The Good Lie (8 page)

I fished out one of Posie’s
articles and turned it toward Angela.  “Remember this one?”

Angela squinted at the headline.  “Of
course.”

“It says you got thirteen million
in settlement.”

“I’m not allowed to disclose the
real amount, but yeah, that’s pretty close.”

“For twenty-six men.”

“Yes.”

“That’s five hundred thousand per
person.”

“Minus my fee, but yes, it was a
lot.”

“Your fee?” Somehow Posie and I
hadn’t factored that in.

Angela smiled.  “Why don’t we talk
about your case first?  Then we can talk about business.”

Your case.
  It sounded so
final.  So real.  So out of my hands.

“I don’t know if I have a case yet,”
I hurried, “I just wanted to talk to you—”

Angela waved her hand.  “I know, I
know, that’s all right.  We’re just talking, right?  I’m going to take some
notes, but it’s only because my memory is for shit—you don’t mind that, do you?”

I wasn’t sure if she was referring
to note taking or cussing.  I shook my head.

“Okay, so Lizzie, why don’t you
tell everything that’s on your mind, and let’s see what we can do.”

I was barely a sentence into it
when Angela interrupted to ask my father’s name.  I told her.  Angela’s wide
mouth shifted to one side while she pondered it.  “Why do I know that name?”

“I don’t know, he’s kind of a big
wheeler-dealer.  He owns a real—”

“—estate firm,” Angela finished.  “Okay,
right.”  Angela noticed my story had stalled.  “Go on, sorry to butt in.”

She let me get a few more lines
into it, then asked, “Isn’t he the big Christian?”

“What?  Oh, yeah, I guess.”

“No, I mean
Big Christian
,”
Angela repeated, her hands flashing with the words.  “Didn’t he have that ad on
TV?”

I blushed.  How embarrassing she
remembered.

AIMES REALTY,
the promo went
—YOUR
GATEWAY TO HEAVENLY HOMES.
 
Hi, folks, I’m Richard Aimes, owner of Aimes
Realty, and I’m here to tell you that Noah wasn’t the only one charged with
keeping all God’s little critters safe from the storms outside.  Here at Aimes
Realty we take seriously our mission to put you into the home of your dreams. 
Remember, all creatures great and small, the Lord our God, He made them all,
and He made Aimes Realty the number one broker four years running so we could
find you that Garden of Eden you’re looking for . . .

Who wrote that drivel?  Although my
father denied it, I’m guessing he did.  The ad didn’t last too long.  It didn’t
bring in any new business, and in fact may have cost my father some of his
secular clients.  Suddenly all of his customers were afraid he would talk Jesus
to them.

“Yeah,” I said, “that was him.”

Angela gave a husky chuckle.  “Excellent. 
Go on.”

She let me finish this time.  I
waited while she caught up on her notes.

“But you’ve never seen them,” she
said, “directly, I mean.”

“No, unless you count wrestling in
their underwear.”

“He’s said in front of you they
were going to take a shower together?”

“Yes.”

“But your brother never said if
anything happened.”

“Well . . . he implied it.”

Angela looked over the top of her
reading glasses.  “That’s not good enough. You see that, don’t you?”

“No . . .”

She removed the glasses and leaned
back in her chair.  She intertwined her fingers over her lumpy belly, then
thought better of it.  “You mind if I smoke?”

I shook my head even though I
preferred she didn’t.  But I didn’t feel I could refuse this woman anything,
not when she was just about to tell me what my future held.

“You see . . .”  She paused to take
a drag.  “The reason why those cases you have in your file have worked so well
is those men were willing to testify about what happened to
them.
  It
wasn’t someone saying what they saw happen to someone else—you get it?”

“Yes.”  Already my soul was
shriveling.  Bad news was on the way.

“It takes a boy, or a girl, or a
grown man or woman saying, ‘This is what he did to
me
.  He did it this
time and this time, and here’s where we were, and—you get the picture.”

