The Forgotten Hours

by Katrin Schumann

  “Ugh,” Katie said. “Sounds bad.”

  “What about you, after the conviction?” he asked. “Didn’t you freak? How does someone even deal with that?”

  Briefly, she thought about Zev and how she dealt with the whole thing by never talking about it, but then she tucked that thought away. After draining her wine, she held it up, the pinkish stain on the glass viscous in the dying light from the window. “This stuff helped, though it was mostly tequila back then,” she said, choosing to wrap it all up in a neat package, when it had been anything but neat. She had logged so many miles, sometimes in the middle of the night, running and running. Yes, there had been booze and boys—pitiful, fumbling attempts at intimacy and rage-filled, drunken fucks that had left her reeling. But there had been so much else: time within herself, unpredictable, dissipating and then clumping like chalk in water. “Forgotten years,” she said. “Yeah. I know what you mean.”

  “To think of how much time I wasted.” Jack pulled his mouth into an exaggerated frown. “And you never get any of it back.”

  She was disappointed with herself for not being able to open up, as she knew she should, but she felt so weary. “Hey, can you help me for a second?” she asked him, standing, stretching, her thigh muscles igniting with fatigue. “Set up this thing upstairs?”

  The narrow staircase to the second floor was awash in cooling shadows that swallowed her as she ascended. Jack almost bumped into her at the top of the stairs, and she jumped, as skittish as a deer. She remembered the Dolans’ house, the absence of moonlight on the woods.

  “In here,” she said, going into the master bedroom, the only room left that she hadn’t yet finished. “No one’s been here in a long-ass time. What a sorry, sad little place. But not when I’m done with it,” she said, pushing her sleeves up to her elbows.

  “What’s that?” he asked, pointing to her arm. “Noticed it earlier, at the lake.”

  A few inches above her a wrist, a tattoo of a sprig of blueberries surrounded by leaves circled her forearm. The blueberries were larger than life, saturated in light and shade, dark powder blue, ciel and Egyptian blue, the leaves a bright pop of green.

  “We used to go blueberry picking together,” she said, “me and my dad.” Under the intensity of his gaze, Katie began to falter. She discovered that she couldn’t tell the story, so she didn’t.

  Jack folded his body into three long sections, bending at the waist and knees. They knelt to dismantle and then reassemble the pieces of the bed frame one by one. They danced around each other, careful not to touch, his smell—Old Spice, soap?—filling the air. Lying on his back, he inched his head under the rails and tightened the metal screws laboriously, his legs thrust out, endless dark-blue jeans. They slowly resumed their conversation, small talk about work, and Katie ribbed him about being a Realtor.

  He would have none of it. “Pays the bills,” he said, “and I have a decent apartment on the East Side.” She felt a kind of guilty pleasure staring at him, watching his eyes light up and become subdued, noticing the creases by his eyebrows, the shadow under his cheekbones, the shift of muscle over bone. His boyishness, a reminder of how things were, moved her.

  “So, um, Jack,” she said as they sat, finally, on the floor on either side of the enormous frame. Over the last hour she’d managed to relax a bit, but now that she had stopped moving, she felt jumpy and uncomfortable again. She had to ask—she had to finally hear him say, in his own words, what he’d glimpsed through the window. Had he been telling the truth when he’d claimed he didn’t really know what he’d seen? Was he protecting her? “I didn’t know you came back to the cabin that night. After the storm.”

  “The lawyers, those guys scared the living daylights out of me,” he said, his eyes with their strange ring of darkness considering her carefully. “I was so immature—people thought because I was tall, I was, like, a man already. But I was just a kid. They said, you know, I wasn’t supposed to tell you anything. Call or write or anything.”

  “They told me the exact same thing,” she said. “But I, uh. I really need to know what you think you saw.”

  “I told them everything I saw, on the stand. I wasn’t holding anything back.”

  “So you still don’t know if you saw . . . if they were . . . ?” Her breath caught in her throat. It seemed that so much was riding on this moment, on his answer. She so badly wanted him to have seen nothing.

