A Mother's Lie

by Sarah Zettel

  While she wolfed down a bacon burger and loaded Tater Tots that for some unfathomable reason had avocado on top of the melted cheese (so did the burger, for that matter), Rafi drank coffee with extra sugar and talked.

  “We’re going into venture capital, Beth—you and me.”

  “Do you even know what that is?”

  “It’s when very rich people give you money to spend on making businesses work, so they can make more money, so they can give you more money to make more money.” She remembered how he spread his hands and grinned. “It’s the circle of life.”

  “And just how are you going to get them to give you the money?”

  “I’m gonna hire you.”

  She slurped her Coke at him.

  “I’m serious, Beth. The people out here are nowhere near as smart as they’re telling themselves. I need somebody who can figure out which ones are actually worth getting in with and which ones are just blowing smoke out their ass.”

  “Oh, is that all?”

  “That’s all, Beth. Come on, sister—you can’t leave me alone out here.”

  The possibility scared the hell out of her. She’d wanted to leave the scams and the lies and the showboating behind. They led to nothing except blood and secrets and abandoning the people you were supposed to take care of.

  But what else was she going to do?

  She was never sure what got her to say yes. Maybe it was just looking at Rafi in his decent clothes. Maybe she was stoned on grease and avocado, or the realization she didn’t even have enough money left for a bus ticket to L.A., never mind back to Indiana.

  Maybe it was because what he really offered was a way to take charge of what had been done to her.

  So, Beth let him introduce her to a friend with a couch she could sleep on, and they got to work. There was so much money, and so many people looking to give it away. The men with their thousand-dollar suits liked Rafi. They liked Beth, his steely eyed “assistant.” They liked Lumination and the story behind it, most of which Beth had made up. It was every beer-fueled, pie-in-the-sky vision of stupid rich guys her father had ever trotted out.

  That whole high-flying, high-pressure beauty of Northern California and its tightly cocooned money world brought her everything she’d ever been promised, and a little bit more.

  Everything that she might now have to leave behind.

  A door creaked.

  Beth sat up a little straighter. She heard the soft whisper of feet against carpet and caught movement through the crack where her door was open just a little.

  She stayed very still until it passed. She waited for the sound of the bathroom door, for running water or the flushing toilet. Nothing.

  Beth got up and softly followed her mother out into the front room.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Jeannie didn’t turn the lights on. She just trailed her fingers along the breakfast bar and paused to spin one stool. The streetlights filtered through the curtains, but it did nothing to soften the sharp angles of her silhouette.

  Beth stood at the hallway junction, waiting for her mother to turn and see her.

  Jeannie wore the plain, quilted bathrobe from the guest room dresser. Her feet were bare. She twirled something restlessly between her fingers. It took Beth a second to realize it was an unlit cigarette.

  Beth tensed as her mother drifted to the front door and examined the alarm, the deadbolt, and the chain. But Jeannie didn’t touch anything. She just stuck the cigarette between her lips and moved on to the living area. The cigarette bobbed up and down as she leaned closer to read the spines of the books on their shelves.

  She was still looking at the bookcases, shaking her head as she pulled something, probably a lighter, out of her pocket. But then she paused, her head up, as if listening. Beth shrank back instinctively. But Jeannie didn’t turn—she just headed for the balcony. Maybe she realized there were no ashtrays, or that Beth (or Dana) might not like her smoking in the house. She found the lock and the security bar and pulled the door open, letting in a rush of warm city air and traffic noise.

  All at once, Jeannie froze. She dropped into a crouch. The cigarette fell.

  Beth ran forward before she could think. She grabbed Jeannie and pulled her backward and upright at the same time.

  “He’s here!” Jeannie twisted like she was trying to escape Beth’s hold and beat her palm frantically against Beth’s shoulder. “He’s here!”

  Beth peered past her mother to try to see between the bars of the balcony railing. She could just see the car parked across the street, right under the streetlight. A thin, familiar shadow leaned against the driver’s side door, not even trying to hide. Smoke rose in pale spirals from the cigarette in his fingers.

