Justice For Belle

by Didi Oviatt

  “Are you ready for my proposition, then?” he asks.

  “Probably not,” I answer.

  “Good, because I don’t think I’m ready to give it to you, in full, just yet anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Mac picks up his phone from the table to check the time before rubbing at his wrist like he’s used to having a watch instead. Then, he pulls a pen from the inside pocket of his jacket and begins jotting an address down onto a napkin as he talks. I watch his hands closely, recalling my image of them squeezing the life from another human. His confidence is unsettling, and the brutally honest confession about his fiancé has left the weight of a rock in my belly.

  “I was a failure as a writer, just like you’ve been a failure at a second attempt in writing. I want to give it another go, but I lack the proper inspiration, just like you. I think we need to take physical action and then write about it, as a team. You and I together. My proposition is more like a plan, and I’d love to talk more about it, if you’re willing. Meet me at this address. No phone calls, no more meetups. I’m not going to eat here anymore, now that we’ve spoken. Don’t call me; don’t seek out my business. We can’t have any ties to one another. No links. No evidence. If you want to talk, just meet me at this address Saturday morning, same time as today.”

  He hands over the napkin, but not before looking over each shoulder and out the window to make sure no one is watching. I slip it quickly into my pocket. I feel sneaky, filthy even; yet in a weird way, it’s thrilling and sexy. A foreign heat pools in my lower belly. Every inch of my body feels the warmth from his fingers as they brush against mine.

  “No evidence? What exactly are you talking about?” I whisper.

  Mac only flashes me his confident smile before he rises and casually saunters off. He leaves me behind, as if our entire conversation never happened. I’m now sitting on display alone, feeling naked and vulnerable for the whole world to see. I grab up my dirtied plate and take it to the back. My mind is running in circles trying to come up with whatever lie I’m going to feed Lucy. Hopefully, I can pull it off, and fast; Douglas will be here any minute.

  Lucy’s busy mixing and blending some sort of sugary deliciousness, moving at the pace of a cheetah. We talk just loud enough to be heard over the sounds of running water, clanking dishes, and blending motors, but not so loud as to be heard by customers.

  “Is he gone?” she asks with excitement rays shooting at me from her eyes.

  “Yeah.”

  I rinse my own plate and place it in a rack that is soon to be ran through a gigantic dish steamer.

  “So? What did he say?” she drills me without taking so much as one breath. “What did you ask him?”

  I clear my throat, but she continues before I have a chance to talk.

  “That was the weirdest conversation by the door! I knew he had an agenda; I knew it, Ahnia. He has been coming here for you, hasn’t he?”

  Lucy’s words pour out of her mouth a hundred miles an hour. I can hardly keep up, let alone interject anything of my own. Her questions assault me, and my stomach flips.

  “I think he’s kind of a weirdo, Lucy. I told him not to come here anymore.”

  “What!? Why would you tell him that? Did you ask him about his fiancé?”

  “Wow, one question at a time.”

  “Start with the girl.”

  “He said he started seeing her because she looks like me, and then he fell in love with her. It weirded me out, so I told him to quit coming here and to leave me alone.”

  “Oh my God, that is creepy.”

  “Yeah,” I agree, avoiding eye contact.

  I can feel her stare at me, eyes narrowed like she does when she’s speculating. So far, I’ve only somewhat lied to her. It feels like the napkin in my pocket is burning a hole straight through my leg. She sets down her kitchen utensils and throws her fists on her hips.

  “There’s more. You’re not telling me everything, are you?”

  Lucy never gives up on anything. What do I say? My mind is on a reel. Luckily, I’m saved by the gruff ring of Madge’s voice as she interrupts.

  “Busy morning, Ahnia. Douglas is here for you.”

  Thank you, Douglas, I think. Even if he does wind up quitting me today, I may just kiss him for saving me from Lucy’s inquisitions. I duck my head, dodging any further questions or comments, and rush by Madge, thanking her on my way past.

