by Owen Thomas
As I tell him this, North leans back, crossing his arms, giving me a look of impenetrable skepticism and disgust. He has bound up his anger placing it on a shelf that I can see but cannot reach. All I can reach is his judgment. His verdict. I want to pound the table. I want to cry like a child.
“I didn’t do anything. She kissed me!”
I am shouting. I can feel the tears damning up behind my eyes. I cannot take any more. I simply cannot take another second of this. I look to Hooley and to Lumkin, hoping for some glimmer of belief from anybody. Hooley is staring into the depths of his bottomless cup. Lonnie has found a problem with his fingernail.
She was kissing me!
But I have slipped down the rabbit hole. I am not shouting at Chuck North. I am not in a police station. I am at the dining room table, in the interrogation room of my childhood. I am shouting at my father. Crying and shouting and I do not dare, even with all of that rage and indignation, I do not dare pound the table. He, however, has pounded and pounded and pounded until it seemed like the dishes might break in half from fear and his wine glass would shatter just to end the suspense. But that is a father’s prerogative. It is not for me to pound.
She kissed me!
My mother is in her loose, worrisome orbit, pretending to take care of the dishes; fighting in her own way to make a home for normalcy. Tilly is on the stairs, hands gripping the stiles like she is in a prison.
She kissed me. I didn’t do anything!
My father leans back, crossing his arms, giving me his look of impenetrable skepticism and disgust. His molten anger is slowly cooling from blinding white to a seething blood orange, his mood like magma to the sea, slowly on its way to darkening, as it always does, to a cold and ashen black. As he leans back, he begins the process of disengaging that emotional part of himself, so that I cannot reach him. And while I cannot take another hot word, I do not want the molten man to go. I do not want the man he will leave behind forever in his place. So quiet and reserved and certain.
She was kissing me.
I don’t believe that, David. Why are you lying to me?
I’m not lying!
You are!
No, Dad. Katie… we’re just friends. She had a fight with her sister. She was all upset and she ran into the bathroom.
The girl’s bathroom, David! The girl’s bathroom!
I know, dad.
It’s for girls!
I know.
You’re not a girl!
I know.
No. You obviously don’t know.
I waited but she didn’t come out.
And so you decided to go in and … Jesus Christ, David.
I went in to see if she was okay and she was crying and when she saw me she gave me a hug and we heard someone coming so she kind of pushed me into the stall. I mean the stall was right there, dad. We were here and the stall was right there and the bathroom door is kind of over here and around a corner and she pushed me into the stall and closed the door and we just kind of stood there real quiet until whoever it was, you know, peed, and then left and then Katie just kind of kissed me and I didn’t want to say anything because we were trying to be quiet and that’s when we saw Mrs. Compson looking over the top.
Why were your pants down?
Dad…
I will ask you again. Why … were your pants … and your underpants … down around your ankles?!
Dad, they weren’t. They weren’t!
Mr. Compson, Charles Compson, the founder and principal of the Vanguard Academy, the person who gave you an incredible opportunity for a top-shelf education unlike anything offered by the public schools in this state, has told me, personally, that your pants and underpants were down around your ankles. That you were … half-naked … in a stall… in the girl’s bathroom … with his daughter. Are you sitting here, telling me to my face, that Mr. Compson is lying?
He wasn’t there, though. Dad, Mrs. Compson was the one…
Are you telling me, David, that Charles Compson is lying to me?
Yes. Dad…
Yes? Yes?! I’ve known this man… Charles Compson is one of the most successful commercial real estate developers that this state has ever seen. He trusts me. Do you get that? When he has an idea for a hundred million dollar project in downtown Columbus, he confides in me. Me! That’s not a relationship built on lies, David. Your admission into Vanguard was Charles Compson’s gift to me and my gift to you. Why…would…he…lie?
