The Good Lie (9 page)

A Basket Through the Window

[1]

I had made a promise to Angela
Peligro, and I meant to keep it.  Mikey needed out of the house.

So I swallowed my snarliness and
called my mother and took her up on her offer for dinner.

There’s a feeling of loss that
comes over you when you walk up to a place that isn’t yours, and your mother
stands in the doorway and nothing inside looks like home, and you realize you’re
not part of her life anymore, and the childhood you had with her can never be
resurrected.

I don’t know how Mikey felt, but my
heart melted into my knees as I stepped into her neatly furnished apartment
that was no part of me.

The food smelled familiar—that was
the only thing.  She had made pot roast, something I’d never had the courage to
try because it seemed too difficult.  The roasting pan sat on the stove
cooling, and I lifted the lid and took in the tiny potatoes and the bay leaves
and the squat brown meat and the soft roasted carrots that were always the best
part of that meal.

“Hungry?” my mother said behind
me.  She had her arm around Mikey.  He looked so relaxed and happy.

How I would have loved to be him. 
To just get over it.  To let my mother hold me and feel the comfort and joy
that could bring.  To stop all this—be a child again.  Be innocent and happy
and free.

“It’s nice not to have to cook for
a change,” I said.  No way I was going to let my guard down.  Someone had to
stay strong.

I almost cried when I tasted the
food.  Like a memory of a past life.  I could barely swallow past the lump in
my throat.

This was harder than I thought.

“How’s your first week?” my mother
asked both of us.

Mikey went to town:  his teacher
was nice but she had a mole on her lip and it looked like she had chocolate
there and one of the kids told her and Mrs. Henry said yes, she knew, but it
was a mole, not food, and the other kids laughed, and—

Blah, blah, blah.

“Lizzie?  How about you?”

“You know.  Same old, same old.”

I didn’t tell her about graduating
early.  That was my business.

I waited until dinner was almost over
before giving my mother the chance to do the right thing.

“Mikey, do you want to stay here?”
I asked him in front of her.

My mother faltered.  “Uh, tonight?”

I narrowed my eyes. 
Don’t screw
this up,
I wanted to tell her.  “Yeah, tonight.”

“Does your father know?”

“Yes,” which was sort of true,
since I’d told him Mikey and I were having a special sleepover at Posie’s.

My mother’s forehead crinkled.  “Um,
I can’t really do it tonight, but tomorrow?”

“Forget it.  Didn’t mean to
inconvenience you.”

“It’s just that I already told Charles—”

“Forget it,” I snapped.  “We’re
going to Posie’s.”

My mother realized she had lost her
moment.  She grabbed it back.  “No. No, I’ll just call Charles.”  And to her
credit, she got up from the table and did just that.

“Do you want to stay here?” I
whispered to Mikey.

He nodded, his mouth full of
potatoes.

“’Cause if you don’t—”

“I want to,” he mumbled past the
food.

My mother returned, smiling.  “There. 
No problem.  I’ll take you to school in the morning.  Lizzie, you can stay too
if you want.”

“No, thanks.  I’m staying at Posie’s. 
I have to get back.  I’ve got homework.”

“I’ll take you,” my mother offered.

“No, Posie’s expecting me to call. 
She can be here in ten minutes.”

I considered broaching the topic of
getting a driver’s license one day, but realized that was the least of my
concerns.  I needed to take care of Mikey first.

I called Posie, then told my mother
I was going to wait outside.  That seemed fine with her.  I think she was happy
to be rid of me.

“Mikey’s clothes are there.”  I
pointed to a paper sack.  I had brought them with me just in case my mother
agreed to step up and be a mother.  Otherwise I’d have brought them with us to
Posie’s.

“By the way,” I added casually, “I’m
going to be living with Posie for a while.  Her mother said I could.”

“Oh.  I see.  Is there a . . .
reason?  Did your father and you . . . have a fight?”

I glanced at Mikey to make sure he
knew to back me up.  “No.”