  Beth lunged past her mother and yanked her phone out of her pocket at the same time.

  “No! Beth!”

  Beth did not listen. She pressed herself right up against the balcony railing.

  Across the street, her father lifted his head.

  Beth held up the phone and flashed a picture. And another.

  Dad pushed himself away from the car. He pitched his cigarette aside. Slowly, without any sign of concern, he raised his index finger and traced a wavering line down through the air in front of him. An answering shudder ran down the inside of Beth’s arm, starting at the scar, reminding her how he’d touched her. Reminding her how easily he could make her bleed.

  Todd climbed casually into the car and started the engine.

  Beth flashed another picture as it drove away. She meant to check it right away, to see if she got the license plate, but she became aware of a low moaning behind her.

  Jeannie huddled on the couch, her face pressed against her hands.

  “He’ll be back,” Jeannie wailed. “He’s not gonna stop.” She lifted her face, and Beth saw her tears shining against her ashy skin. “He won’t ever stop. Not until somebody’s dead.”

  Beth stared at her, caught between simple, sour anger and a stirring of new feeling she did not want.

  “I’ve screwed everything up,” Jeannie whispered. “I should have never…He’s gonna be so mad, Star. Beth. So mad. He’ll come after you. Even if I go back now, he will, because he knows you helped me. ”

  Beth stared down at her, trying desperately to pull herself back from the fragile sympathy unfurling inside.

  Because it’s a trap, same as always.

  “I have to get out of here. I can’t stay. I can’t…he’ll kill you. He’ll kill Dana.”

  Jeannie teetered to her feet and stumbled to the door. She scrabbled at the chain and the lock.

  It’s not real, Beth told herself, even as she moved to her mother’s side.

  “Stop, Mom.” Beth laid her hand on her mother’s and felt how cold it was.

  “I can’t. He won’t. Not until somebody’s dead.”

  “I know.”

  Slowly, with stiff, jerking movements, Beth wrapped her arms around her mother’s shoulders. She felt Jeannie’s shoulder blades press against the pulse points on her wrists.

  I remember.

  She remembered wanting this and missing this—this press of this sinewy body, this scent, the prickle of Jeannie’s wiry hair against her cheek—everything that came with the simple act of holding someone and being held. She was five. She was eight. She was ten. She was thirteen and fourteen, and she knew everything this woman was and knew a single moment changed nothing. But she still wanted her mother’s embrace.

  She’d told herself this need was a sickness, like an addiction. It was brainwashing and Stockholm syndrome and a dozen other mental pathologies. It was anything and everything, except love. It could not ever be love.

  “It’ll be okay, Mom,” Beth whispered. “First thing tomorrow, we’re getting you out of here. The Haven House shelter has room and—”

  Jeannie stiffened. “I can’t go there.”

  “You’ll be safe. I know these people. A friend of mine does their fundraising. I was able to—”

/>   “No. I can’t.” Jeannie was shaking, patting her pockets, rummaging for a cigarette. “They’ll shut me up and tell me all the things I can’t do. Probably won’t even let me smoke.” She looked at her fingers, where the cigarette had been.

  Beth refused to take the hint.

  “They’ll get you help. If you want to get away from Todd, you’re going to have to start thinking about how you’ll survive.” She let those words sit. Jeannie stuffed her hand back into her pocket, and Beth watched her fist flex and curl.

  “You’re really going to hand me over to a bunch of strangers?” whispered Jeannie. “You owe me!”

  Here we go. Beth felt the strange urge to smile. This was the woman she understood. Not the sad, broken creature she’d glimpsed a moment ago. This woman—she knew how to fight.

  “I owe you?”

  “Who do you think kept him away from you and your daughter for so long? Huh? That was me!” Jeannie beat her chest with her open palm. “Did you even once stop to think about that?”

  “Honestly?” said Beth. “No.”

  Jeannie snorted, as if to say she’d known it all along. “You have no idea what it was like after you left us.”