The truth is too terrible to speak. It is too large for my throat which closes around the words like a fist. It is not that I do not want to tell him. I do want to tell him. But I cannot. I do not know why. I only know that I can’t. Somehow, somewhere beyond my terrified teenage comprehension, there is a greater injury to be avoided by not telling him. By not telling him about the unfinished sciences lab, smelling of drywall and plaster and sawdust, a place I was not supposed to be, but a place that Delia Compson and I had, in fact, necked and groped during the lunch hour and study hall until our lips were so chapped and our faces were so flushed that people tended to ask each of us independently if were feeling sick.
What harm was to be avoided by not telling him of the time, a week before my expulsion, that I had conspicuously lingered outside the lab, waiting for an opportunity to slip inside the door unnoticed and to wait for Delia, Katie’s older sister, behind the new stone counters, my heart pounding in its tiny cage, hoping she would see the loop of string on the doorknob, hoping against hope for another moment in which the smell of her hair and her skin and her sweet breath might again fill my senses like some aerosol euphoria, some airborne drug, hoping to feel her lips against my own, her hands in my hair, those gutturally textured groans, low streams of sound slowed to individually perceptible vibrations rolling down along the groove of her tongue and off its soft, pink, blunted curve into my ear as I, a being of pure vibration, give myself over to feelings I cannot explain or control? What was to be avoided in not telling him that?
Who was I protecting, exactly? What greater harm was I avoiding by not telling my father, when it mattered the most, about the rustling from within that room, those sounds that echoed my own internal rustle and flutter, knowing that Delia had beaten me there, that she was already waiting inside? Who had I saved in not telling my father about the girl, the woman, to this day I am not sure which, the one on her knees in the dark without shoes, the soles of her feet and her bare back to me like sheets of amber in the warm blade of light from the hallway; hands and arms disappearing around and behind the shirt and the tie and the midnight blue suit coat?
Who had I protected? The shoeless, shirtless girl-woman? I did not know her. Charles Compson? There was no great affinity there; nothing to engender such loyalty. He was not a regular presence at the Academy, except to visit his wife and his children or to supervise construction of the new addition. He showed me no particular favor, certainly not in the look from across the dusty dark of that room, filling me with as much fear as I had ever felt in my fifteen years of breathing. Myself? Was I saving myself? No. I did myself no favor in keeping that secret.
So. Who then?
Why…would…he…lie?! Goddamnit, son. Why?!
Hollis, really…
Susan. Stay out of this, now. I want an answer. If he is actually going to try and blame Charles Compson, then I want an answer.
Daddy! Stop yelling! Stop yelling at him!
Tilly! Damnit! I told you to go to bed and I meant it!
No. I won’t go. You stop yelling!
Susan, will you just take her up stairs please.
Mommy! No!
David, let’s have it. Why do you insist on blaming your despicable behavior on a good man to whom you should be indebted? This is a test of your character, not his. Do you know what character is?
Yes.
Good. Because this is a character test. So you tell me why all of this is Charles Compson’s fault.
I don’t know!
You don’t know. Well I know. It’s bec
ause you have no respect, David. No respect for the truth. No respect for me. No respect for Mr. Compson, who is about as flawless and honorable a man as I have ever met. Christ, David. Mayor Moody has honored him five times in as many years for what he has done for Columbus and you want to me to believe that he’s lying to my face? About you? That he’s just making all of this up? For no reason? Does that sound right to you?
No sir.
This is a great man you are trying to tear down. You want me to believe he is a liar? I won’t have it. Do you understand?
Yes sir.
He is a friend of mine.
Yes sir.
And a valuable client.
Yes sir.
You have made this family look like Ohio white trash. You’re lucky he didn’t call the police. You’re lucky you’re not answering questions in a police station right now.
Yes sir.
You have wasted thousands of dollars in tuition. You’ve destroyed any chance Tilly might have had to attend Vanguard.
But why? Why would this…
David, you were caught all but sexually assaulting Charles Compson’s young daughter in a stall of the girl’s bathroom. Why should he ever take a chance on our family again? I’ll be surprised if he wants to continue doing business with me. Any idea how long it had taken me to build that relationship?