I stared at my hands.  “Yeah.”

“But,” Angela said cheerily, “let’s
talk about the rest of this.  You said he touched you too, right?”

“Yeah, but not like Mikey—”

Angela held up her hand.  “I don’t
want to hear about Mikey right now.  Mikey isn’t a fact yet—not unless he comes
in here and tells me so.”

“No, I can’t ask him—”

“Okay, so let’s put him aside for
now.”  She pointed her cigarette at me.  “You, I want to talk to.  Are you sure
he only touched you that one time?”

“When he ran his hands over me? 
Yeah, that was it.  I mean, there was this other time when he just stroked my
back—”

“Okay, tell me about that.”

I did.

“Did he ever say anything to you?”
she asked.  “Suggest anything?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Were those the only times?  You
think maybe he ever touched you when you were younger?”

I hadn’t thought about that.  “I
don’t know.  I’m not sure.”

Angela inhaled and nodded and
studied her notes.  Then she sat back and considered me.  “So what would you
like to see happen?”

“Uh . . .”

“I mean,” Angela added, “if you
could have anything in the world happen right now—if you could say to me, ‘Angela,
make this thing better’—what would you want me to do?”

It was a serious question asked of
a sixteen-year-old girl, and I appreciated it.  I reciprocated by giving the
question long, serious thought before answering.

“Here’s what I want.”

I leaned forward in anticipation of
what I might say, but Angela slouched back and put her feet up on the chair
beside her and lit another cigarette off her half-finished one.  It was her way
of telling me I had plenty of time.

I didn’t answer with childish
fantasies about crushing my father’s groin or seeing him hauled off in chains. 
The truth was, I didn’t care so much about hurting him anymore.  What mattered
to me was Mikey crying in the doorway to the kitchen.  What mattered was the
image of his sweet little body being split apart by the vile filthy instrument
of my father.  What mattered was getting Mikey free, and making the freedom
stick so he could live the right life from now on.

“I want my brother out of the house
and enough money for all of us to live on and I want my father never to see
either one of us unless we decide we want to.”

Angela nodded thoughtfully.  “Seems
fair.”

“But I don’t want him to go to
jail.”

“That’s not really in your control.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because of what you’ve told me—now
I know.”

“Then forget what I told you.”

“See, I can’t do that, either.” 
Angela stubbed out her cigarette, removed another from the packet, then changed
her mind and slid it back into place.  “Let me explain something about the
law.  What you told me today is confidential.  You understand attorney-client
privilege?”

“Yes.”

“It’s like priest-penitent.”

If Posie had been there she would
have scowled at the mere mention of the word.

“Whatever you’ve told me today, I
can’t say unless you give me permission. 
But
—and this is a big but—if I
have reason to believe a crime is about to be committed, I have an independent
duty to inform the police so they can stop it.  Do you understand that?”

The cold sweat was back.  “I think
so.”

“Now, it’s a little fuzzy here
because when I look at what you’ve told me, I ask myself are these enough facts
that I’d be comfortable going to court and filing a lawsuit?  I have your word
about what you think is going on with your brother, but I don’t really have any
facts.  From what you’ve told me today, I don’t think I would file a lawsuit. 
But do I have reason to believe a crime will be committed?  Reason to believe? 
Yeah, maybe I do.”

“But I wouldn’t have told you!”

Angela smiled.  “Yes, you would
have.  Because you want to help your brother.  And so do I.  You might guess
from looking at that,” she said, indicating Posie’s file, “that I don’t like
men who fuck little children.  In fact, you might say I have a personal mission
against men like that, so when I hear about a boy like Mikey maybe getting
diddled by his daddy, that’s something I want to know about.  That’s someone I’d
like to help if I can.  You understand?”

“Please, you can’t call the
police.  I’m not ready for that.”

“But you see, Lizzie, don’t you
think your brother is?  If it’s really like you say?”

