The Girl She Used to Be

by David Cristofano

  As my blood pressure rises, I’m ushered into a dark, plush conference room where four men are waiting—no one I recognize—and they stand when I enter like they’re the surest of southern gentlemen.

  “Hello, Melody,” the first man says, equally practiced and sinister. I stand with my hands at my sides and Williamson nods to the group and leaves me. “You’re looking well. Very healthy.”

  “I wasn’t six hours ago.” I give a snide smile. “You caught me on a good day.”

  “Can we get you anything? Something to eat or drink?”

  “Let’s move this along. I have to get back to Baltimore.”

  First Man frowns and looks at the others. “Very well. Please have a seat.”

  I sit, but am quickly annoyed that four pairs of eyes are observing me at once.

  First Man says, “My name is Hugh Donovan; I’m the assistant director of the U.S. Marshals Service. This man next to me is Miguel Sanchez, Justice. Next to him is Special Agent Lou Foncello with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And the man at the end is Abraham Greenberg, our chief psychiatrist here at Safesite.”

  “I always wondered what happened to stooges four through seven.”

  Donovan sighs a little and looks over at Agent Foncello.

  “It’s our understanding,” Foncello says, “that you’ve not been satisfied with your experiences inside WITSEC.”

  I chuckle. “Dissatisfaction lends itself more to buying a blouse with a hole in it or eating a bad cheeseburger.” I stare at him like I’m trying to make him burst into flames.

  “Right. Well, either way, we’d like to make it better.”

  I sit back in my chair for a moment. “What are you guys, some hybrid customer-satisfaction panel?”

  Donovan gets this supercilious look on his face. “Melody, you are in the presence of some of the smartest and greatest minds at Justice.”

  “Oh, yeah? What’s the square root of negative four?”

  “Two. No, wait…”

  “Chew on that for a while. I’m going back to Baltimore.”

  “Melody,” says Sanchez, “the purpose of this panel is… well, we’re here to make your life better.”

  “Did you say life or lie? If the government lifts a finger to my lips one more time, I swear I’ll bite it off. I do not need another artificial life.” I turn and look at Donovan, who is squinting toward the ceiling, still pondering how to derive the square root of a negative number. I decide to set him free. “It’s an imaginary number, Hugh. I thought for sure you’d grasp that concept considering your recurrent influence in the lives of the imaginary.”

  Sanchez picks up where he left off. “What we’re offering is an artificial life, yes, but a wonderful life. Anything you want—within legal reason.”

  I pause to think. “Meaning?”

  “You would stay right here, at Safesite, while we re-create who you are, so that when you leave, there is no waiting. The whole process would take less than two weeks. No months of hotels and waiting for work. We have folks who’ll draw up a memo—a contract, if you will—outlining exactly what we have offered, right down to the job, location, and subsistence checks. And we’re willing to be generous.”

  I swallow. “Why?”

  Sanchez leans forward and smiles in a way that makes me feel like a perp. “You can help us, Melody.”

  I widen my eyes. “Thank goodness, because keeping you guys happy is my deepest desire.”

  “Jonathan Bovaro,” he says, using the name as a knife to cut my sarcasm. “He seems to have manipulated you quite a bit.”

  “Interesting you put it that way. Maybe we should focus on how he managed to find me in the first place. Might be time to officially change the term from witness protection to witness relocation.” I clear my throat. “Besides, no one has manipulated me.”

  “Really? Are you saying Little Johnny didn’t push himself into your life? He didn’t woo you with money and luxuries and who knows what else?”

  “I called him.” My answer is childish and poorly thought out. I can feel myself sinking.

  Sanchez loses his aggressive smile and says, “Let me tell you about Jonathan Bovaro. He’s a liar and a crook and a violent man.”

  Jonathan has told me about items two and three, which sort of defuses item one. “He’s not a liar.”

  I am not helping myself.

  “Really? You find him to be a truthful and forthcoming kind of guy?”

