by A B Whelan
“It’s another transition program we do here every day,” I tell my audience. “Ashley is my partner. She oversees the projects and students here.”
Ashley makes her way to us between tables and painting students. Kids are whispering to each other excitedly at one table. Some adults are so immersed in their own projects that they don’t bother to look up. In the background, like a soft blanket, classical music envelopes everybody. After I found out what a monster my husband was, I couldn’t bring myself to listen to classical music. I owe Ashley for my rediscovered love of these instrumental and beautiful melodies.
“So, what are you doing with the final projects?” the woman with a kind face and an iPad in her hand asks me.
“We partnered up with an art gallery in the city that showcases and sells the paintings, drawings, and statues that are created in this room. We use the money to finance the art program. I don’t know if you remember David Hanaway.” I point at a framed photograph of a smiling young black boy underneath Ashley’s draping arms. They shake their heads no. “The police found him locked in his parents’ closet, half-starved to death. He was only fourteen years old and fifty-eight pounds. He was placed in the care of foster parents and was introduced to our program a year later. He came here every day to paint. He is an extraordinary talent. His paintings were alive. The gallery offered us an exhibition solely for his work. It was a tremendous success. He now lives in Seattle and has his own studio. Frequently he comes back to us and takes other promising artists with him to work on projects together. In the past five years, we’ve had over a hundred artists find their passion in some sort of art form here who now are able to make a living off their work.”
“It’s very impressive, Mrs. Campbell. But I’m sure not all the stories here are success stories.”
“We strive to build confidence and self-worth in people who end up with us. Our methods don’t always work, but we have a great community here. We aspire to help each person move forward with his or her life instead of wallowing in self-pity, depression, and sorrow. We try to help everybody find out what they are good at and point them toward a profession. Yes, we have had failed cases, but some people are so damaged that they are beyond any type of repair offered here.”
“You said you help people find professions? I read that your foundation is collaborating with vocational schools.”
“Yes. From the beginning, we saw a huge problem with the people coming here. They flunked high school or maybe went to community college for a few months and lacked any kind of professional skills. I don’t believe everybody needs to go to college. Many young men and women are ready to start their adult lives earlier. They want to be independent and able to stand on both feet. In Europe, there are high schools where kids can learn different trades, and by the time they reach their twenties, they can be masters at anything—a mechanic, a chef, a baker, electrician, designer, plumber, anything—and become a valuable part of society. I believe in that system. So instead of forcing kids back to school to learn more history and math when they are already so far behind compared to their peers, we train them in a trade. Based on our experiences, most of these kids find decent-paying jobs where they are appreciated. And with that foundation they can build a good life for themselves. I keep in touch with many of our former members, and I know that some of them decided to go back to school and earn a diploma while working. It’s wonderful how much kids can achieve if only someone believes in them.”
I feel like my words are falling onto empty ears. The company I keep today is only interested in the marketability and profitability of our programs, not our success stories. Why do I even bother to make them understand what we are doing here?
I rush my guests through the remaining areas of the house. We peer into the fitness room where Betty runs her “Gilad Club.” On the back wall, there is a projector with a big, curly-haired athletic man jumping around in tight black pants and a white sleeveless top bearing the logo of “Bodies in Motion.” Behind him, men exercise in similar outfits, and the women wear leotards and high-top Reebok athletic shoes. I was skeptical when Betty came up with the idea to start this program. Gilad is an old-time aerobic trainer from the 1990s, and Betty used to do his exercise programs when she was in high school. But I’m not the one to tear up people’s dreams. Now she has hundreds of people hooked on his videos. Betty runs a class twice a day. Mostly women come. It’s one of our most popular programs. I notice our visitors smirk and exchange mocking glances, so I don’t tell them any of this. I must admit it does look a little funny to watch his videos nowadays, but somehow it works, so I’m good with it.
I only point out our group meeting room. Here, instead of sitting around in a circle and watching each other in awkward silence, our members mingle about, looking at pictures of our past events, view art projects on display, and read brochures of the vocational education programs we offer, all the while nibbling on healthy snacks. Based on our past experiences, we learned that people open up easier to each other if they are given options to choose from and whom to speak to. We have tables to play dominos, UNO, and a few other board games. Putting puzzles together is also a popular pastime. Ms. Sylvia works the room every day. Her husband used to abuse her verbally, telling her that she was good for nothing, that without him she couldn’t survive. Now there are hundreds of people here who depend on her. She goes from group to group and table to table and speaks with the newcomers. She somehow has an aura about her that is so peaceful and honest. People trust her. We all love her. She’s been with us for almost four years now.
Upstairs there are bedrooms for mothers with kids who were recently rescued from an abusive relationship. I refer to their privacy as a reason for not going up there.
We skip the bungalow tour because it seems unnecessary to offer more insight into our daily lives to these people. I know I will not collaborate with them on the next The Good Samaritan Safe House.