  “I left you? Is that what we’re calling it now?”

  Jeannie ignored her.

  “Everything went to hell,” she croaked. “We were ripping off quickie marts. Stealing cartons of cigarettes and selling them as loosies. We got arrested twice.” She swallowed. “I was whoring, Star.” Her whisper was little more than a breath of air. “He’d bring me suckers he met in the bars, and I…” She shook her head. “He wouldn’t even talk about things getting better anymore. None of those stories about how we were going to find a big score, no more saying it’ll be better in the next town. Just…drifting.

  “Every now and again he’d get a bug up his butt about you, and how we should find you and make you pay up. But I talked him down. Every time. I’d convince him you’d have fancy lawyers now, and how it was so much easier for cops to talk to each other with the internet and everything—you could just call them and maybe you wouldn’t even care if we said…stuff about you, because you would have been able to pay to get it all fixed up.”

  She lifted her face, her eyes glittering. “Beth, I worked every day to keep him away from you and your daughter. For years, all so you’d have some kind of chance.”

  Do not believe her. You cannot believe her. She is lying to guilt-trip you. She is trying the story out on you before she tries it out on Dana.

  There was a problem, though, because Beth really had wondered what kept them away for so long. The more money she made, the better her life became, the more often she wondered when they would come for her. They’d barely left Grammy alone for a minute, and she’d had nothing to give.

  “So what changed, Mom?”

  “Shit.” Jeannie dropped onto the couch and yanked the lighter out, along with a whole pack of cigarettes. She didn’t even bother looking at Beth. She just shoved one between her lips, lit it, and inhaled hard. She blew the smoke out at the ceiling. “The women—that’s what changed.”

  “What?”

  “He came home one night—well, came back. We were living out of the car. He had this wad of cash, and he told me to find a motel room and said he’d be back in a couple of days. So, I did, and he was back a week later, with more cash.

  “I was worried he’d gotten into something heavy again, but he told me…he told me he met this woman in a bar. Called her Stacey. Said her boyfriend had just dumped her and she was really upset about it. She was pretty drunk. He helped her get home safe.

  “I thought maybe he stole her purse or something. He said he’d planned to, but then he got a better idea. He tucked her up in bed and went out and got them breakfast and basically sweet-talked her. You know, like he does.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Well, it worked. Eventually, he told her his car was impounded for a busted taillight and asked for a loan, and she was all ready to give it to him. He told me he had her on the hook hard, and he wanted to see where it would go. But, he said, she was looking for a boyfriend, so he was going to have to play the part.”

  “How is this new? Dad’s always sweet-talking somebody.”

  She got abruptly to her feet and strode into the kitchen. “Yeah, well, he never lived with them before.” Finally, the wounded, frightened facade had cracked. Finally, there was spite, and there was anger, and finally, it was real.

  Jeannie took a long drag on her cigarette and then tapped ash into the sink. “He never fixed their cars or their houses or let them buy him clothes and stuff. None of them ever…had real money. Not like these bimbos.”

  “These?”

  “Stacey was just the first. It became a regular thing.” She ground out the cigarette in the sink and pulled the pack out again. “They’d get bored, or he would, or they’d catch on, or…whatever. And he’d just leave and find another one. He joked about the endless supply and what a gold mine the dating sites are. He even roped me into the act. He’d tell them I’m his sister and how he needs money for ‘his sister’s’ chemo because he got laid off from his job because of his bad back.” She waved a fresh cigarette vaguely in Beth’s direction. “No, seriously—he said that.”

  Never change a game that works.

  “So who are these women? What are their names?”

  Jeannie shook her head and lit the new cigarette. She took another drag and exhaled more smoke. This time, her shakes eased, and so did some of the strain in her voice. “I only remember some of them. Stacey Walsh—she was the first, I told you.” Her eyes narrowed. “There was a Felicity Brandt. Oh, and get this—Amanda Pace Martin. He loved saying that name. He thought it was just soooo classy.”

  “Sounds like it was a good racket,” Beth said bluntly. “What was the problem?”

