A Thread of Truth (18 page)

He leaned harder against me and smiled; his voice was low and even, like the voice you'd use to calm a skittish horse. “Easy, baby. Calm down.” He squeezed my flesh with his hand.

“What're you so scared of? Huh? Bet you've never been with anybody before, have you? Well, that'll sure be different for me after all these years with this bunch. Normally, I'd make you give it up five times, a hundred dollars a pop, before your bill was paid off. Tell you what, we'll make it three. Your first time's gotta be worth something extra, three hundred. And after the other two?”

He grinned and rocked his hips hard into me. “I'm good, baby. After the other two, you'll want to pay me to do you.”

His face was close to mine and his breath smelled of cigarettes. He tried to kiss me and I bit his lip. His reaction was instantaneous; he drew back his hand and slapped me hard.

“You little…Don't try that again! You hear me?” He was breathing hard. “I don't know what you've heard from your girlfriends at school, but it's not gonna hurt that bad. You relax and cooperate and I'll be real gentle, I promise. Unless you want it to be rough? Is that what you're after? Hey, baby, if that's your bag, I'm happy to oblige.”

He pushed my pinioned wrist hard against the rough brick wall, making me cry out, “Stop it! No!”

The music for Carmel's striptease was blaring and the applause and catcalls from the audience drowned out the sound of my voice.

Jerry was done talking. He tugged the pink ribbon that held my blouse closed, then pushed the lace back and grabbed the top of the white satin corset that lay underneath and jerked open the tear-away seams.

I was crying again. My fury and panic were replaced by a feeling of terrible powerlessness. “Stop. Please, stop.”

“Jerry,” a deep, calm voice came from the doorway that led to the dressing rooms. “Jerry, what're you doing? In a place like this, with so many warm, willing women, rape isn't just a low-class thing to do, it's a flat-out waste of energy. You should know better.”

Jerry's grip on my wrist loosened and I could feel the formerly taut muscles in his body go slack. Released, I pushed him away and pulled the lace top closed around my chest.

“Mind your own business, will you, Hodge? What are you doing backstage, anyway?”

“I just came back to let you know that the guys at table nine are my guests. Put their tab on my bill. Also, I came back to meet this beautiful young lady and congratulate her on reconsidering her career options.”

He smiled at me and when he spoke his voice was soft and sincere. “You're much too pretty and sweet to be working in a place like this, miss. As soon as Jerry comes to his senses and lets you go, run home to your parents and stay there.”

“Thanks,” I whispered gratefully.

“Gee, ‘Uncle' Hodge,” Jerry said mockingly, “I'm sure we all appreciate your advice, but why don't you just butt out. She owes me five hundred dollars. I gave her an advance for dancing and now she don't want to dance. Okay, so fine. I'm reasonable. I'm willing to negotiate. I'm just taking back what I'm owed in trade, that's all.”

“Yeah, Jerry, you're a prince of a guy. Everybody knows that.” The handsome man with the kind eyes and soft voice, Hodge, looked at Jerry and then at me. “You owe him five hundred dollars?”

I was worn out. The situation was too complicated to explain, so I just nodded. “Yes,” I said.

Hodge reached in the pocket of his suit, fished out a money clip fat with bills, peeled off five, and handed them to Jerry. “There you go, Jerry. You're whole again. Happy?”

Jerry shrugged and closed the bills in his hand.

“Everyone's happy. Now, Ivy Rose…Is that your real name?”

I shook my head. “No. It's just Ivy. Ivy Peterman.”

“Well, Miss Peterman, if you'd like to change into your street clothes and gather up your things, I'll be happy to give you a lift somewhere.”

I hesitated. His smile was so genuine and he seemed so nice, but I'd thought Jerry was nice at first, too.

“If you'd rather take a taxi, I understand. Not a problem. But my Mercedes is parked right outside and you'll be completely safe with me.”

Hodge lifted his hands, his palms open toward me. “I won't lay a hand on you. I promise.”

