Crescent City Connection

why she’d requested the missionary outpost as soon as news of her ex-husband’s criminal activities became public. She was a wreck and must have been worse then. “I was married to a psychopath and I didn’t even know it.”
    “Why do you say he’s a psychopath?”
    She lifted her chin and stared at a place far outside the office. “A million little lies. Two million cruelties without meaning—except to him, I suppose. That’s what I know about him. But what’s he doing now? I couldn’t tell you. I haven’t spoken to him since the thing broke in Atlanta. We have a child together, you know.”
    “I thought you said ‘children.’”
    “Did I? Daniel was his son by a first wife, but I guess I think of him as mine.”
    “Odd—he wasn’t mentioned in the church records.”
    “What records? Oh, I know—we filled out insurance forms. He hasn’t been a dependent in—oh, twenty-five or -six years I guess—he’s much older than Isaac.”
    Skip said nothing, hoping she’d expand without prompting on Jacomine’s life story. When the silence had gotten too long for comfort, Irene Jacomine said, “It was rather ironic. That first wife is probably the only human being who ever got the best of him. Maybe it’s part of the reason he’s the way he is.”
    Irene spoke very precisely, almost formally, as if expecting to be judged. She was a timid woman, Skip thought. She spoke kindly. “We really don’t know much about his background. Maybe you can fill in some of the blanks.”
    “Evidently I didn’t know enough myself. I think there’s a lot I still don’t know.” She took a deep breath. “But I do know how Daniel came to be. Errol got a girl pregnant when he was fifteen, and married her. He was married at fifteen—I can’t even imagine that. Can you? They ran away together, those two, and in two years Errol was back—without Rosemarie. He told me that she left him, he didn’t leave her. If she did—” Skip thought she saw admiration on Irene’s face, but the older woman quickly remembered she was a church lady. “She probably didn’t. Errol is an inveterate liar. However, what seems certain is that she arrived back in Savannah some five years after that, bringing the child, whom she dumped on Errol. I married a criminal, I know that, but sometimes—I don’t know, sometimes I think he might have, too.”
    For a second Skip wondered if she meant herself, but she said, “The first time around.”
    “Imagine that—abandoning your husband and then your child.” She shook her head. “Mmm. Mmm. Mmm.
    “And then he left Savannah. I guess he didn’t want to be found after that.” She tried out what was meant to pass for a chuckle. “He was preaching even then. And finally he got a church from the Community and then another one, until he got the big one in Atlanta. We met in a small town in Alabama, where he had a church at the time. I was younger than he was, and flattered when the preacher took a shine to me. I guess he dazzled me.”
    Skip kept a poker face but she wondered, as she often had, why Jacomine’s particular charisma was invisible to her. She supposed she had an overdeveloped bullshit-detector.
    “I guess I thought he must have an interesting past, this preacher man with a teenage boy—I met him seven years after Rosemarie came back. Daniel was fourteen then, and so shy he couldn’t look at anything but the floor. If ever a boy needed a mother, it was that one.”
    “And so you married his father.”
    She looked astonished. “Well, that wasn’t why. I was in love with him.”
    Skip thought perhaps she hadn’t managed to keep the perplexity off her face, because Irene seemed to have a need to justify herself. “He seemed such a principled man.” For a moment her features captured that early passion, and then gave way to irony. “Seemed is right. I guess I fell into the trap of listening to what he said rather than seeing what he did.”
    “What did he do?”
    “Oh, he was horrible to the boy. He beat him, but I didn’t even know about that. I did see him speak harshly to Daniel, and humiliate him.” She shook her head again. “I just don’t know why I thought it was all right. He said the boy was a behavior problem, and it hurt him a lot to do that, but he had to, a psychologist had told him to; and he said the school counselors were always telling him he was too lenient. I thought if they said to do it… now I know. Now I know.”
    Skip said, “I beg