  He shook his head. “Sorry. I wanted to be the one who could fix everything, make it all go away. But I couldn’t.”

  “I tried that too.” For a long moment, they looked at each other, unblinking. “Told them I’d been awake all night long, that I hadn’t slept a wink,” she admitted. “And the thing is, it wasn’t really true. I don’t think so at least.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. I know.” She had to move. She jumped up and leaned over, and together they hauled the mattress onto the frame and pushed the whole contraption back against the wall. “I’ll get the bedding,” she said.

  As they stretched the cotton sheets onto the bed, neatly tucking in the corners, he kept talking. He told her he’d wanted to say goodbye again, that he’d freaked out after she left the clubhouse, thinking he’d miss seeing her the next morning for sure. Once the top sheet was smoothed down, she dragged the comforter over, and they spread it out, neatly folding the top down to reveal the two plumped pillows.

  “Okay,” she said. “Done. Thanks.”

  They each drank two enormous glasses of water in the kitchen, their gulps loud and vulnerable against the steady whir of the electric clock on the wall. All this time, and that clock had never stopped running. It marked the passage of every second, every minute. It was past six o’clock, when she usually spoke with her father, but they’d agreed not to talk tonight. It hardly seemed possible he’d be getting out next week. There was so much more she wanted to know, but she could sense that Jack was pulling away, that he would tell her in a minute that he had to get back to the city, that he had a dinner or some kind of appointment, an engagement he couldn’t break. And she was tired to the bone, reeling from the day.

  She put her glass in the sink. There was one more question she wanted to ask, but her hand was shaking. “Do you think she was lying, Jack? You think Lulu actually made the whole thing up?”

  When he didn’t answer right away, she turned to look at him and was surprised to see his face suspended in a kind of painful hesitation. His expression was open, as though he was about to say something. There was an entire story playing out behind his eyes, those intelligent, soft eyes; he was always waiting to see other people’s reactions, gauging his impact and adjusting himself accordingly, like a chameleon. “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I really don’t know what I think.”

  That wasn’t the answer she’d been hoping for. As they said goodbye, promising to meet up again in the city, he tried to hug her, but she was stiff and unyielding. When he turned around on the front stoop one last time, his eyes did not stop communicating with her, even though something was holding him back and he was not speaking his mind.

  25

  John Gregory is stoic, the faint smile on his face like a placeholder for better things to come. He sits at his lawyer’s table in the Deloitte County courtroom, the top of his head glistening under the harsh overheads. Local TV news cameras aim at him, perched on tripods. The cameramen swivel on their hips, bored. Their eyes land on the Gregory family as it enters, calculating which shots are worth getting. The air in the courtroom is stale, the hum of air-conditioning resoundingly absent. Katie has dressed so carefully, praying that it will make some kind of difference: if the judge remembers how nice they all are—this man’s family that loves him, stands by him—maybe she’ll give him a light sentence, let him stay at home while awaiting his appeal. In the oppressive heat, her mother’s borrowed silk shirt clings like a damp spider’s web to the rise of Katie’s breasts; she plucks at the material with thumb and forefinger and surveys the courtroom.r />
  Amid the apple faces, shiny and upturned, there are four or five seats across the room that remain conspicuously empty. As before, Herb has warned Katie not to look for Lulu, but as soon as she enters, she begins scanning the room for her. It isn’t a conscious decision; she just does it. Eyes strafing the rows, searching—she sees nothing but the emptiness of those seats. The vacuum caused by Lulu’s absence leaves Katie disoriented.

  It’s only now that she realizes that she thought there would be some kind of final reckoning between them. Last time they exchanged glances, it was Lulu who dominated, telegraphing her separateness. She seemed done, done with Katie, done with the Gregorys, whereas Katie had been expecting some brief connection, a thread that bound them. Now that she sees the empty chairs, she understands that there will be no reckoning. She will not have a chance to see Lulu, to convey with a glance and a squaring of the shoulders that she will not allow this to destroy her. That whatever Lulu has done and for whatever reason, Katie and her family will forge ahead.

  And yet Lulu is not here, and nothing passes between them.

