The Truth Commission

by Susan Juby

  “Dad, can you even remember the last time Keira ate at the table with us?”

  He turned back to the giant pot and didn’t answer.

  “When did she get home?” I asked.

  He stared at the recipe book, which was one of the cheap ones without any of the photographs that make a recipe book worth having.

  “Not sure, Normandy. I’m making chili.” As though that had anything to do with anything. “Let’s get things ready. Your mom will be home any minute. She had a hair appointment after work.”

  It was rare for my mom to do any kind of self-care, and I knew he didn’t want to ruin her afterglow.

  But something had gotten into me, and I put out the three plates and then added three plain spoons and three plain butter knives and three water glasses.

  My dad looked at the table settings, but didn’t comment that we were short one place, or that I hadn’t used any Dianaware.

  I went to my room to get changed. I could tell Keira wasn’t in the closet, because my room was absolutely still and calm and no light leaked out the narrow gap at the bottom of the door. My sister is one of those people who can change the entire atmosphere of a room just by her presence, even if that presence is tucked away in a closet.

  My bed was neatly made and my desk was bare except for my magnifying glass clamped to the side of my desk like a clumsy bird of prey. My big laptop was closed. One wall was lined with neat plastic bins of embroidery thread, and photos of Dusk and Neil and me surrounded my old mirror. A handmade paper kimono I made last year hung above my bed, and one of Dusk’s shadow box sculptures sat on a floating shelf on another wall.

  A strange and restless defiance moved in me and I guess that’s what made me open the closet door. As I’d expected, Keira wasn’t inside. The shock was that her sketchbook was. I recoiled at the sight of it lying on top of her lap desk. Usually, my sister kept that book clutched to her chest like an attaché case containing the red button.97

  I stared at it.

  Like the coward I am, I edged to the door on her side of the space and listened. Total silence. I picked up the heavy pad and carried it into my room, my heart thudding in my chest.

  The first pages were all drawings of the same man. Twenties, handsome face, disheveled hair, half smile. Dimples.

  I felt like I’d stolen her diary. I guess I sort of had.

  In one image, he stood at the front of what appeared to be a classroom. Keira had drawn tiny handwriting on the whiteboard. The man was in midsentence. The drawing was hasty but full of urgent accuracy. Keira’s strengths as an artist are many, but she’s particularly good at people.

  Some pages were covered in three or four portraits of the man’s face. Each one made me want to look deep inside him. A full-page illustration showed him at a desk, head down, reading.

  She’d captured his face in so many iterations that he seemed almost alive and moving from image to image. Then came the extreme close-up. It was done in ink and the perspective was off.

  I realized why. His face was shown from below, putting the viewer beneath him. The man was almost unrecognizable, his face twisted.

  “What the . . .” I whispered as I stared at the drawing.

  It was the work of a superb illustrator, and something about it was terrible. It was the face every woman is afraid to see.

  With a growing dread I turned the next page and saw a drawing that made me go even colder.

  This one showed the man falling from a great height. His face, tiny now, was still twisted, but this time with fear.

  What the hell were these?

  Keira’s stories always started in the drawing pads. But this wasn’t a story. It was a series of increasingly disturbing portraits of the man who had assaulted her.

  I checked the front of the pad. Maybe this wasn’t the right one. But I’d seen her carrying it around the house. The top corner was folded and frayed.

  Slowly, I carried it back to the closet and placed it on her lap desk in the exact position I’d found it, backed out of the closet, and shut the door.

  xxxxx

  When my dad called, I went to dinner. He’d reset the table for four, with full Dianaware: tablecloth and place mats, cutlery, salt- and pepper shakers, plates. I ate the vegetarian chili. The salsa was a nice touch.

  Keira didn’t join us. My mom’s hair shone in the bright kitchen lights.

  When we were done, I cleaned up.

  I sat and did embroidery under my magnifier for a few hours, and then I went to bed. My eyes, tired from staring at stitches, were drooping when Keira opened the closet door.

  “I forgot my drawing pad,” she said.

  My breath grew ragged and shallow.

  I didn’t know whether to be relieved or upset when she came out of the closet and climbed onto my bed. “Can you switch on the light?” she whispered.

  It occurred to me that she didn’t need a light to lie on my bed and tell me things I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear. But I turned the lamp on anyway.

  “Did you look?” she asked simply.

  “Yes.”

  “So you know.”

  Did I know? I guessed I did.

  “Those pictures, they’re of your teacher. The one you went hiking with.”

  “Jackson Reid.”

  I waited.

  “I thought he liked me,” she said. “But when we went to the hiking cabin, he . . .”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  I could feel small jerking movements on the huge mattress, and I thought she might be crying. Her face was buried in the hood of her sleeping bag and hidden in the shadows. Just the shine of her eyes reached me.

  “l feel so stupid,” she said after she’d gotten control of her voice.

  Seeing my sister, so odd and oblivious to normal human interactions, hurt like this was too much for me and I started to cry, too. Unlike Keira, I couldn’t do it quietly. My sobs were loud and wet and messy and I kept wiping my sopping eyes with the sleeve of my long T-shirt and the blanket.

