by Kim Savage
SEVENTEEN
371 Days After the Woods
Paula took days to confirm Liv’s surgical appointment with Dr. Juan Cassio in Bolivia. She was, after all, torn between two major stories now, and she had me to thank for both. The rising number of parents sending their teens to foreign countries for plastic surgery constituted a bona fide trend. And balancing the sensitivities of my personal revelation—girl saw body in pit, remembered later—required a deft hand, and could not be hurried.
Stuck in my hospital bed, with Liv screening my calls and her “surgical holiday” only a day away, I had to spin Alice into action, even if it was Thanksgiving. Alice’s official mission was to inform Liv of my car accident, although I doubted Deborah would relay the message. I hoped if Alice made my wreck sound bad enough, Liv might stick around, or at least stop by the hospital on her way to Logan Airport.
Alice thought it odd to find Deborah, rather than packing or fixing Thanksgiving dinner, on the front lawn talking shades of yellow with the owners of Park Pro Painting.
“These people,” Deborah had stage-whispered behind her hand to Alice, “don’t mind working on holidays.”
The next morning, in the wee hours, Alice drove by the Lapins’ house again as instructed, and was surprised to see Deborah’s car in the driveway and the houselights blazing well past their six a.m. scheduled flight departure. It seemed Deborah and Liv hadn’t left for their trip after all. Alice’s news of my hospitalization had worked, I declared, stripping off my johnny, ready to be discharged. Alice’s conclusion was more mercenary. Deborah had decided that the money for the trip would be better used to finally paint the house, Alice presumed. Either scenario sounded good to me; all that mattered was that Liv’s trip wasn’t happening. And choosing the perfect historical yellow could be all-consuming.
Call it foolish optimism: I even bet Alice that Deborah would leave Liv alone.
Liv wasn’t making any bets. She chose Thanksgiving night to give Shane his early Christmas present. The rest is history.
“He’s lucky,” Paula said gravely on the phone. “Assault with a deadly weapon can carry a sentence of up to ten years. He was a minor. It happened the day before he turned eighteen. It’s an injustice: he just gets charged with a misdemeanor, has a strike on his record, and only has to go to juvie for six months. The system must be reformed.”
“It’s a clean slash right over the cheekbone, long but not deep, so it wasn’t much more painful than a paper cut,” Erik said. His friend was the plastic surgeon who had been consulted, and sharing information with me was okay, because processing is healthy. “Still, it’s impossible to repair without stitches. There wasn’t much anyone could do, no matter how skilled. Eventually it will scar. It won’t be pretty.”
Mom said, “Along the way, someone failed her. Someone allowed her to mix with the wrong crowd.”
Ricker said, “It is unfortunate to the extent that it hinders your progress.” Okay, she didn’t say that. But she was thinking it.
Only Alice said, “Go to her. Immediately.”
Now I charge past the metal trash can on the curb and up the walk, fly up the stairs, and hammer on Liv’s front door. Stacked on the welcome mat are two foil-covered turkey dinners, a fruit-stuffed cornucopia with a tag that says Saint Theresa’s Parish, and a cellophane cone of autumn-hued carnations. I lift the flowers and peer at the tag: Wishing you a speedy recovery. Fondly, Ryan Lombardi. Water saturates everything, tiny beads across the foil and the cellophane. It’s classic Deborah, leaving this gaudy, soggy display to show the world that so many people care about the Lapins.
I bang harder. The handle is altogether missing now, but no matter, because the door eases open. Liv wears a ladylike kelly-green peacoat, tights, and gloves, like an old-fashioned traveler ready to board a steam train. Her hair is drawn back into a neat bun. A rectangular plastic bandage stretches across her cheek from under her left eye, nose to ear. “Come in,” she says, like it’s a regular day, her voice and movements light. I step in, wiping tears of panic away with the heel of my palm. On the round table in the middle of the foyer is a hand-drawn card for LIVVY propped against a bouquet of supermarket flowers: pink carnations losing petals and browned baby’s breath. Three pearlized suitcases of different sizes are lined up next to the door.
“It’s the holiday season. A time for gratitude,” Liv says.