  “Katie,” her mother says under her breath, spitting out the t. “Stop fidgeting, will you?”

  Charlie’s dress bunches up in folds around her narrow hips. Her body is small, thinner than ever before. She’s tied her brown hair back at the nape of her neck. Her skin is as pale as skim milk. Tortoiseshell reading glasses perch on her nose, which is strange because she usually never wears them in public and certainly not when she isn’t reading.

  Twice Grumpy has laid an enormous, wrinkled hand on Katie’s thigh in an attempt to still her quivering. It takes everything in her to resist pulling away from him, lifting that concrete hand off her leg. Her love for her grandfather is rooted in the idea of his invincibility, and seeing him cowed throws her.

  David sits on the bench swinging his feet above the scuffed wood floor. In his blue blazer and red tie, he could be attending a confirmation or a wedding. He is thirteen, his face an angry terrain of pimples. The tender flesh around his lips is brutally swollen and cracked. It shines with Vaseline.

  Judge Sonnenheim enters, and quiet falls over the room. She is far prettier than Katie remembers from when the trial ended a few weeks earlier. Her lips are brownish red, her hair soft and styled away from her face. Every eye in the room tracks her movement. She calls the room to order and begins talking. People are standing up and sitting down again. Her mouth with its painted lips opens and closes. Katie’s forehead is burning up. The sun on her back brands her through her shirt. Sweat gathers at her waistband, under her armpits.

  Herb has sent the judge dozens of letters from supporters. They tell of how John Gregory runs a Saturday chess club for public school kids. That his jokes turn run-of-the-mill backyard barbecues into parties. That he babysits for neighborhood children, cooks for his family, washes their laundry, teases his wife mercilessly because he adores her. All this is true; all this is her father.

  But as soon as the judge starts talking, Katie understands that none of this makes any difference at all. This judge doesn’t care about her family one bit. Not about her little brother or her, her mother or Grumpy—and least of all about her father. The reason the judge is wearing lipstick today is because of the television cameras. This is not about dinners and laundry; this is about making a statement.

  “I recognize that the defendant is considered an upstanding member of his community,” the judge is saying. “But one must consider the lasting damage he has done—the psychological trauma. I have a letter here, a statement from the victim . . .”

  This is really happening, and it is not going to go as her father or Herb promised.

  “. . . one must consider the age difference. The victim was only fourteen years old, three years younger than the age of consent in the state of New York. There is an age gap of over thirty years. The defendant groomed this child over a period of time, seducing her into . . .”

  But the words are not adding up. For one, Lulu wasn’t fourteen years old, was she? Katie tries to remember: her birthday is sometime in September. Is it possible—is it actually possible that all along Lulu let her believe they were the same age, when really she is a whole year younger? But this isn’t so surprising, really, considering how much Lulu talked and how little she ever really revealed.

  “. . . the request for a stay of the sentence, pending appeal, is denied. Given the severity of the crime, I sentence John G. Gregory to six years in state prison, with five years’ probation.”

  The DA, with her wrenched-back hair, jumps to her feet. Her eyes dance as people pat her on the back. Everyone at her table stands. Everyone everywhere stands. People are moving, talking, crying. Security guards in white shirts and black pants surround her father. Tears run down Grumpy’s cheeks. The crowd begins jostling around them. Charlie’s glasses slip down her nose, and she does not push them back up. She nudges forward through the crowd with one shoulder and heads over to her husband.

  Raising both her hands, she holds onto the sides of John’s face. They look at each other. They kiss on the lips. The red lights on the cameras pulse.

  Herb whispers into her father’s ear. John empties his pockets out, depositing his wallet and keys and some coins into his lawyer’s cupped hands. Through the murmurs, the breathing, the shuffling of heels on the floor comes the unambiguous, elemental thrum of the air conditioner finally turning on.

  Her father places his hands behind his back, and one of the guards reaches over and clicks a pair of handcuffs onto his wrists and leads him away.