No sir.
He’s a very moral, family man. How do you think this makes our family look to him? That you’re even capable of such a thing? She’s only thirteen!
Yes sir.
That’s exactly the type of moral depravity that Charles Compson built the Academy to avoid. And you’ve delivered it to his doorstep!
Yes sir.
It’s one thing for you to have taken sexual liberties, or tried to take sexual liberties, with his daughter, a girl two years younger than you. I mean do you have any concept of what it means to take a young girl into a bathroom … well, I just can’t even begin to understand such incredibly poor judgment. It’s like you’re from some other family living on some other planet.
Yes sir.
It’s one thing to actually do something like that, which is bad enough, but it is indescribably worse, David, to not take responsibility for your own actions. And it absolutely defies all comprehension that you would try to blame somebody else. Anybody else! But particularly a man like Charles Compson, after all he has done for you and for me. I can just… David, I am so disappointed I can barely look at you right now.
“I’m telling you… I’m… I didn’t kiss her. She … kissed… me!”
“Brittany’s in high school.”
“I know that!”
“High school.”
“I know that, goddamnit!”
“What. You gonna cry now? Is that the next part of your little drama here?”
“…”
“You need a Kleenex?”
“No.” I sniff like a baby and blink the humiliating tears out of my eyes.
“You want to go home?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me what happened.”
“I told you what happened.”
“No. You’ve told me a bunch of lies. You’ve told me the most ridiculous story I have ever heard in all my years in law enforcement.”
“Fine. Then you tell me. What other way is there to explain any of this? Why does she show up at my house? With her violin? How does it make sense any other way?”
“Oh that’s easy.”
“Easy? How…”
“I think you had the violin all along. I think you took the violin and the backpack a long time ago. When you gave her a ride home from school that day.”
“I never…”
“According to her diary.”
“That was DJ!”
“You.”
“No.”
“She got out, but you hung on to the backpack. And the violin. You kept them. Not in the house. Or the car. We would have found them. Maybe you gave them to Richie for safe-keeping.”
“Oh come on…”
“I think she wanted it back. I think you told her you wanted her to earn it back.”
“Why?”
“Only your twisted mind can answer that. My guess is drug-addled sex. I know you’re not getting anything steady from Mae Chang.”
“…”
“Right. Anyway, I think you tried to lower her guard. You asked her over to talk. Or watch a movie.”
“Glengarry Glen Ross? You think it’s possible to set a mood with David Mamet?”
“Shut up, Dave. I think you gave her a bunch of booze, a bunch of Wild Turkey. Bottle was half-gone. And I think that because my niece is not a drinker she got sick all over your carpet and your kitchen. I think you saw things starting to crumble. You tried to get her to put on the lingerie. Maybe it’s Mae’s. Maybe someone else’s. My guess is that you bought it special. Only Brittany wasn’t drunk enough or desperate enough for you and she resisted. She threatened to leave. She demanded her violin. Maybe she knew where it was, maybe you’d already produced it, dangling it like bait, and she tried to take it from you. You have no idea how much she loved that thing.”
“I think I do.”
“I think you don’t.”
“Her dad gave it to her. Her grandmother played in the New York Philharmonic.”
“It was a birthday present. I gave her that violin, Dave. I did. She’s had it since she was ten years old. She takes it everywhere. Dipshit Daddy Desmond had nothing to do with it. Understand? This girl will be great one day. If she lives through this, she will be great. But the violin is history now, isn’t it? She reached for it and you hit her in the face with it…”
“Oh, I…”
“Shut up. Your prints are all over it. And her blood. You hit her in the face. She tried to escape, but your blood was running hot by then. There was a fight. You smashed her head into the table, maybe harder than you meant to. And then you got scared. There’s a lot of blood in there, DJ. Karl Gustafson saw a lot of blood on her face. You didn’t want a dead girl on your hands. You tried the paper towels but the blood kept coming. You dragged her to the door. She resists. There’s a struggle. Down goes the fish tank. You haul her out to the car, not expecting citizen Karl on his driveway. You try the whole young-and-in-love charade, you stuff her in the car, she’s only half coherent, and that’s the last anyone sees of her.”