  It looks like Douglas has packed on more than a few pounds. The buttons on his 1980s corduroy suit are working extra hard to stay done up in the middle. His cotton undershirt is peeking through the gaps as if it’s trying to escape, and his pants float a couple inches from the top of his dress shoes. A smack of guilt for Douglas’ lack of nicer attire slaps me across the face.

  If Douglas were to ever kill someone, he’d likely stick around the body for some time afterward. Not to soak up the evil pride of it all, but to cry in self-pity over his actions and to doubt himself as a man. He’d probably find himself dangling at the wrong end of a looped rope over the whole scenario.

  “Ahnia.” He stands to greet me and slides out a chair. “I’m glad you finally decided to see me.”

  The pity-melt of his eyes doesn’t match his words or offer any encouragement for that matter. He isn’t glad; that’s a bold-faced lie. I fumble for an excuse.

  “Yeah, sorry I’ve been so hard to get ahold of.”

  I look at my feet, embarrassed.

  “It’s fine, it’s fine. Let’s just get right to business, shall we? I don’t want to keep you.”

  “Yes, please,” I agree and take a seat.

  It’s worse than I thought. Not only does Douglas quit, but he informs me that my literary agent has also given up on my representation. He passes on a direct message from her that if I do ever come up with another book, I’ll have to start at square one.

  Apparently, she was too busy burying her head in the sand to tell me herself, so she had to pass the news on through Douglas. I’m no longer a shoe-in to traditionally publish a second book. The news hits me like a bullet. A quick, painful jolt to the chest, leaving a hollowed out hole clear through.

  I stare off into space, refusing to look at Douglas while it sinks in. I hear the words he says, but I have no response. Then, through the fog of it all, Mac’s face is all I can see. Front and center through my mind’s eye, he grins at me. I don’t even hear Douglas anymore, only Mac. As odd as it was, his proposition swirls around me like a tornado. We have to take action and write about it, as a team.

  Maybe Mac is right. It was Belle, and what I’d done to her that inspired my best seller. Maybe I do need to take action. My skin crawls, and despite how nasty it feels and how confused I am, it just might work. I’m desperate, I’m lost, and I’m broke. Mac could be my writing career’s only hope at redemption. What if he could help me get on top again? I’ll do it. I’ll keep whatever his little plan is a secret, and I’ll meet with him.

  Chapter Five

  I don’t take this drive any more often than I have to. Dad’s house hasn’t exactly felt like home since it’s lacked the presence of Mom. It especially hasn’t felt like home since Dorothy moved in. Tim goes to dinner at Dad’s every single week. The typical Friday night as a bachelor without a social life outside of school, I suppose. Waiting on Saturday to roll around, so I can meet up with Mac, has made me anxious, so I decided to take Tim up on the invitation to join them tonight.

  What’s worse than visiting the house I grew up in is the driving past of one house in particular on the way there. The house it happened in. The house I repeatedly sleepwalked to, until one night I did the unthinkable. The house Tim followed me to, but wasn’t fast enough to stop the disgusting event that played out.

  I ease off of the gas pedal some, just enough to creep past Belle’s childhood home at a snail’s pace. The windows are boarded up. There are a few deep cracks between the bricks. One of them starts just above a window on the first floor and sprouts like the
branches of a dead tree all the way through the second level. Thick weeds and unkempt shrubbery cover the ground, and nearly all of the paint on the front door is faded and cracked, causing it to peel away from the wood as if it’s poisoned.

  No one has lived there since a mere few days after it happened. Belle’s father was arrested for her murder and sat in jail until his trial three months later. The police had found inappropriate pictures of Belle hidden away in his underwear drawer. They deemed this enough evidence to prove him guilty in the court of law for Belle’s murder. There was no forced entry and no murder weapon to be found. Belle’s dad was coming down from a three-day heroin high when a neighbor called the police. When the cops showed up and ultimately found the crime scene, Belle had been dead for days.

  In reality, Belle had been abused by her own father and then murdered by a girl she’d been close to as a toddler.

