A Mother's Lie

by Sarah Zettel

  She was able to straighten up and face her father. She could make her voice low and pleading.

  “Can I…can I sleep in here? Please. Just in case she gets sick or something. She’s had a bad reaction to sleeping pills before.” Which was a total lie, but Todd would not stop to think how a normal mother might not drug a child into unconsciousness.

  Todd grabbed another slice out of the box and bit into it. He took his time chewing and swallowing.

  “Yeah, sure.” He sucked pizza grease off his thumb. “Why not? After all, we’re one big, happy family, right?”

  “Right, Dad.”

  He picked up the pizza box and carried it into the other room and sat down on the other bed, in full view of the open connecting door. Beth saw him pick up the remote and turn on the TV. ESPN was talking about the Tigers.

  Beth found her shopping bags and dug out the plain gray nightshirt she’d bought. Numb, she went into the empty bathroom and changed out of her clothes.

  The water shut off in the other bathroom.

  Out in the bedroom, Beth folded her clothes up out of habit. She was so tired, but when you lived in small spaces, you had to be tidy. There was no room for extra mess.

  Through the open connecting door, Beth saw her mother come out of the other bathroom. She went straight into the other room and threw herself on the bed, snuggling up next to Todd. He put an arm around her and she opened her mouth like a baby bird, and he started feeding pizza into it.

  Beth watched her mother playing the little girl, feeding his ego, eating the food from his hand.

  And Todd smiled down at his wife, as if she were the most beautiful thing in the world.

  That was when Beth knew how badly she had miscalculated.

  Because more than anything, Todd believed in Jeannie’s absolute dependency on him.

  In his mind, she not only loved him, but she needed his support and his approval to live. He had made sure that she belonged to him solely and wholly. He would defend that belief to the death.

  And Jeannie knew it. She played on that need to stay alive, and if Beth did not do as she said, Jeannie would make Dad go off, as surely as if she’d pulled the trigger on his gun.

  Beth turned away, sick in her head and in her heart. She curled up beside her daughter. She slid her arm around Dana’s ribs. She didn’t close her eyes. She just lay there, feeling the rise and fall of Dana’s chest. At the same time she listened to Jeannie’s soft laughter and the sound of cable sports.

  Beth thought about the gun and how her parents would soon be asleep.

  She thought about shooting them both.

  She thought about shooting herself afterward.

  She thought about shooting Dana first, because that would be kinder. What life was there after this? What could she give her daughter that would even begin to make up for this?

  She pressed her face against the back of her daughter’s neck, and slowly, silently, Beth let herself begin to cry.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  Dana’s mouth felt like it was filled with glue. That same glue had sealed her eyelids shut. It was stuffy as hell.

  Because she’d pulled the blankets up over her head. And because there was somebody next to her.

  She shoved the blankets down, and sunlight hit her in the face and startled her enough that she was able to yank her eyelids open.

  The person spooned up behind her shifted. Mom. It was Mom.

  “Hey, Dangerface!” Mom said softly and kissed her cheek. “How you feeling?”

  Dana stirred her tongue around in her mouth. She tasted bad. Metallic. Dry. “Something’s wrong with me. I think I’m sick…”

  “No. That’s not it. Try to sit up. I’ll get you some water.”

  Dana tried. Her head was fogged, and her stomach regretted all that bad pizza and bad coffee.

  Mom brought two little glasses of water and handed one to her. Dana downed it in a gulp. She shoved her hair back from her face and looked up at Mom for answers.

  “Jeannie drugged you,” Mom said.

  “Wha…what?”

  Mom handed her the second glass and took back the empty one. “She was afraid you were going to run, so she slipped you one of her pills.”

  Dana went white. “She didn’t…”

  She didn’t bother to finish. Of course she did it. Because she knew I was thinking about running. My fault. Again.

  She swallowed. “Can I get some more water?”

  Mom nodded. She stepped back so Dana could stand up. The world tilted for one bad second but steadied, and she was able to walk. In the bathroom, Dana turned on the sink. She drank glass after glass of water and splashed more water on her face, trying to wash the glue and sand out of her eyes.

