I'll Sing for my Dinner (25 page)

Finally, we were able to go home and resume our lives, but there was one more thing I had to do before I felt we could really go forward.

Lying in bed that night, I said, “Jake, I’m sorry I lied to you.”

“About what?” he said in a lazy tone of voice.

“About killing Eddie.”

He rose to a sitting position and looked down at me. “You killed him?”

“Yeah. I couldn’t tell anyone, not even you. If you want to tell a really big lie, you have to make sure you never change your story. If you can convince yourself, you can convince everyone else. I probably could have passed a polygraph.”

I took a deep breath. “I’m a very good liar, Jake. My mother taught me when I was very young that the easiest way to avoid punishment was to tell her what she wanted to hear. ‘Yes, Mother, your new double Ds look entirely natural on your five-foot-three, one hundred and five pound frame.’ ‘No, Mother, your new bleach blonde hair doesn’t look trashy.’ ‘Of course I spent the afternoon practicing, Mother. I would never dream of wasting precious time reading a comic book I stole from Tommy Martin’s house.’ That’s why I didn’t want to answer your questions. You were the first person that ever treated me with kindness, just because you thought it was the right thing to do. So I’ve tried my damnedest never to lie to you.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

“Yes. I do. I want to get rid of everything that’s still standing between us. And if you want me to leave in the morning, just take me to the bus station.”

“You stabbed him,” Jake said, and I saw his eyes shift to my knife sitting on the dresser by the door. I was surprised the sheriff’s office had returned it.

“Yes, but not with that knife. I left the knife. Remember when I told you that Eddie owed some people a quarter of a million dollars?”

Jake said, “Yes.”

“That was true. What I didn’t tell you was that he came up with a scheme to get the money. He decided that he would move me up to New York, and then send a ransom note to my parents telling them to give him the money or he’d kill me. God, the number of holes in that plan made my head spin. Something you have to keep in mind is they don’t require an IQ test to deal drugs, and Eddie wasn’t that bright when he was sober.”

I sat up so I could see Jake’s face easier.

“Even if my parents were inclined to pay the ransom, I couldn’t see them doing it without calling in the police. I received kidnapping and other threats for years. Everyone seems to think that kidnapping a child star is the road to instant riches. Then there was the problem of whether they had the money. Since they didn’t have access to my trust anymore, and I wasn’t performing, I wasn’t sure of their financial situation. They had been living off me for years. Of course, I was never fool enough to tell Eddie about my finances, or that I had money of my own.”

“What parent wouldn’t try to pay to ransom their child?” Jake asked quietly.

“You met my mother. What if the child was an ungrateful, drug-addict whore?” I asked in return. “Keep in mind, if I die, my parents inherit my wealth. Or they would have then. I fixed that. I’m not saying they would have thrown me under a bus, but the ties of parent-child love were extremely strained. We had a number of shouting matches about me canceling the tour and living with Eddie.”

I looked out the window, seeing the stars twinkling at me. “But what scared me the most was that Eddie really would kill me. He had been spending a lot of time with a new girl, and I wouldn’t put it past him to slit my throat if my parents didn’t pay. So, I tried to talk Eddie out of it. And he did something he had never done before. He hit me.”

I remembered the scene so well. Eddie saying,
“I’m tired of arguing with you. We’re going to do it my way. Shut up and go get me a beer.”

“Eddie, I’m telling you it won’t work. We need to figure out another way.”

I didn’t even see the fist coming. In almost two years of abuse, of being raped and sold to other men to rape, he had never hit me. He knocked me off the bed, and I lay on the floor, confused more than hurt, trying to understand what had happened.

“Listen, bitch. You don’t tell me what to do. If I say, go get me a fucking beer, you go get me a beer. Do you understand me, you fucking cunt?”

“So I went to the kitchen and got him a beer,” I told Jake. “But I also brought back a chef’s knife. He was lying on his back, his head propped up with a pillow against the headboard. I put the beer on the nightstand, turned, and drove the knife into him with both hands.”

It entered just below his breastbone, and went all the way through to the mattress. Other than a loud gasp, he never said a thing. I left the knife where it was, wiped the handle and the beer bottle with the sheet, and went to take a shower. I discovered that even when you stab someone in the heart, there isn’t much blood if you don’t pull the knife out.

“All the abuse, everything he did to you, and you killed him because he hit you,” Jake said.

It wasn’t really a question, but I said, “Yes.”

“Good for you,” he said. “If every man who hit a woman got the same treatment, it wouldn’t bother me at all.”

I sat there waiting for something more. He reached out and cupped my face in his hand. Then he leaned forward and kissed me.

“I consider myself warned,” he said. “Never hit Cecily.” And then he took me in his arms and kissed me again, and again, and made love to me.

