Lies of the Heart

by Michelle Boyajian

  When Jerry had acted out at McDonald’s and at his birthday party right here at the apartment, Nick had sat at the computer just like this, writing up incident reports for Jerry’s file. Of course Katie wasn’t allowed to read the final drafts—Confidential, Nick had said both times, even though Jerry eventually ended up in Katie’s arms, mumbling Scripture and sobbing into her hair, both times.

  She pictured herself handing Nick her own report from the night before, immediately saw his reaction: that same expression whenever Jerry suddenly reached for her, in fear or in happiness, the same one whenever Nick saw Katie whispering with the staff in private places at the center. She turned the computer off, watched her name disappear.

  She stared at the blank screen, saw Nick’s hands fisted by his sides, his chest pushed forward. She swiveled in the chair to look at her closet, at the shoes spilling out of it.

  For the next hour, Katie reorganized the closet—jeans and cargos folded neatly on the wire shelves on one side, shirts hung by color, dark to light—then sifted through and weeded out the shoes she didn’t mind giving up. The shoes Jerry would take into the bathroom when Nick was out running an errand, or to the bedroom while Nick was showering, and rip to pieces. The shoes he would try on first, then tear apart and destroy with his hands, while Katie waited patiently for him to finish so she could bury them at the bottom of the trash.

  Reassuring him each time, It’s okay, Jerry. I won’t tell anyone. You have my word, you can trust me.

  Nick finally called her around six-thirty, on his way back from the group home.

  —You took him home already? she asked.

  —We had a big day. He was tired.

  —Why didn’t you call me back?

  —I was thinking, he began slowly.—I was thinking about the visits. I should have told you this sooner. But I think I should take Jerry on them by myself for a little while.

  —Why?

  —Just until we get a better handle on his recent behavior.

  —Did you talk to Patricia about this?

  —I’m going to, tomorrow. And his social worker, too. Maybe it’ll help if he has some alone time with me, just a male presence to interact with. If they do agree, it will probably be better if you lay off on the visits to the center for now, too. It might distract him.

  Just like that. In less than a minute, Katie felt herself thrust back in time, to a life filled with restless tiptoeing around the outskirts of everything that felt important.

  —I kept calling, Nick, because I wanted to tell you, she said quickly, struggling to sound casual.—That old college friend called me back this morning.

  —Yeah?

  —The guy who works at PBS?

  —Great, Nick said.—Hey, did you eat yet? I could pick something up.

  —No, but listen. He said he’s busy, but he’s willing to look at my work. I was going to call him back and pitch this idea I’ve been throwing around, but I wanted to talk to you about it first.

  —Okay, shoot.

  —Well, I’ve been thinking about you and Jerry a lot lately. How there’d be a huge audience for this sort of thing.

  —What sort of thing? Nick’s voice unmistakably defensive.

  —Your relationship with Jerry, how much you’re helping him, how much progress he’s making. It would be the focus of the film. I think PBS would definitely pick it up, possibly even enter it into some film festivals or something. But if you think Jerry should spend time alone with you . . .

  —You think this guy would be interested?

  —Definitely.

  —Hmmmmm.

  —I’d have to be around for the filming, although I’d be behind a camera most of the time, so I wouldn’t be in the film at all. But if you don’t think it’s a good idea for me to be around Jerry right now, I’ll show him something else. I just thought it would be so cool to see you on TV, Nick. How all these people you’ve never met would see you working with Jerry, too . . . She trailed off again, waiting.

  Only silence then, but she knew Nick by now. His silence, for once, enough—an answer. Her legs nearly buckling with relief, she sat down on the couch, waited for his spoken confirmation.

  11

  On Saturday, Katie finally calls Jill back, and they meet for a long lunch date at Twin Oaks. Sitting across the table from her friend, she thinks what a relief it is to replace her family’s interrogation and a sleepless night of foundering with Jill’s steady patter about the man she’s breaking up with, the one she wants to date next, the deranged woman who cut her off and almost killed her on Route 6 the other day.

  “This woman had all this crazy hair, sort of spiky and all in her face,” Jill says, motioning to her own long hair, “you know, like that girl in high school, the one who wouldn’t change in front of anyone in the locker room, Lacey, or Nellie something?”

  “Nancy. Nancy Cummings.”

  “Yes, Nancy, God, I haven’t thought about her in years, but, Katie, this woman in the Volvo looked right at me, and I swear she stuck her tongue out right before she swerved her car at mine! And then I was flying into the other lane, and a couple of seconds later I hopped the curb and was heading right for a tree!” Jill laughs as if this is the funniest thing that could have happened to her on a Thursday afternoon during the five-o’clock rush.

  Katie picks at her chef salad, smiling and nodding every so often at Jill, who is like a windup toy with a broken string today; the tales pour out of her mouth through the entire meal, until she finally pushes her plate away.

  “Whew, I’m stuffed,” she says. “So that’s me.” Jill grins, props her elbows on the table. “Should we try to squeeze you into this conversation or what? What’s going on with the trial?”

  “It’s going,” she tells Jill vaguely, and then reassures her friend that she still doesn’t need any company. “It’s not as bad as I thought it would be,” Katie says, looking for the waiter. She catches his eye across the room.

  “Look at you, Katie,” Jill says, staring, “You are so strong.”

  Don’t believe everything you see, Katie thinks, but she just smiles at Jill, asks her if she’s heard from Amy lately.