I considered that, and knew she was
right, but it was all moving too fast and I did sincerely wish I hadn’t come
there.  I hadn’t figured it out in advance, and now I was caught.

“What if I tell you it won’t happen
again?” I asked.  “What if I make sure of it?”

“How are you going to do that?”

“He can stay with my mother, or
Posie—her mother already offered.  I can keep him away from him.”

“For how long?” Angela asked.  “The
rest of his life?  What’s your mother’s story?”

I explained her financial situation
as I understood it—poor, living off her lover—and her housing arrangement.  “She
has an apartment,” I said.  “Mikey could probably stay with her if she had
enough  money to support him.”

“And what about you?” Angela
asked.  “Where will you live?”

“Look,” I said, “I haven’t figured
all of this out.  I just wanted to talk to you today.  I needed information so
I could come up with a plan.  I promise I’ll find someplace for Mikey to live
for a while.  Then maybe you can help me think of what to do.”

Angela lit another cigarette,
inhaled, blew smoke out of the side of her mouth, and studied me.  And what was
I?  A scared, nervous girl trying to keep it together, trying to act tougher
than she was, coming to Angela with stories of what evils might or might not be
taking place in her house.  I don’t think I came across as hating my father, so
she probably didn’t see me as lying to set him up.  I had tried to be honest,
and maybe that was the problem.  I said what I thought instead of just laying
it all out for her to decide.

“Maybe I’m wrong,” I said lamely.

“Maybe you’re not, and that’s what
we need to think about.”

The “we” mattered to me.  She was
taking me into the partnership.

“Just out of curiosity, what does
your friend—Posie?—think?”

“She thinks he’s definitely
guilty.  From everything I’ve told her.”

“But she hasn’t seen anything
either, right?”

“Right.”

Angela nodded.  “So we don’t have
any real proof—not that I want there to be any.  Believe me, I really hope he
hasn’t done a thing to that kid.”

I sagged into my chair.  “So what
do I do now?”

Angela lifted her eyes to the
ceiling to find inspiration there.  “Let me think about it,” she said finally.  “And
you think too, Lizzie.  Why don’t you come back—”  She glanced at her calendar
then hit the speaker phone.  “Georgia, do I still have that class Friday
afternoon?”

“Far as I know,” came the assistant’s
voice.

“Cancel it.”

Angela turned to me.  “Next Friday
at four o’clock, okay?”  She stubbed out her cigarette and husked, “I’m
skipping my fencing lesson for you.”

And the angel hovered over
Jerusalem, sword outstretched.

You Can’t Run Forever

[1]

Second place again.  Yay!  This
time in the Young Voices Creative Writing Contest.  I won $50—not bad for a
story that only took me a few hours to write.

It’s about a girl who travels to
China to meet some mystical teacher she’s read about.  The teacher turns out to
be this god-like omniscient seer who tells the girl everything that will happen
to her from that second forward, including the fact that she’s about to lose
her legs in an accident.

The girl tries to avoid her fate,
of course, and unlike the woman in
The Fortune Teller
, she actually
succeeds.

The problem is, by changing just
that one thing, it means all the good things that the seer said were supposed
to happen can’t anymore, and her life becomes this total disaster.  The End.

You can’t outrun your fate.

It was the fall of my junior year. 
My long bad summer was over.

Posie and Jason were seniors.  In
another year they would be moving on, and I’d be stuck alone in high school. 
The more I thought about that, the worse it sounded.

Luckily, I had gotten used to
taking matters into my own hands.

“I want out.”

“Excuse me?”  My school counselor,
Miss Stewart, stuck her knuckle under the rim of her oversized glasses and
hefted them off her cheeks.  It was a nervous habit she had, and I always
wanted to tell her to buy smaller glasses, but she seemed determined to dowdy
herself down.  Maybe the principal had warned her not to be too pretty or the
boys would develop crushes.