“That’s… that’s just absurd.”
“None of this is gonna work, DJ. This only gets worse. If one hair on her head is hurt when we find her, and we will find her, I’m coming straight for you. Understand? So let’s avoid all of that. Help yourself out and just tell me where she is.”
“I don’t know.”
“Then tell me who does know, DJ.”
“How many times do I have to say it? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. And I’m not DJ!”
“That’s not what your friends say. Mae Chang calls you DJ.”
“I’m not DJ! But then you don’t really care, do you? This whole witch hunt is just a way for you to avoid the fact that you have a seriously fucked up niece. Whatever is happening to her, she started it and she is continuing it. I have nothing to do with it. But it’s easier for you to blame me. God himself could tell you this is all absurd and you still wouldn’t care because, knowing you, you enjoy all of this.”
“Knowing me, Dave? Knowing me? Knowing you!” He points at me sharply. “Think we haven’t checked your school records? Think we don’t know about the Vanguard Academy? Didn’t work out so well, did it? Think we don’t know about your sister the tabloid queen? Christ, there’s a piece of work. Sexual perversion runs in the family does it?”
“Fuck you.” There is a trigger in the back of my head. “You fucking …” A trigger that when pulled – “You fucking…” brings on a kind of momentary Tourette’s. “You fucking…” It is a frothing of words from a seizure of emotion that robs me of all control over my normal power o
ver language. “You… you…” Whatever is in my head at that precise moment, comes out like a geyser, whether it is good for me or not. Whether it makes any sense or not. Whether it is a betrayal or not. Whether it is true or not. Out it comes. “You fucking … jack-booted … Super Trouper… Fernando … Dancing Queen … Mama Mia Nazi!”
Hooley is looking at me like I have started speaking in tongues. He is gob-smacked by nonsense and is anticipating an actual seizure. He looks at North, but North is spellbound; staring at me, stunned. He does not blink. He is weighing the words. They are more than words. They are sounds. They are secrets. They are scarlet letters in this new age. They are badges of a shameful weakness, binding together a generation who vowed never again to be so unabashedly, squarely, innocent and saccharine about the world. To let them out of the basement and to let them run – these harmonically over-sampled, Swedish toe-headed children of Kumbaya – is to invite questions about one’s mental complexity and grounding in reality. To simply know those words is nearly an indictment in a post-911 world, for we are a nation of citizen soldiers in a war on terror. This is no time for nonsensical optimism. Knowing me, knowing you, indeed.
He blinks, trying to put it together. I have shown myself to my enemy and, in the process, I may have exposed him. Brittany was not, it would seem, lying about ABBA. Was she also not lying about the other? Is that what I see in these eyes? I recognize in North’s expression a budding concern about how I know enough to speak such words to him. Silently, he wants to know why it makes any sense for me to speak such words to him. Now or ever. Still deep in his eyes, not yet fully conscious, is an even greater concern about what else I might know. If I were a self-respecting cop, my shower nozzle would be about the only thing in the universe I would allow to know such a thing about me. If I actually knew that some other human knew such a thing about me, and if I happened to have a sexual thing going on with my own sister, then, well, I would be very, very concerned. And my eyes, my face, might look exactly… like… that.
I do not smile at him. I am too angry and full of hate to smile. That, and I could be imagining some small triumph over my accuser where there is actually none. To be right about ABBA is not necessarily to be right about the other thing, which is so freakishly horrible that it is most certainly one of Brittany’s inexplicable lies. A smile would be a cocky presumption of the kind for which I always seem to be punished. But the smile is there anyway, floating like a thin sickle moon somewhere in the misty silence between us. And I know he can feel it.