  This shame had been haunting her since…since that other hotel. But now she was shaky and dried out, and it threatened to swamp every other feeling. Because she’d killed Dad, and now Mom was going to have to…Mom was going to have to…

  It’s my fault. I got her into this. She never would have let them get close, but I got stupid. She wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t in trouble…

  Now she’s going to…she’s going to have to…feel like this. BE like this.

  “It’s not your fault, Dana.”

  Dana stared into the mirror. She hadn’t closed the bathroom door. Mom was standing on the threshold. Dana watched her mother’s face in the mirror. She looked so sad Dana’s heart twisted tight.

  “Jeannie said you were going to ditch him,” murmured Dana. “I thought you might, you know…” Kill him.

  Mom looked away. Dana realized Mom had thought about it. She’d really considered killing her father.

  Dana had a friend at school who was a cutter. She said it was a distraction, because the pain in her skin felt better than the pain in her head. Dana finally understood what she meant.

  My fault. It’s my fault she has to think like this. It’s my fault we even have to be here.

  But even as those thoughts threatened to drown her, Dana saw her mother’s face shift. Ideas took shape behind her eyes, fitting together like puzzle pieces. Mom knew something. She felt something. She understood something.

  “I used to watch the kids who got to go to school and had normal lives.” Mom started rubbing Dana’s back, slow circles on her shoulder. Dana wanted to turn and hug her, and she also wanted to scream at her to get away.

  “All those kids who didn’t have to hang out in the library all day and decide which librarian was a bitch so it’d be okay to steal out of her purse to get money for the snack machines. I was so jealous of them. I thought I didn’t deserve the lives they had. I was bad. I stole and I lied, and I made my parents mad so they fought all the time. They told me our life was better, but I didn’t love it like they did, and that had to be because I was bad. And sometimes I wanted to run away from them, and that made me worse. Good girls love their parents. So, I didn’t run away. I didn’t tell anybody what was happening, because I was ashamed of myself.

  “And Todd and Jeannie know all that, and they will use it against you, and they will use me against you, and your fear of the cops against you, and anything else they can wrap their minds around. Because their only hope of controlling me is controlling you. And they have to control me because I’m the one controlling the money.

  “None of this is your fault, Dana. This was them from the beginning. They wanted to get to me, so they used you to do it. You and your father.”

  Dana heard what Mom was saying. Each word rang perfectly clear—it made sense. It was true. But it wasn’t enough. It could not ever be enough.

  “I killed him, Mom,” she whispered. “I stabbed him, and I killed him.”

  “No.” In the mirror, Dana saw her mother shake her head slowly. “You didn’t. They did that.”

  “No. I had Chelsea’s nail file. I was…it’s all a mess, but I know we were fighting and we fell and…”

  “Dana.” Mom turned her around. She took Dana’s face in both hands and
tilted it up. Dana realized she was shaking all over.

  “Dana, I have one question, okay? And you have to answer me absolutely honestly. Will you do that?”

  Dana swallowed. She nodded, her cheeks brushing against Mom’s hands. They were cold, her cheeks or Mom’s hands. She wasn’t sure which.

  “Did you slit your father’s throat?”

  There were moments when the whole world froze, as if God pushed the Pause button. Dana felt it right now.

  “After he got stabbed, did you do that, Dana?” Mom was asking. “Did you take that homemade knife and cut his throat?”

  Blood, and Dad looking at her, and Dad pulling the knife out of himself, and…

  And she was pulled backward and turned around, and her face was pressed into Jeannie’s shoulder. She remembered her grandmother holding her so tight so she couldn’t move.

  So she couldn’t see.

  “No,” breathed Dana. “No, I didn’t.”

  “Because I saw him,” said Mom. “After he died, I went in that room and I saw him, and I saw his throat. The blow to his chest was bad, but he might have survived. It was the throat wound that killed him.”

