Never Tell A Lie

by Gail Schimmel

  ‘It’s okay, April,’ I say, like I’m comforting Django. ‘It’s okay, baby, it’s okay.’

  Linda is staring, her mouth slightly open. Out of the corner of my eye I see the waiter approach us and then do a neat 180-degree pivot and retreat.

  ‘I’d decided to tell you today, Mary,’ says April. ‘But I was just going to be very cool and collected and not cry.’ She lets out another sob. ‘I should know better than to have a plan. My plans never work.’

  ‘Shhh,’ I say. ‘Just catch your breath and talk when you’re ready. There’s no hurry.’

  Linda finally manages to speak. ‘We’re here for you,’ she says, which makes April start crying again.

  Eventually, as I’m starting to worry that she’ll never get a grip, so our food will never come and we might spend the rest of our lives at this table, she manages to pull herself together. She stops crying and gasping and wipes her face. The waiter must have been watching because a group of waiters descend on us like crows, distribute our food and disappear.

  ‘Oh God,’ says April, ‘I feel such a fool.’ She then quite uncharacteristically starts shovelling food into her mouth, like the crying has left her starving.

  Linda and I, with a glance at each other, also start to eat, but the food tastes like cardboard in my mouth. Linda seems to be having a similar struggle – she’s pushing her pasta around her plate like it contains cockroaches.

  After April has inhaled half her meal, she puts down her fork.

  ‘So,’ she says. ‘Leo does hit me.’

  She takes a deep, shuddering sigh, and then almost laughs.

  ‘That’s the first time I’ve said it out loud,’ she says. ‘Except to my mother. Who told me not to be ridiculous. I guess I just knew then that nobody would believe me.’

  ‘We believe you,’ I say.

  ‘It started on our honeymoon. I mean, he’s always been a bit difficult, since the very beginning, but you know, he’s had a hard life and I thought I would be the one to make him better. I thought if he just knew love like mine, love that doesn’t falter, he’d become less angry.’

  I’m tempted to say, ‘And how did that work out?’ but the answer is obvious, and it would sound cruel, so I bite my tongue. Who am I to judge after I chose Travis?

  ‘On honeymoon, he got it into his head that I was flirting with the waiter.’

  ‘What is it with men and waiters?’ I say, because Travis frequently became suspicious of waiters. He just never hit me because of it.

  ‘He became absolutely convinced that I was plotting to have sex with the waiter, and he said I had humiliated him, and he back-handed me. I had a red mark on my face, but nothing more. He walked out of the hotel room after it happened, and I packed my bags and tried to find out about flights home. But when he came back, he had flowers and chocolates and a diamond necklace, and he was crying and apologising and said it would never happen again.’

  ‘And you believed him,’ I say gently.

  ‘I did,’ says April. ‘I really, really did. I thought it was the tension of the wedding, and all the fights about religion that led up to it that had unhinged him. I thought that he literally wasn’t himself. I thought it would just take love and time, but we’d be fine.’

  ‘And?’ says Linda.

  ‘And for a long time, for about two years, it was.’

  ‘Two years?’ I’m surprised. He lost his temper so easily on honeymoon, and then kept it for two years? That’s not what the stuff you read about abuse makes one expect.

  ‘I know,’ says April. ‘I was completely convinced that that slap on honeymoon had been an aberration. Yes, he was still sarcastic, and often mean, but I didn’t think he was going to hurt me.’

  ‘So what was it that changed?’ I ask.

  ‘A man again,’ she says, with a small shrug. ‘We went to a party. He accused me of flirting with one of the men there.’ She sighs. ‘The real irony that time was that I actually had found the man in question profoundly boring, and had been making small talk, desperate to get away. Oh, and his wife was standing right there. Equally boring, as it happens.’

  ‘So he hit you again?’

  ‘That time, he hit me, and when I fell, he kicked me. The next day it was like we’d travelled back to our honeymoon – the flowers, a piece of jewellery, apologies, tears.’ She pauses. ‘So then I thought, okay – maybe something builds up in him. He had this terrible childhood. Really, he did. And it damaged him. Obviously. And I thought maybe once every two years is okay. Or maybe the gap will be bigger next time. Or maybe this was the last time. I thought all these things. I was wrong.’

