The Good Lie (17 page)

This Whole Fable

Samuel Greaves grinned at me so
smugly.

I hurried to tell my side.  “All
that stuff was hers—not mine.”

“My question is do you know Tessa Blake,
yes or no?”

“Yes, but you don’t understand—she
lied—”

“Maybe you’ll help us with that in
a moment.  First, would you tell the court who she is?”

I swallowed hard.  “A girl I used
to know from church.”

“A girl you knew very well,
correct?”

“Correct.”

Toni Margress did not look happy. 
Hadn’t she warned me she didn’t like surprises?  Well, guess what?  Neither do
I.

She rose from her chair.  “Your
Honor, this is all very interesting I’m sure, but I don’t see what relevance—”

“Did you and Miss Blake purchase
condoms?”

Toni Margress remained on her feet
and shot me a look of confusion.  I felt outnumbered and helpless.  Why did Tessa
tell?  Why did my father let her?

“Can we have some foundation?”
Judge Beacons asked.  “When are we talking about?”

“This would have been when you were
what, Lizzie, thirteen?” Samuel Greaves said.

“They were Tessa’s.  I swear.”

“Uh-huh, and you went with her to a
women’s clinic, correct?”

“Yes, but—”

“Where you both received counseling
in birth control and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, is that
correct?”

The heat on my cheeks had reached
my eyes by now and I used them to try to burn a hole in Greaves’s face.  He was
so pleased with himself.  He laid down his legal pad and folded his arms across
his chest and tilted his head down to study me over his glasses.  “Would you
agree with me that the purpose of birth control is to prevent pregnancy?”

“Yes—”

“And that only the sexually active
would be concerned with pregnancy?”

“No!  I was a virgin—except for my
father—” I stammered, “and I wanted to stay a virgin!  I still do.”

“Well, condoms and other forms of
birth control don’t preserve virginity, now do they?”

“No, you don’t understand—”

“So to summarize, at the age of
thirteen you purchased condoms and sought counseling in the prevention of
pregnancy and STDs.”

“I was doing it for Tessa!”

“Your Honor,” Toni Margress tried
again, “none of this is relevant to today’s proceeding.  We’re here on a child
custody matter.  Counsel is simply trying to harass this witness.”

“Bring it home,” the judge told
Greaves.  “Does this have a point?”

“The point is, Your Honor, this
witness has not been truthful with the court.  She has been sexually active
since she was at least thirteen—”

“No, I haven’t!”

The judge held up his hand to
silence me and Toni Margress caught my eye and shook her head.  Why wouldn’t
they let me tell my story?

Greaves continued, “—since she was
thirteen, yet she claims she’s a virgin.  What else is she lying about?  Maybe
this whole—”  He waved his hand in the air.  “—fable about sexual abuse is
really a cover for her promiscuity.  It won’t be the first time a sexually
active girl has done that.”

“Objection!”

“You’ve made your point,” the judge
said, “for whatever it’s worth.  Move on.”

Toni Margress seemed satisfied by
that.  She sat down again.

Greaves shrugged and made a face
and shook his head as though he were the victim of some clear miscarriage of
justice.  Asshole.  He went back to his notes while I sat there drowning in a
soup of my own sweat.

I recognized the questions for what
they had been—a game, a way to rattle me—and I hated myself for letting it
work.  I was finished.  A shattered, shaking liar up on the stand with nothing
better to say for myself than my name and what grade I was in.  Maybe what
Greaves had said wasn’t relevant in the judge’s eyes, but the asshole lawyer
hadn’t intended it that way.  He was speaking just to me.  He wanted me to know
that my father wasn’t afraid of me.  He also wanted to remind me I was lying.

Samuel Greaves laid down his legal
pad and announced, “No further questions then.”

“You can step down,” the judge told
me.  Easy for him to say.

I felt sick, weak, completely used
up.