  “Yes.”

  “So I guess he told you about what goes on at his restaurant in Brooklyn?”

  “Yes, he was totally upfront about the money laundering.”

  How stupid am I?

  All four men sit back and smile simultaneously.

  “That’s what we thought.”

  I close my eyes and shake my head. I have never felt protected around these men, reinforced by the types of actions they are committing right now. I am a pawn—again—in their quest to bury the Bovaros. Taking that family down will make one or more of the careers of these guys. But all it means for me is another town, another alias, another stint of life on the run and wondering when my car is going to explode. And the satisfaction in their collective eyes, the warmth in their faces at getting closer to a showdown, tells me one thing and one thing only: They really couldn’t care less about me.

  I look up at the ceiling and softly offer, “Jonathan is a good guy. He’s not like the rest of—”

  “Right.” Agent Foncello slides a folder across the table and says, “Take a look.”

  I put my hand on the folder gently, like I’m placing a flower on the coffin of a loved one.

  “Take a look at the kinds of things Jonathan is capable of.”

  I open the folder and I get only as far as the first picture before my stomach turns. It is the image of a young man with the bottom half of his face bloodied and listing to the left, his mouth protruding as though pushed from the throat outward, with several teeth broken or missing. The man in the picture is conscious, and the look in his eyes is undisputed terror.

  “That’s Gregory Morrison. Jonathan gave that man what the Bovaros call a souvenir—something to remember the event, as it were.”

  I swallow. I can’t take my eyes off the picture. “What, um… what did he do?”

  “Well, once he was done smashing the guy with various objects, he took off his belt, placed the buckle inside Morrison’s mouth, making sure the guy’s top and bottom teeth were in the buckle. Then Johnny pressed his foot against Morrison’s chin, wrapped the belt a few times around his fist, then yanked up like he was pull-starting a lawn mower.”

  I close the file and slide it away and fall back in my chair and everything gets light and gray. “May I have a glass of water?”

  Nobody moves.

  “We need you to help us, Melody.”

  Nothing has changed in twenty years. They are employing the same wear-down, fear-inducing tactics they used on my parents. I cover my eyes, wish the room would stop spinning. “Why do you need my help? Looks like you have plenty of evidence against him.”

  “You think Morrison’s going to testify?”

  I lurch forward and slam my fist down on the table. “Why don’t you put him into Witness Protection? Bring him here and tell him what a great life he’s going to have in Nebraska as a fertilizer deliveryman!”

  “You can get us a lot more information. You would be a great asset to—”

  “Don’t you dare try to play on my patriotism.”

  Donovan steps up to bat again. “Listen, Melody, you’re already in the program. You’re not giving up anything new.”

  It’s hard to believe those words actually came out of his mouth. The other three guys look at Donovan.

  Sanchez quickly tries to stop what is about to happen. “What Donovan meant was—”

  “Wait,” I say, but I can’t help laughing with all my might, all my heart. It does not bring relief; what I’ve needed all these years is a good laugh, not a good hysteria. “Y
ou know, you guys are a bunch of low-life losers, scumbags of the highest order, a bunch of self-important dicks who are just as bad as the bad guys but you pretend to be the good guys, which makes it so much worse. You have no face value. You have no worth to speak of. You promise hope and deliver ruin. And my last, undying prayer is that each of you will live a life of pain and anguish and misery, that some new and excruciating cancer will emerge and fester in your bodies where you will rot for years on end.” I stand and adjust my clothes. “And you got it all wrong, Donovan. I am not in the program. And I never will be again.”

  I turn and leave the room and though I hear a little rustling in the chairs, one of them says, “Let her go.”

  I walk down the hall where Williamson is waiting and I angrily say, “Take me back to Baltimore.”

  He nods and says “Yes, ma’am” like a soldier, an entity entrusted to do as it is told; I have no doubt he will complete the mission.

