The Spellman Files

by Lisa Lutz

  ISABEL: Cuff her. Cuff the kid. She should be arrested.

  OFFICER #1: Ma’am, this is the last time I’m going to ask you to calm down.

  RAE: I’m sorry.

  ISABEL: You will be. Just wait until Mom and Dad hear about this.

  OFFICER #1: Are you two related?

  ISABEL: Not much longer.

  RAE: That’s my sister. I think you better let her go.

  OFFICER #2: Not until she learns to control herself.

  ISABEL: I’m not just going to kill you. I’m going to torture you.

  OFFICER #2: Ma’am, we can’t release you if you keep talking like that.

  ISABEL: You better grow eyes on the back of your head, Rae.

  OFFICER #1: Ma’am, that was your final warning.

  [For the second time in two days, I felt the cold metal of handcuffs on my skin and not even an ounce of marijuana to show for it. One of the officers threw me against the trunk of the car. But I couldn’t stop.]

  ISABEL: The rest of your life will be pure hell.

  [Rae knew she was in trouble. She knew that whatever happened to me would result in further punishment for her. It was in her best interest to save us both.]

  RAE: Please let her go. It was my fault.

  ISABEL: Of course it was your fault, you lunatic.

  OFFICER #1: Ma’am, stop squirming.

  RAE: Let her go. She didn’t do anything.

  OFFICER #2: Young lady, can you explain to us what is going on here?

  ISABEL: I’ll explain.

  OFFICER #2: No, let the girl explain.

  RAE: She’s my sister and she’s mad at me.

  OFFICER #1: Did she hurt you, miss?

  RAE: Only a little.

  OFFICER #1: Are you afraid of her?

  RAE: No. I’m fine.

  ISABEL: You better be afraid of me.

  RAE: If you don’t stop saying that, Izzy, they won’t let you go.

  OFFICER #1: Young lady, has your sister hurt you?

  RAE: If you don’t let her go, she will hurt me.

  ISABEL: You got that right.

  OFFICER #2: We can protect you.

  ISABEL: They can’t protect you.

  OFFICER #2: That’s enough, ma’am.

  ISABEL: Stop calling me ma’am!

  [Officer #2 pulled me off the car by the chain on the cuffs, nearly dislocating my arms from their sockets. The back door of the black-and-white was opened, and Officer #1 put his hand over my head and pushed me onto the seat.]

  ISABEL: You won’t go to just any old camp, Rae.

  [The second officer shut the door and walked around to the driver’s side.]

  ISABEL: How does music camp sound to you?

  RAE: No!

  [The first officer kneeled down and spoke sympathetically to Rae.]

  OFFICER #1: What’s your name, sweetheart?

  RAE: Rae Spellman.

  OFFICER #1: Is that your sister?

  RAE: Yes.

  OFFICER #1: What is her name?

  RAE: Isabel Spellman.

  OFFICER #1: Okay, Rae, this is what we’re going to do. I’m going to stay here with you and call your parents and another squad car will come and take you home.

  RAE: I have to go with Izzy.

  OFFICER #1: We have to book your sister.

  RAE: Book me, too. I have to go, too.

  OFFICER #1: No. That’s not how it works.

  RAE: You need to put handcuffs on me, too.

  OFFICER #1: But sweetheart, you didn’t do anything wrong.

  RAE: I will.

  OFFICER #1: Let’s just relax here. Take a deep breath.

  [Rae kicked the police officer in the shin, an act she figured would not require lethal retaliation, but would sting enough to force a harsh response. Perhaps one that involved handcuffs and, if she were lucky, an assault charge.]

  OFFICER #1: Ouch!

  RAE: Please put the cuffs on me and stuff me in the back of the car next to Izzy.

  OFFICER #1: Rae, I do not think that is necessary.

  [Rae kicked him again, harder this time, then silently turned around, reaching her arms behind her back.]

