The Forgotten Hours

by Katrin Schumann

  “I think I should be here,” John says, his voice lacking conviction. And he is too fidgety, strangely subservient.

  “Where’s Mum?” Katie asks. She feels like a little girl again in the presence of these two awkward men. “Can Mum be here too?”

  Her father and Herb exchange quick glances. John says, “You two have a little chat on your own. I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.”

  In the study that day, Herb explains what is happening: During health class five months earlier, in December of the previous year, Lulu Henderson and a group of students were talking about date rape in college after her teacher initiated a conversation about the meaning of consent. Lulu said, casually, that she’d had sex with her friend’s father, “And I’m not even in college yet.”

  Herb’s fingers make air quotes.

  “Is she all right?” Katie blurts, horrified, imagining her friend bleeding in some alleyway, crying. Just like that her heart is stripped bare.

  “All right . . . ?” Herb asks, his hands hovering in midair, before recognizing the misunderstanding and pointing to her. “Katherine—your father, it is your father she’s talking about.”

  And with those words, with that awkward gesture, Katie’s life changes irrevocably.

  Herb’s hands are pudgy, the skin like suede, and he uses them often as he speaks, circling through the air, touching his chest to show his sincerity. What Lulu is accusing Katie’s father of amounts to a felony indictment. Herb looks at Katie over the top of his glasses. It is considered statutory rape, he clarifies, his face freezing briefly, as though it takes great effort to say these words aloud. It is then that Katie really begins to comprehend: Here is a grown man who can barely bring himself to say the word rape in front of her. This is serious.

  “That’s not possible,” she says, straightening up in the chair. She tries to think back to when she and Lulu last spoke on the phone, maybe after Christmas? Or was it Valentine’s Day? She can’t recall anything specific they talked about. Yes, now, now she remembers. It was short. Awkward. They spoke over one another.

  Nothing makes sense.

  “What’s not possible?” the lawyer asks. “That your friend is accusing your father or that this alleged crime took place?”

  “You mean, when the police came,” Katie says, feeling as dumb as a cow, “they were arresting Dad?”

  “That’s the procedure. He’s been out on bail, and we think there’s going to be a trial. Probably not for a while if we can help it,” Herb said. “Listen to me—this girl, she’s saying this incident happened while you were present. She claims the three of you were watching television at the cabin, on the last night of summer. She said there was a storm and you were all together, very early in the morning. Do you remember that?”

  “She says it happened in the den—the . . . whatever? Something between her and Dad?”

  “Yes. Do you remember that night?”

  Katie nods, slowly. A piercing anger makes her ears ring. I am so fucking dumb, she thinks. How can Lulu be so cruel, so selfish? Why would she say something so incredibly, unbelievably stupid?

  Because it’s obvious: no one with half a brain is ever going to believe that Katie’s father would have sex with a girl, let alone while his daughter was in the same room. People will laugh at Lulu. Everyone is going to think she is a batshit-crazy liar.

  As Herb Schwartz talks, a constant thought runs through her brain, like a frigid undercurrent: All along there is the fact that Katie disappeared with Jack that night. That she had chosen him over Lulu. That Lulu knew it.

  She must really hate my guts, Katie thinks.

  But there is not much time for reaction; Herb is in action mode. He wants answers. He’s looking to lay out the facts for her. Katie remembers little of what he tells her, other than the basics. There was a counselor who took Lulu to be examined by a doctor and to give a statement to the New York Child Protective Services Abuse Investigation team. There was, of course, no evidence of abuse, and it is clear to everyone involved that the story is full of holes, Herb says.

  “So, Katie. Here’s the problem.” Herb knits his thick brows together. This part she will remember clearly. “Once Protective Services becomes involved and a claim is filed, it sets in motion a chain of events that can’t be stopped, not even by a full retraction of the accusation. Your friend was a minor, and she stated that an adult molested her. She said, in fact—just to be precise,” he continues, “that she had been, uh, penetrated.”

  “What, I mean, how do you mean? At knifepoint? And I slept through it all—seriously?” Katie lets out a snort. “Rape?”