She was pretty, though, underneath
her disguise.  Long blonde hair she wore in a boring ponytail down her back. 
Pretty blue eyes behind the tortoise shell saucers.  She wore the worst clothes
I’ve seen on a young single woman—ratty bargain-bin skirts and plain shirts in
notice-me-not colors, and those ugly sandals you see nuns wearing when
 they
go out grocery shopping.

“Miss Stewart, I am done with high
school.”

“Okay,” she said with a pleasant
laugh, which is why I liked her.  She always listened to me and took me
seriously, but not too seriously.  “When you say done . . .”

“I mean I’m ready to graduate.  I
should have enough units by the end of this year, don’t I?”

“Well, let’s see.”  She retrieved
my file and did the math.  “Yes, Lizzie, I think you’re right.  Two summers of
summer school, plus a full load this semester and next will give you just
enough credits.  But can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Why are we in such a hurry?”

I had rehearsed this.  I shrugged. 
“Just ready, I guess.  All my friends are graduating this year, and I’d rather
just go on to college with them.” 
Plus, my father’s a pervert, my mother’s
a whore, I’m a slave in my own home, my brother’s being raped—just a few other
reasons.

“All right, I see.”  Miss Stewart
studied my file some more, but there was really nothing there.  I had never
given any of my teachers any trouble.  I was a decent girl with good steady grades—the
kind of girl you can leave on autopilot while you deal with the rotten kids. 
The kind of girl nothing ever happens to.

“You’re sixteen now?”

“Yes.”

“That’s pretty young to be
graduating.”

“I know.”  I decided not to say any
more about that, but the truth was that was part of the attraction—I wanted to
look like a whiz kid.

“Where are you thinking of going?” 
Miss Stewart asked. 

“Here.  To the U.”

“To study—”

“English.  I’m going to be a
writer.”

“Good for you.  We need more of
those.  So, what have you done about applying?”

“Nothing,” I answered.  “That’s why
I’m here.  I want to see about financial aid and scholarships—you know, help
out my parents as much as I can,” which was a lie because my real plan was
never to have to go to either of them for anything again.

Miss Stewart’s face lit up.  Some
people can’t live unless they’re useful.  She set aside my file and gave me her
full attention.  “Okay, Lizzie.  Let’s see what we can figure out.”

[2]

Jason sneaked up behind me at my
locker.  He wrapped his arms around my waist and nuzzled my neck.  I let him,
for just a nanosecond, before elbowing him away.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

God, he looked good.  Tan, tall,
dressed in his best low-rider jeans with a hint of red heart boxers peeking
out.  His hair was still wet from his post-PE shower.  He smelled like
industrial soap.  Why can’t schools hand out the good stuff?

I hadn’t seen him for at least a
month.  We talked a few times on the phone, but it was always so awkward we
finally stopped.  I figured I would see him the first day of school, though. 
In fact, I had counted on it.  I wore my lowest-cut black camisole under a
tight periwinkle blouse with the top three buttons undone.  My hair was down, I
had put on mascara—I didn’t look half bad.

Jason bent down and laid his mouth
right against my ear.  “I missed you.”  His breath was warm and moist.  Why did
he have to do that?

I nudged him away to gain some room
to breathe.  “Yeah, me, too,” I said in as neutral a voice as possible.  As if
we were just friends.  As if my heart weren’t lunging at the walls of my chest
that very moment.

“We should go out tonight,” he
suggested.  “Posie, too.  Ease into the new year.”

“Can’t.  I’ve got way too much to
do.”

“How can you have too much to do?”
he said, although the look in his eyes told me he got it.  “School’s just
started.”

“I’ve decided to graduate this
year.”  I slapped the stack of books in my locker.  “Lots to do.”

Jason pinched an area no girl wants
pinched, just above my waistband.  “You can’t run from me forever.”

My mouth went dry.  He was too
direct.  Like we were friends or something, and he was allowed to be honest
with me.  “Um . . .”

“See ya.”  He sauntered down the
hall, sparing me whatever inane thing I was about to say.

Which was, I think,
“Yes, I can.”