  RAE: I’ll do it again, if you don’t cuff me.

  [The officer had no choice. He put the cuffs on Rae and sat her next to me in the backseat of the squad car.]

  ISABEL: I thought you were dead.

  RAE: I’m sorry.

  Nothing more was said until we arrived at the police station, met by Inspector Stone. Against protocol, he insisted that my sister and I be placed in the same holding cell. The officers were about to remove my cuffs when Stone stopped them.

  “You better leave them on for now,” he said.

  “What about the kid?” the officer asked.

  Parity was his only move and Rae agreed. Her punishment must match mine or the retaliation would be unbearable.

  “Please leave them on,” Rae said, referring to the handcuffs.

  Before Inspector Stone shut the door on us, I shouted, “Hey, get me out of here!”

  “I’m afraid I can’t.”

  “What did I do?”

  “Resisting arrest. You know better, Isabel,” Stone said, disappointed.

  “Did you tell them? Did you tell them what she did?”

  “I’ll take care of it,” he said and then shifted his attention to Rae, sharpening his stare. “What you did,” he said, “it was not clever or inspired. It was inexcusable and cruel. For five days your family believed that their life was over. Young lady, I am going to make it my business that you get way more than a slap on the wrist.”

  Stone latched the door and I could see Rae’s complexion whiten. Through the iron bars of the cell, I watched Inspector Stone disappear down the hallway. Oddly, that very moment, the one thing I thought was: Could this be Ex-boyfriend #10?

  Our silence extended a good thirty minutes. Rae was too frightened to speak. I believe it broke all her previous records. But curiosity finally got the best of me and I ended the silence.

  “So you just stayed in that motel room the entire four days?” I asked.

  “I went out for food.”

  “Oh, right. For Ding Dongs and Snickers.”

  “I had Slim Jims and Pringles, too.”

  “Did you brush your teeth?”

  “Twice a day. I even flossed once.”

  “So what did you do all day long?”

  “They have cable. All the channels. You wouldn’t believe some of the programs.”

  “You did this to make me come back?”

  “We were all happy once. I just wanted things to be the way they used to be. I thought you needed to reevaluate your priorities.”

  “That is so fucked up.”

  Rae thought about it for a moment. “It wasn’t the right move. I can admit that now.”

  Our parents’ approach, from the end of the hall, seemed to take an eternity. Their expressions were a complicated disarray of unreadable emotions. Stone unlocked the cell door and guided their entry.

  My mother’s face was ruddy from crying, but she had sopped up all the tears and was glaring with an undercurrent of fury I had never seen.

  Stone unlocked my cuffs, then Rae’s. My sister’s instinct was to run and hug her parents. She had missed them, too, in her absence. But their body language was not entirely receptive.

  Rae bowed her head and in her most submissive voice said, “I’m so sorry. I swear I won’t do anything bad ever again.”

  My mother took Rae in her arms and let herself cry one more time. Then she released Rae into my father’s embrace. He hugged her hard, forcing her to gasp for breath.

  “You’re going to pay for this, pumpkin,” he said.

  It was only in that moment that I knew everything would be all right.

  EPILOGUE

  CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

  My father encouraged the court to “throw the book” at Rae, but Rae’s compelling and persuasive plea to the bench, which included a cheesy pass
age regarding how all her actions were done out of love (and which ended with the line “Look at me. I won’t stand a chance in juvenile hall”) managed to persuade the judge, who, frankly, happened to find Rae the most sympathetic person in my family.

  But what she did required more than a slap on the wrist. Judge Stevens gave her nine months’ probation, which included a 7:00 P.M. curfew and one hundred hours of community service at Oak Tree Convalescent Home. My parents chose that punishment believing that the lack of excitement would sting Rae the most and remind her that actions have consequences. But Rae had once watched a segment on 60 Minutes regarding elder abuse in nursing homes and took the opportunity to investigate all the employees at Oak Tree. She found one member of the staff who stole from the clients and another responsible for criminal neglect. She snuck in a camera and managed to get incriminating footage on both employees. She brought the tape to Inspector Stone, the only police officer she knew, and he passed it on to the appropriate departments.