  “To be clear she did not, at least not originally, use that word. Rape. And no, there was no violence involved.”

  “I don’t get it.” Katie is stunned. It’s as though the world is spinning in the wrong direction. “What exactly is she saying?”

  “In New York State, a girl under the age of seventeen is considered incapable of giving consent. The Deloitte County prosecutor has decided to press charges, and there’s going to be a trial. Eventually. It will be held in Blackbrooke, where the alleged incident took place.”

  Herb stands with the fingers of one hand resting on the edge of the desk. “And because you were in the room when she says the offense took place, you are going to have to take the stand in your father’s defense. Do you understand what I’m telling you, Katie?”

  She nods again, biting her lip. This can’t be for real. “I think so.”

  Now he smiles. “And that’s good, very good for us, actually. About you being in the room. We’re very lucky she admitted it. We’ve basically got this thing tied up. Now, why don’t you tell me what you remember? Try to be as exact as possible.”

  And that is when the idea is born. That she has some control. That she can think back, play the night over and over again, piece together the details and make sense of this. The movie, the storm, the sleepy end-of-night warmth in the den, while outside—

  “You watched the entire film with the two of them?” Herb says. “From beginning to end? And then you went upstairs to bed, with Lulu? You were awake?”

  “Of course I was.” She tries to remember the end of the movie, what happened. A pinkening sky, a face in the window? An itchy blanket. Her mother looking for David. What had William Hurt’s fate been? She vaguely remembers being embarrassed by the story; it was kind of cheesy. Did Lulu like it—hadn’t she said it was one of her mother’s favorites? Katie had been sleepy, yes, but she probably hadn’t totally fallen asleep. She would have definitely known if something weird had happened between Lulu and her father.

  “I was awake the whole time, and nothing happened,” she says quietly. “Nothing.”

  Would I have known? The question sits like fragile china way up at the very back of a shelf in a corner of her brain; Katie looks it over, examines it, and then puts it carefully and completely out of sight. It is not possible. It is absolutely not possible that she would not have known.

  Herb tells her that she may never contact Lulu again, under any circumstances.

  “But what about . . .” She is thinking of the summer. It’s as though her mind hasn’t quite caught up with reality. What will happen now?

  “If you contact her, it’ll be disastrous, Katie—and your father will not be able to recover from it. Am I being clear? There can be no calling, no emails, or anything whatsoever. You will do the case irrevocable harm.”

  So—there will be no more Eagle Lake, at least not with Lulu. It’s over. She feels the backup of salty tears in her throat, finally seeing the divide between before and after. Until then, she has never thought of the future in that way. She and Lulu had such ordinary dreams, as girls do. They assumed that one day they would live together, get an apartment—maybe somewhere far away like California or Texas. They could go anywhere. They’d share clothes and give each other makeup and boyfriend advice, spend weekends drinking with impunity on some rooftop deck overlooking the city lights. They’
d argue about paying for utilities and buy each other gifts when they were feeling down. She thought the future was something that unspooled like a ball of yarn in front of you, bouncing along, unimpeded.

  Now she glimpses the path ahead of her and understands that whatever happens, her future is going to be one that does not contain Lulu. It hardly seems possible: she will never see her or talk to her again. Katie blinks rapidly, eyes stinging, as though she is drowning.

  22

  Whenever the phone rings, Katie jumps. It is never, ever for her. Her father hangs on it like a teenager, pacing, skin coated with sweat, snapping the cord impatiently. Her parents live on the phone. They talk and talk and talk, and Katie shuts it all out. Once, when they are both out of the house, Katie dials Lulu’s phone number.

  The phone trills in the distance until Katie remembers about caller ID and slams the handset back on the cradle. She knows she’s not supposed to contact her, but she also knows that no one understands what’s happening to her: she hates Lulu, but she also doesn’t. It’s impossible to just switch feelings off. She wants desperately to know what Lulu is thinking, to understand her, but what Katie wants doesn’t matter.

  School happens around her and to her—SATs, college applications. In many ways, from the outside everything is almost exactly as it was before. Except for the once languid, childish months at the lake during summertime; those are over. For the first time in Katie’s living memory, the Gregorys spend the summer in West Mills. Only once do they fight about this.

