“I feel terrible having you come all the way to Boston and further, and now you have to sit by yourself while I…” Debbie said, and at a loss for words dropped her hands to her sides.
“Are you serious?” asked Stephanie. “I’ve got internet, an endless supply of caffeine, and NuGo bars. Plus, I’ve seen genetic evidence that I could have a rocking bod once mine decides it needs a shape.”
“You have a lovely shape,” said Essie.
“For a twelve-year-old boy!” Stephanie argued.
“I saw your Facebook page,” said Debbie. “No twelve-year-old boys look like that!” Stephanie blushed and chanced a glance at her father.
“Yeah, I saw it. Wish I hadn’t. You have more lift than a Harrier in that photo,” Brandon said.
“What’s a Harrier?” Stephanie asked.
“Google it,” said Brandon with a wink.
Brandon followed Debbie and Essie into the private office and set his briefcase down near one of the seats. Debbie sat on the beige leather sofa that she and Ab had shared two days prior and Essie sat beside her and crossed her legs. Debbie had a sudden jab of paranoia. Had Brandon and Essie spoken about her life in Lakewood without her knowledge? It was unfounded and improbable, but the notion made her feel at a disadvantage, as if they knew all her secrets. Essie patted her reassuringly on the leg as if she were aware of her thoughts. Brandon sat down and offered a supportive smile that fell a little short.
“I feel as nervous as you look,” Brandon said to Debbie.
“This has been hanging over me for a few days,” Debbie replied. “I’m sure what you have to tell me won’t make it to a Walt Disney film.”
“No, it won’t,” Brandon said. “I’m not entirely sure how and where to start. Maybe I should start by asking you what you remember of Lakewood?” He looked to Essie for an affirmation. She nodded and shared a comforting smile.
“You asked me that the other day,” Debbie said. “I remember more lately but… still just little snippets. I feel the most important things are those I don’t remember, like my mother. Why would I block her out? I envision her as a faceless, long-haired absence and me as a little girl, saying goodbye. I can’t even conjure an image of my father. I have fond and faded memories of Nan. They feel like safe memories. I think she was my mother’s mother, but I’m not sure.”
“She was,” Brandon affirmed.
“I remember Nan’s funeral, or at least the memory of her lying in her casket. I also remember running in the woods and playing… tag… or hide-and-seek. Those were the good memories. The bad memories were hidden from me until shortly after my ex and I split. Something dredged them up, and they kicked into hyper-drive when Hannah appeared. That’s about it.”
Brandon repositioned on the seat and scratched his head nervously. “Now, I can tell you some of what you don’t remember if you’re sure you’re ready.”
“You drove hours out of your way, I’m not about to waste your time like that,” Debbie said.
“That’s not the response I need. You have to tell me you are ready or that you are not ready to hear about Lakewood. If it’s too much to deal with right now, I can’t and won’t blame you. This has not been a waste of time for me. I have thought about you often over the years. If I were to leave right this moment, I would leave content that I did see you and talk with you, and knowing that you are doing well.”
Debbie looked at Essie and then closed her eyes to calm herself. “Okay,” she says. “Let’s have it.”
After another deep breath Brandon said, “Everything was good until 1987 when grandmother died. She was your self-appointed caretaker since your mother was seldom present and not too with it when she was. I don’t remember her that well, but my father, your mother’s brother, said she was always chasing romantic dreams, pursuing promises, and coming back a little emptier each time. She was exceptionally beautiful and he said that her beauty was her biggest folly. She thrived on attention and would take off for long spells to places like Vegas, Cancun, Rio, or wherever her latest suitors took her. There were many men. They would use her then lose her, but she always found her way back to Lakewood, broken-hearted, penniless, and quite often addicted to one thing or another.”
“Which finally killed her,” Debbie said.
After an extended pause Brandon said, “Debbie, your mother’s not dead.”
“But Mad Mother Prioulx told me she overdosed,” Debbie said. “She said she died like a whore, in an abandoned building with a needle in her arm.”