I made my way back past the tables,
past my mother and Toni Margress and that asshole Greaves, through the little
wooden gate that would be sweet outside a cottage but seemed out of place in a
courtroom, out through the double wooden doors into the corridor as Posie
padded behind me and whispered, “You did great.”  Bless her heart, she’s such a
liar.

My father sat on the bench in the
hallway outside the courtroom.  As soon as he saw me he cried, “Lizzie!”

And collapsed onto the floor.

The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things

[1]

It wasn’t real, of course—or at
least I didn’t believe it.  I knew it was just another ploy.

I stood in the corridor with
Greaves and Posie and my mother and everyone else and stared at my father lying
on the dirty linoleum.  Someone propped up his feet with a sports coat.  My
father kept his hand over his heart and panted.  His eyes were closed most but
not all of the way.  I could see he was watching us.

I kept my distance, the way you
would if you came upon a wild animal injured in the forest.  He might have
rabies.  He might bite.

What do you do if you’re in my
mother’s situation?  Do you go to him or turn away?  He was her husband still,
and he was another human in need, but bully for her she let others take care of
him while we all waited for the ambulance.

The paramedics took his vitals,
asked questions of him and some of us, then bundled him onto a rolling
stretcher and transported him out of the courthouse.

“Do you think it’s real?” Posie
whispered to me.

“No.”

We followed my mother down the
stairs.  She watched the gurney disappear through the doors and said, “Maybe I
should have gone with him.”

“Why?”

“It looks serious.”

“It’s not,” I assured her.

“He’s still my husband.”

“Go for it,” I said with a roll of
my eyes.

She hesitated, and then the moment
passed.  “I’m going home,” she said wearily.

“See ya.”

What had my father said in his
letter? 
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.
  We
were all liars, weren’t we?  My mother sneaking out on him to fool around with
her lover.  Me and my lies.  My father and his.  And now this last big effort—this
one last lie—to get my mother back.  It wasn’t going to work.  My father was
only forty-seven, so a genuine heart attack was out of the question.

I couldn’t wait for the doctors to
call his bluff.

[2]

Posie and I exited the courthouse,
and there she was, smoking a cigarette, hair bright red, like Raggedy Ann’s.

Leave it to Tessa to be late for
her own performance.

I couldn’t move.  It’s like seeing
a rattlesnake in front of you on the path.  You want to give it enough room.

Tessa looked me straight in the
eye.  Deeply inhaled her cigarette.  How come it looked so much less
frightening when Angela did that?  Somehow Tessa made it seem like she was
sucking out my very soul.

“Is that . . . her?” Posie
muttered.

“Yes.”

“Don’t be afraid.  Let’s go.”

Posie linked her arm in mine.  We
strode right toward Tessa, intending to pass by without a glance.

But of course I couldn’t do that. 
I’m like Lot’s wife—I have to peek.  And just like her, I froze.

“Lizzie,” Tessa said breathily,
like she was getting ready to seduce me.

“Come on,” Posie said.  She tugged
me along.

“This your new bitch?” Tessa
asked.  She took another hit.

Posie halted.  “Ex-
cuse
me?”

Tessa laughed.  “Must be.”

Posie took one step toward her.

“Poz—”

“Lizzie told me all about you,”
Posie said.  “You’re a horrible, wicked person.  I only wish you had the chance
to perjure yourself today.  Then your crimes would be complete.”

“Yeah,” Tessa said to me, ignoring
Posie.  “I saw your dad gurneyed outta here.  You finally manage to kill him?”

“Stay away from me,” I said, and
this time it was my turn to tug at Posie.  We walked away quickly, both
grateful, I think, to escape without any more venom from those eyes.

When we were a reasonable distance
away, Posie asked, “How could you ever be friends with her?”

“I was insane.”

But it wasn’t that at all.

I think you meet people sometimes,
and you’re ready for them or not.  Like meeting Posie, or meeting Jason.

There’s something in your soul,
like a heat sensor, telling you when you’re ripe.  It’s like those stories you
hear about people who go to the same high school but never speak to each other,
then they go to a class reunion ten years later and fall completely, madly in
love.  It could have happened earlier, but neither of them was ready.