  Within minutes I am back in the blackness, zooming from the building, onto the rural roads back to the parking lot where they open the door and point to Sean parked fifty feet away. I step out of the vehicle and before I am three feet from the door, the Excursion spins its wheels and disappears. I turn and watch it fade away, along with my last chance.

  Sean gets out of the Explorer and casually walks over to me, as though he knows that there is no need to protect me, that I am no longer in the program.

  “They told me not to wait,” he says. He smiles and adds, “I knew better.”

  The dust catches in my throat and though my response is delivered weakly, I am firm in my belief. “They just wanted to use me, Sean. No one has my best interests at heart. And honestly, how could they? Unless you’re emotionally bonded to someone, how can you ever really protect that person? In my case, no one at Justice cares.”

  He shrugs and looks into the distance. “You think John Bovaro does?”

  I shrug back. “At least I know what he is, you know? You guys are just…”

  He sighs and folds his arms in a nonaggressive way. “It’s a good program. Don’t knock it, Melody. Just because it didn’t work for you doesn’t mean it doesn’t work at all. We’ve been able to put hundreds of horrible people away for life because of testimony generated out of WITSEC. And the recidivism rate for criminals that went into the program is not even a tenth of what it is for people who get rehabilitated in prison.” He pauses and stares back into the distance. “It’s made a difference.”

  I want to believe him but his genuineness is one dimensional, like he’s repeating statistics from a recent briefing used to invigorate an increasingly disenchanted force of marshals.

  I nod a little, throw him a bone. He can spew the facts at me all day long, but what I know is that my mother and my father and I fell through the cracks, and instead of pulling us out, they sealed us over with a fresh layer of cement.

  “They’re not heroes,” I say.

  He smiles and shakes his head. “Heroes are exactly what they are. You cannot imagine how many people are alive because of the good things these guys have done. I know you think you’re a victim—which you are—but so are these marshals and agents. You think they don’t get threatened all the time? Or their wives and kids? They do, believe me; I’ve been on those details, protecting government officials and their families. It’s not perfect, just like the entire criminal justice system, but it’s all we have. And sometimes good people, like you, get caught in the middle.”

  I step up to Sean and he bridges the gap and pulls me in for a hug and my head falls right into the valley between his pecs; it’s a warm, inviting place to dwell.

  Sean lightly strokes the back of my neck and says, “If someone had testified against the Bovaros decades ago, your parents would never have been involved. They’d still be alive today.” I pull back and look at him. “Your parents saved someone else’s life. You see? The system works in a chaotic way.”

  “But the feds lost the case my folks testified in.”

  “Yeah, they did, but other guys—lower-level guys—folded because of the pressure of that case, which led to more arrests down the line. It did more good than you probably know.”

  We stare at each other while we remain partly embraced and for a moment I imagine what it would’ve been like if my little brother had survived. I’d like to think he would be strong and protective, like Sean, but without the tunnel vision.

  “You still want to go back to Baltimore?”

  I leave his grip and look down the road. The dust from the Excursion is long gone. “Yeah, I do.”

  “Because you have no place else to go?”

  I exhale slowly. “No, because it’s the place I want to be.”

  Sean walks around the side of the car and opens the passenger door. “Listen, I’ll take you wherever you want to go, but please know that Jonathan Bovaro will never be your hero. There is no way he can rescue you from the life you have to live.”

  I say the words I’ve practiced, but the mantra is losing its effect: “He’s not the same as the others.”

  I get in and Sean closes the door. After he walks around and sits down on his side, he says, “There is only one type of Bovaro—and Johnny is his daddy’s boy.”

  As Sean accelerates, I stare ahead blankly, unable to get the image of Greg Morrison out of my mind. But the thing that haunts me, that scares me and brings about a sudden faintness, is the rage one must be capable of to inflict that kind of torture on another person.

  Sean pulls in front of the Renaissance and puts the Explorer in Park. He turns and leans on the steering wheel as I open my door and get to the sidewalk.