I
was amazed by Ivy's ability to tell her story so calmly.

But, in a way, it made sense. Probably she'd run out of tears years before. Having been through troubles of my own, my unexpected and, at the time, unwanted divorce followed by near financial ruin, possible loss of my business, and then a breast cancer diagnosis, I understood that misery can become so commonplace that you just can't shed one more tear, that sometimes the only thing to do is distance yourself from the pain. Otherwise, you might lose your mind.

Still, I couldn't help but wonder: If this whole mess ended up in court and she had to testify, wouldn't she make a more convincing witness if she did shed a few tears? I understood her, but would a judge?

Only one time did Ivy show any emotion that afternoon. As she told the story of her “rescue” by Hodge, how he'd helped her collect her few possessions from the apartment she'd so briefly rented, and then offered to let her stay in his guest room until she was “back on her feet,” acting the perfect gentleman, treating her kindly, never so much as trying to hold her hand, winning her trust and, eventually, her love, Ivy's face grew red and angry, not with Hodge but with herself.

“I was so stupid! Even after all I'd been through, I really believed that he was different! An idiotic little girl who believed in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Stupid! By that time I should have learned my lesson: All men are the same.”

No one but Franklin had spoken since Ivy began talking, and even he said little, occasionally asking a question to clarify some point or other, the rest of the time silently scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad, but I couldn't keep quiet in the face of her outburst.

“Ivy, you were a little girl, or very nearly. And you were alone in the world. How could you have kept from having feelings for an older man who was so bent on winning your affections? You weren't stupid. Just young. And you're wrong. Men
aren't
all the same.”

“Ha!” Ivy laughed bitterly. “Sure they aren't.”

“Your father wasn't like that.”

She didn't say anything to that, just ducked her head and bit her lower lip.

At Franklin's gentle suggestion, Ivy continued the story, telling how she, nearly four months after moving into Hodge's guest room, had been the one to make the first advance, impulsively kissing Hodge one day after he'd come home from work carrying big brown bags of Ivy's favorite Chinese food as a surprise. When Ivy said that nothing more had happened that first night, but related how over the following week that first tentative kiss had led to a few more, then to longer and more passionate caresses, until the lovesick teenager gave herself fully and willingly, my dislike of Hodge Edelman bloomed into red-hot hatred.

He'd known what he wanted and what he was planning from the first moment he met Ivy. He'd been patient, gained her trust, and waited until just the right moment to make his move. After witnessing the scene between Ivy and Jerry, he'd realized that one false move, one overeager caress would send Ivy running. He knew how to get what he wanted, that was for sure. Poor Ivy never stood a chance.

Just weeks after entering into a physical relationship with Hodge, Ivy was pregnant. She was afraid to tell Hodge about the baby, uncertain about how he would react to the news and worried that he might want her to have an abortion. But when she finally worked up the courage to tell him, he was thrilled. He insisted they get married and, on Ivy's eighteenth birthday, they did.

“I was so happy,” Ivy said ruefully. “On my wedding day, eighteen years old and five months pregnant, I was sure that I was on my way to happily ever after. No one on earth could have convinced me otherwise.”

Her eyes were unfocused and she brushed a fingertip over the ridge of her chapped lips before shrugging off the memory of that day. “Well. Anyway. You know what happened after that,” she said, looking at Franklin. “The rest is just like I told you.”

“And that's all? Your marriage, how the abuse escalated, the events that led you to run away and take the children? Everything happened as you said it did? There's nothing else?”

“No,” Ivy said slowly. “I haven't left anything out. I swear, I haven't. I've told the whole truth.”

Franklin nodded slowly and bit the inside of his lip while he read over his notes. “Okay. Good.”

He looked up, slid his reading glasses to the end of his nose, and looked over the tops of the lenses. “If you're sure you have nothing to add, I think that's enough for today. I need to go to my office, transcribe my notes, spend some time mapping out strategy, and then try to track down some people who can verify your side of the story. Tomorrow, you and I should get together, Ivy. I'll want to ask you a few more questions.”