“Madeline Prioulx. Not exactly the honorable type,” said Brandon.
“How do you know her?” Debbie asked, her agitation rising with the timbre of her voice. It was daunting talking with someone who knew her history better than she did.
“Don’t know her, but I know quite a bit about her,” Brandon said. “Madeline wasn’t in Lakewood, but she was in the Cleveland area. The Prioulx case is one of notoriety in Cuyahoga County. Your mother overdosed on a number of occasions, but it was never fatal. Nan and my father were usually there to catch her. In retrospect, it was probably for the best that you thought she had died. She was sentenced to ten to twelve years in the Ohio Reformatory for Women, and was released after seven on good behavior.”
“Sentenced for what?” Debbie asked.
“You,” answered Brandon.
“She was involved?” blurted Debbie. A strap around her gut tightened and pushed it up against her heart.
“Not directly, but she may as well have been. She was found guilty on several accounts of gross negligence and failure to protect. My God, she was your mother for crying out loud. Parents are supposed to protect their children.” Brandon complained. “Could I have some water?”
Essie quickly got up and left the room.
“Where is she now?” asked Debbie.
“In Lakewood. She changed her name to protect herself. How’s that for a kick in the teeth? Ten or so years ago she married a fellow named Grafton. That’s what she goes by now, Patricia Grafton. She has a court-ordered, non-expiring restraining order, which means she cannot attempt to contact you in any way… for life. Jail sobered her, dried her out, and gave her plenty of time to acknowledge how she failed her only child. She’s forty-eight but looks seventy. I imagine the guilt is eating her alive. I know she’s my aunt, but I say good! She deserves it.”
Essie returned with three bottles of spring water.
“Who did she fail to protect me from?”
After another pause Brandon said, “Our grandfather. We called him Grumps.”
“Grumps?” Debbie repeated. The word felt odd as she spoke it and it tasted wrong on her tongue.
“Not a good man,” Brandon said.
Debbie hissed introspectively as fragmented images of the man speckled her memories like mud on a windshield. “I vaguely remember him, but I thought he was nice to me.”
“So it seemed. So much so, it made us jealous. He showered you with gifts, gave you the best room in the house, and always took you places. Little did we know that the whole time he was paying you for being good and for keeping silent,” Brandon said. He paused, not sure how to go on.
“Fuck,” Debbie muttered. It kept getting more and more bizarre. She felt miles away from the conversation, yet confined, as if she were in a soundproof box and hearing his words shouted through the tiniest of pinholes.
“He wasn’t our biological grandfather,” Brandon said. “He was Nan’s second husband. Harold Gillan, our real grandfather, died in an industrial accident long before either of us was born. The bastard’s name was Stafford Dunne. As I mentioned, we called him Grumps, but most people just called him Dunne.”
“Stafford Dunne,” Debbie whispered more to herself. The name claimed no hold in her memory.
“He was a tenant in Nan and Harold Gillan’s marriage home on Atkins Avenue, off Hilliard Road. Dunne ended up marrying Nan, and when she died, he got the house.
“My father said he was neutral about Dunne before
the truth was discovered, but my mother despised him from the get go. She thought he was obnoxious—one of those over-friendly face-talkers. She suspected he was dirtier than a hog’s heel and tried convincing your mother to get you out of that house once Nan died. Your mother told her that she worried too much. Of course, the situation was ideal for your mother. She lived there rent free and Stafford, being retired, was a built-in babysitter.”
Debbie let this sink in for a moment. “I remember the woods. I think there were two boys who played with me,” Debbie said, recalling the vision of the same boys trying to hide her beneath the basement stairs. “I’ve even dreamt about it.”
“There was a wooded area behind the house where we used to run around as kids,” Brandon said.
“One of them had a different name, like Scooby or Scooter or something. I have the feeling that was you,” Debbie said.
“Yeah, Skipper or Skippy. I haven’t been called that in years. This is not a complaint.”
“Who was the other boy?” Debbie asked.
“My brother Glen,” Brandon said. “He was eleven then. He was also used by Stafford Dunne, although we hadn’t known it at first. I was older, which I think dampened their interest in me.”