“Oh, Liv.” I start to bawl.
Liv throws up her palm. “Stop! You’re not allowed to sob. Turn right around and leave if you’re going to do that.”
I swipe at hot tears with my fingertips. “Tell me. Tell me everything.”
“You must have heard by now. I tried to break up with Shane, and he got mad and just started slashing all over the place. Everyone knows he carries a knife.”
A gift that goes beyond the recipient, tied with a fat bow. Liv and I both bound our presents with ribbons. Shane got his, but I chickened out and left Liv’s stocking alone. If I had let Liv know that I was onto her madness, that I knew, maybe somehow her face would be whole.
Liv snaps her fingers in front of my nose. “Are you saying you didn’t hear the story?”
“I just heard. I was in a car accident, in the hospital.” I hold up my splinted wrist. “I was discharged an hour ago. I snuck out of my house when my mother went to get the ginger ale I begged for. It doesn’t matter, never mind. I called you. I’ve been calling you,” I stammer.
She moves to the burnished-gold antique mirror and turns her cheek to it. “The story got around fast. A matter of hours, really.” She touches the edge of her bandage. “I guess the holiday break didn’t slow the rumor mill.”
“Shane is a criminal. He deserves everything he gets.” I search her eyes in the mirror for agreement. There is nothing. I had expected nothing; anything would have surprised me.
Which means it’s Go Time.
“I hear he’s going to jail for a long time,” I say. “Twenty years, maybe.”
“Nooo,” Liv says, drawing out the word as she tightens the belt on her jacket. “He’s going to juvie for six months.”
“That’s not long enough. Shane is pure evil. Calculating.”
“It’s over.” She moves away from the mirror and drops to her knees at the biggest suitcase, popping the buckles and setting the cover against the wall. She unclicks the crisscrossed straps and removes two sweaters. From a nearby bag labeled Blick Art Materials she slips a set of colored pencils in a wooden box sealed in plastic, along with a tablet of creamy, expensive-looking paper. She places them in the spot where the sweaters were and runs her fingers over them, smiling.
“Thank God it’s over.” I swallow hard and plow through. “In some ways, I feel like this was all part of Shane’s master plan, you know? Get his dream girl, then mark her in some ghastly, irreversible way that will make her forever his.”
“That’s ridiculous. Shane doesn’t have the brainpower to plan his own course load each semester, never mind mastermind ways to keep a girlfriend,” Liv says, closing the suitcase and snapping the locks.
“People don’t realize,” I say. “It takes a lot of courage and strength to break it off with an abuser. The fact that people experience domestic violence doesn’t make them inherently weak. Abusers like Shane are able to manipulate and coerce girls like you by chipping away at your self-esteem. It happened so slowly that you probably weren’t even aware of it. Then, bam! The violent attack happens.”
“Wait.” Liv stands and brushes off her knees, the round hall table between us. “What do you mean by ‘girls like me’?”
“Statistically, many victims grow up in homes where there’s abuse, physical or emotional. It’s the norm. It conditions them to accept dysfunction and unhappiness.”
Liv circles the table. “Conditions them. The victims?”
“Sure. Victims like you were raised to accept abuse as the norm. So, in some way, your mother orchestrated all of this.”
“My mother,” she says, shaking h
er head. “My mother doesn’t get credit here. Shane doesn’t get credit here.”
I reach out blindly and touch the table, trying to blunt the urge to run. “I was thinking. It’s a shame you weren’t able to hold him off.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Just that he’s such a scrawny punk. So soft. Weak-seeming.”
Her eyes flash. “He had a knife, Julia.”
“Like Donald Jessup. Been there.” I laugh weakly, clear my throat, and back away, avoiding her eyes. “I was so afraid of that knife the first time I saw it. Nine inches of serrated stainless steel, I found out later. How big was Shane’s knife? Never mind, it doesn’t matter. When I pulled Donald Jessup off of you, I was sure he would swing around with that blade and get me. The thing is, with a knife, you have to control the attacker’s weapon hand. Kick ’em in the groin, gouge the eyes, strike the throat. Hurt their vulnerable targets. But skills can only get you so far. I didn’t have them that day in the woods. Kellan’s father says stopping an attacker requires innate bravery.”