Ivy frowned. “What kind of questions? I've already told you everything.”

“There are just some things I think we should talk about in private.”

“Why? Everybody here has already heard all my secrets. I've got nothing to hide.” Ivy's voice took on a panicked edge. Her eyes darted from Franklin to me.

“What aren't you telling me? He's going to do it, isn't he? Hodge is going to take the kids from me.” Ivy gripped the edge of the table and rose halfway to her feet as if ready to run out the door.

I reached my arm out and started to reassure her, but Abigail, who hadn't said a word the entire afternoon, beat me to it.

“Ivy, sit down,” she ordered. Ivy looked at her uncertainly and then obeyed, sinking slowly down into the chair.

“No one is going to take your children from you because of a mistake you made while you were still a child yourself,” Abigail insisted. “Stepping onto that stage might not have been the brightest move you ever made, but everyone makes errors in judgment now and again—especially when they're young. And my goodness! In spite of the trap that awful Jerry person set for you, when push came to shove, you couldn't go through with it! So quit saying you worked in a strip club! You didn't!”

Abigail's frustration creased her brow and she glared at Ivy. Abigail's sympathy tended to manifest itself in…well…unusual ways. Knowing her the way I do, I understood it was her concern for Ivy that caused her to raise her voice, but I don't think Ivy realized that. The poor girl looked like she was under siege.

“If that's the terrible secret that's had you on the run all this time and that's had you quaking in your boots so badly that you wouldn't even let anyone get close…!” Abigail shouted and smacked the tabletop with her hand. “Well, that's just the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
That's
the big skeleton in your closet? The fact that you went to a strip club and
didn't
take off your clothes? Ivy, that's not a skeleton. It's not even a bone! How could you have been so taken in? How could you have been so stupid?”

After an entire afternoon spent keeping her cool, telling the saddest and most intimate details of her past with barely a flicker of emotion, Ivy broke under the strain. Her eyes were glassy with tears and her shoulders quivered from the effort it took her not to sob. “You don't understand. You don't know Hodge. He's very…he has this way of making things happen…You don't understand.”

It was hard to understand how a young woman who was so strong in some situations could be so vulnerable and easily manipulated in others. Just a couple of years before, I'd have been scratching my head over this, but that was before I'd started volunteering to teach quilting at the Stanton Center. Even more than physical violence, it is psychological coercion that keeps women like Ivy under the control of their abusers.

Often, abusers will isolate their victims, taking them far from the influence of family and friends, effectively eliminating their access to support systems and making them utterly dependent on the abuser in every way. That's why the victims of domestic violence so frequently go back to their abusers: Once implanted, the psychological dependency between abuser and victim is hard to overcome.

In Ivy, an orphaned runaway with no family to turn to, Hodge had found an easy target. The job of isolating her was more than half accomplished when he found her and, alone as she was and with no way of supporting herself, Ivy had quickly begun to view Hodge not just as her rescuer, but as her only means of survival.

Margot had told me the story of how, the first time Ivy had tried to stand up for herself, Hodge had pushed her and baby Bethany out the door and into the snow and refused to let them back in the house. I was pretty certain that Hodge's choice of neighborhood, far on the outskirts of town, and the timing of his confrontation, before anyone else had moved into the subdivision, so that Ivy couldn't seek aid from a kind neighbor, had been entirely intentional. He wanted to make Ivy believe that she owed everything, even her safety and that of her children, to Hodge and that her very existence depended on maintaining his goodwill. It had worked.

That accomplished, Hodge had gone on to convince Ivy that she was so worthless and her past was so shameful that anyone who found out about it would shun her as a degenerate and an unfit mother. Ivy's whole world was her children. And since she was convinced Hodge had the power to take them from her, she had continued to tolerate his abuse in hopes that he would keep her “shameful” secret.