My mother nodded.  She understood
she could no longer pry.  I was grown up now.  She had to approach me like the
stranger I was.  “Okay, so should I call you at Posie’s?  If I need to talk to
you?”

“Yeah.  Whatever.”

“Goodbye, sweetheart.”  She kissed
me on the cheek before I was ready.  She must have felt me stiffen, and I felt
bad about that.  Compared with my father, my mother’s touch was like brushing
against an angel.  I was finding it harder and harder to be as mad at her as I
wanted to be.  A part of me wanted to forget everything that had happened, and
just go back to loving my mother like I used to.  But the moment passed and I
walked outside alone to the parking lot.

“How was it?” Posie asked when I
got in her car.

“Okay.”  I fixed my eyes out the
window and let regret sweep over me.  My mother was trying, she certainly was,
and I wasn’t giving her anything for it.

If my father were perfect, I
thought, I’d have no reason to love my mother ever again.  But I was running
out of parents.  If I didn’t change my heart soon, I’d be more alone than I
could stand.

[2]

Is it wrong to lie?  Someone
immature in her faith would say yes.  But the Bible celebrates a good lie for
the right cause.  Think of Jael tricking Sisera into falling asleep in her tent
so she can peg him to the floor.  Or Rahab the prostitute lying to save the Israelite
spies.  A couple of times people lie and say our heroes went that-a-way, then
when the coast is clear they lower the good guys by a basket through the window
so they can make their escape.  Sometimes we all need that basket.

I didn’t know what to expect when I
met my mother the following night.  She had called me at Posie’s that morning
before school and said, “Lizzie, I need to talk to you.”

“Okay.”  I waited.

“In person.  Can you come to my
apartment?”

My apartment.
  It sounded so
permanent.

“Okay.”  

“Tonight?  For dinner?”

“Will Mikey be there?”

“Yes.  He’s staying with me for a
while.”

Finally, some good news.

“I’ll have Posie drop me off,” and
that’s where things stood at five o’clock when my mother answered her door and
called over her shoulder, “We’ll be back in a while,” and told me to follow her
to her car.

“I thought we were eating,” I said.

“I want to talk to you first.  Away
from your brother.”

We walked in silence out to the
parking lot.  She unlocked her car and we slid into the seats.

“Tell me the truth,” she said.

“About what?”  I wasn’t in the mood
for an inquisition.  The day had already been long.

My mother covered her mouth and
shook her head.  I couldn’t tell if she was trying to cry or trying not to.

“What?”  I was irritated now.  I
wasn’t in the mood for theatrics.

“Has he touched you?”

“What?”

“Your father.  Has he touched you?”

It was the last thing I expected to
hear.  I wasn’t prepared, and so answered truthfully.  “Yeah.”

“Oh, my God!  Dear God.”

Somehow I didn’t feel it was as
serious as she made it.  “Mom, it’s okay.”

“It’s not okay!  Your father has
been molesting you and—”

“It’s not really molesting—”

“Your brother told me everything!”

That jolted me.  “He did?”

“He said your father goes into your
room every night and you scream for him to stop and—”  My mother paused to soak
up the horror of it.  She dropped her voice to a whisper.  “Is he sleeping with
you, Lizzie?”

My mind reeled.

First, my mother was asking me a
direct question and my true and only impulse was to say no, of course not.

Second, I had to process what she
had just said:  that it was Mikey who made up this lie.

What did that mean?  Why did he do
it?  If my mother had let me into her apartment instead of dragging me out to
her car right away, Mikey might have warned me.  I mean, it’s true that my
father had attacked me that one time, but every night?  I don’t think so. 
Mikey had taken the story and run with it.

I had to think fast, or it might
all fall apart, this delicate deception my brother had created and which might
be his only hope for salvation.

I lowered my head as if I could
hardly bear to answer.  “Yes,” I whispered,  “it’s true.”

And in my little brother’s most
extravagant dreams, he couldn’t have wished for what happened next.