If I had met Posie when I was in
elementary school or junior high, would she and I have been friends?  Or did we
have to wait until I was free of Tessa and her poison before I could ever have
a friend like Posie?

Same with Jason.  Maybe we’re meant
to be together some day, but does that mean I should go for it now?  What if I
know I’m not ready?  Will he still be there when I am ready?

They’re the kinds of puzzles that
can drive you out of your mind.  All these questions of fate and destiny and
free will.

Like this one, for example: 

If I hadn’t been making out with
Jason on my birthday;

If I hadn’t walked in on my father
and Mikey wrestling in their underwear when I came home that night;

If I weren’t friends with Posie at
the time;

If Posie hadn’t been following
Angela Peligro’s career;

If the priests hadn’t molested
those children, and given Angela all those cases to win;

If Angela hadn’t given me the idea
of how to trap my father;

If my father hadn’t written that
letter, and dug his own grave;

If I hadn’t testified at the
hearing, and made up all those lies;

Would anything that happened next
ever have happened?

It’s enough to drive you insane.

Victory Party

Toni Margress called my mother a
few hours later to say the judge was granting my mother temporary custody, at
least until the rest of the divorce case was decided.

My mother invited me out for pizza
with her and Mikey to celebrate.

“The judge says you’re supposed to
live with me too, Lizzie, but if you want to keep staying at Posie’s you can—as
long it’s all right with her mother.”

“Yeah, Mrs. Sherbern said it’s
okay.”

“I should probably call her,” my
mother said.

“If you want.”

“Stop that, Mikey.”

Mikey blew bubbles with his straw
one more time, then gave it up.  He played with his pizza next, rearranging the
pepperoni to make faces and shapes and to spell his initials.

Well, someone was in a good mood. 
I wondered if he understood exactly what had happened.  Had my mother told
him?  Did he know how large my lie had been?  Did he realize I’d done it for
him alone?

I had to not care.  You don’t do
good things because you want credit for it.  You do it because it feels good to
your soul.  If there’s credit to come from it, let it be the riches you store
up in heaven.  I didn’t want to be the kind of person always saying, “See? 
See?  Look how great I am!”

“We should talk about college,” my
mother said abruptly.  “What are your thoughts?”

“Uh, well, I was thinking I would
go here, to the U.  They already accepted me, I was just trying to think of how
to come up with the money.”

“Did you apply anywhere else?”

“No.  I didn’t really see the
point.  Besides, Posie’s going there.”

“Oh.”  My mother studied her deep
dish slice and appeared to consider her words carefully.

“I’m sorry, Liz, but I’m sure you
understand—I can’t really afford—”

I hurried to fill in the gap.  “I
know, Mom, I wasn’t expecting that.  I already applied for financial aid.”  I
didn’t want to mention Mrs. Sherbern’s offer.  I didn’t intend to accept it,
and I thought another mother offering to send me to college might make my own
mother feel even worse.

After pizza we returned to my
mother’s megaplex.  I let her go on ahead a little ways so I could walk alone
with Mikey.

I draped my arm across his
shoulder.  “Happy?” I asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“Good.”  I squeezed him in closer
and felt how nice it was to have a little brother who would still let me hug
him.

“You should come live with us,”
Mikey said.

“Where would I sleep?  You already
have the couch.”

“You could sleep in Mom’s bed.”

“No, thanks.  That’s a little too
much togetherness for me.  I like having a bed to myself.”

“You could come on Tuesdays and
Thursdays,” Mikey tried again, “when Mom’s at Charles’s.”

I halted.  “She leaves you alone? 
All night?”

“Yeah, but it’s okay—I have her
number.”

“Does she feed you?”

“She leaves me something,” Mikey
said.

“Aren’t you scared to be alone in
there?”

“Nope.  But you could come.  We
could stay up and watch movies.”