In Ivy's mind, Hodge had an omnipotent, almost godlike power to control her and others.

For someone who hasn't been through it or hasn't been educated about the relationships of abusers and victims, it was difficult to understand. But Abigail, of all people, should have been more sympathetic.

Long decades before, Abigail had been under the spell of a man who used her love for him to control her and get her to do things she wouldn't have otherwise done, things that poisoned her relationship with her family, things she'd been so ashamed of that, like Ivy, she'd pushed others away for fear they'd find out about her past. It wasn't until Liza had come unexpectedly and unwillingly into her life that Abigail had finally been forced to reveal the truth to her estranged niece.

It hadn't been easy but, over time, Liza had forgiven Abigail. The process of Abigail forgiving herself had been more difficult. And I wasn't entirely convinced the operation was complete. In another situation, I might have chalked up Abigail's angry response to Ivy's seemingly unreasonable fear of Hodge to her usual impatience with weakness in all its forms, but I suspected that her harsh reprimand of Ivy was really a reprimand of her younger, more foolish self, the girl who had thrown so much away in trying to hold on to the love of a man who was incapable of loving her or anyone else.

Sobbing, Ivy pushed back from the worktable and jumped to her feet so quickly that the folding chair she'd been sitting on fell onto the floor with a metallic clatter. There was panic in her eyes and she bolted for the door, like a wild animal desperate to escape a predator.

We all jumped to our feet, but Abigail reached Ivy first. She grabbed the frightened girl, wrapping her long, strong arms around her in a grip that was as firm as a vise and as loving as a mother's caress. At first, Ivy fought to break free from Abigail's embrace, but after a few moments she ceased struggling. She raised her shoulders high, taking in a deep breath of air and then letting it out in an anguished, audible sigh, and collapsed against Abigail, resting her head on the older woman's shoulder like a child laying her head on a pillow. She was still crying, but the terrified hysteria had passed.

With tears in her own eyes, Abigail whispered, “Stupid girl. Stupid, silly girl. You're wrong. I do understand. I know. Just calm down. Rest now. He's not going to hurt you anymore or take your children. I won't let him. Calm down now. Breathe.”

She sniffed, pulled Ivy even closer, and said firmly, “Hodge Edelman might think he's a tough customer, but he hasn't tangled with
me
before. I am a Burgess. Descended from a long, proud line of the most formidable, cunning, and stubborn Yankee stock in New England. On top of that, I'm richer than Midas. And I promise you, Ivy, I am going to use every ounce of my considerable wealth, power, and personal influence to run Hodge Edelman out of New Bern with his tail between his legs. He is not going to take your children. I'm not going to let that happen! Do you hear me? I'm not going to let it happen!”

Margot stepped forward and laid her hand on Ivy's bowed head. “Neither am I,” she said.

I moved close, gripped Margot's hand with mine, and added my pledge to the others. “Neither am I.”

A moment passed. Ivy wriggled an arm loose from Abigail's death grip and reached out to bring Margot and me into her embrace. By then, we were all crying, but it was all right. These were good tears, the kind of tears that clean out the old junk and, when shed among the company of friends, can water the seeds of powerful and unstoppable resolve.

But the men, of course, didn't realize this. Few men understand the healing benefit and emotional relief of tears. I've never understood why, but nothing seems to make men feel as uncomfortable and helpless as weeping women. I suppose it's because when a woman cries, a man feels like he ought to
do
something, but he hasn't the first idea of what that might be.

Behind me, I could hear a masculine clearing of throats and the shuffling of leather lace-ups. After a few moments, Garrett said, “Uh…Mom? It's nearly five. Would you like me to close out the registers and tell everyone downstairs that they can go home?”

I squeezed Ivy one more time and looked up, smiling and wiping my eyes. “Yes. Thanks, Garrett.”

Charlie pulled on his nose and looked at his watch. “I've got to be running myself. Must check in with Maurice before the dinner crowd shows up.” He gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and scrambled for the door with Garrett close on his heels.