Judge Donna Ashby Gage.
The Associated Press article was two columns to the right of the photograph beneath a bold-type headline.
Boston Judge Resigns amid Allegations of Sex with Minor
Though the headline said it all, I read the article. Superior Court Judge Donna Ashby, a graduate of Burlingame High School, had been caught by a court bailiff having sex in her office with a twenty-year-old law school clerk. The clerk admitted to a three-month tryst of sexual acts in Judge Ashby’s office and car. Further investigation revealed several other relationships with her judicial clerks. Married and a mother of three, Donna had resigned from her position. The article quoted her attorney as saying she was seeking counseling for an addictive personality.
“And she still has the big tits,” Mickie said.
I considered the photograph and saw enough in Donna’s face to peel away the years to reveal the heavyset nineteen-year-old girl who had stolen my virginity and used me as her personal vibrator, as Mickie had so aptly put it.
I set down the paper. “At times, I used to think my time with her was the best sex I’d ever have.”
Mickie’s eyebrows arched. “Oh, thank you very much.”
I came around the counter and held her. “That’s not what I meant. What I meant was that, at seventeen, the sex came without strings, without baggage, without expectations. It was just sex.”
“And at other times?” Mickie asked.
“I resent her.”
Mickie pulled back from me and gave me a curious stare.
“She intended to steal my virginity from the moment I walked into my father’s store, and she did. She saw me as easy pickings, and she relished the thought that she would be my first.”
“Well, whatever it is that makes that titillating for her, it’s apparently never gone away,” Mickie said.
“No pun intended?”
Donna had taken something I could never get back, something my monastic years helped me admire about my parents’ relationship, the knowledge that they had loved only each other. Donna was part of the reason I chose to be celibate. She did not come to my dreams and memories as a sweet recollection; she brought back the shame and humiliation I’d felt when I realized, standing in her kitchen, that love can be faked and, therefore, never fully trusted.
“You know, my desire for you has never gone away,” I said.
Mickie put down her coffee cup. “Oh no, you’re not getting off that easily.”
“For what?”
“For saying she was the best sex of your life. We’ll just see about that.” And she pulled open my bathrobe.
8
Late that morning, after a shower, Mickie and I stood in the bathroom, brushing our teeth and combing our hair. We were going to retrieve my father from the rehabilitation center and bring him to the hospital to visit my mother. I broached an idea that came to me while sitting in my mother’s hospital room.
“I want to take my mother to Lourdes,” I said.
Mickie spit toothpaste in the sink and considered me in the mirror. She stood in her underwear. She was wider in the hips but otherwise not much different from the young woman with the hard body in the bikini I first set eyes on at the Russian River. “France?”
“Yes. It’s said that the Blessed Mother appeared to Saint Bernadette back in the eighteen hundreds and it’s since become a Catholic pilgrimage. My mother has been devoted to the Blessed Mother her entire life,” I said. “She deserves to go.”
Mickie rinsed with mouthwash, spit again, then walked closer and put a hand on my shoulder. “No doubt. But you do realize there won’t be any miracles, Sam.”