  “He kept talking about them!” she shouted. “How pretty this one was, or how smart that one was. He’d go on and on about all the stuff they’d done with their lives. What had I done? Huh? We hooked up when I was seventeen! Seventeen! What have I done but stand by him and take care of him my entire goddamn life! And now that I was sick, and old and ugly…he was going to leave me.” She stared at the cigarette and ground it out hard in the bottom of the sink. “I knew sooner or later he was going to leave me for one of them! So, I decided to leave him first.”

  Beth waited.

  “Only I didn’t have anywhere to go.”

  “So you came here.”

  “I tried to warn you. You were getting phone calls yesterday, right? At least two of those were me. But you didn’t pick up, and Todd caught me with his phone and started asking questions. That’s when I decided to wait outside your building.”

  “How’d you even know who Dana was?”

  “She looks just like you.” Jeannie paused, fidgeting. It was starting to sink in she might have showed Beth too much of the truth.

  “I think maybe I ate too much,” Jeannie said suddenly. “She’s a really good cook, your girl.”

  Beth sighed. “I’ll get you some Tums.”

  “Thanks.” Jeanne climbed up onto one of the breakfast bar stools. Beth found the tablets in the medicine cabinet and brought them back. Jeannie popped an entire handful and chewed.

  “Jesus, Mom.”

  “Yeah, well.” She was rubbing her stomach again. “I told you. I’m sick. That’s why I can’t go…”

  “No,” said Beth firmly. “You are not staying here. Not while Dad is out there. I can’t keep you and Dana safe!”

  “But you’ve got security! You’ve got people! You…” She winced and pressed her hands against her stomach. “You’ve got everything, Star.”

  A choking noise tore at her throat. All at once, Jeannie doubled over. Beth thought she was starting to cry again, but that wasn’t it.

  “I hurt. Jesus. It hurts.”

  Looking for sympathy…doesn’t want me to throw her out. Planning something. Beth stared, unable and unw
illing to believe as her mother screwed her face up.

  “I can’t…I can’t…it’s hurting.”

  Jeannie all but toppled off the stool and stumbled to the sink. Without thinking, Beth ran to her side and shoved her hair back while she vomited up a stream of bile and filth.

  I remember this too. Christ, I remember all of this…

  Standing beside Jeannie in the hotel rooms, while she was on her knees over the toilet, or bent over the sink. Standing beside her in the alley or behind a dumpster in the parking lot. The days when there’d been too much booze, too much pain, too much…just too much.

  Mom had not been back twenty-four hours yet, and here she was again.

  Eventually, there was nothing left inside Jeannie but dry heaves. But she stayed bent over the sink, shuddering and gagging. When Jeannie did look up, she was white as death and snow. She looked confused, like she didn’t know where she was anymore. But that was only for a single frantic heartbeat before she crumpled in on herself and fell.

  Beth heard a gasp and a whimper. Her head jerked up. There was Dana, both hands pressed against her mouth, staring down at her grandmother, unconscious on her kitchen floor.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “Grandma?” Dana wrapped her hands around the gurney rail. “Grandma, we’re here.”

  Jeannie didn’t move.

  It had taken forever to get in here. They couldn’t ride in the ambulance and had to take a cab. When they finally got to the hospital, they had to wait in line at the desk to find out if Jeannie had arrived yet. Then they had to be checked in as visitors. Then, they had to wait to be walked back to the emergency room.

  The emergency room was white-and-steel beds in alcoves framed by curtains. There was a babble of voices, and the sounds of confusion and pain, people in scrubs moving with purpose.

  It smelled—lots of disinfectant and humans and all their problems. Jeannie was in bed 20, in the back corner. Somebody had dressed her in a hospital gown, tied in the front to allow access to her frail body. Dana could clearly see her sagging breasts and the incongruous, rounded lump of her stomach. The veins on her legs were thread-thin nests of black and blue. The branching veins on the backs of her hands ran up her arms to meet brown bruises that peeked out from under the gown’s short, loose sleeves.