  “Have you told anyone?” I asked, knowing that she hadn’t. She hadn’t even mentioned the affair, if that’s what it was, before it took a violent turn.

  “I was just so shocked. I never expected him to . . . do that.”

  That set me off again. I felt kind of stupid that I was crying harder than she was, but I couldn’t stop myself. All the tension of the past few months was coming out, whether I liked it or not.

  “Are you going to tell anyone?” I asked when I had regained a tiny sliver of control.

  “No!” Her voice was vehement. “It would ruin me. I’d always be that girl who got raped by her teacher. I’m already strange.”

  I would have protested that she wasn’t strange. That no one would think the fact that she’d been assaulted was her fault. But my sister was strange. And she was famous. Whether they blamed her or not, people would be fascinated.

  “What about a teacher? You could talk to someone at G. P. Our new guidance counselor is really good.”98

  Keira snorted. “I don’t think so. This is a little beyond the Art Farm’s capabilities.”

  The image of the final drawing in the book rose in my mind like a specter. I wanted to ask about it. But I didn’t. I didn’t. I couldn’t.

  I could feel my face working as I considered what to do and what to say. I knew I looked ugly in that moment. I knew she was watching me. Nothing was ever simple with my sister watching.

  “Just telling you about it has helped. Drawing and talking. Those things are good medicine. You’re good medicine, Norm,” she said. And I felt that old thrill. My sister trusted me. She’d told me about the affair. Now she’d told me about the terrible thing that had happened. About the worst betrayal possible. Her trust had to mean something. But I wasn’t sure I could handle it.

  The
n, astonishingly, my sister fell asleep on my bed.

  Thursday, October 18

  A Classic Story

  Why did I call Sylvia? I guess because when I woke up to find Keira gone, my brain immediately started looking for someplace to put the load of bad news she’d left with me the night before. I was in no way equipped to deal with something this serious. What if he did it again to someone else? I had a duty to report it. Sylvia was an experienced and worldly person. She was used to dealing with problems, even really big ones. After all, she worked with artists. If anyone would know how to help my sister, it would be her.

  People might wonder why I didn’t tell my parents. All I can do is repeat that they are not truth handlers or reality dealers.

  I texted Neil and Dusk and told them I was going to be late and they should drive themselves to school. I managed to wait until 8:30 a.m. and then I called Sylvia. Her assistant answered. He sounded like he spent the first few minutes of the morning sucking on helium balloons.

  “I’m calling for Sylvia,” I said.

  “She’s in a meeting right now. Who may I say is calling, please?”

  “Normandy Pale.”

  “Oh,” he said, unmoved by that information.

  “Keira Pale’s sister.”

  Silence.

  “One moment, please.”

  A shuffling sound. Then the same complaining cat voice came back on the line.

  “Can I take a message?”

  “If you could just tell her that Normandy called.”

  “Uh-huh. So that’s Normandy Pale? Keira Pale’s sister?”

  I’d never called an agent before. I thought they were supposed to have efficient, powerhouse assistants. This one sounded like one of Mary Norton’s Borrowers.

  I confirmed the details and hung up. The phone rang when it was still in my hand.

  “Normandy! You never call! You never write! It’s so great to hear from you, honey. What’s up this fine morning?”

  “Other than the voice of your assistant?” I said, because I try and be clever when I speak to Sylvia. Sometimes I even pretend that she’s my agent. God, I’m so sad sometimes.

  “Kevin?” she said. “He’s the grandnephew of the head of the agency. He’s eleven. It’s Nepotism Day or something, so he’s being my assistant.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I’d like to get in on that sometime.” I was not entirely joking.

  “Absolutely. When there’s a Long-Distance Nepotism Day, you’re the first person I’ll call.” I could hear her attention wander, the way it always did when she spoke more than a few sentences to me that weren’t about my sister.

  “Look, I don’t want to be inappropriate or—”

  “Never!” she interrupted. “Just let ’er rip.”

  “We’re—I mean, I’m a little concerned about Keira,” I said.

  “Oh,” she said, her voice rising until she sounded a bit like her eleven-year-old assistant.

  “She goes out a lot,” I started. “Since she came home from school.”

  As I spoke, I knew I was taking the long and winding road to get to the point. But I couldn’t just blurt it out. Before I went any further, Sylvia cut in.

  “Probably just enjoying her new place. I know you’re used to having her around and that she likes to work in your shared closet? Isn’t that right? God, I love that detail. It just blows people away. But you’ve got to give her space to change. Grow.”

  “New place?”

  “And now that she’s paid off your parents’ house and made so many other changes in her life, it’s natural that things will change. Dynamics shifting all over the place. I’m talking tectonic movement here.”

  “What?” I said, every inch the dimwit.

  “Your parents didn’t tell you?”

  To say “what?” again would make me sound even dumber than I felt, so I squeaked out a reply in a voice so small not even a Borrower could have heard me.