  I didn’t kill him? I didn’t?

  “Dana. Did either Todd or Jeannie tell you directly that you’d committed murder?”

  “They did. Both of them.” She held on to me so I couldn’t see. And I couldn’t get away.

  “They did that to keep you from running away, and then when that looked like it might stop working, they drugged you. That is what is happening here, Dana. That is what you have to hang on to.”

  I believed them and I let them, and you’re here because of me. The poison bubbled up from the bottom of Dana’s heart. “I’m sor—”

  “Dana, stop,” said Mom quickly, firmly. “You sink down into shame you will think you don’t deserve to get out of this, just like I used to.”

  “But…”

  Mom laid her finger across Dana’s lips to shush her. “Dangerface, listen to me. Some things changed last night. They might be about to start falling apart, and when they do, we are not going to have a lot of time. I need you to trust me. I think I can get us away, but I am going to need your help. So, I have to know for sure that you want to get out of here more than you want to try to save them from their own shit. You have to believe, Dana, that you are worth saving, and that I am too. ”

  Dana looked at her mother, and she felt the shame and the guilt crawling through her veins and her bones. She remembered being little, tiny Dana sitting on the curb with Mommy and wondering what she’d done to make the pink-hands man take her away. She must have done something. She must be bad. She must have deserved it.

  That shame was real. All of it, and it was not ever going away.

  Yeah, well, screw that.

  “Mom?” whispered Dana. “Let’s go home.”

  Mom smiled. A hot, dangerous joy shone in her eyes, and Dana felt her own eyes blaze in answer. The green one burned bright, and the brown one burned sharp. They hugged each other then, hard and mercilessly, like they were never going to stop.

  “Well, now. What’s going on in here?”

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Beth stared, startled, at the mirror. Todd stood in the bathroom doorway wearing nothing but an undershirt and boxers, sleep tousled and disconcerted but trying to smile.

  “I…uh…Mom was just letting me know what the situation is.” Dana pulled back, stiff and scared, and Todd definitely noticed.

  He knows something’s up. He’s going to expect a distraction.

  Beth started gathering up the unused toiletries and little soaps that were still wrapped. “You know, Dad, we’re going to have to think about money. The cash isn’t going to last. And we might want to think twice about using the credit cards so much…”

  “We got plenty to get us to Miami,” he said. “It’s only a couple days’ drive from here. Once we’re there, I’m sure you can figure out the pipeline. After all, need to keep our girl here in shoes, right?” He stopped. “So, just what was it you two were talking about when I came in here? You look like you were getting pretty upset.”

  “It was nothing,” said Beth. She wasn’t frightened. It was strange. They had failed to take hold of Dana’s heart. They had tried their best, but it hadn’t worked. It was as if Beth could not be truly afraid of anything else.

  She was tense, though. Shit, she was practically vibrating.

  But as long as Dana was with her, there was a way out.

  And I know what it is.

  It was in Todd’s blind spots. Including the fact that when he looked at Dana, all he saw was the weak link.

  “Now, you’ve got something to learn here, Granddaughter.” He bent down in front of her, hands braced against his thighs like he was talking to a two-year-old. “When I ask a question of one of my girls, I expect an answer. Do you understand that?”

  Beth shifted the toiletries to the crook of her arm and put her free hand on Dana’s shoulder.

  “You better tell him, Dana,” she said quietly but firmly. “Tell him what your grandmother said last night while we were gone. He needs to hear this.”

  Do you hear me? Do you understand? But Dana reached up and squeezed Beth’s hand.

  And all Beth could do was stand there and trust.

  Dana licked her lips. Her face shifted. Beth knew that look. It was the one Dana got when another homework assignment hadn’t gotten turned in, or a quiz had been totally blown off.

  She was getting ready to lay it on thick.

  “Um…when you and Mom were…out, Grandma told me…she told me Mom was going to get rid of you.”

  Todd frowned. He also straightened up. Beth took the opportunity to steer Dana past him, out into the bedroom. She checked through the connecting doorway reflexively and saw Jeannie still curled up under the covers in the other bed.