  Green Leaf Recovery Center

  When Rae returned home, Uncle Ray unfortunately had to grapple with the deal he had made with God. He had promised he would go to rehab if Rae were returned safe and sound. But his deal implied that foul play had caused her disappearance. The fact that Rae had disappeared by her own hand complicated matters. Uncle Ray, having some degree of superstition, had to come up with a compromise that would alleviate any further guilt but not alter his essential lifestyle.

  He sat Rae down to explain his decision to her.

  “Listen, kid, when you went missing, I made a promise to the Big Guy that if you came back, I’d go to rehab.”

  Rae responded by throwing her arms around him. He disengaged her embrace and continued. “But you see, you weren’t really missing in the way I thought you were missing. And had I known that you had kidnapped yourself and were gonna show up five days later with those twenty-four-hour-television eyes and not a scratch on you, I wouldn’t have made the deal.”

  “So you’re not going to rehab?”

  “I’ve been agonizing over this decision and the fact remains that, semantically, I owe God a trip to rehab. I promised him if you came back I’d go. So I’m going.”

  Rae threw her arms around him once again and he pried her off.

  “Listen. I’m going to rehab semantically, too. Do you understand?”

  “Sure, you’re going to rehab,” Rae said, trying to figure out the definition of “semantically” and whether that was a bad thing.

  “No. I’m going to rehab. But I’m not going to rehab.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m gonna spend thirty days at Green Leaf Recovery Center. But it won’t stick. When I get out I’m going to be the same old Uncle Ray.”

  “So you’re gonna be Old Uncle Ray, like they told me about.”

  “No. I’m going to be new Uncle Ray, which is old Uncle Ray to you. Kid, I’m not changing.”

  Rae simply got up from the couch and walked away, finally realizing that some people you can’t control even with the best-laid plans.

  In her first act of defiance since her probation started, Rae took the bus to Milo’s for happy hour.

  Milo telephoned me when his pleas for Rae to leave went unanswered.

  “Your sister is off the wagon again.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  When I arrived, Rae was on her third ginger ale on the rocks. Instead of the usual protest and refusal to move, Rae took one look at me and said, “All right, all right. I’m leaving.” She left Milo a generous tip and casually mentioned that he wouldn’t be seeing her for a very long time.

  “Like seven years?” asked Milo.

  “Not that long,” Rae replied.

  I drove Rae directly from the bar to Daniel’s office, having made a last-minute appointment for her to get those three cavities filled. I figured that if she connected going to a bar with a dental appointment, it might subliminally force a negative association.

  Daniel remained Ex-boyfriend #9 and showed no signs that he wanted to change that status. Mrs. Sanchez told me he was dating a schoolteacher—a real one—who also played tennis. I asked Daniel about her outfits for future reference, but he refused to answer the question.

  One month into Rae’s probation, my mother got a toothache that she couldn’t quell with her emergency stash of Vicodin. All planes to O’Hare airport were grounded because of a bitter storm in the Midwest. Unable to cope with the mounting pain, and per my insistence, my mother made an appointment with Daniel. He performed an emergency root canal—with my father present, of course.

  My father made an appointment for a cleaning a few days later. Daniel recommended a colleague of his who was located in our neighborhood, but my mother refused, and, reluctantly, Daniel became the family dentist. With our appointments staggered throughout the year, to his great discomfort, Daniel could rarely go longer than two months at a time without seeing at least one member of the Spellman family.

  I quit for a second time, but it didn’t stick. My announcement was met with a silent acceptance. Or so I believed. Later I discovered that the entire family (David included) had started a betting pool on how long it would take me to return.