I lay in his arms later, listening to his breathing, with tears running down my face. Finally, I could allow myself to be happy.

The following day as I was getting dressed, Jake came into the bedroom and knelt in front of me. He pulled out the little box that held the diamond ring he bought when I was taken into protective custody. But when he opened his mouth, I put my hand over it. My heart was hammering as hard as it did when Alejandro stuck the gun in my chest. For an entirely different reason, of course. I was so elated that I thought I might float off the floor. But he was throwing a wrench into one of my dreams, my fondest fantasy.

“Are you going to ask me to marry you?”

He nodded.

“You really want to marry me? Do you want to have kids and all that?”

He nodded again.

My breath caught in my throat, and it took me twice to actually form the words, but I managed to keep my voice steady. “I’m not ready for that, Jake. You know I love you, but there’s something I want to do first. Something I have planned, but I’ve been too afraid to do it. I’ve always been afraid that being with you is just a dream, and that I’ll wake up some morning and you’ll tell me to leave.”

“How can you even think that?” he asked. “You know I love you. Cecily, this is real. We are real. There’s never going to be anyone for me except you.”

I leaned over and kissed him.

“Put the ring away, but not too far away, okay? Like I said, you’ve just given me the courage to do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Please let me do it?”

He stood and put the ring back in his pocket. “You know I would do anything for you. Am I going to have to wait very long?”

Pulling his head down and kissing him, I said, “No, Jake, not very long at all. Let me play my little game and then I’m yours.”

We dressed and headed out with me driving. I had finally gone into town and paid for my learner’s permit. It took us twice as long to get there when I drove.

That evening at the bar, I played my normal two hours. When I finished, I pulled the microphone close and said, “Jake, can you come up here, please?”

He wiped his hands and came out from behind the bar. I put out my hand and pulled him onstage. Then I knelt down in front of him and began to play.

You tell me that you love me

And you show me every day

I’ve never been in love before

I never knew the way

I didn’t know the world could be

Such a lovely place

And I didn’t know that angels had

A handsome cowboy face

I never knew that being owned

Could set you truly free

Jacob Allen McGarrity

Will you marry me?

I pulled out a small box and opened it, showing him the ring I’d commissioned from a jeweler in London. He smiled and put out his hand and I slipped the ring on his finger, then he pulled me to my feet and kissed me. The whole bar was cheering. It was exactly the way I imagined it.

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I’ll Sing for My Dinner
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Author’s note:

In most, if not all, states in the U.S., a 200-pound man can beat and rape a 100-pound woman and she is not allowed to defend herself using lethal force. The normal standard is: A person may use non-deadly force to prevent imminent injury; however, a person may not use deadly force unless that person is in reasonable fear of serious injury or death. 

Many courts (usually male judges) have ruled that rape is not a “serious injury”. She can’t shoot her rapist or stab him or hit him in the head with a rock unless he is trying to kill her. And if she does kill him, she must prove her innocence and his intent.

Since most such crimes have no witnesses, such proof often is difficult. As a result, of the men Cecily killed, only Alejandro would qualify as a “justified homicide”, since he had a weapon and threatened to kill her in the presence of a witness. If such laws seem insane, then public pressure should be brought to change the laws concerning violence against women.

~~~

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Chapter 4

The Friday night of finals week was bat-shit crazy at the bar. We were full from noon, and by dinnertime, it was standing room only. By the time I dragged myself into bed, I was as exhausted as I could ever remember.

The next day, I took a shower and washed my hair, put my clothes together and drove over to Marcie’s with my hair still wet. We curled and styled each other’s hair, made sure our makeup was perfect for pictures, then went to meet our parents and Pat for lunch.

The graduation ceremony started at one. As Pat and I sat through the speeches, I thought at one point that something inside me was going to explode. It was as though this huge bubble of emotion—joy, elation, trepidation, accomplishment, nostalgia, and a dozen different emotions—was forming in my chest. I almost felt as though I was having trouble breathing.

But then it was over. I had my diploma, and mom and dad were taking pictures of us, and classmates were trying to find each other to share one last hug.

Marcie had a job with one of the international accounting firms in their Denver office. God knows how that woman partied for five years and still managed grades in the top one percent. She was keeping her apartment in Fort Collins, at least for the summer, but would be traveling a lot. I had to admit I was a bit jealous. Even though she wouldn’t be traveling to exotic places, at least she was traveling.

Dar was on the waiting list at five different medical schools, but had no immediate plans. She said that she’d been told her entry was almost guaranteed at two schools a year from that fall. Sheila, of course, had another year of grad school, but she was planning on going to Europe for the summer.

And I had to go to work.

As the dinner crowd wound down later, the bar started to fill up, and I felt like I was running a marathon.