy the sun, the crash of the waves on the rocks, and the scent of pines.

There was a girl, a pretty girl walking on the rocks, taking selfies. She had bright blue, almond shaped eyes, bob-cut blond hair.

“Hi, are you Beth, by chance?”, said Lorraine.

The girl looked startled and backed off a bit.

“No, I ain’t who you think I am”, said the girl. She was pretty, an adornment… thin and finely drawn, perfect skin. 

“I’m sorry, I made a mistake. I thought you were someone else”.

“That happens occasionally,” said the girl. She was still a bit wary, but she was also interested in the baby. It was just the three of them down by on the rocky shore.

“What’s the baby’s name?”, she asked, edging towards Lorraine to get a better look. 

“Lou-Anne,” said Lorraine, holding the baby up so that the girl could see her properly.

The girl stared at the baby like she was a creature from outer space, “Oh, she’s so beautiful. Would you mind if I held her, just for a moment?”

That moment felt to Lorraine like the end of one thing, the beginning of another. 

It felt like forgiveness.