  Uncle Ray, the seasoned gambler, won with a wager on three days, the three longest days of my life. I wore a suit with a crisp white shirt and high heels and answered phones at a brokerage firm in the financial district. Within the first five minutes, I was desperate for my old job. Desperate. But pride forced me to endure as long as I could, which was the aforementioned three days.

  I returned to my parents’ employ with a list of demands that I explained were nonnegotiable and further explained that if any demand was not fully met, I would seek work with the competition. The list, before I had David turn it into a binding legal document, read as follows:

  No matchmaking with lawyers.

  Section 5, clause (d) null and void.

  No background checks on future ex-boyfriends.

  Personal privacy must be respected.

  My parents agreed to all my demands and every member of the Spellman family signed the document.

  A few weeks later, Rae and I worked our first surveillance job together since her disappearance. As I wove through traffic, struggling to maintain a tail on Joseph Baumgarten, Case #07-427, Rae turned to me and asked what I supposed had been on her mind for weeks.

  “Izzy, why did you come back?”

  I answered without contemplating the question. “Because I don’t know how to do anything else.”

  What I didn’t say was that I didn’t want to do anything else. That I had a choice and I finally made it. That I had always loved the job, I just hadn’t always liked who I became doing it. That I had grown tired of trying to be someone I was not.

  Rae’s days of recreational surveillance, lock picking, mass sugar consumption, and Uncle Ray taunting came to an abrupt halt. She became, for the first time ever, a typical adolescent. Who, yes, still worked in the family business, but certainly didn’t run it.

  One might have expected that the change in Rae’s status would have her railing against this newfound authority. But that was not the case. Because, in the end, in spite of or because of what my sister had done, she got exactly what she wanted. I came back and the family was once again together as it used to be.

  Two months after Rae’s safe return home, David and Petra announced their engagement. Uncle Ray quickly popped a bottle of champagne to celebrate. Rae watched him with quiet acceptance as he downed half the bottle and then went out to the corner store for a six-pack of beer.

  Petra spent the next several weeks ordering me to try on various bridesmaid’s dresses at department stores scattered throughout the city. Each dress was markedly puffier and brighter than the last. And just when I was convinced that she was suffering from some kind of bridal-magazine brainwashing, I received a brown envelope in the mail with an array of embarrassing photographs of me—scowling—adorned in the motley
assortment of bloated pastels and chiffon. I discovered that my mother was behind the charade—in a feeble attempt to resurrect some of the joy she derived from section 5, clause (d)—and briefly considered that surreptitious photographs of me were in direct violation of my contract, but I let it slide. Because what was I going to do? Quit?

  Three months into Rae’s probation, upon hearing the news that her investigation resulted in indictments, she promptly went to see Inspector Stone.

  This was not their first visit. She had been visiting him at least once a week since her probation began. Each time he would remind her that she was assigned a court-ordered psychologist and that she should be speaking to her. But Rae would stay, try to negotiate down her sentence, and when that failed, begin chatting about other matters—family, friends, the pitfalls of curfew. Each time Rae dropped by Inspector Stone’s office, he would reluctantly see her and then promptly telephone me to pick her up.

  “She’s here again” is how all our conversations would begin.

  “Who?” I’d ask, because it amused me.

  “Your sister. Please come get her. I have work to do,” Stone would reply with a pronounced professional air.

  Usually I would drop whatever I was doing and go pick her up. By the time I arrived, Rae was typically sitting cross-legged in the worn black leather chair in front of his desk, doing homework at his insistence. And since he was the only supervising adult present, she assumed this meant he should help her with her assignments. Their exchanges would go something like this:

  “Inspector, what does ‘hirsute’ mean?”

  Stone would silently grab the dictionary from behind his desk and slide it over to Rae.

  “So you don’t know what it means, either,” she’d say.

  “I know what it means, but the assignment isn’t to ask your local police inspector to do your homework.”

  “You’re bluffing. You don’t know.”

  “I know.”

  “No, you don’t.”