Things Done While in the Flesh

[1]

I read a piece in the paper not
long ago about a little boy with autism who died when his church tried to cure
him.  While his mother and aunt held down his arms and legs, the church pastor
sat on the boy’s chest for hours at a time.  This went on for several nights,
until one night the boy’s chest couldn’t bear the weight any longer and he died
of suffocation.  What strikes me is the bewilderment of the pastor.

“We were so close,” he told
police.  “We just needed one more night—we almost got that spirit chased out of
the boy.”

The church can be a wonderful,
dangerous thing.  It protects and it saves and destroys.

“They told me not to tell,” my
mother began.  “I swore to them I never would.  They said it was a mistake—just
a lab mix-up.  I was so young I didn’t know any better.”

“What are you talking about?” I
demanded.  The inside of the car was too stuffy.  The windows were fogging up. 
“I need air.”  My mother turned the key and lowered the windows a crack.

She looked around as if she were
afraid someone would overhear.  “Do you remember your operation?  When you were
five?”

“Yeah.  On my bladder.”

“That’s right.  You kept having
terrible bladder infections, and finally the doctor thought it would be best to
open up your urethra more so it could flush through better.”

“Okay, whatever.”

My mother’s voice quieted to a
whisper.  “We had to have some tests done—you wouldn’t remember that, but
before we decided on surgery they did some tests.  And they found . . . semen. 
Inside you.”

The world closed around me and I
heard her voice echoing down to me from somewhere up above ground.

Semen inside you.  See men . . .
inside you.

I don’t think I breathed for at
least half a minute.

“What?”  I finally managed to force
out.

“I know,” my mother said.  “It’s
terrible.  I didn’t think I should ever tell you because I didn’t think it was
true.  I didn’t want to believe it.”

“They found semen in me?  What do
you mean?”

“They ran the test twice to make
sure, and it showed up both times.”

I felt sick.  I felt—I don’t really
know what I felt—I felt like I was being filmed.  The conversation was so
unreal and so unlike my natural life, it had to be happening to a character I
was playing on TV.

My mother wouldn’t stop.  “I told
your father about it immediately, and he brushed it off.  He said the lab must
have made a mistake.  He laughed it off and tried to make me feel silly for
believing it.

“But I did believe it, at least a
little,” she said.  “I started thinking about the boys in the neighborhood—the
older boys, the ones who could make semen.  There was the brother of one of
your babysitters, some kids at the end of the block—I thought about everyone.

“I kept asking your father to do
something.  I thought he should question them or do something.  He acted like
it was a joke at first, then he started to get angry with me the more I pressed
it.

“You had the surgery—you remember
that.”

My mouth was dry as dirt.  “Yes.” 
I remember how much the shot in my arm hurt, the one they gave me to make me
sleepy before they wheeled me into the operating room.  I remember seeing the
surgeon and the nurses.  One of the nurses held my hand while the
anesthesiologist strapped a green plastic mask over my face and told me to
start counting backward from 100.  I drifted off at 96 and woke with pain in my
crotch where they had poked holes.  When I woke up my parents were there, and
my father gave me a stuffed dog—a black Scottish terrier with a red plaid scarf
around its neck—and that night the nurse brought me ice cream for dinner.  That’s
what I remember.

“You were so sweet and little,” my
mother said.  “I was so worried about the surgery, but you came through fine.

“You spent the night in the
hospital, and when your father and I got home I tried to talk to him about it
one more time.  I had asked the doctor privately how long semen could stay in
your vagina, and he told me about seventy-two hours.  You had been sick a few
days before we took you in for those tests—a cold, I think—and the only person
around you besides me was your father.  I knew that for a fact.  You hadn’t
left the house, and no one else had been over.

“So I told your father all that,
and he was furious with me.  He shouted, ‘What are you accusing me of?  You
want me to swear on the Bible?’  And he ran and got the Bible and he held his
hand on top of it and swore he had never, ever touched you.

“Well what could I do?  He was a
good Christian—there was no reason to suspect him—”

“Other than everything you just
told me,” I pointed out in disgust.