They whisper their disappointments to each other as they get back into their cars, but I just wave them away politely. The kind of work we do here only works if the people involved find the will to help others in their hearts.
I eat lunch with Betty and Ashley, like I do almost every day. Usually we go to the kitchen and pick food from the buffet line that our volunteer transitionary group conjures up daily. For every meal, we are treated to food from diverse cultures and backgrounds. Some people find tranquility in preparing the meals, and our kitchen is always open for people who want to cook away their pain.
I pour myself a bowl of vegetable soup, but I’m edgy and it’s not going down easily. I stir my spoon around in the thick, hot liquid. Today is a big day. An anniversary, if you will. But it’s not a date we remember fondly. Five years ago today, Richard died. Every year on this day, the three of us come together in the office and talk about what happened. On every other day of the year, none of us bring up the past.
Ashley lifts her bottle of water. “Here’s to another successful year.”
We clink glasses, but none of us smile. We don’t smile, because the success Ashley mentions doesn’t refer to the success of our foundation; it refers to our fifth year of getting away with our crime.
I push the soup bowl aside and look out of the window. A memory of my mother-in-law visits me. The day the police found Richard’s body in the lake, she called me. I explained to her the research Richard was involved in and that my theory was that he got too close to identifying the Fifty Shades Killer and paid the price for it.
She wasn’t buying my theory.
“My son never mentioned a word about his investigation to me,” she had insisted aggressively. “I’ll talk to the police about you, Olivia, and I want you to know that I will tell them everything I know.”
“And why would you do that?”
“Because I know about your trips to Dubai when you were younger and how you earned your money. Richard told me everything.”
My jaws clenched. How could Richard humiliate me like that?
Everything I shared with him was confidential. At that moment, I knew why she resented me all along. She considered me a money-hungry foreigner whore who stole her precious son.
“I have to go to the police station right now, but there is something we need to talk about, Grace.”
“I’m not talking to you anymore. I’ll talk to the officers.”
“Well, then you’ll never see your grandchild.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m pregnant, Grace. It’s Richard’s. My baby. Your grandchild.”
A long silence ensued. “You witch! You’re lying!” She was crying—deep, ugly bawling.
“We have to think about the future, Grace, because whether you like it or not, I will inherit Richard’s foundation, and we will stay here. I will raise our child in this house, and if you go against me, then I guarantee you your grandchild will never know you exist.”
I heard her trying to catch her breath amid sobbing. I almost felt sorry for her, but then I thought of all the bad parenting she committed against Richard, and I blamed her for what happened to us.
“Grace? Six o’clock tonight at my house, okay?”
“I’ll be there,” she had whispered. I pictured her popping pills to calm her nerves. That’s how she always solved her problems: numbing her brain to block out reality.
Since the police had no evidence to implicate my involvement in Richard’s death, they were forced to release me after three hours of “volunteer conversation.”
I released Margit of her duties for the rest of the day, and I prepared dinner for Grace and me. There was a numbness inside me as I cut up the meat. It started when I saw what my husband had been doing to my unconscious body on the video. Or maybe it started when dozens of foul-smelling, overweight, hairy Arab men took turns on me in Dubai. Maybe the only way to submit to your animal self is to kill your own humanity. Once it’s gone, there’s nothing left but a deep emptiness, a void that you spend the rest of your life trying to fill.
Grace had arrived on time. She’d managed to put on decent makeup to mask her puffy red eyes. I’ve never seen her so fragile. So many times I’d wanted to strike her down for her manipulation and evil doings, but now, as she was standing in front of me stooped and broken, I pitied her.
We ate. She would erupt in a series of accusations, calling me various unpleasant names for ruining her son’s life. “If you’d made his life whole, then he wouldn’t feel the need to go after a dangerous man. You saying you’re pregnant? Now? When he is dead? Why couldn’t you give him a family while he was alive?”
I listened and listened to her blaming me, the universe, and the stars for what happened but not taking any responsibility herself. Then I understood that she needed to know the truth.
I told her everything about the sex dungeon, the dead girls, and how Richard truly died.
She didn’t cry. She only listened in numb astonishment. When I was done, her face looked withered and her hair appeared to have a more grayish tone to it. Her eyes turned dull and lifeless.
“Who killed him?” That was all she said after hearing the truth about her son.
“I don’t know. I believe it was one of Richard’s victims who managed to get away,” I lied. I refilled our glasses, mine with chilled lemonade and hers with straight, warm bourbon.
“And you just wrapped his body in dirty plastic and dumped him into the cold, murky water?” Her expression was that of a madwoman, like someone who couldn’t understand how a man could rape his own daughter. Only in our situation, Richard was the horrible monster. “What else were we going to do, Grace? Tell me!” I raised my voice. She put her forehead into her hand. “I don’t know.”
“I was not going to let my kid grow up knowing that his father was a sexual sadist and a serial killer. We would have lost everything. Why should we have to suffer for his criminal behavior and deplorable deeds?”
