The Dark at the Bottom of the Stair

I was amused at his affected English accent. His biography made it clear that his family had come over from Ireland during the Potato Famine. "Oh well," I thought, "the rich must have their little idiosyncrasies."

As I looked at him, I thought I could detect some traces of his stroke. His left arm seemed to hang somewhat loosely, and the left side of his face seemed to sag just a bit more than his age would normally dictate. Nevertheless, he was still a handsome man, and it was easy to see how women might be taken with him even if he hadn't been rich.

"So you're an old friend of Maddy's," he went on. "It was a shame about her passing. She was a beautiful, intelligent woman. I certainly miss her. Wish I could have come to her funeral, but with the stroke and all . . ." He shrugged with a smile.

I gritted my teeth as he rattled off his platitudes, but held my tongue. I would get my turn.

He seemed to grow uneasy at my silence, and after a minute he spoke again.

"Well, I understand you have something that Maddy wanted me to have, is that right?"

When I merely nodded, he went on, "Well that's just like her, always thinking of others. She was always that way, don't you know?"

As I thought back on what I'd learned this weekend, I wondered if Maddy had ever truly stopped to think about others. Maybe that wasn't fair. But if she did, it was only after she'd already done what she wanted to do, I thought bitterly.

He cleared his throat. "Ahem, well, what is it exactly that you have for me from her? Some sort of keepsake or a letter, perhaps?"

"No," I replied, "nothing like that, just a simple message."

When I paused, he became impatient. "Well then, what is it?"

I bent over the desk until my face was about a foot away from his. "Just this," I said evenly, "Fuck you!"

He pushed his chair back in surprise and alarm. "Hey," he gasped, "what is this?" Then an odd look came over his face, and he snarled, "Who are you, anyway?" I noticed that his English accent had disappeared.

"I already told your housekeeper," I said evenly, "but I think she misunderstood me. My name is Raleigh, Raleigh Moore."

He flinched when he heard me. "Then you must be Maddy's . . . I mean you were . . ."

"That's right," I cut him off, "I'm Maddy's husband, the cuckold you thought you'd fooled for so many years. Only now I'm here, and now it's time for you to pay for what you've done."

His face went pale and he looked wildly around. His left hand tried to reach for the buzzer I saw embedded in his desk, but his movements were jerky and slow.

"Don't even think about trying to call for help," I told him quickly. "I can be across that desk long before anyone could ever get here."

He jerked his hand away. "What do you plan to do, Moore, kill me? Over a little affair that happened a long time ago? Do you really want to spend the rest of your life in prison just because your wife stepped out on you a few times?"

"No, the adultery probably wouldn't be enough to do it," I replied. "But the fact that you got my wife pregnant might whet my appetite, and the fact that I unwittingly raised your child as my daughter would certainly add to my motivation. Then, of course, you wound up seducing my daughter – make that your daughter -- when she ran away to confront you. Oh, and there's also the little matter of her daughter: your daughter's daughter. Let's see: infidelity, illegitimacy, incest. When you put all that together, life in prison doesn't sound so terrible to me."

As I went through my list of grievances, Morrison grew increasingly agitated. Sweat began to run down his forehead and into his eyes.

I leaned over his desk once again. "When I went to bed last night, I was planning to kill you today. But this morning I came up with a better idea. I'm going to let you live so you can experience all the pain and grief and horror that I've gone through."

His voice was a hoarse whisper. "What are you going to do?"

"Simple," I said, "I'm going to ruin you. When I leave here, I'm going straight to the police to swear out a warrant for your arrest on a charge of incest. With the DNA test you and Maddy had done on Grace and the one I'll have done on your daughter's daughter, I think a conviction will be a slam dunk."

"But a man with your fortune might be able to buy his way out of something like that. So I'm not going to take that risk. As soon as I leave the police department, I'm heading to the offices of the Sun-Times, and I'm going to give them the whole sordid story. Once I'm done there, I'm going to contact every tabloid newspaper and gossip columnist who's ever run a story on you and let them know what kind of slime you really are."

"When I get finished, you're going to have to wall up that iron gate out front of your house, because every blogger in the world is going to be clamoring to get more dirt on you and the paparazzi will be swarming to photograph your crippled body."

"And as for all your friends in the art world, once they learn what you've done, I'll bet they won't touch you with a ten-foot pole. They'll probably post your picture with their security guards just to make sure you don't even get in the door of their museums. You'll go from being a patron of the arts to a social outcast, a leper shunned and reviled."

As I was speaking, Morrison slumped lower and lower into his chair. It was clear that he could envision the fate I was predicting, and when I finished, he visibly shuddered.

Suddenly, his right hand shot out and yanked open one of the drawers of the desk. Darting his hand inside, he pulled out a 9mm pistol, which he proceeded to point at my chest.