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Liv’s voice quivers. She steps closer, her ear resting on her shoulder at an extreme angle. “Are you saying that I’m not as brave as you?”
“I’m not suggesting that at all. I’m devastated about what happened to your face,” I say.
“You think brave is answering someone’s cry for help in the woods. I call that an instinctual reflex: fight or flight. Some people choose flight. You happened to choose fight. You want to know what brave is? Brave is meticulous planning. Staying with the plan, even when you get cold feet.”
My stomach grips. “What plan?”
“Bravery is trading something you love for something you love more. Like your freedom.” Liv leans in close and says coolly, “I gave him the knife, Julia. Think about it.”
“I have,” I whisper.
“You want the real story? An exclusive? We both know you’re a fan of those. Fine. You know something? After all this time, you deserve it. Here’s the thing: this is for you.” She jabs the air in front of my chest with her finger. “Not your fancy doctor. Not your mother. And absolutely not Paula Papademetriou.”
I nod slowly.
“He did it fast, like I expected he would. It felt like a paper cut across my cheek. Far worse was watching him fall apart afterward, coke-addled and freaking out over the blood. I didn’t scream. He screamed, high-pitched, like a girl. I had to taunt him for over an hour; it was exhausting. First I had to make sure he smoked enough pot to make him impotent, then snort enough coke to get his frenzy going. Throw in some insults about his real mother, then his fake mother, then his manhood, all the while straddling him until my hips ached. A few moans of ‘Ryan’ instead of ‘Shane.’ After all my coaching, who would have ever thought it would have taken him that long?”
My bag slips to the floor. I leave it.
“I researched what it would feel like, to be prepared,” Liv continues. “The cutters of the world love to blog and tweet. They won’t shut up about it. The touchy-feely cutters use words like release and orgasmic. The more common minds say ‘it burns’ or ‘it stings.’ Duh. There’s a subset that waxes on about best tools, with a majority in the razor blade camp. I sort of wish I’d done more research before I spent $10.49 on the Grim Reaper, because it sounds like a razor blade would have been the way to go from a precision standpoint. But no one grabs a razor blade in the heat of the moment. It’s too awkward. And from the gift standpoint, it wouldn’t have worked. Might as well give him a kitchen knife.
“After a few seconds, it felt exposed, like when part of your body gets cold unexpectedly. Imagine dropping trou on a freezing winter day. It was almost refreshing, the moment the air hit that thin line of muscle and blood. I guess that’s why corpses are cold, because living blood is warm.
“On the subject of blood and surprises: in case you were wondering, there was very little. All the gauze I bought sat untouched in my bag. I hadn’t worked through how I was going to explain carrying what amounted to a first aid kit anyway. Evidence of premeditation, that’s what the courtroom dramas would call it. I clasped my hand to my flayed cheek, surprised, which required no acting whatsoever, because even when you’re expecting something to happen and are fully prepared for it, getting hurt is always a surprise. No need to fake wide eyes, your eyes just fling open. I made a noise too, but mostly, I kept thinking, my cheek is so cold, and I should get that antiseptic out right now.
“It seems a shame that Shane didn’t get to enjoy his Christmas gift a little more. As all future criminals do, Shane has it in his DNA to hide the weapon, so before he even attended to me, he threw open his bedroom window and hurled the knife into the yard. I should have given him a harder time about that. It’s funny that his first instinct was to cover his butt, when he admitted his guilt to his mother and the police right away anyway. It just meant some fat cop had to fish it out of the rhododendron next to the Cuthberts’ driveway.
“His mother. Oh, God, his mother. She heard his shrieks as she walked in from bunco. How horrid that must be, coming in from Eighties Night. Running upstairs, coat flung open, pink scrunchie hanging halfway down her teased ponytail. Shane pointing to me, her screaming, ‘What did you do? What did you do?’ like I’d been the one holding the knife. Running to the window and leaning into the darkness, her butt one big tweedy hump, as though an intruder had assaulted me and scaled down the face of her house and was now running down Evergreen Lane. She kept yelling, ‘Where is he? Where is he?’ and Shane kept moaning ‘There was no one,’ but pausing for a minute, wondering if she might be onto a good fabrication.
