Deceived

by James Scott Bell

  For a long moment, no one moved. Then Rocky started pushing Liz away from Mac, gently but firmly.

  “What happened?” Rocky demanded.

  Mac saw fear in Liz’s eyes.

  “Easy,” Mac said, putting his hand on Rocky’s arm. “Liz, can you tell us?”

  Liz fell to her knees, dissolving into tears.

  “Where is he?” Rocky said.

  Mac put his hand up to Rocky, silencing her. Then he knelt and helped Liz to her feet. She was shaking and seemed so small. He held her again, stroking her hair. “Liz, we have to know what happened. Where is he? Can you tell us?”

  Still sobbing, Liz nodded.

  “Please, do your best to tell us. Come on, let’s sit down.”

  He helped her to the living room and into a chair, the news starting to sink in. Arty, dead? He swallowed hard. Both of the women in the room with him now seemed to be in shock. Liz for obvious reasons, Rocky out of some kind of frustration, or something else as yet unidentified.

  Mac was now the one who had to comfort them. He uttered a silent prayer for wisdom.

  “Get some Kleenex,” Mac told Rocky. She went but seemed to be moving slowly. With attitude. Strange.

  Liz whispered, “She doesn’t like me.”

  “Let’s talk about what happened to Arty.”

  “It was an accident,” Liz said. “We were hiking. There’s a place . . . he fell.” She stopped, taking in a labored breath. Her forehead furrowed, as if all the tension of the moment was focused there, seeking release.

  “How long ago was this?” Mac said.

  “This afternoon.”

  Rocky said, “I want to hear this.” She was back in the room and put a box of tissues on the coffee table.

  “Why don’t you have a seat?” Mac said, hoping Rocky would get the message from his tone that she should sit down and shut up. She didn’t sit.

  “I fell, too,” Liz said. “It was horrible.”

  “What happened exactly?” Mac said.

  “Don’t make me tell,” Liz said. “Please. It was an accident. A man came along, he called 911. The police came, paramedics. I just got home a little while ago.” Liz sat up and grabbed Mac’s wrist. “What am I going to do, Mac? I’m all alone!”

  “No, no, you have us,” Mac said.

  Rocky said nothing.

  “We’ll be right here to help you,” Mac said.

  Liz shook her head. “I can’t believe it. I can’t. It’s a nightmare. I can’t face it . . .”

  “All right, listen,” Mac said, “let’s get you to bed. You need to sleep — ”

  “I can’t possibly — ”

  “We’re not finished yet,” Rocky said. “Did the police question you?”

  Mac turned on her, tossing fury from his eyes.

  “No,” Liz said. “It was a sheriff’s detective.”

  “Pack Canyon would be a county matter,” Mac said.

  “You have the name of the detective?” Rocky asked.

  “Let’s just take it easy here,” Mac said.

  “Look, who are you anyway?” Rocky said. “You’re not family. Who asked you to run things?”

  “He is family,” Liz said. “More than you.”

  “Arty’s my brother,” Rocky said.

  “He’s my husband !”

  “Okay,” Mac said. “This is hard right now. Liz, you need to rest. Have you got anything you can take?”

  “Let’s look,” Rocky said.

  Liz’s eyes flashed. “You have no business going through my things!” She got up and ran from the room, slammed a door.

  Mac looked at Rocky. She appeared about to say something. Her lips twitched.

  “What about you?” Mac said. “You all right?”

  Rocky shook her head.

  “You need to get some rest, too,” he said.

  “There’s something going on here,” Rocky said.

  “Rocky — ”

  “I’m going to find out what.”

  “Maybe you need to go home.”

  “You telling me what to do?”

  “I’m just making a suggestion,” Mac said.

  “Keep your suggestions to yourself.”

  “Look, you don’t have — ”

  She turned away from him.

  Mac said, “I didn’t mean to come on so hard. But until we find out what’s happened, we need to be real easy around Liz. She’s vulnerable.”

  “Oh yes,” Rocky said, without facing him. “So, so vulnerable.”