  Todd followed them. “What the fuck is that girl talking about, Star?”

  Dana wasn’t having any of that. Nobody answered for her. “Jeannie told me Mom was going to get you drunk and get rid of you, and that Mom and me and her were going to all take off together.”

  Beth sighed. “I tried to tell you, Dad.”

  Todd’s fists curled up tight. Beth immediately slid between him and Dana. She lifted her chin. She remembered this too. Only he’d been so much taller then—a monster with a great, long shadow and yellow fangs. Then, it had been Jeannie behind her. Now, it was Dana, and that made all the difference.

  “You set this up,” he growled. “You told her what to say, just now, in there.”

  “Knowing how you’d beat the crap out of my daughter if you found out she lied? You really think I’d take that kind of chance?”

  Because you know I’ll do anything for her. You know I’d never put her in danger. That’s what your whole plan hangs on.

  He looked bewildered. He ran his hand back across his hair, an old gesture from when he was a younger man and had to push his hair out of his eyes. Memories were coalescing inside him, thoughts rearranging themselves into realizations.

  Beth held her breath.

  You’re getting there. Almost there.

  That was when Jeannie stirred and sat up in bed.

  “What’s going on?” she mumbled. “Why didn’t anybody wake me up?”

  All at once, Dana lit up. Beth saw in the mirror how her eyes blazed, and Beth’s heart stopped.

  Dana jerked around, ran into the other room, and threw her arms around her grandmother.

  “I told him, Grandma!” she wailed. “I’m sorry! I couldn’t help it! He heard me talking to Mom, and I had to tell him.”

  “Told him…” Jeannie’s bewilderment and disbelief were every bit as strong as Todd’s had been. She slowly lowered her hand to Dana’s back, mostly because she didn’t seem to know what else to do with it. “Told him what?”

  “That thing you said, about what Mom was going to do.” Dana lifted her face, confused. Beth felt her fist tighten. Careful, Dange
rface. Careful. Not too much. “I had to!”

  Todd stared at his granddaughter and his wife. Beth could practically hear the thoughts in his mind crumbling. He knew Beth would lie. He knew she could be dangerous. But when he looked at Dana, all he saw was a clone of the little girl Beth had once been. He saw Star.

  Star was always frightened. Star had always been alone. She had always been trapped in a room with parents who would use her when they needed her. Her life had been about surviving them, not defying them.

  He had no understanding that Dana might have had a different kind of life. He’d always made sure his women were too dependent, too ashamed, and far too frightened to move.

  Except maybe not. Except maybe someone had lied to him. Someone jealous. Someone terrified he might actually leave. Someone who could not live without him. That he could believe. That he could understand.

  Todd walked up to his wife. Jeannie scrambled back in the bed. Dana slid out the far side and backed away, but Todd ignored her.

  “What’s this about, Jeannie? What did you say to the girl?”

  “Nothing, Todd! What would I say?”

  Beth came up behind him, close enough to feel the fever warmth of his body and smell stale sweat and garlic.

  “You better tell him, Mom,” Beth said. “You know how much worse it gets if he catches you lying.”

  Jeannie scrambled out of bed. Dana jumped back out of her way. “What are you doing, Star?”

  Jeannie came forward around the bed, intent on grabbing Beth, but Todd intercepted her.

  “Jeannie…” He took hold of her arms. “Just tell me it’s not true. Say it.”

  She kissed him, hard and sharp. “Of course it’s not true!” She caressed his stubbled cheek. “Why would I even think anything so stupid?”

  “Because you were afraid Dad was going to leave you,” said Beth from by her father’s shoulder. Here it was. This was where he would either believe or he wouldn’t.

  Maybe you were lying, Mom. Maybe you just wanted to get the band back together. But it was the wrong lie to tell.

  “You know you can’t make it without him,” Beth said. “When have you ever even lived by yourself? Do you even have an actual driver’s license? How would you even get your pill money?”