by Robin Brande
“Listen to me, Lizzie. Are you listening?”
“Yes.” Father, dear.
“These lies you’re telling—they’re dangerous. Not just to me, but to you. Do you understand?”
A passion overtook me. “Don’t,” I hissed. “I mean it. Don’t even try. I know what you’re doing to Mikey—I’ve seen you, all right? I know. Don’t pretend you aren’t molesting him. I know everything.”
He glared at me with revulsion. “How can you say that?”
I leaned in closer until my mouth was an inch from his face. “I know everything, Dad, and if you don’t start explaining yourself right now and swear that you’ll stop, I’m going straight to the police. I don’t care what happens to you. All I care about is Mikey.”
“If you cared so much about him,” he said, his voice suddenly reedy and precise, “then you’d be careful what you say. You’re not a very smart girl, Lizzie—face it. You haven’t thought this through.”
Sweat pooled on my lower back. I hated the look in his eyes. He wasn’t afraid of me—not in the slightest. I was nothing but a child.
“Think about it,” he said. “Let’s say you really do go to the police. Then what? See, the problem you have there is that they’ll take a report and then you’ll have to go to court and swear to it. And you’re lying, Lizzie—we both know that. The judge will find that out. That’s perjury, and it’s a crime. You’ll go to jail for that. And then you know what? It’ll be just me and your brother in the house. If I was really doing all the bad things you say, I can’t imagine you’d want that, hm?”
My spine iced over. “Mom wouldn’t let that happen.”
“Mom has nothing to do with this. This is just you and me and Mikey.” He poked me in the chest and I shriveled at his touch. “Think about it.”
He smiled grimly and anyone watching from far away would have seen only the smile and thought how sweet—a father-daughter moment. He patted my arm harder than he needed to, then stood. “Really, Lizzie, you should think things through before you start running off your mouth. That’s always how you get yourself in trouble.” He turned to leave, then added, “I’ll pray for you. I really will.” And then he walked on without looking back.
My clothes were wet from the inside out. I had sweated from underwear to pants, bra to digital recorder. I fumbled to turn it off discreetly, but how could that look normal? I didn’t want the recorder to capture my heavy breathing or what I was going to say to Posie as soon as we met at our rendezvous point a few blocks from the park. I headed in that direction with legs leaden and soupy inside my jeans. I knew Posie would go to her car first, then drive around and pick me up.
The sun was so cheerful I felt like screaming. I kept my hat low over my eyes and watched my feet scrunching through the brown grass, and I didn’t dare lift my head to face a world that no longer felt real.
The Hard Faith
[1]
In answer to her question I handed Posie the recorder. She rewound and played it back. Our voices warbled at times as if we were underwater. My father sounded normal, reasonable. I was the psycho.
“We can’t use it,” I said when she had listened to my father’s parting words.
“Wait, I’m not sure.” She rewound it, but I stopped her before she could play it again.
“Posie, face it—it didn’t work.”
Posie sighed. She clutched the recorder, still damp from my skin, and seemed anxious to press her own good wishes inside it. “We can’t give up.”
I shrugged as if I were taking the whole thing well.
“Lizzie,” she ordered, “don’t be that way. So it didn’t go great—so what? You still have the letter. And maybe you can try again later.”
“No.”
“Come on,” she said with false brightness, “don’t let it set you back. We’ll talk to Angela, regroup, and—”
“And what, Poz? He knew what I was trying to do—obviously. Can’t you hear how careful he was? He’s on to me.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
“Look, I screwed up. I had one shot at it and I couldn’t pull it off. Let’s just admit that.”
“We’ll take it to Angela.”
“Fine. She’ll say the same thing.”
[2]
It seems to me if you’re going to say you trust God you have to trust him all the way. That means trusting him when the news is filled with stories of people dying for no reason. It means trusting him when the rapist is already inside you, or your house has already burned to the ground, or someone you love didn’t get well no matter how hard you prayed.
That’s the hard faith—the kind that sets you apart either as an unrealistic lunatic or a saint of uncommon courage. Is it better to plunge blindly ahead believing God will always do what’s best for you, or to give up your foolish faith and take your life into your own hands?
Maybe it was stupid, but I chose faith. It was a faith that made my teeth chatter and my hands shake, but I wanted to prove to myself this was real—that believing everything will always work out for the better isn’t just something you do when things are already good. I was going to keep going through with this, no matter what happened. No matter how hard it got.
Angela Peligro was frank. “It isn’t enough.”
“I know.”
“But you’re getting there.”
“Not really.”
“No, listen to this.” Angela rewound then forwarded until she found the particular part.
“It’ll be just me and your brother in the house. If I was really doing all the bad things you say, I can’t imagine you’d want that, hm?”
“Sounds like a threat to me,” Angela said.
My enthusiasm was less than lukewarm. It was a stretch, and we both knew it. Angela just wanted to pump me up for a second go round.
“He knows. He’s not going to say anything.”
“You’re guessing,” Angela answered. “Come on, Lizzie, this is important. If you can get him to admit anything at all . . .”