  “Why?” Katie yells at her parents as the two of them sit eating a cobbled-together dinner at the kitchen counter. “Why can’t we go back? I don’t understand!”

  There are fumbled explanations; her mother flushes, her green eyes cloudy. But there is no real answer, other than the answer they all know deep down inside but cannot bring themselves to say. Eagle Lake is Chernobyl; it is fear and confusion and poison. It is Lulu and her fucked-up family and her lies.

  Life cants at a strange angle but still moves forward. Nothing will stop time but death, and even then that’s not certain. The West Mills house goes on the market, but it doesn’t sell. Grumpy delays a planned move back to London. Sometimes he and Katie drive into the city to catch a show or to stop at the cliffside picnic spots on the Palisades Parkway to kill time (he does not come for dinner to the house anymore). They eat cheese-and-pickle sandwiches on Wonder Bread folded into wax paper that he grabs from her and crunches in his enormous fist until it shrinks into a damp ball. He tells her about England when he was a little boy. They find safe topics. She tries to dwell on happy, ordinary memories like these rather than wonder why Grumpy wants to leave them to return to England. This leaving, running away, seems like an act of cowardice to her. Gram died years ago; why does Grumpy want to leave now, when their world is imploding? Does he even know what’s going on? He is so stoic, his back so straight inside his corduroy blazer, his neck crisscrossed with wrinkles. But they can’t talk about what’s happening.

  Her mother takes a job at a local flower shop and is no longer at home when the kids come back from school. She works weekends, special occasions. One morning Katie comes downstairs for breakfast to find her asleep, curled up on the armchair in the living room like a little girl, a book splayed on her lap, feet in thick socks. Her mouth hangs open and her face is relaxed. She’s been there all night. Katie gently touches her shoulder. “Mum,” she whispers, afraid to wake her but also needing to understand what’s happening.

  Charlie startles. Under her eyes are thick smudges of mascara. She runs a hand over her hair, totally disoriented.

  “It’s time for breakfast,” Katie says. “David’s not up yet.”

  “Sorry, I . . . I fell asleep,” Charlie says, rising. Her book falls to the floor.

  “Mummy, are you all right? What’s going to happen to Dad? Are we in trouble?”

  A hundred thoughts appear to flit across her mother’s face, yet Katie can’t read any of them. She’s tried to ask before, and all she gets is a panicky glance that quickly turns distant, blocking her. Now her mother seems to be wrestling with making up her mind about what to say.

  Anger rises inside Katie. “Dad won’t talk—he’s all, ‘Everything’s fine and dandy.’ And you, you’re . . .”

  “I’m fine, darling. We’ll all be just fine, I promise.” She lays a chilly hand on Katie’s forearm. “We’re all doing the best we can. I think it’s wise to concentrate on your schoolwork and think about your own future, and Daddy and I will sort everything out in good time.”

  “How am I supposed to do that? How should—”

  “Listen,” her mother snaps. “You’re not helping matters. Just get on with things, all right? Think about the things you can control. Focus on that. Now I have to go get David up, or everyone’s going to be late.”

  Katie wants to bark something at her in response, but she notices that her mother’s eyes have filled with tears, and she can’t bring herself to make things worse.

  Two years pass after “that summer”—the axis upon which Katie’s world has been turning, the invisible yet foundational structure for all that is to come in her life. She sets the alarm for five fifteen every morning and runs through West Mills before the sun comes up. Here and there, lights flash on, and she spots a bathrobed mom at a sink, the kitchen window aflame in the steely morning, or a man bent toward a bathroom mirror, shaving. Children sleep as parents rouse themselves to face the world, and Katie runs and runs. At home and school she is lethargic, always yawning, but on her runs she is tireless, pneumatic. She gets leaner, faster. Her fear fuels her—and as time counts down (finally, finally) to the day when she will testify, she is furious at everyone. At David, now a teenager, for his red-rimmed eyes and shredded lips. At Charlie for her fortressed silence. At her father for suffering in a way she can’t do anything about and for expecting too much from them all. She often dreams of her friend, of screaming at her until the veins in her neck burst, and she wakes up even angrier. Her anger lurks, voracious and annihilating, behind the door she has slammed shut, and she cannot risk letting it out.