I didn’t like this at all.  So much
for her selfless acts of motherhood.  Apparently her own sex life was still her
priority.

“I don’t think she should leave you
alone.”

“Don’t say anything,” Mikey
begged.  “Please.  I shouldn’t have told.”

“Mikey, you can always tell me
anything—you know that.”  I waited, hoping he would.

“I know.  But don’t say anything,
okay?”

We walked the rest of the way
across the parking lot, then up the stairs.  I felt unspeakably lonely for my
little brother.  What little kid really wants to be left alone overnight?  He
might think he wants that—total freedom to string torches onto cats’ tails or
make crank calls or whatever they do at that age—but I couldn’t forget the
sorrow on his face when he stood in the kitchen doorway and told me he missed
our mother.  That boy had been long enough without one.  How dare she go back
to her own life and leave him behind again?

“Mother,” I blurted the second I
entered her apartment, “you’re leaving Mikey alone at night?”

“Lizzie, no,” Mikey muttered,
pulling at my hand.

“Look, Mikey, it’s not right.”  I
turned to my mother again.  “Don’t you think you could give up your dates so
your little boy could feel protected?”

“He’s fine,” my mother protested.  “I
lock him in—”

“Mother, he’s just barely turned nine. 
What if something happened?”

“Nothing’s going to happen,” Mikey
butted in.  “I can take care of myself.”

I was doing a good job of working
myself up by now.  The day had been stressful, and it felt good to let off a
little righteous indignation.  “Maybe Mikey should come live with Mrs.
Sherbern, too.  At least she’d know how to take care of him.”

“Lizzie,” my mother scolded me, “that
will be enough.”

But I was enjoying being right.  “How
is it enough, Mother?  You left him alone with Dad, and look how that turned
out.  Now you’re—”

“What do you mean,” my mother
asked, “‘look how that turned out’?”

My eyes darted to Mikey, but he
didn’t try to stop me.

“You realize,” I said, “that I made
all of that up.  It wasn’t me being molested, it was Mikey.”

“No, it wasn’t!” he shouted.  “That’s
a lie!”

“Mikey, I saw it.  Don’t lie—she
needs to know.”

“He wasn’t, I swear!  Lizzie, shut
up.”

“Sit down, both of you,” our mother
ordered.  I rolled my eyes at this unnecessary family drama, but sat next to
Mikey on the sofa.

“Mikey,” my mother said, “look at
me.  Tell me the truth—was your father molesting you?”

“No.”

“Do you know what I mean by that? 
Molesting—”

“Yeah, I know,” he said
impatiently.  “He wasn’t.”

“Lizzie, what do you think you saw?”

“They took showers together, Mom. 
They wrestled right in front of me in their underwear and Dad had a—”  I
shielded my mouth with my hand so Mikey wouldn’t see me mouth, “Hard on.”

“Did you take showers together?” my
mother asked him.

“Yeah, but so?”

“So, that’s not normal,” I said.  “That’s
gross.  A grown man and a little boy.”

My mother’s voice was shaky.  “Did
he ever touch you?  In the shower?”

“No,” Mikey answered surlily.

“Then why were you taking showers
together?” I asked.

“I don’t know.  Just because.”

My mother clutched Mikey’s hands in
her own.  “Mikey, it’s okay, sweetie, you can tell us.  I believe Lizzie.  She’s
the one who told—not you—you don’t have to worry.  Did your father ask you not
to tell?”

“Mom!”  Mikey squirmed out of her
grip and stood up.  “Stop asking me all these stupid questions.”

My mother sat back on her heels and
watched him go to the kitchen.  She turned back to me.  “What, exactly, did you
see?”

“I told you,” I whispered, “plus he
went to Mikey’s room at night.”

“For how long?  To do what?”

“I don’t know.  He was in there a
long time.”

Wearily my mother dropped her chin
to her chest.  She stood and then joined me on the couch.

“And so what you said—what you
swore to under oath—that isn’t true?”

“I did it to protect Mikey.”

“Your father never touched you.”