Posie, ever optimistic, ever rabid about the topic, asked to come in. For whatever reason, Angela let her this time. Posie lowered herself gracefully into the chair beside me and said, “Let me try. Let me meet with him.”
Angela’s brows lifted in skepticism. “Does he know you?”
“Not really. I mean he knows I’m Lizzie’s friend.”
Angela sucked in some fumes and recycled them toward the ceiling. “What would you say?”
“I’ve been thinking about it.”
“Of course you have,” I said wryly, but I’ll admit my heart lifted just a little knowing Posie was on the case.
“I think I flatter him first—flirt with him a little.”
I groaned.
“Just to get his guard down. I’ll tell him you were really upset after your last meeting, and you don’t like how it ended. You hadn’t meant for things to get ugly. What you want is for your family to come together again, like it was before. Maybe I’ll even throw in your mom somehow—something like you’re trying to talk her into coming back.”
Angela stubbed out her cigarette and lit her third that I had seen. “This isn’t something to play at, Posie. We have to be serious with it.”
“I know that. I’m dead serious. I think he’d be suspicious of Lizzie trying to act all sweet again. I think it makes sense that she’d send her friend to make peace.”
The hour appointment spilled into a second hour while we practiced and debated and worked out contingencies.
I admire Posie Sherbern. You read stories about people in the worst possible circumstances—a miner trapped under rubble with only an inch of breathing room, the last hostage left after all the others have been shot, someone clinging to the side of a canyon wall as a flash flood washes everyone away—and you wonder what makes them who they are. Why do some people understand that the worst thing is to give up too soon, while the rest of us tell ourselves we’re only being realistic? Posie would be the one still runni
ng down the stairs of a burning high rise while I sat crying in a corner wailing, “We’ll never make it! We’ll never make it!”
No, I take that back. If Posie were there she wouldn’t let me. She’d grab me by the arm and hoist me to my feet and drag me down the stairwell shouting maniacally the whole time, “Keep moving! Don’t you stop!”
I’ve noticed that little kids aren’t embarrassed when they’re watching a TV show or movie to point at the hero on the screen and say, “I’m that guy.” It seems obvious that all our make believe is based on that, but it’s so pure to hear the words said out loud.
Sitting in that smoky stale room with short, dark-haired Angela with her husky voice and destructive habit, and with Posie Sherbern, lean and idealistic and so feminine in her go-to-see-the-lawyer costume—a soft rose sweater and basic black skirt—I slipped out of my own awkward skin and tried on each of theirs for a while. When I was Angela I was tough and brash and said things like, “Fuck the bastard,” and felt better for it. As Posie I took on an unshakable confidence that good would always triumph over wickedness, and that it was my job to make it so. I’m that girl.
Sometimes when I replay it all, starting from the first moment things started to go wrong that night I came home from the prom and found out my mother was gone, I like to pretend I’m Posie and see what I would do instead. I think about every critical moment along the way when my choice was to act this way or that, and I imagine the decisions Posie would have made instead. Considering everything that happened later, I now know how different things would have been if it had been Posie living inside my skin instead of me. But that’s how we learn, right? We have to do our worst and then look at it and study it, and be willing to admit how desperately we’ve screwed up.
I’m nobody but me. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it does not.
And I could only go on as I was, making every mistake I would make, and mopping up the blood afterward.
Games
[1]
Posie never had a chance to meet with my father. By the time we could arrange it, he had already hired a lawyer who knew better than to let him do it.
Samuel Greaves was a good Christian lawyer—everybody said so. Angela told me he wore a bow tie and a bad toupee, or maybe that was his real hair, which was just as unfortunate. He was tall and spindly like Ichabod Crane, and he had adopted a slight twang like a gentleman southerner, even though Angela said she looked him up and he was actually from Iowa.
There were lawyers everywhere now. My mother hired a divorce attorney named Toni Margress. I met her in mid-October.
I sat across from her in her office—pale wood, sleek metal, everything clean and orderly and in no way resembling Angela Peligro’s office—and I looked at my mother’s lawyer—this classy blonde wearing a pale salmon blouse and cultured pearls and a sleek navy suit—and I noticed the easy confidence she displayed not by slouching into her chair the way Angela did, but by sitting erect and ready for battle. And while Toni Margress ran through the questions she thought my father’s lawyer might ask me (“Why didn’t you call the police? Why did you wait so long to tell your mother? Do you really expect this court to believe…”) I tried to distract myself by wondering how many different permutations of female lawyer there might be in the world. So far I’d met two, and only Toni Margress fit the image of women you see on lawyer shows. Did that mean she was a better lawyer than Angela Peligro? I had no way of knowing.
“Lizzie? Did you hear me?”
I was sweating again. I smelled like I did that afternoon on the park bench when the digital recorder stewed between my breasts and my body busily diverted all the moisture from my mouth into a stream of noxious sweat rolling down my backside.
“Don’t be nervous,” Toni Margress said. “There’s no question Greaves is going to try to intimidate you—that’s his job—but he can’t really hurt you. The judge isn’t going to let him slap you.” Toni smiled. “That was a joke, Lizzie. Relax.”