  But she needs someone. Someone who will understand; she knows she needs this, or she might go mad. Yet there is no one.

  Once the trial starts, her parents drive the one and a half hours back and forth from West Mills to Blackbrooke each day, leaving the house early in the morning and returning late, eyes crazed with red tracks, blank expressions denying trouble. John tells bad jokes as Charlie lays the table and serves up lasagna or her disgusting spinach pie. His good cheer is pervasive, the exhaustion so subtle that it’s not that hard to be lulled into a sense of security.

  But that changes when Katie takes the stand.

  In the front row, Grumpy sits, stooped, and seeing him like that makes her falter. He looks so old, his back weighed down by whatever it is he’s thinking. The judge sits on a raised mahogany throne, or so it seems, surrounded by intricate woodwork scrolls and stacks of leather-bound books, wearing an impressive black robe. Judge Sonnenheim’s narrow, lined face is impassive, but her eyes are kind as they track Katie’s movement toward the witness stand.

  At a table next to Herb and her father, facing the judge, sits a youngish woman in a pale-gray suit with severe blonde hair tied back in a ponytail: the district attorney. A man with a swarthy complexion and ludicrously thick eyelashes sits next to her, taking endless notes.

  “Come on up here,” the judge says to Katie, gesturing with a sweep of her bat-winged arm toward the podium. “Right here. That’s it.”

  As Katie takes the oath, Herbert Schwartz chews his lip. She promises to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth while Herb works on his bottom lip as though he hasn’t eaten in days.

  “Who are you going to look at?” Herb asks her over and over again during their practice sessions in her father’s study.

  “Only at you,” she answers. “No one else.”

  “Or you can look at the DA. You can look at either of
us, all right? Only at the people who are addressing you directly.” While he does not raise his voice, he enunciates each word as though he is talking in caps. “Do not look at the jury.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not saying they’re not on your side. You just don’t want to confuse matters. So it’s better just to focus on whoever is talking to you.”

  “Okay,” she says.

  “Who else are you not going to look at?”

  “I won’t look at my father.”

  “Do not look at your father. Right. Who else? The plaintiff. You’re not going to look at the plaintiff . . . or at her table or at anyone sitting next to her. Don’t even take a glance.”

  “It’s stupid to call her the plaintiff,” Katie says.

  In the courtroom, the windowpanes create a latticework of shadows that ripple along the wooden benches in a kind of underwater dance. Katie only moves her eyes fractionally to the left, and there she is, Lulu. It can’t be more than a few seconds that she allows her eyes to rest on her, but it seems to last forever. No detail escapes her. Lulu looks radically different than she looked when they said goodbye on the pavement outside her apartment building years earlier. The wild, curly hair is shorn off and appears to be wet. Her face is round and naked, her complexion surprisingly sallow. She wears a blue shirtdress made with thick, shiny material. The rounded Peter Pan collar is laughably juvenile.

  Her gaze is unwavering and flat. Here, in real life, she is not telegraphing Katie that she misses her, that she wishes they had a chance to talk, or that she is sorry and has made a terrible mistake. She is not asking for Katie’s forgiveness, laughing about what a silly misunderstanding all this is, or blaming herself for being a drama queen.

  What does it mean, that bare, untextured look? It’s unbearable. Katie’s heart is trapped in her mouth like a thumping animal.

  Both Herb and the DA ask Katie almost identical questions. They show her picture upon picture, trying to untie the critical knot in the story: how this alleged violation could have happened with the defendant’s daughter in the same room. They show her a map of the cabin’s footprint. A sketch of where the den was in relation to the kitchen, the main entrance, the stairwell. Questions about the door, whether it was obscured in any way, if she remembers anyone peering into the den. There are disquisitions on the couches and how they were positioned, where she was lying, and whether she ever once turned around and looked behind her.