"You're an even bigger fool than I thought, Moore," he snarled at me. "What's to keep me from shooting you right now before you get a chance to tell your story to the world? All I have to do is say you threatened me and I had to defend myself. I wouldn't even be lying."

I stood up straight. "Go ahead and shoot me, Morrison. Be my guest. After what you've done to me and my family, I'm already dead."

He was taken aback by my response, and he hesitated.

"But before you do, I want you to realize that shooting me won't do you any good," I went on. "This morning, I sent the whole story to my attorney back home. If he doesn't hear from me by this afternoon, I've instructed him to give all the facts to the Chicago police and then to follow up with the Sun-Times and all the rest of the media. Your name is going to be dragged so deep in the mud that you'll never get clean, and there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop it."

"But what about Grace, what about my grand-daughter?" he pleaded. "You're condemning them to the same fate as me. You don't want to do that."

"My daughter – I mean, your daughter – already hates herself because she feels so guilty about what she's done. Telling the truth is the only way I know to help her forgive herself. And as for poor little Susie, I seriously doubt that her name or picture would ever appear in any news media. Even if it did, that poor benighted child would probably never know about it, much less care."

"You've already done all you can do to us, Morrison. There's nothing you can do to harm us any more than you already have. The only thing left is for you to join us in the hell that you've made."

"But I have money," he exclaimed, "lots of money. I can make you a very rich man if you'll just forget about all this."

I sneered at him. "Your money won't give me back the love you took from my wife. It won't give me the daughter who should have been mine, and it won't give me the grand-daughter I didn't know. Your money means nothing to me."

As I stared at him, he slowly lowered the gun to his desk. He looked up at me with haunted eyes; there was nothing he could say. I turned to leave. I heard the movement behind me, and when I looked over my shoulder, I saw him pick up the automatic again. I just kept walking – if he was going to shoot me, it would have to be in the back. "Let's see him explain that one to the police," I laughed to myself.

I reached the door and opened it without looking back again. Nothing happened. I stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind me.

The housekeeper was waiting. "Are you leaving now, Mr. Raleigh?"

"Yes," I replied, "I've done all I came to do."

As I walked out the front door, the big steel gate began to roll back, and I started walking toward it. I had almost reached it when I heard a single shot ring out from within those gray walls. I just kept going.

Unbelievably, my car was right where I'd left it. I pulled away from the curb, and as I drove, I rolled down the windows to let fresh air into the car. Maybe that would remove the stench of decadence and perversion that had clung to me from that dark room under the staircase.

As I drove, I thought about what had happened. I knew that mortals couldn't best the gods, but at least I hadn't taken that last step down into murder and madness either. Then another thought struck me: what if I wasn't even the main character in the drama? Maybe the gods' target had been Morrison all along, not me. If that were true, I didn't know whether to be relieved or outraged. Finally I decided it didn't matter: either way, the play was finally coming to an end.

When I reached Skokie, I had to drive past the little park where Grace, Susie and I had walked the previous day. Looking out the side window, I spied a small boy who had climbed to the top of the spiral slide but was now perched on top, afraid to make the descent. I pulled over to watch. His mother was standing at the bottom of the slide. "It's okay," she said, "it's safe to come down." He looked at her with wide eyes. Then he seemed to make up his mind and, releasing his grip, slid down the ramp. Sure enough, as he neared the end his momentum slowed until he came to a safe stop at the bottom. He looked up at his mother solemnly, then hurried around to the ladder to begin climbing again.

I smiled and restarted my car. I was ready to start over too.

Grace must have been looking through the curtains because she opened the door before I could ring the bell. She rushed out and threw her arms around me. "Oh, Daddy, I was so worried about you. I tried to call but you didn't answer your phone. I was sure something had happened to you."

I smiled at the irony of her words, but I didn't say anything. Instead, I put my arm around her waist and walked inside with her. "You need to get Susie ready," I told her. "I'm taking you home."

Epilog
I hadn't been bluffing with Morrison: I had emailed the whole story to my attorney that morning. But when I heard on the radio that wealthy philanthropist Carleton Morrison had been found dead in his home from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, I told my attorney to leave the documents be. Morrison's suicide was sufficient expiation of his sins as far as I was concerned.

But I wasn't quite done with Mr. Morrison yet. The libertine had neither a wife nor a will, so naturally his relatives went into a frenzy over the prospect of dividing his estate. Imagine their dismay when my attorney came forward with Grace's DNA test. Under Illinois law, if a person dies with a descendant but no spouse, the entire estate passes to the descendant.

Morrison had taken a terrible toll on my family, but when the final curtain fell, I was the one still standing on the stage. Moreover, I emerged with my life and my sanity, and I had the rest of my family back. Perhaps most important of all, I knew my precious grand-daughter would never lack for any care or treatment she might need for the rest of her life. That was good enough for me.