How could I possibly relax? I was as tight as a spool of wire.
“Now,” she continued, “Greaves is going to try to make you look like a liar—that’s his best case—so we have to be prepared for that.”
“Uh huh.”
Toni Margress sat back and gazed at me kindly. “Okay, Lizzie, I’m through asking you questions for now. Your turn. I’m sure you must have some questions for me—this all must feel pretty strange.”
What, lying under oath? Nah, I do that all the time. “Yeah.”
“So ask me. What would you like to know?”
I sat up straighter. Time to get serious. “So my father will be there, right? When I testify?”
“Yes.”
“Who else?”
“Greaves, me, your mother, the judge—”
“Will my brother be there?”
“No, I wasn’t planning on it. Usually judges don’t appreciate when we bring kids to these hearings unless they’re going to testify.”
“Anybody else?”
“Whatever witnesses we both call.”
“Like who?”
“We haven’t exchanged witness lists yet, but it’s usually family counselors for each side, a few character witnesses—whatever we think we need to make our case. Considering who your father is, I expect him to bring in church leaders to vouch for him.”
“Oh, brother. Not Pastor Mills.”
“Why?” Toni Margress asked.
“He doesn’t like me.”
“He’ll be testifying about your father, not you. Unless there’s something specific he knows about you—”
My face felt hot. “Um, no, not really. He just doesn’t like me.”
Toni Margress frowned. “Lizzie, Greaves is an aggressive lawyer. He’ll try to dig up any dirt he can find on you. I have a policy with my witnesses that I’d rather hear the bad stuff from them first, rather than from the other side. That way we can deal with it. So now is the time. Tell me everything Greaves is going to find out about you.”
I didn’t know what to say. So much had happened at the end there—with Pastor Mills, with Tessa, my parents—but would my father really bring any of that up? He was satisfied I had told the truth, right? Why would he bother going into it again?
“Um, I just had some problems with the pastor. He and I had a fight, and he told me not to come back to church.”
“A fight about what?”
“This promise thing he had us do. It was really stupid. My parents were okay with me not going any more. It wasn’t a big deal.” Lie, lie, lie.
“Lizzie—”
“I swear. It’s nothing.”
Toni Margress checked her slim gold watch. “I have to leave for court in a few minutes. Is there anything else you want to know?”
I wondered if I should, but in the end decided this was my time with the lawyer, and if she wanted me to be honest, she could do the same. “How can my mother afford you? I thought she didn’t have any money, and obviously. . .” I swept my hand across the office, and ended with the well-turned-out lawyer herself. “I mean, if it’s okay to ask.”
“I can’t disclose the particulars. Maybe you should ask her.”
“Is Charles Gray paying?”
“I really can’t say. Maybe your mother will tell you if you ask.”
Toni Margress checked her watch one more time and talked faster. “Now, the last thing I wanted to talk to you about is that Judge Beacons has ordered a custody evaluation. That means an evaluator will be calling you soon to set up an appointment.”
“What for?”
“To see what you’re like. To hear your story. It will probably be Henrietta Parse—she’s good. She’ll interview your parents, too, maybe some of the witnesses, and then report back to the judge with her opinion about the whole thing. She’ll act as an independent observer—she doesn’t work for either side. Judges like to bring people like her in on cases like this.”
“Okay.” It was all growing more complicated by the minute. But the
n I thought, what did I expect? This was no game—it was serious stuff.
[2]
Speaking of games, I think Jason was tired of mine.
Like how I avoided being alone with him whenever he dropped in at Posie’s. How I dodged him in the halls. How I always conveniently found something else to do whenever he suggested we all go out.
“Aimes—”
“Wilder—”
Jason edged closer to me on the bed I slept in at Posie’s. Posie had gone to the bathroom, and he wasn’t wasting any time.
“Do you want me to fall in love with somebody else?”
“Ha!” But my heart skipped a few beats. “I didn’t notice you suffering. Weren’t you with Maggie Barnes last time I saw?”
“Lies.” Jason leaned back on the bed and tried to pull me down with him.
I wrestled his hands away. “I’m sure she’d love to know you’re over here tonight. What excuse did you give her?”
“I don’t need an excuse. She’s not my girlfriend.”
“I hope for your sake that’s true,” I said. “That girl is a skank.”
“Then you should save me from her.”
“No, thanks.” I tried to pretend I didn’t care, but I doubt that it was working.
When Posie returned Jason sat up and leaned against the wall. He leveled his gaze at me and said in a hardened tone, “Let’s talk about you, Aimes.”
“Let’s not.” I continued to pretend to do my homework, re-reading the same paragraph from my chemistry book that I’d been trying to get past since Jason arrived.
“Like why are you living here?”
“I want to.”
“I asked her to,” Posie said.
Jason wasn’t buying it. “Your dad finally go ape shit on some guy?” he guessed. “Pistol whip him for sending you roses?”
“No.”
Jason tisked his tongue. “You have far too many secrets.”
“No, I don’t.”
He pointed to my hand. “Like what’s that ring all about? I’ve always wondered about that.”