  She will never again see him in the kitchen of their home, preparing breakfast. He will not lean over her for a quick peck on the cheek or smooth her ponytail with his fingers or tell her to put away her shoes. There will be no vacations together, no movie nights or family dinners, ever again. The future lies ahead of her, the years when she will become a woman, and this man will be absent from it all. The hole this will leave is as gigantic as a crater, the shocking emptiness of which rings in her ears as though she has been struck across the face.

  26

  The last days of high school. A cluster of parents lingering by the secretary’s office clamp their mouths shut—snap! snap! snap! snap!—as Katie walks through the front doors. She stares at them, daring them to say something, and they cast their eyes downward. Good! Fuck you too, she thinks. The boys just return her cold looks, and while a few snicker or make crude gestures, they aren’t as embarrassed by their contempt for her as the girls are.

  Girls avoid her, their eyes filled with pious false pity. She senses a curiosity so intense it borders on erotic. Their faces flush as they lean in toward each other at lunch, talking breathlessly. “Was she, like, pretty?” Katie can just imagine them asking. “Are her parents getting divorced?” “Do you guys think it ever happened before?” “Did she hear them doing it?” “Wonder if she’ll go to jail, to, like, you know—visit him?” They’ve read the articles, seen the local news. This is by far the most exciting thing that has ever happened to them.

  The family’s life is suddenly smaller, trapping them in a tightening mesh. There are all these new rules, this pretense they are supposed to keep up. The new certainty they live with is that they can’t count on anyone or anything except themselves. Katie’s father believes that together, they can be strong against the screwed-up world—but the truth is that they are all on their own, and it is lonely, like being the only human being left alive on a ravaged earth.

  She’s in a suspended state of being until the day she visits her father in prison, some weeks later. There are only a few other visitors. In the waiting room, the chairs are the same type of molded plastic used in school lunchrooms and are bolted to the floor. A thin girl sits hunched over, playing with the cuffs of her sweatshirt. At first glance she doesn’t seem much older than Katie, but there are streaks of gray in her dirty-blonde hair.

  Waiting to see her father is like taking a test for which Katie doesn’t know the rules. It is a m
edium security prison north of Blackbrooke, in Deloitte County. From the outside, the concrete building seems to go on forever, surrounded by barbed wire fences and spotlights as big as the ones used to light football stadiums. There is overcrowding, her mother explains, and that’s why Daddy is here; as soon as things are sorted out, he’ll be moved to a minimum security prison. But that will never happen.

  At home, Charlie is mostly expressionless and quiet, reading obsessively, but in the prison waiting room her skin assumes some color again, and her movements become brisk and efficient. She pushes ahead with a sense of purpose, whereas Katie feels more and more lethargic, incapable of agency. The lockers require tokens, which Charlie produces from the bottom of her handbag. She folds up her long cashmere sweater and places it in the locker and tells David and Katie to do the same with their jackets. David is operating at half speed, which Katie finds infuriating.

  At the yellowing pass-through window in the front of the room, Charlie gives her name and hands over her driver’s license to a female guard. Her mother’s face is gaunt, the freckles almost entirely gone. Sometimes, when David or Katie ask her something, she appears not to hear them at all. Maybe she is taking pills or is depressed. But in the middle of the night when Katie crawls into her bed, Charlie doesn’t kick her out. In her own bed, Katie feels as though darkness is pressing in on her like a thousand heavy palms, and when that happens, she can’t understand which way is up and which way is down. In her parents’ bed, her body is heavy against the sheets, weighed down and substantial again. In the mornings, when she opens her eyes, she buries her head in her dad’s pillow and breathes in his scent. In just a few weeks she’ll be in college—gone. She’s too old to be in her parents’ bed.

  The idea of leaving home is also the only thing that is keeping her from losing her mind. Over the summer, she changes her name on all her paperwork; she’s becoming someone new, someone with no history. As much as shucking off her father’s name gives her a hollowed-out feeling in her gut, she has to do it—if she can’t talk about these things at home, she certainly can’t talk about them anywhere else. And one day it will all be over, he will be free again, and they’ll be able to forget this ever happened. It’s just a matter of getting from here to there.