Brandon seemed lost in thought for a while, his eyes brimming. After a prolonged blink, he spoke. “Once Dunne was discovered and convicted, Glen became increasingly troubled. We started seeing a psychiatrist who discovered that Glen had a horror story hiding within him. Turned out that one of our neighbors, a scumbag named Beebo Grant was also involved. Beebo often articulated to Glen in Technicolor detail what he would do to him if he exposed them. Glen was plagued by what had happened to him and was unable to get past it. The psychiatrist was good, but ultimately not good enough. Glen hanged himself in 2002 when he was twenty-four. By the time he died, he was surviving primarily on whiskey and peppermint Life Savers. We tried everything to help him, but it was too late.”
“My God,” Debbie said. “If I remember right, he was animated and seemed so happy.”
“So did you. But you were—and are—stronger than Glen was,” Brandon said. “We practically lived in those woods, you, Glen, and me, but Dunne also had his shed there. It wasn’t much more than a tool shed, but it was always locked and he kept the windows covered.”
Debbie raised her hands to her temples and stiffened. “The shed is where it all happened. That’s where the flashbacks bring me,” she said.
Her thoughts traveled there, though it was more than twenty years ago, flashing quick, fleeting images of Atkins Avenue in her mind. She saw a house with a small front porch. She saw a tree-lined driveway that narrowed down into a pathway leading to the distant outline of the shed. She felt as if she were there. Fear numbed her extremities and charged the nerves throughout her body, wracking her with a severe shudder.
“Guest of honor,” she said. The words spilled unconsciously from her lips.
“Guest of honor?” repeated Essie.
Debbie’s head jerked to face her, her eyes wide and dilated with fear. She felt small, like the seven-year-old girl in that godforsaken Lakewood, Ohio, shed all those years ago. “I have to treat the guests of honor right,” she said, her voice tiny and childish. “I have to give them whatever they want.”
She could see the little unicorns on her sneakers, as one foot stepped in front of the other, marking her obedient walks from the house and through the trees to meet up with whoever the next guest of honor was.
“Foul bastard,” Brandon muttered.
“Why’d he do it? Why’d he let them do that to me?” asked Debbie, trying to push away the memories of that damned life, on that damned street, in that damned city. The images blurred as her tears welled.
“Money,” said Brandon. Essie let out a small moan.
And there it is, Debbie thought. “He sold me,” she said. It wasn’t a question, but a murmur of acknowledgement. “My grandfather sold me like an old record. No… no, not sold, he rented me out as if I were real estate. Not once, but repeatedly. I was his little whore.”
“Oh my God! No Debbie!” said Brandon. “He was… he…”
“He was sick, demented, and evil,” Essie completed.
“No… it’s okay. I get it now,” Debbie said. The trancelike feeling within her deepened, obvious in the slowness of her words, yet she sat up straighter. “How did he find people to… you know…”
“There are bad people out there, Debbie,” Brandon said. “For every depravity, there are multiple markets.”
“Real estate markets,” Debbie said. “Child sex for sale or rent.”
She had seen it fairly often in her job. She had come upon people who had lent their own children out for favors, fixes, and once, by Christ, for tickets to a basketball game, but she had never expected it to hit home. It hit so much harder this way. She was at the center of the blast—ground zero—and it slammed the structure and fractured the foundation. There was nowhere safe to hide from it.
“He must be in his seventies by now. Where is he?” Debbie asked.
“Dead,” said Brandon, hoping it would bring her at least a small victory. “He was found guilty on profuse charges of molestation and aggravated rape of two juveniles, and a laundry list of charges that would have assured prison without bail for three lifetimes. He was sentenced to the Lorain Correctional Institute, but barely lasted three months before someone twisted his neck. They’re not too tolerant with his kind in most prisons.”
“Dunne gone,” Debbie said, and chuckled bitterly. “He served only three months?” she clenched her fists on her shaking legs. “That’s not long enough… not for what he did to two children. He should have lived through his death—through a hundred deaths—like Glen did and like I did. Like I’m still doing! He should have been hanged a hundred times for what he did to your brother.”