  Mom was friends with Belle’s mother before she divorced Belle’s disgusting father. If only Belle’s mom had taken her with, as she did the three older brothers, then none of it would have ever happened. No one really understood the motive behind Belle’s abandonment with her dad. It made no sense. Aside from Belle’s new stepdad wanting nothing to do with her and everything to do with the boys, there was no reasoning to the fact that Belle’s mom left her behind.

  Belle became distant from all of her friends. She dressed in only black and refused to look anyone in the eye for years. We stopped being friends, and until Charles paid her so much attention, I tried not to give her much thought. Especially since we were so close in looks. At the time, the whole idea of Belle and her entire family just rubbed me the wrong way.

  For the first couple of years after the divorce of her parents, Belle’s brothers would visit here and there. That quickly faded; I vaguely remember them, and if they ever did actually come around, they’d recluse. We were really young, and there has been too much that’s happened since. I wonder about them all so often now. Dad, Tim, and I went to Belle’s funeral. Even though it was less than a week after Mom’s service, Dad still insisted we be there. We were close as young children after all.

  Belle’s family wasn’t even there.

  I’ll never forget the day she was lowered into the ground. I searched for anyone who really loved her, but no such person existed. No mother, no siblings. The casket was surrounded by members of the community who pulled together out of sympathy and shock from the incident. Pretending to be surprised at what “that man had done.”

  I remember everything everyone said. The comments, the shaking of heads, and especially the lack of love and tears shed for Belle. A not-so-innocent man was locked away for a crime he didn’t commit. I walked away free and clear with the loss of my own mother to remind me of my sleepy mistake, every single day, for the rest of my life.

  My mom’s voice of reason whispers in my ear, “Ahnia, don’t dwell. Always move forward in life. Remember that.” She’d tell me this every time I made a mistake in school, or when I’d break a toy. A hint of sadness was usually hidden in the crows feet surrounding her eyes as she said it. Mom’s battle with depression gave her a first-hand view of my struggles-to-be in life. She knew me better than I knew myself, and because of me, she’s dead. Because of Belle and the horrid thing I did to her in the very house I’m driving by.

  A shiver runs through my entire body as it does every time I pass the house. It starts in my feet and makes its way up and out the top of my head and the tips of my fingers. I turn my focus back to the road and push away the recollection of the moment Tim had to violently wake me. Thoughts of her bashed in head and the blood soaked through my clothes give me a sudden, queasy feeling in my guts.

  Tim’s Jeep is already at Dad’s, parked on the road as to leave an open space in the driveway for me. I chuckle about his unnecessary kindness, as usual. I slip out of my car and saunter to the front door. Dad tries to insist that I come in the garage door like everyone else, but I refuse. That would indicate my being at ease, at home. I’d rather use the front door as any other guest coming for a visit. I ring the doorbell and wait for Dorothy to answer it. She usually does.

  Dad hasn’t answered the door in years. Dorothy insists on assessing and evaluating visitors before allowing them inside her home. “Too many people simply have too many secrets,” she tells him. “I’m a professional. You just stay seated, and I’ll be the judge on whether or not they should be allowed as our guests.”

  What a judgmental hag, I think while waiting patiently in my rightful place on the porch. I listen to the doorbell bounce from room to room in a melodious echoing pattern. It only reminds me of just how big this house really is. What once was an admiration of my father’s success is now an insulting slap to the face.

  I fiddle with the hem on the bottom of my overworn Nirvana t-shirt. My heel taps the concrete step with my thick knee-high boots as they hug tightly to my ripped skinny jeans. One of the easiest ways to say “F-you” to Dorothy is by showing up to dinner in an outfit that is “less-than-worthy dinner attire.”' Naturally, I go right for the grungiest choices I own.

  I used to want this. A big, beautiful, six-bedroom house, fully equipped with expanded living spaces, vaulted ceilings, and a personalized bathroom to fit the needs of practically every guest who might possibly stop in. If not in this exact same suburb, then at least one like it, with only one road leading in and out.

  The layout of this neighborhood allows you to admire the gradual size increase of each home as the road snakes up a side hill overlooking the valley. I spent the majority of my childhood imagining my own place here. I even had the color of stucco I wanted all picked out, along with the perfectly grouted rock fence in the back.