  10:43 p.m.

  No way he was going to get some sleep.

  Not tonight. Not lying on top of the bed, staring at the ceiling, every synapse in his brain firing away.

  There were big, bright letters on the ceiling. They spelled out, This is your life, Ted Gillespie.

  And there was a movie screen on the ceiling. It showed the same scene over and over again.

  A blond woman, calling for help, coming toward him. He saw himself in the movie. He looked a lot better in the movie than he did in the mirror. The woman threw herself into his arms.

  This is your life, Ted Gillespie.

  He smiled in the darkness. He liked movies.

  11:16 p.m.

  Something going on, Rocky had said.

  Mac rubbed his eyes and looked at the wall. The only sound now was the tick tick tick of the Elvis wall clock. One of Arty’s treasured possessions. Elvis’s legs were the pendulum. It was 1950s Elvis, not Vegas Elvis. Not even the Elvis of Kissin’ Cousins.

  Real, revolutionary Elvis. Mac’s mom had been so totally into Elvis. She used to tell him all about seeing him in 1956 when she was just fourteen and her girlfriend got her into the Mississippi – Alabama Fair and Dairy Show.

  “So, so crazy,” his mother said with a faraway look. “I was there. I saw it happening. It was . . . amazing.”

  She played Elvis around the house all the time. Mac got the idea that she wished she didn’t live in Newark, but back in Alabama or in Las Vegas with an Elvis impersonator.

  Not that any of that mattered now.

  What mattered was Liz. Finally in bed, hopefully asleep.

  Definitely alone.

  She would need a lot of care now, and she had no one close to her. Arty’s father wasn’t in the best of health. And clearly Arty’s sister wasn’t ready to come alongside.

  Mac didn’t know much about Liz’s family. Arty never really told him about it. Neither had Liz. She was from the South somewhere. The only impression Mac had about her background was that it probably wasn’t real nice.

  A little of that seemed to apply to Rocky, too.

  What was her deal, anyway? Arty had mentioned her a few times. Said they weren’t as close as they used to be. Hoped maybe they could talk more. He also said she was talented and capable and sort of independent. A chip-on-the-shoulder kind.

  Lost. That was the last word he remembered Arty saying about her.

  It occurred to Mac that both Liz and Rocky were lost in very much the same way.

  Should he stay? He could sleep on the sofa and be here in the morning, when the shock would renew itself all over again, a poke in a fresh wound. She might need someone most of all then. And it wasn’t like he had anyone to go home to.

  He wondered if he’d ever get married again. If he was even capable of it with the episodes and all. If the rages would ever be healed, the way Pastor Jon said they could be.

  He wondered if he’d ever get to see his daughter again. See her graduate from high school. Meet her boyfriends —

  “You’re still here.”

  Liz was standing there, in the living room, dark blue robe around her, eyes bleary.

  Mac stood. “Why aren’t you sleeping?”

  “Couldn’t,” she said and shuffled to a chair. She pushed some hair aside and over her ear. “Can we talk?”

  “Sure,” Mac said. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “You were Arty’s best friend in the world.”

  “One of them
,” Mac said.

  “No, I think his best friend. After he started going to church, it was you he looked up to.”

  Mac thought about that. They certainly had spent a lot of time together. It made Mac feel good that Arty thought that highly of him.

  “I think he would have wanted you to keep after me,” Liz said.

  “After?”

  She nodded and wiped her eyes with her middle fingers.

  “I think you need to get back to bed,” Mac said. “In the morning — ”

  “No. Please. I want to talk. To you. Now.”

  Mac thought he saw desperation in her tired eyes.

  “I need to talk about what’s happening inside me,” she said.

  “Of course.” Mac sat in the chair next to hers. This is why you are here tonight, boy. Don’t blow it.

  He suddenly felt nervous. A little shaky. This could be one of those life-altering moments. Except his tongue felt like a tree sloth. His brain mushy. He silently said a help me, help me, help me prayer and waited for Liz to talk.