“Lizzie, listen.  I even talked to
our pastor about it.  Pastor Bingham—you never knew him, but I always trusted
him.  I was afraid to tell him about it, but I really needed advice, you know? 
So I went to him in secret and told him what I was afraid of, and he said I
should never mention it again—not to you, not to your father, not to my friends
or anyone else.  He said it would ruin a fine Christian man, and we would be
ostracized for the rest of our lives—no one would ever trust their children
with us again.”

“Maybe they shouldn’t have.”

“I don’t know,” my mother said.  “The
point is, I was young, and I didn’t know what people know these days.  I just
wanted to have my family, you understand?  I wanted us to have peace.  Anyone
who looked at your father would know he loved his kids.  I never wanted to
believe he did it, but it was always in the back of my mind.  I didn’t ever
want to leave you alone with him—”

“But you did,” I reminded her.  “You
left both of us.  Mikey and me.”

“I know!” my mother wailed.  “And I’m
sorry!  I should have known what could happen.  Oh, Lizzie, I’m so sorry—you
don’t know how much this breaks my heart.”

I was into my part now, and I admit
I relished her anguish.  She was sorry for the wrong reason, but finally—finally—at
least she was sorry.

“You left me alone with him knowing
what he was.”

“I didn’t know!” my mother cried.  “Not
for sure.  I thought—all that time had gone by and nothing happened.”

“Once a child molester always a
child molester.”

My mother steeped in her pain.  She
was past excuses.  She knew she had screwed up, and now here was the worst
possible consequence.

“I’m taking you out of there,” my
mother said.  “I’m filing for divorce and getting custody of you kids.”

“You haven’t even filed for divorce
yet?”

“No, I wasn’t . . . I wasn’t sure I
was ready.  But now I am.  I can’t let you kids stay there another minute.”

Satisfaction crept into my organs
and settled there in my heart and lungs.  I breathed deeply, even though I knew
I needed to act more distressed.  I couldn’t help it.  Mikey’s plan had
worked.  My shy little brother was a master of strategy.  It must have been all
the video games.

I waited for my mother to calm
herself, then I said quietly, “It’s all right.  I’m glad you know.  Now we can
do something about it.”

“We will.  I promise.”

“Don’t tell Dad.  I can’t face him.”

“But I might have to, to get
custody.  He’s already said he won’t let me have you—either of you.”  She
grimaced.  “He said no judge will take them from a good Christian father and
give them to a whore.”

[2]

After the flush of victory had
passed, and I had eaten my mother’s stuffed cabbage rolls with brown sugar and
ketchup baked into the top, and Mikey and I had exchanged knowing smiles, I
returned to Posie’s house and the poison of my mother’s words began to seep
into my veins.

Semen inside you.

I sifted those words around in my
head.  I tested them.  I poked around my heart to see how I felt.  Was it
true?  It didn’t feel true, but then what did I know?  I tried to remember
everything about that time, the surgery, the little stuffed dog, how I felt
about my father—nothing tangible came to me.  No images of him coming into my
room, lifting my nightgown—none of that.  It would have hurt terribly, wouldn’t
it?  Unless he somehow shot outside my vagina and the semen seeped in on its
own.  But that didn’t sound right either.  Maybe it was a lab mistake.  Or
maybe my brain had its own reasons not to remember.

I told Posie, because there was no
point in keeping any of it secret any more.

“Oh, my God.”  She gaped at me, so
sympathetic, a dull anger filtering through her eyes.  “I can’t believe she
told you that.”

“Do you think it’s true?” I asked.

“Of course.”

“Can you believe it?  Mikey thought
he was making it up.”

“Yeah, what about that?” Posie
asked.  “Why did he say that—what’s he up to?”

“I think he wants my mother to take
both of us out of the house, but he doesn’t want to say what’s really going on.”

“That was risky.  He didn’t know
what you’d say—you might have denied it.”

“He knows I know what my father is
doing.  Mikey knows I’ll protect him.”

We pondered this in our respective
silences for a while, until I broke the tension with a sigh.  “That sick
bastard.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know what to think about
my mom.”