  “When Keira decided to sell the option to Diana, it all happened in a rush,” continued Sylvia. “She was so excited to renew our agreement. We’ve worked together for so long. She felt bad about our little breakup. Then the first thing she planned to do was to go to the bank and surprise your folks by paying off the mortgage. She’s wanted to do that for a while. Your parents have worked so hard to support her. And you’ve been a big support, too, obviously. The three of you have been such good sports about the stories. When I think of them slaving away delivering the mail and operating a horse-drawn milk truck or whatever it is. God, it’s such a classic story.”

  “I—” I felt like a fish flapping on the deck of a boat. What the hell was she talking about?

  “How thrilled were your parents when she told them?”

  Suddenly, it seemed important to play along. Pretend I had the smallest clue what she was talking about. “They were surprised,” I said.

  “Thanks to my persuasiveness the production company was willing to send part of the money as soon as she signed. Half of mid-six figures is no joke. Usually, it would take much longer to get the money in hand. I was shocked the mortgage on that place was still so high,” she said. “And your school must cost a fortune. No one’s going to be going to your dad to ask for financial-planning advice. Well, no worries. You are all going to be well taken care of. Now what was it you wanted to talk about?”

  The distraction was fogging up her voice again.

  “Nothing. I just wanted to . . . nothing.”

  “Normandy, honey. You tell that sister of yours to call me as soon as the new book is ready for me to look at. I’m going to time the announcement of the option deal to coincide with the announcement of the pub date of her new project. Wham, wham! At first I didn’t want to delay the option announcement, but now I see the possibilities. Keira was smart to make us wait.”

  “Right,” I said.

  Then Sylvia hung up and left me wishing someone would just bash me in the head and get it over with.

  Grinding Middles

  What did I do with the bizarre revelation that my sister, supposedly incapacitated after being assaulted by her teacher, had sometime in the past few weeks rehired her agent and become rich from selling an option for her comics? I did what any deeply ambivalent and confused person would do: I went back to bed. My parents had already left for work, and Nancy was still in impound. When Dusk and Neil texted to ask when I was coming to school, I said I was sick. And I was.

  I lay in bed and listened to the sounds of the house. The fridge hummed off and on, the foundation creaked, birds scuttled around in the gutters. I tried not to think. When my dad got home after his shift, I stayed in bed until he knocked on my door to tell me dinner was ready.

  Dinner seemed to be ready about four times a day.

  My mom was home by that time, and I’d been in bed for so long, I felt like I barely knew how to speak or interact with other humans. My mom’s new highlights glowed and her cheeks seemed flushed. Maybe Keira had given my parents some money. I couldn’t ask her, because she hadn’t come home.

  “Keira still out?” I asked.

  My parents exchanged a glance, as though they’d been talking about me.

  “She’s an adult, Normandy. She gets to set her own schedule,” said my mother. She spoke as though I’d been lobbying hard to get my curfew extended. Which would be pretty pointless, since I didn’t have a curfew and had never managed to come within shouting distance of needing one.

  “Just wanted to know if she was home.” I said this even though I knew the answer. I felt a need to establish some sort of baseline reality.

  My dad blew on his chili. This one was a white-bean version. Quite adventurous for him.

  “I think she may have gone out. She needs privacy, Norm. You know how hard she’s been working on her project.”

  “Ah,” I said. Something in that syl
lable set them off.

  “Normandy!” said my parents together.

  “You really need to lose the attitude,” said my mother. I could practically see the highlights fade from her hair with the effort of each word. “Your sister’s life has changed since college. She needs more independence. It’s important not to interfere as she works her way through this next phase.”

  “What’s with the glum face?” said my dad. “We’re a family.”

  And since that was exactly the kind of crazy talk that was making me feel like I might be losing my mind, I decided to join in.

  “It must be awesome to have so much disposable income now,” I said.

  My parents stared at me. My mother lowered her spoon to the place mat that, tragically, shows her as she appears in the Earth realm of the Diana comics.

  “I mean, since Keira paid off the mortgage for the house,” I said. My words dropped like stones into a murky pond.

  “Normandy,” said my mother. “Are you feeling all right?”

  I didn’t want to look at her. To see the lines of her face blurred by work and worry and denial.

  “I think you’re being unkind,” said my mother. “You know that Keira wants to help out with the household when she’s able. But this isn’t the right time. She had a lot of expenses. Her college cost a small fortune. We couldn’t help much.”

  “She got a full scholarship,” I said.

  “Just for tuition,” said my dad.

  “There were a lot of other expenses,” said my mom.

  “The new book’s coming along slowly,” said my dad. “The last thing she needs is more pressure.”

  “So you’re saying that she didn’t pay off the mortgage?”

  My father laughed uncomfortably. “You’ve been doing too much needlepoint.”

  “Embroidery,” I said. “There’s a difference.”

  “Your sister’s money is her own. We’re the parents. We pay the bills,” added my mother in a brittle voice. It was as clear as freshly Windexed glass that my mother and father lived in suspended animation. Did they hope their patience would pay off somehow? That their agreeing to be turned inside out for public consumption would somehow be rewarded? That Keira would eventually put them on easy street, as she kept hinting?