“This is one of those examples where the expression, ‘Death isn’t good enough’ works,” Essie said and squeezed her hand.
Brandon said, “I’m an Atheist, but I truly hope there is a hell for people like him.”
“Who else was there? Who else was involved?” asked Debbie, not wanting, yet needing to know.
“There were three other men the police were aware of besides Stafford Dunne and Beebo Grant,” Brandon said.
Aware of, thought Debbie. Her stomach clenched even harder. That means there were five and maybe more. She felt like she needed to shower, to cleanse off the grime that covered her, the filth that was seeping into her pores, her ears, and mouth, polluting her and infecting her. “Who are they?”
“Their names were Darrell Shipman, Albert Polevik, and Roberto Juarez,” Brandon said. “Roberto Juarez disappeared but surfaced a couple of years later in Miami where he was arrested for killing a cop in a drug sting. He’s doing life on countless charges. Shipman was found in his cell at Lorain with a handmade knife in his throat. He was seven years into his sentence. Albert Polevik was a wealthy executive and considered a pillar of the community. He owned AKP Manufacturing, was a devout elder at his church, and gave generously to charities. Albert’s dirty little secret instantly became enormous and his dignitary status was instantly crashed. To save face, Albert put a .45 in his mouth just as the police broke his door in.”
“There was a fat man with shiny black shoes in my flashbacks. He reeked of cologne that was nauseating and made it hard to breathe,” Debbie said. She shuddered, leaned over, grabbed a thick throw pillow from the foot of the sofa and hugged it to herself. “He hurt me. At least in my flashback he did. I don’t know what he did, but I think he really hurt me.”
“He did,” Brandon said in a voice heavy with emotion. “It was horrendous. I’ve tried for years to get your screams out of my head, but I can’t. They still haunt me.”
“You were there?” asked Debbie.
“No, not when it happened, but before and after. Glen and I tried to hide you that night, but Dunne found us.”
“Under the stairs,” Debbie mumbled, haz
y with the memory.
“Yes. In the basement. We lived three houses down on the same street. We heard you… everybody did. They echoed through the neighborhood, those screams.” Brandon’s voice broke under the weight of his memories.
“He tried to run from it—Polevik did—but he didn’t have time to dress and run. The neighborhood men and women caught him. He was covered in blood, but no one knew whose blood until they found you.” Brandon sniffed. “Should I be telling you this? Is it too much?”
“Maybe we should take a moment to check in,” said Essie. “How are you doing, Debbie?”
“I’m not sure yet, it’s the most hideous thing I could have imagined, but it feels as if we’re talking about someone else,” Debbie said. “I think that’s the only way I’ll get through this is to handle it that way.”
“It could become overwhelming,” said Essie. “If you feel like it’s too much, we can stop at any time, but the floodgates may already be opened.”
Debbie considered her options and decided it would be better to get everything on the table. Sometimes it works better that way… it’s less painful to jab the needle in than to slowly push it in by increments.
“Okay, Brandon, what did the honorable Mr. Polevik do?” Debbie asked.
“Oh God,” Brandon said, his voice guttural and shaking. He paused to collect himself. “He ruptured you. He punctured you inside and nearly killed you. The doctors said that he nearly ripped your cervix off.” Debbie felt the sharp stabbing sensation in her abdomen as the phantom pains returned to torment her.
“After that, Glen started acting odd. He became jittery and reclusive. He didn’t want to go to the hospital to see you and would disappear whenever it came up in conversation. My mother made the connection, but when my parents asked him about it, he denied it. He finally told our psychiatrist that he, too, was abused. As I mentioned, they had threatened him, saying they would kill my parents and me. Without Glen, Darrell Shipman, Beebo Grant, and Roberto Juarez would have gone free. Up to that point it was believed that only Polevik and Dunne were involved.”
“Were there other children?” asked Debbie.
Hannahwhere Page 32