  She took in a long breath and let it out, making a whooshing sound. Gathering her courage, Mac thought. Gutsy.

  “I just can’t believe he’s not here,” she said. “Can you tell me, please, why God would take him away like this? When we still had so much to say to each other?”

  Great, Mac thought. Cut right to the biggie. The mystery of why God allows bad things to happen to good people. He hadn’t come near to figuring that one out himself.

  “I know he’s with the Lord,” Mac said. “I know that. That’s what the Bible says. So you have to know that, too. Bad things do happen to us, but it’s all in God’s hands. Nothing happens that he doesn’t know about.”

  She shook her head. “Arty would say that, and I didn’t understand. But I wanted to, Mac. That’s why we went hiking today. I told him I wanted to go to his favorite spot and have him tell me all about God. I was ready, Mac, to drink it in. And now . . .”

  Her voice receded like a wave off a rock. Mac felt if he didn’t catch her now, she herself might slip into a darker despair. Help me.

  “And now you need to keep on going,” Mac said. “We’ll keep on the way Arty would have wanted it. We’ll be family together.”

  She pasted a slight smile on her face, the way sad people do sometimes to fight against grief. “That’s nice, Mac. That’s very nice. No wonder Arty liked you so much. Did he ever talk about me?”

  “’Course he did,” Mac said. “He loved you.”

  “You can be honest with me. He was frustrated with me sometimes, wasn’t he?”

  “What married couple doesn’t have frustrations? Believe me, you’re talking to an expert here.”

  “You were married before, right?”

  Mac nodded.

  “A daughter, right?” she asked.

  He nodded again.

  “Ever get to see her?”

  He shook his head.

  “See,” Liz said, “I don’t think that’s fair. Why would God . . .” She stopped, looking at his face. “What would he say, Mac?”

  “Arty?”

  “What was the bottom line?”

  “Bottom line,” said Mac, “was he wanted you to be happy, and he thought you weren’t. Because he wasn’t happy till he surrendered to God.”

  “That’s what I wanted to do,” she said. “That’s what I was moving toward, but I fought him about it. Now it’s too late.”

  “It’s not too late.”

  “Can you help me? Can you make me understand?”

  “I can try,” Mac said.

  “Do,” she said.

  He’d never done it before, made someone understand. Where did you even start? He could only think of one place.

  “Prison makes you take a long look,” he said. “Some guys keep looking to the outside, what they’re gonna do when they get out. The jobs they’re gonna pull. Or some of ’em think they’ll be able to go straight, but they end up not. But I was looking at what I was, and it took me a long time to figure it out. It wasn’t until Pastor Jon came that I started to get it.”

  “Pastor Jon came to see you?”

  “He does prison ministry. I could sit in my cell every night, or one night a week I could get out if I went to Bible study. So I went to Bible study. Just to kill time. I thought I’d be hearing some namby-pamby, but that’s not what I got.”

  “No?”

  “Pastor Jon’s not like that at all. He looked us in the eyes and opened his Bible and said, ‘The heart is wicked, man. It’s an ugly rock sitting there.’ And I knew that was true about me. There was no way I couldn’t know it. He told us that no heart can be changed unless God does it. And the only way he does it is through Jesus. He told us how Jesus got to a bad dude named Saul. He was blinded by light one day, and Jesus spoke to him, and when Saul got his sight back, he was changed. I mean, how could you not be? And I thought, I want to be changed like that.”

  “I want that, too,” Liz said. “I want my heart changed. I want what you have. What Arty had. Can I have that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me how. Please tell me how. Because I thought God made that decision for you, and you were stuck wherever that was.”

  “I’ve never heard that,” Mac said. “I only know that God wants everyone to be saved and that’s why Jesus came. I mean, it says right there in the Bible that Jesus died for the sins of the whole world.”

  “What if you’re not good enough to be saved?”

  Mac shook his head. “That’s not it. Not it at all. Nobody’s good enough. It’s a choice you make, to take Christ or not. Anybody can take him if they want to. So that’s the thing. Do you want him?”