“Sounds like she didn’t believe it
at the time.”

“I’m not so sure,” I countered.  “I
think maybe she knew it was him, but she was afraid to mess things up by
pushing it.”

“Do you think he ever molested you
again?”

I had thought of that.  “I don’t
know.  I guess once you get away with it once—”

“But you would have remembered,
wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t remember the time she told
me about.”

“You were only five,” Posie pointed
out.  “If it was still going on when you were older, I’m sure you’d remember.”

It sounded reasonable.  What I didn’t
want to tell Posie, or admit to myself at that moment, was that the times I did
remember with my father from that long ago were actually very pleasant.

When I was little—maybe five or
six, I guess—he used to call me up for dates.

“Brrring, brrring,” he’d say into
his imaginary phone.  I’d be sitting right there, and I’d pick up my own
invisible phone—it was pink fur in my imagination—and say, “Hello?”

“Hi, may I please speak to Miss
Elizabeth Aimes?”

“This is she.”  I had learned the
proper way to speak on the phone early, partially, I think, from these
exchanges.

“Hello, this is Richard Aimes.  I
would like to ask you out on a date this afternoon.”

I was usually giggling by this
point.  It was Saturday morning, and he had already made plans for us.  I think
that was the most flattering part, that he had thought ahead about what we
could do together—he had thought of me, specifically, only me, and we were
going to do something just the two of us.

Then I’d get dressed up, just like
it was a real date, and we’d go to the movies or out for ice cream or once even
to the petting zoo.

I adored this private time, being
the center of attention.

Once Mikey came along the dates
stopped, and that made me sad for a while until I realized how much fun it was
to have a baby around.  But my father had already secured a place in my heart
by playing make believe like that:  the pretend phone call, the formality of
asking me out.  How do you shake a good feeling like that?  When did I lose it?

“You have to tell Angela,” Posie
said.  “Right away.”

“We’re seeing her tomorrow.”

That probably wasn’t soon enough
for Posie, but she accepted it.

When I entered Angela Peligro’s
smoky chamber once more, I felt I had a better story to tell.

“It’s me,” I said straight off.  “We’re
going to sue for me.  He molested me when I was little—my mother told me last
night.  I want to sue him for as much as we can.  Let’s get it over with.”

[3]

And still it hadn’t sunk in.

Maybe this seems strange, but it
wasn’t until days later when I really started to feel the evil of what my
mother had told me.

Was it on those dates?  Did I only
remember the good parts—my fancy dresses, the ice cream, how flattered I felt—when
there was something much more sinister behind them?  Did he take me somewhere
and have sex with me?  I didn’t want to think about it, but I did without
ceasing.  I thought about every minute that would have led up to it—what did he
say to me, how did he get my clothes off, how did he work his way inside?  Did
he have to use petroleum jelly or some other lubricant?  Did I cry?  Did I
scream?

I spent eight or nine or fifteen
hours thinking only the most wicked, depraved thoughts, and then when I knew
they would turn me inside out and spill my guts on the floor, I knew I had to
stop.  Completely.  Never to be thought of again.  La dee da, life is so good,
father, what father?  I can do that better than you might imagine.  I can take
a thought and carve it out and hide it away someplace and even forget where I’ve
left it.

The key is it doesn’t touch you
inside.  It’s always outside, in that pocket where you’ve stuck it, and though
it might try to creep into the center of you—into your pure core—you notice
that, and you strike immediately and mercilessly, and you send it back out
where you’re not thinking of it ever again until next time.

That’s why when I got his letter I
could read it sort of coldly, like it was a new script I was helping Posie
learn for Drama.  It was all soliloquy, there was no part for me, so I read it
with a detachment I truly admired about myself.

Dear Lizzie:

This is the hardest letter I
have ever had to write.

Last night your mother called to
tell me she was keeping Mikey because I am “dangerous.”  She told me a story
that I have absolutely no recollection about, but she says you do.  I was so
sick after that phone call I ended up in the emergency room for 7 hours.  It is
such a repulsive story to me, but I cannot ignore it.