“He must have.  There was sperm—”

“I mean now—recently.  He didn’t
force himself on you.”

“Not that way.  He touched me a few
times, but not like that.”

My mother slumped forward and hung
her head.

And here’s where I have to admit
something: I wanted to see her that way.

I hadn’t done any of it on purpose
to upset her, but I didn’t mind at all that she was.  It wasn’t my job to
protect her.  It wasn’t my job to make her life easy while Mikey’s and mine had
been hell.  Now, finally, maybe she knew what it was like to have too much
awful garbage coming at you day after day, sometimes moment to moment.  It was
about time she gave up this frivolous little life of hers and came back to
reality.  This stuff was hard.  She had left us to deal with it alone.

“What else was I supposed to do?” I
demanded.  “You weren’t there to protect him—I had to think of something.”

“You should have told me.”

“Why?  So you could send me another
postcard saying how much fun you were having with your lover, and oh, by the
way, tell Mikey I’m sorry his dad is molesting him?”  I didn’t care that Mikey
could hear me.  “Come on, Mom—you were too busy out there screwing Charles to
give even a small shit what was happening to your children.”

“Stop it, Lizzie, that’s not true,”
she cried.  Her face was ugly with tears the way mine sometimes got.  This wasn’t
an elegant cry—this was from the gut and it hurt.

So I kept going.  “I’m glad Charles’s
so great in bed, Mom, because maybe he’ll be around when you’re an old woman
and you’re wondering where your children have gone.  You have to put in your
time, you know?  What’s Mikey going to take from all this?  That you love him? 
That you’ll protect him?  You know how hard it’s been for him and you still
leave him alone!  I should have told that judge not to give Mikey to either of
you.”

Mikey was sitting on the kitchen
floor now, staring at me hatefully for what I was doing to our mother.  Fine—he
could hate me—I didn’t care.  It was time I told the truth.

“I am a virgin, Mom, do you even
know that?  While you’ve been out there messing around I’ve been trying to live
a good life.  I actually believe that stuff you used to tell me about how
precious
my body is and how
wonderful
if will be some day when I meet the man I
love.  Who else have you slept with, Mom?  Did you love every one of them?”

She wasn’t crying anymore, just
staring at me.  “Are you done?”

“No.  Do you know that Mrs.
Sherbern—a practical stranger—offered to be my foster mother? 
She
wants
to be my mother.”

“So do I, Liz—”

“And she even offered to pay for my
college.  Can you believe that?  I told her no, my parents will surely come
through—I’m their only daughter after all—but maybe I should take her up on
it.  Mikey, you want to come along?”

“Stop it, Lizzie.  I’ve had
enough.  I’m glad you’re so sure of yourself.  It’s easy to condemn me, isn’t
it?  You have no idea all the sacrifices I made for you.”

“Oh, really?  Why didn’t you go to
the police, Mom?  If you thought Dad molested me when I was a baby, why didn’t
you tell someone?”

“I was so young!  I believed him. 
I was afraid to push it any further.”

“Thanks a lot.  Big sacrifice.”

“I’ve been home for you for sixteen
years,” my mother argued.  “I stayed married to your father so you kids could
have a stable home.”

“You
did
,” I pointed out, “but
then I guess you got over it.  So I got to take your place.”  I had had just
about enough family drama for one day.  I stood and walked to the kitchen.  “I’m
sorry, Mikey, I didn’t mean to mess up your night.”

“You’re a big mouth,” he said.  “I
wish you never came.”

“Thanks a lot.  I was trying to
look out for you.  Whether you know it or not, Mom’s not taking care of you. 
She should never leave you alone.”

“Dad didn’t touch me,” Mikey
insisted.

“Whatever.  Been a blast, gang. 
See ya round.”  I slammed out the door and down the stairs and looked for the
nearest pay phone.  At times like these I wished desperately I had a car.  I’m
sure Posie was tired of always coming to my rescue.

Yet another Aimes family crisis.

If only that were the end of it.