“I was surprised when I started to feel a little woozy, like when you blow your nose too hard and the room tilts and everything sounds muddled. Mrs. Cuthbert yelled at Shane to step away from me then, a motherly move made by someone who had reason and experience enough to be afraid of her son. She forced me to sit on the floor—I don’t know why they always force traumatized people to sit on the floor—and hold toilet paper she’d grabbed from the upstairs bathroom against my face to ‘staunch the flow’ (I expected to find she’d handed me a tampon) while she called Mr. Cuthbert at the bar who advised we go straight to the hospital.
“Even if she hadn’t called the police, I knew from TV that the ER doctors would have reported the incident to the cops anyway. It’s not like I wanted anything bad to happen to Shane—didn’t care, really—I just wanted it on the record, to keep things straight. It was good that I had some time alone with the social worker to recount all the times Shane pushed me and punched me and yelled at me: a quantifiable record of growing violence. There was even corroboration. Half the school had seen him grab my ankle in gym, and certainly Ryan Lombardi had been worried enough by my little bruises that he regretted not saying something sooner.
“I think it’s beautiful. When a scar heals, it pulls at the rest of your face like it’s clinging to the old skin, as if nostalgic. This morning was hard, I confess. I woke up to itchy stitches, and caught myself about to cry when it all came back to me. Then I heard Mother on the phone arguing with the airline over ‘unforeseeable circumstances’ and demanding a refund on our flight, and I snuggled back under the blankets and realized it was worth every stitch. I will never second-guess myself again.”
The only sound is Liv catching her breath. I have stopped breathing.
“Does it hurt to smile?” I ask, my voice shredded.
“Yes. But I can’t help it.” She grins widely.
I nod at the suitcase. “You’re going somewhere?”
“Yes, right. Those. I’m leaving town. For a hospital in Belmont. A little mental respite. In fact, I thought you were my cab. Mother will follow later, after she drives Crystal home. She was coming anyway, to wish us bon voyage. It all worked out.”
“How did Crystal take it? The public version.”
Liv frowns, crinkling the dressing on her cheek. “Crystal wasn’t really fazed. This is
not an unheard-of event in her world. In fact, this very thing happened to her cousin Jessie last year. Except, well. A bit worse. Her boyfriend had a violent history. Unstable,” she adds behind her hand in a stage whisper.
Sing-songy voices and splash sounds trail from the kitchen. My ears start to ring and my vision narrows.
“About Crystal and my mother,” Liv says, stepping closer, smelling of antiseptic. “Remember your promise.”
“I need to use the bathroom,” I say, moving drunkenly past her and squeezing into the tiny downstairs toilet in the back hall. I leave the door open an inch and brace myself over the sink. The voices from the kitchen are clearer from here: Deborah, and a younger voice, notes rising and falling, and a cascade of giggles. A strong vinegar-apple smell. I peek through the crack and see Deborah’s back, arms bowed, blocking most of Crystal, who leans over the sink. Deborah squeezes a pink plastic bottle in a circle over her head.
“You’re going to love it! Your hair will be so pretty and smooth. Try closing your eyes so the fumes don’t bother them.”
I flush the empty toilet bowl and run the water before stepping out, pausing at Crystal’s rush of laughter as Deborah ties her hair in a towel turban and hands her a mirror. “Make believe you’re at a spa. If you’re good, maybe we’ll do your toenails next.”
I stumble past Liv as she calls, “Wait, aren’t you going to say goodbye?” But I don’t stop, because her cab is coming, and Shane is in juvie, waiting for her call, waiting to be told she loves him no matter what, and he is her one true hero, having rescued her in a way Julia never did, and no one can understand that real love hurts, and he will tell her about the visitor’s lounge bathroom at McLean that they can use to be together on visits if he ever gets released, and she will tell him that she will, but she won’t, because she’s done with him.
I pause to breathe in the day. The rain has ended. Much as I hate the rain, the smell that comes after isn’t unpleasant.