  ‘It happened again soon?’

  ‘The next month. I can’t remember what it was that time. What I do remember is that that time, there was no jewellery. Just flowers. And then I kind of knew. He’d done a cost-benefit analysis and realised that it would get too expensive to give jewellery every time.’ She laughs, an empty sound. ‘I was right. Sometimes it’s three months, sometimes it’s a week. I never know. Next day, I get flowers, and we don’t mention it again.’

  She takes a bite of the food left on her plate while Linda and I sit looking at her, trying to absorb this.

  ‘And then I started drinking, so I would mind less. And it drives him mad, so it happens more. So I drink more. Vicious circle. I suppose if I could just stop drinking, then it would all be okay again.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I say. ‘I don’t think any of this is your fault.’

  ‘Of course it’s my fault,’ says April, sounding quite angry. ‘Leo is an exceptional man. Everybody knows that. If I was just cleverer and drank less and didn’t make him angry, this wouldn’t happen. He—’

  I interrupt. ‘April, if you say that he had an unhappy childhood again, I swear to God I . . . might cry.’ I’d been going to say, ‘I might hit you’ but stopped myself just in time, realising how terrible it is, the ease with which we resort to these violent phrases.

  ‘But, Mary,’ says April, ‘you have to understand, he really did have a terrible time.’

  ‘Chris’s father beat him with a belt every evening at 6 p.m.,’ says Linda, conversationally, like she isn’t saying anything that shocking. ‘Said that even if he didn’t know what Chris had done wrong, there was probably something. After the beating, he and his brother were locked in their room until morning.’ She takes a sip of her Coke. ‘Guess what?’ she says. ‘Chris doesn’t hit me. Or hit the kids. Or raise his voice much.’

  ‘Well, maybe his reaction is different,’ says April, but she sounds a bit unsure.

  ‘Yes, he’s reacted by being a decent human. Leo has reacted to far less by being an abuser.’

  April looks at Linda for a long moment, and I think that Linda might have pushed things too far. But then April speaks.

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ she says. ‘And that’s why I’ve decided to leave.’

  She smiles at us.

  ‘That’s great,’ I say. ‘When?’

  ‘That’s the thing,’ says April. ‘I can’t just walk out. I tried that once. He broke my ribs and told me the next time he would kill me and the kids. I need a plan. I need your help.’

  ‘Right,’ says Linda. ‘What do you need?’ Then she holds up her hand. ‘Wait,’ she says, and pulls a notebook and pen out of her bag. ‘Right,’ she says, licking her finger and turning to a clean page. ‘Let’s plan this. Step one – where will you go?’

  Chapter 39

  It sounds a bit heartless but planning April’s escape is quite fun. We have to have all her ducks in a row, all angles considered, before she can actually leave.

  The first challenge is money – Leo makes her provide invoices for everything that she spends, and if she draws cash, she needs to have receipts to support what she drew the money for. There are obviously a few things that don’t generate receipts – tuck-shop money for the kids, school outings, tips. But then Leo makes her write it down in a notebook.

  Linda turns out to b
e a whizz in this area. First, straight after the lunch she marches April off to open her own bank account. Leo has managed to convince April that a married woman needs her husband’s permission to do this, and that the bank will alert him, so she takes some persuading to believe otherwise. I offer that she can open an account in my name if she really wants to, but in the end, after talking to the lady at the bank, she feels safe enough to use her own name.

  Then Linda concocts an entire fake invoicing plan for cash sales. April will, for example, hire a fake lawn-servicing company to put topsoil on the lawn. Linda will manufacture an invoice, and April will scatter a random bag of smelly topsoil over the garden for authenticity. A thousand rand into April’s account, just like that. I questioned whether anyone would really pay that much to have people scatter compost over their garden, but apparently this is something that wouldn’t make Leo lift an eyebrow. They come up with a number of these schemes, chortling and plotting like two crooked accountants in tax season.