  Thank God I grew out of that little fantasy. A place outside the city with plenty of garden space, fruit trees, and privacy would suit me just fine. The home itself wouldn't even need to be big. A one-story house with a large, open living space and a beautiful kitchen, the kind of kitchen my mother could have lost herself in. I may not have carried on her culinary skills, but I would never buy a house that didn’t honor her memory in the worthiest way I could manage.

  Other than that, nothing much matters in a house to me. As I'm allowing myself to get swept away in thought over what has been and may never be, the door swings wide open, revealing Tim's large, crooked grin.

  "You came!" he chirps.

  "You're sweaty," I reply.

  "Dad and I have been playing tennis on the Wii." He chuckles. "Care to join?"

  I shuffle in the door, shimmy out of my light jacket and hang it on a stand-alone coat hanger in the corner of the entrance. I look both ways, peering into the sitting room on my left, and then into the first of two family dens on my right. The more formal of the two contains Dorothy.

  She’s standing as straight as an arrow, donning the hat of a well-groomed homemaker. There are at least a dozen houseplants arranged perfectly on decorative, metal, stacked tiers. They cover the entire wall that's touched by the sun's rays daily from a giant bay window across the way. Dorothy, with a spray bottle in hand, is giving each vine and sprout a squirt. One at a time, she sprays them, and then fluffs the wet leaves like a pillow.

  To the right, in the den, is Dad. He’s collapsed on the couch, practically laying off of the edge. His arms are relaxed flat to his sides and his legs are motionless, extending straight to the floor. He’s huffing and puffing for air with a smile the size of Texas across his face. He must have won a game or two because he’d never be such a happy loser.

  I lift a quizzical brow at Tim.

  “Do you even need to ask?”

  “I suppose not.”

  We both look back over at Dorothy, who pretends she can’t hear a word we say from a few yards away. No hello, or how’ve you been . . . nothing. She only straightens her back even higher, if that’s possible, pulling the crown of her head to the ceiling. Then she gives a few more leaves a squirt. My eyes round a full circle before I give Tim’s shoulder a little sho
ve.

  “You ready to lose?”

  Dad slowly makes his way to his feet, pushing off of the couch cushions with his tired arms shaking at the elbows and grunting along the way. He hands me the other paddle before pulling me into a tight one-armed hug and plants a kiss on my forehead.

  “Glad you could make it, beautiful.”

  I take a long adoring look into his aging eyes.

  “Me too, Dad.” I smile.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to check the lasagna and step away from this foul game while I have the upper hand and my dignity is still intact.”

  “You got lucky, old man,” Tim says.

  Dad giggles and pats Tim on the shoulder before trudging off, still trying to catch his breath. I lean in close to Tim and whisper toward his ear once Dad is out of ear range.

  “You let him win, didn’t you?”

  “Of course,” he replies, even quieter. “He’s a stubborn ass and tries too hard. I thought if I didn’t back down and stop the game, he’d likely have a heart attack.”

  We both laugh, and I drop my head to the palm of my hand. Tim lets out an adorable post-laugh snort and then drapes an arm around my shoulders. Dorothy still hasn’t attempted to make as much as a sliver of eye contact. I, of course, have no intention of going out of my way to say hello, which is obviously what she’s silently digging for. Instead, I spin in a rush and race Tim to the start button on our game, hoping to score a point and one up him before he can get his hands on a paddle.

  Not that I need to score any cheat points. I’ve beat Tim at every single game of tennis we’ve ever played, be it real or virtual. I loved tennis growing up and was truly a force to be reckoned with on the court. Tim’s never stood a chance. Basketball has always been more of Tim’s forte. Put a paddle in his hands, and he turns into an awkward, gangly lunatic. It kind of seems like he’s swinging at an invisible bug with a fly swatter.

  Dad makes it back just in time to witness my winning score and to stick around for one more game, cheering on the underdog. His whoops and at-a-boy comments do no good. I don’t even take it easy on Tim; there’s really no point. Just as we’re packing it in and calling it quits, Dorothy finally graces us with her presence.