  “I think so.”

  “It’s freedom,” Mac said. “It’s the only thing that gives you real freedom. But you have to be willing to give up the old life.”

  “Old life?”

  Mac nodded. “You have to give up your life for his.” Was he making sense? Was he doing it right?

  A sudden fear twisted around his heart. What was that all about? Then he realized he was afraid for her. For her soul, for her soul for eternity.

  Mac grabbed her hand.

  11:59

  Rocky Towne, covered with Geena’s knitted afghan, head propped on the arm of the sofa, looked out the window at the moon. It was a crescent over Los Angeles. Not full, not whole. Sliced. Like her.

  The moon became a blur. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Arty,” she whispered. “I wish I could see you one more time. One more . . .”

  Sunday

  8:35 a.m.

  Rocky woke up crying.

  In the dream, she and Arty were kids again and playing at the park. The park was by their house. They used to play there all the time. Arty would push her on the swings and then twirl her on the roundabout.

  When Arty was doing that, she felt safe. Happy, too, because he loved her. Even though they fought sometimes, she never doubted his love. Not because he said it, but because of what he did.

  In the dream, Arty was on the slide and was about to come down to the sand, where Rocky was waiting.

  But he hesitated. He was looking at her. His face was sad. He was crying. She asked him what the matter was. He didn’t answer but slid down. When he got to the end, he went into the sand and disappeared.

  The Rocky in the dream cried out.

  The Rocky on the sofa in Geena’s apartment felt herself shaken awake.

  “Hey, hey,” Geena was saying.

  Rocky put her face on Geena’s leg until the tears stopped.

  Geena stroked her hair. You had to hand it to her, Rocky thought. She was a little flighty, yes. Sometimes the two sides of Geena’s brain were like a couple of hummingbirds looking for nectar. They’d pause at a thought every now and then, wings beating wildly, then be off to another flower or guru or movement or cause. Always wanting to drink in life, experience it, and most of all take flight.

  But say what you would about
Geena Carter, Rocky loved her like a sister because she had a heart the size of Texas. And she’d come to Rocky at just the right time.

  Five years ago, Rocky was singing, as she often did, in an isolated stretch of Griffith Park. It was her favorite spot in LA, between two hillsides in a crook with trees, rock, ice plants, and grass. It took a bit of getting to, but that was the point. Not a lot of foot traffic. And you could see people coming. If she had to stop singing she could before any sound reached other ears.

  It was her private lounge. There she sang show tunes and jazz favorites and big band. Those were the songs she liked. Upbeat. They were the songs that reached the deepest part of her heart.

  In her spot in Griffith Park, she could let them all out in glorious solitude.

  One cool fall day, Rocky had gone there straight from a scene out of a bad soap opera. Only unfortunately, it was a scene from real life, her real life. Jeremy was his name. Jeremy of the silver tongue, of the I love you for you who are. That Jeremy. Six months they’d been together. One harried afternoon he’d made love to her, then asked her to please leave quickly, he had to get to an appointment. When she took too long he got mad, and then she found out why. There was a leggy blonde knocking on his door.

  Funny thing was — if funny was even the right word — the blonde didn’t even seem to care. She waltzed in without so much as a second look. Jeremy gave a shrug, as if to say, That’s life in the big city.

  So Rocky, driving, then running almost blindly, went to her spot in the park and raged into the hillside, cried her tears into it, and screamed the name of Jeremy attached to all sorts of cathartic epithets and animal sounds.

  When her rage was spent, she sang The Andrews Sisters. “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” to be exact. Their most famous song. If that couldn’t lift your spirits, you had none.

  She practiced it once, then went for it again. She must have been really into it because when she got to the part where the voice did this bugle riff, just before “eight to the bar,” she noticed a woman just standing there, smiling.

  “Keep going!” the woman said. “This is way cool.”

  Rocky was too surprised to reply. Where had she come from? Was she some sort of urban wood nymph, sent to municipal parks to spy on innocent citizens? Just what did she think she was doing, invading like this?