  It is all very well to get some money saved, but April will also need an income. Having spent a lot of time with April talking about what she should be doing and jobs that might interest her, I don’t hold out much hope in this area. I know April. She’ll express great enthusiasm, but she doesn’t actually want to work. I say as much during the lunch.

  ‘But I’ll have to,’ she says. ‘He’ll be forced to pay maintenance, but money to support me will be harder. When I spoke to Steve Twala, he explained that the courts would expect a woman my age to at least be contributing in some way. So I need a job.’

  ‘But if you have a job, what about the kids?’ I say. ‘Fetching and all that?’

  ‘Other people make a plan. I will make a plan,’ says April.

  I’m still not convinced, but I agree to help her put together a CV and identify suitable jobs.

  ‘But the biggest thing is where you are going to live,’ says Linda.

  ‘That’s the thing,’ says April. ‘In the long run, I can move back in with my parents. But that’s the first place he will look when I leave. And if he finds me, he’ll kill me. I need time for him to calm down, and to get a protection order and a divorce. Steve will be able to help with that.’

  ‘I’ve heard those orders aren’t worth the paper that they’re written on,’ I worry. ‘Will it really make a difference?’

  ‘I think so,’ says April. ‘Leo would rather die than be a headline case, or even a non-headline case. His dignity is everything to him. He won’t risk it. I just need a place to hide at first, with the kids.’

  ‘Well,’ says Linda, and she sounds a bit unsure. ‘I’ve got a garden cottage. I mean, it’s nothing like as smart as what you are used to, and it’s only two bedrooms, so the kids would need to share. And I know that we live way out of your comfort zone.’

  I’m not sure whether Linda is making all these excuses to put April off because she doesn’t actually want the hassle, or if she genuinely thinks her offer isn’t good enough. I can see a small crease between April’s eyebrows, and I wonder if she is also struggling to interpret the reluctance.

  ‘I wouldn’t want to put you out,’ says April. ‘But it would be perfect. I mean, he’d think to look for me at Mary’s. But I don’t think he would think of you. And I’ll pay rent, of course.’ She adds the last with a wave of her hand, and my heart sinks.

  ‘April,’ I say, ‘you are going to be on minimum money. Leo will cut you off as soon as he realises you are gone. Once you go to court, they’ll make him pay, but in the meantime, you won’t have any money. You can’t just blithely offer to pay for things like you usually do.’

  April frowns. ‘You’re right,’ she says. Her eyes start to brim again. ‘I don’t know if I can do this,’ she says. ‘I don’t know if I have what it takes to make it in the world like a normal person. Leo always says that I am stupid without him, and I think maybe he’s right. I’m going to mess this up.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘We’ll be right here beside you the whole time. But you can’t offer Linda rent.’

  ‘Oh, I never expected rent,’ says Linda.

  ‘And it will just be for a bit,’ says April.

  ‘Exactly,’ says Linda, and I exhale a breath I didn’t realise I’ve been holding.

  ‘Okay,’ says Linda, making a note in her book. ‘Money, roof, legal, job. We have a plan.’

  And so we do.

  With the bank account sorted, I will start on April’s CV and looking for jobs, and April will set up another appointment with Steve Twala to make sure she knows where she stands legally. We decide to aim for a month to try to get some money into April’s account, and so Steve can have all the paperwork for the protection order and divorce ready.

  ‘What if he hurts you again though?’ I say. ‘Isn’t that likely, in a month?’

  April shrugs. ‘I’ll try to be his perfect wife. And at least now I have a plan. Thank you, girls.’

  I go home feeling like I’ve done something good.

  But Joshua isn’t quite as convinced.

  ‘So she actually said in so many words that he beats her?’ he asks me.

  ‘That’s what I told you,’ I say.

  Joshua is quiet.

  ‘What?’ I say eventually. Django needs help with his maths. I don’t have time to listen to people being quiet.

  ‘Do you believe her?’ he asks, eventually.

  ‘What type of a question is that?’ I say. And then, before he can answer, ‘No, really? How can you ask me that? You know what we’ve seen. You know that she called us in the middle of the night. And you know what I’ve been through myself. And you can ask me that?’