  “I guess this is good-bye,” he says, but I hear a question mark in his tone.

  I turn and rest against the frame of the door, sort of casually, but my stance is mostly derived from fatigue. “I suppose so.”

  Sean smiles and all of a sudden he’s human again, all McConaughey-esque and whatnot, as though our parting is a signal for him to be a decent, caring guy for a moment. “You’re a beautiful woman, Melody.”

  I smile a little and look down.

  “And I don’t mean just today, from your spa thing. You were already beautiful.”

  I look up again. “Thanks, I—”

  “And you’re worthy of more than John Bovaro. Don’t think that by switching sides everything will get better. It doesn’t matter which team you play for; the game remains the same.” I stare at him. Just like that, Matthew is gone and Sean has returned, like he’s suffering from dissociative identity disorder. He puts the car in Drive and slips away.

  My body and mind are now conditioned to toss me into worry whenever instability or loss enters my life, and I begin rubbing my temples as I walk through the lobby of the hotel. I glance at the clock on the wall and see it’s nearly three o’clock. I take the elevator to the second floor so I can return to the spa, and the image I see in the mirror of the elevator is a vaguely familiar one, a weathered, exhausted woman with mascara-smeared eyes and patchy makeup. I’m struggling to maintain this morning’s conversion; I’ve become a close, rivalrous sibling of my former self.

  As I walk through the entryway of the spa, I’m greeted by the same clerk as earlier in the day, and I finally notice a little name tag on her sweater that reads KIMBERLY. I liked her better as Clerk. She takes one look at me and says, “Oh, dear. When is Jonathan coming back for you?”

  “Five.”

  She looks over her shoulder and checks the time. “We better hurry.”

  In an instant I’m tossed into the chair for a facial, and two estheticians go to town at once. I want to ask how much Jonathan gave them to be this attentive, but I’m probably better off not knowing. Besides, it’s more fun to pretend they’re doing this because they want to help me, as my friends, look good for my boyfriend.

  The hairstylist passes by, glances my way, stops, and says, “Oh, dear,” and before I know it she’s grabbing chemicals and re-applying them to my hair and scalp.

>   One of the estheticians nods to someone behind me and instantly the manicurist is looking down at my fingernails, then my toenails, and then she says, “Oh, dear,” and my arms are out and my sandals are off and my feet are propped up like I’m seconds from giving birth.

  I am a movie star. Right down to the broken home and the perpetual insecurity, I am a movie star.

  Sixty minutes pass and by some wave of a magic wand, all hands are removed from my body at the same time, their faces and bodies parting like the Red Sea so that I may finally witness the glory of their concerted labor. I see myself, but it’s hard to recognize me. They finished the job and finished me off at the same time. May Adams and Karen Smith and Anne Johnson and Jane Watkins and Terry Mills and Shelly Jones and Linda Simms and Sandra Clarke are gone forever. And so is Melody Grace McCartney.

  I may never look this good again. The only thing missing is the halo.

  That such health and comfort are delivered only to the rich and privileged seems horribly askew, so unfair, and for the briefest of moments, while I am staring at my silky hair and my soft, powdered skin and my glistening nails, I think it might be okay to be a criminal if the fruits are this sweet and juicy.

  I stand motionless, frozen, a deer with an introversive beam of light in my face. I can’t stop staring at this sight, but the image before me is so beautiful, so sexy, so elegant, that I cannot help being rude to myself. And all at once I see decades of missed opportunities fall to the sides of my history.

  My eyes begin to moisten.

  “Oh, dear,” I hear in unison.

  I lunge for a box of tissues and start pressing them to my eyes. “It’s okay,” I say.

  Tears of joy are so much easier to stop.

  I turn and thank each one of them individually—and confirm they’ve been taken care of, financially speaking. They say they have been, like they just finished some daylong lovemaking session; my dark side wonders what Jonathan gave them for currency.