“So, all you cared about was the money?”
“No!” I yelled at her, getting out of my chair. “I protected us. All of us. I will take charge of the foundation now, and I will help people, truly help people, not just embezzle money from donors and exploit the victims.”
“How dare you talk ill of my son!”
“Look, Grace! You can put your head in the sand and pretend that things are not as they really are, but that won’t change the fact that your son kidnapped dozens of women, tortured them, and killed them, that he drugged me for years and sodomized me without my knowledge or consent. Or that he lived like a king on the foundation’s money. That he never wanted children because he was so scared they would turn out like him, or maybe he didn’t trust himself to be around his own children. I don’t know.”
“He’d never hurt a child.”
I shook my head in disbelief. I wasn’t sure how much more of Grace I could take that night.
“I’m tired. I need to lie down. It’s been a very long and exhausting week.”
“So now what? We just forget what happened?”
“What else do you want to do? Go to the police? Are you prepared for reporters to start tearing apart your life, the way you raised your son? You want Richard’s face on the cover of every newspaper? You want him to become a story psychology majors investigate for their essays? You want your grandchild to be bullied for his entire life for something he had no part in? You need me to go on?”
“No, of course not!”
“Then this conversation is over, forever. I did what I had to do to protect my child, and I’d do it again. So don’t even dare to try crossing me. Do you understand me?”
“Is that a threat?”
“It’s a promise.”
She bitterly accepted the situation. I had no doubt she would. Narcissists always do.
Grace doesn’t come to our annual luncheon or join us at Lake Hodges afterward, but we do have one extra member of our secret group. The door opens, and Betty, Ashley, and I turn to look. The woman who steps into the room has a healthy bundle of brunette hair tied in a romantic braid down her back. She wears jeans and a sweater under her mud-stained apron. She pulls off her garden gloves, steps out of her muddy garden shoes, and sets them by the door. She slips into a pair of indoor slippers, the ones with soft white fur inside. Since those days she had spent locked up in Richard’s sex dungeon, tied to the ceiling, her feet were always cold.
“Did I miss something?” she asks, picking up a can of Diet Coke from the bar and popping it open.
“No, you’re right on time. Soup?” Ashley says, pushing the extra bowl to the spot on the table in front of the empty chair.
The girl in the door shivers, licking her mouth. “It’s cold outside, but I’m almost done pruning the vines.”
“I feel like we’ll have a good season this year,” Betty says. “Brad can’t wait.”
“Is he coming in today?”
“Yeah. The kids are looking forward to his stories.”
“Or to touch his gun,” I say, laughing, and all the girls join in. Then it’s silence.
“Look what we have built together. I’m so proud of us,” Ashley muses, her eyes glistening with tears.
The girl nods, takes her seat at the table, and picks up a spoon.
“Do you guys ever think about those parents who never get closure for their lost daughters?” Here we go again. Betty, our most experienced mother, brings her annual question to the table.
“Remember Skyler’s parents? To them, she was disposable. They never cared about her. No, not everybody deserves closure,” the girl snaps, tossing her spoon into the bowl.
“I’m sorry, Julie. I was insensitive.” Betty shakes her head. “Whatever, what’s done is done. I’m glad you came out of this madness alive.” She offers her open arms to Julie, and after a moment of hesitancy, the girl leans against her chest, and Betty closes her arms around her.
“I still have nightmares. Not only about the weeks that I spent in that fucking dark hole but also the moment when that monster’s eyes w
ent dead.” Julie straightens her back. Her eyes seem to be lost in the emptiness ahead of her. “But I’m glad I killed that bastard.”
My stomach tightens. I know Julie did us all a favor by shooting Richard in the chest, but sometimes the happy moments from our marriage make me feel conflicted. There was a time when I loved Richard with all my heart, and it deeply hurts me to think of how I misread him, how I lied to myself every day to keep our marriage going. If I had been more involved in Richard’s life, if I had been truly his wife and not just a roommate, would I have prevented some of the murders?
“Oh, shit, sorry, Olivia.” Julie puts her hand over her mouth as if that would take the words back. “I know he was your man, but he was one sick fuck.”
Ashley pushes her chair back. “All right, let’s get going. Peter wants to take us out to dinner tonight, and I don’t want to be late.”
“I’m okay,” I say. And the truth is that when I look around this table, and when I think about the time we spend together—Betty and Brad and the kids; Ashley and her husband, Peter, who gave up bankruptcy law to work as a human rights activist for our foundation, and their little baby boy, Samuel; Julie and her flowers; and my sweet little Lily—I know that I’m happy and that life is good. Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll meet a man I can trust. But until then, I merely want to go home and hug my daughter and tell her how much I love her. I want to watch her play on the monkey bars and ride her bicycle. And never, ever let her know that a monster’s blood is circulating in her veins, because her blood doesn’t define her. Blood doesn’t define anybody.
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