  ‘Mary,’ he starts, ‘it’s just I know Leo and—’

  I interrupt. ‘Joshua,’ I say, ‘I thought you were different. I really thought that you were different from other men. I never, ever thought that we would be having a conversation like this, where you accuse a woman of lying about being abused. I mean, what the hell would be in that for her? What?’

  Again, I don’t let him answer. ‘You know what,’ I say. ‘I need to think about this. I’m not sure that this is working. I just . . . I just can’t.’

  And I end the call. I am shaking with anger.

  ‘Mom,’ calls Django, ‘these fractions aren’t converting themselves, you know.’

  I take a deep breath. ‘Coming, baby,’ I say. ‘Fraction-converting Mom to the rescue.’

  No, I think as I walk through to Django sitting at the kitchen table, his head bent over his homework, I don’t have time for a relationship with a man who doubts April’s story. We’ve been bickering a lot lately, and it really all comes down to this same issue. Like most men, Joshua thinks that abusers are a type. He was happy to believe his client about the #metoo thing, and me about Travis, but he won’t accept that his precious Leo Goldstein could hit his wife. And I can’t be with a man like that. I’m done.

  Joshua tries to phone me, but I ignore the calls. He sends several WhatsApps asking me to call him, which I ignore at first. After the fifth one, I send a message saying: Stop harassing me. I will call you when I am ready.

  I know I have to face this, but I’ll do it in the morning. I’ll call him, and maybe see him, and tell him it’s over. I thought he was the one, but I don’t know. I think maybe at the end of the day women are better off alone.

  But first thing the next morning, I get a call from my mom.

  ‘Mary,’ she says. ‘I don’t want you to panic, but Sean is in the hospital.’

  ‘What?’ My dad is as strong as an ox. He is never sick. He must’ve been in an accident again. ‘Was he in an accident? Did he go on the roof again?’

  ‘No.’ She pauses. ‘They think he had a small stroke in the early hours of this morning. But they think he’ll be fine. I just thought you would want to know, that you’d want to come.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Where is he?’

  She tells me, and we’re about to ring off when I think of something.

  ‘
Mom?’ I say. ‘Why did they call you first?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Whoever found Dad,’ I say. ‘Why did they call you?’ I’d called her Mom. But she might have been so distracted by what she had to tell me that she didn’t notice.

  There’s a pause. ‘Um, Mary, actually, I was there.’

  ‘What? Where?’

  ‘I was there, with him. Um, God, I don’t know how to say this. I was asleep next to him. He kind of convulsed and grabbed hold of me, and I knew something was wrong, and I called an ambulance.’

  Asleep. Next to him. In his bed.

  At the hospital, my dad is in a private room. My mother is sitting in a chair at his side and she jumps up when they show me in.

  ‘Mary,’ she says, and I let her hug me. I can see that she’s barely slept, and I think that she’s been crying.

  ‘They say he’s going to be okay,’ she says. ‘He’s sleeping now.’

  I look over at the bed. He looks small and old. My father has always been a large, firm figure. Now he looks like he might float away; that all that is anchoring him is the woman beside his bed. The woman who left him with a baby, but it would seem is now sharing his bed.

  ‘So, you guys are . . .’ I can’t find the words for this, but she knows what I mean.

  My mother blushes like a teenager. ‘I guess he’s still the only man I ever really loved. Despite it all.’

  I look at her. ‘You know that he’s a womaniser, right? He sleeps with everyone.’ I don’t know why I say this; which one of them I am trying to hurt. Maybe them both; the parents who between them lied to me and deprived me of a mother.

  ‘I gathered,’ she says. She smiles. ‘Is it terrible to say, but I found the idea rather attractive.’

  I can’t help it, I laugh. ‘That’s terrible,’ I say. ‘That’s literally why women are in so much trouble. Because we find men sluts attractive.’

  ‘Are you calling me a slut?’

  My father’s eyes are still closed, but there’s a smile on his face, and his voice seems quite strong.

  ‘Totally,’ I say, going over to the bed. ‘You know it.’