  “A few weeks ago,” Jill says, less animated now. “They’re already buried in snow up there.” Her face clouds over as she reaches into her purse for her wallet.

  “You know,” Katie begins, her heart starting to race as she watches the melancholy deepen on Jill’s face, “I was just wondering something the other day. It’s sort of silly.”

  Jill tips her head up, stops flipping through credit cards.

  Katie lines her plate up to the very edge of the table; her skin tingling, her legs a little wobbly, she forces the words out. “But, you know how you and Amy were so close in high school?”

  Jill squints at Katie, a small crease forming between her eyebrows. “Well, we were all close, right?”

  “Yeah, of course,” Katie says, trying to assemble the words that suddenly feel adolescent and foolish: Did you like me as much as her back then? And if Amy hadn’t moved to Michigan, would you be here right now? But then an urgent voice drowns them out, warning—do you really want these answers now?

  “I was just wondering,” Katie finishes brightly, “if you thought Amy was happy up there. Married and with kids.”

  Jill doesn’t answer right away. She sits very still, looking at Katie. “Seems like it,” she says. “You should call her sometime.”

  The waiter comes, and Jill reaches for the check. “My treat,” she says in the same subdued voice.

  Out in the parking lot, they hug, and Katie promises to keep in better touch.

  “I know that your life is nuts lately,” Jill says, opening her car door. “But you can call me anytime. And I’ll still come to court if you change your mind.”

  “Thanks,” Katie says.

  “Don’t thank me, you idiot, that’s what friends are for,” Jill says, smiling, but there’s an impatient edge in her voice that Katie doesn’t recognize.
>
  “I’ll call you,” Katie says, nodding, “I will.”

  But Jill’s door is already shut, the engine humming to life.

  By Sunday evening Katie is more than a little surprised. She has received only one phone call from her family all weekend—from her father—and then just to tell her about the robbery at Gregg’s restaurant, where her parents and their friends go every Saturday night for one of their famously rich desserts.

  “We missed them by minutes!” her father had yelled into the answering machine after Katie ignored the ringing, content to sit on the floor with Jack and share her turkey and cheese grinder. “Only minutes, Katie!”

  She felt a little guilty sitting there on the floor, ignoring her father’s call—or she did for about one minute and ten seconds, the time it took for her father to use up the minute he was allotted to leave a message and call back to further speculate about what might have happened. No mention of the trial, no mention of the failed intervention to help Katie understand why she had recently become “worse.”

  Worse than what? Katie had wondered again, seeing the pity in her father’s eyes as Jack nudged closer. What did they want from her? Change, their faces seemed to say as they talked about Katie’s job, her life, change who you are. She remembered her mother’s words from so long ago—You need to make more of an effort—and her own frustrated wish to be different. To be better.

  “Just four minutes, five tops, and me and your mother and the Potters would have come face-to-face with these thugs at the door!” her father had yelled into the phone.

  Katie peeled off the heel of her sandwich, put it on the floor for Jack; she rose and turned the volume down on the machine, cutting off her father’s sad observation that it was, after all, a very troubling comment about the world when you couldn’t even eat a piece of strawberry cheesecake or coconut cream pie without risking death.

  Now that Jack is, she hopes, done vomiting all over the kitchen (the Swiss cheese from the sandwich causing his spine to bow as he hacked up the mess in little puddles, Katie remembering Sandy’s warning about dairy too late), she wanders aimlessly around the house, contemplating the decisions that were made about the footage this weekend, the finished tape the jurors will see in court. What happy moments will make their way onto this tape, how they will dovetail with Jerry’s anger—what it will feel like to see Jerry’s love reflected back to her through her lens in front of an entire courtroom. And Nick. To see him again, to hear his voice and see the camera close in on his face, to witness him once again embracing Jerry, laughing with him, encouraging him. But maybe Richard was right about this; even Donna would understand the dangers of showing too many shots of Nick alive, eagerly helping Jerry. Loving Jerry.

  She ignores Jack, who trails behind her, whining insistently. “Go on out,” she tells the little dog in the kitchen, and opens the slider for him.

  Outside, long, slow gusts of cold wind rock the tops of the trees in her backyard. Jack trips along the lawn, nose close to the ground, then disappears behind the trash cans.

  The phone rings inside again—the fourth time in a row—and Katie’s glad she turned down the volume. Despite her protests, Richard informed Katie on Friday that he wouldn’t bother her this weekend with the details of the final footage, so it wouldn’t be him. It can wait until Monday morning, he insisted. Try to enjoy your weekend. With any luck the person calling is just her father, still ruminating about his close call, and not Ben Cohen again—though she doubts that Ben would call repeatedly like this after leaving another message this morning. Still, she really should return Ben’s phone call, because it’s clear that something must be wrong. At first his message hadn’t troubled her—it was left in the same casual voice he always used—but later Katie wondered at his persistence. It wasn’t like Ben to call twice in the same month, never mind the same week. She had missed his phone calls before, back when Nick was alive and after he was gone, and then a month or two later Ben would call again, too polite to mention Katie’s slight. But while she should at least acknowledge this change in his behavior, the thought of one of those long, casual conversations with Arthur and Sarah’s son is just too exhausting. All she wants to do now is gather up Jack and cuddle with him in front of the TV, relax a bit before another week in court.

  “Jack?”

  Either the little dog has found a special treat behind the trash cans or he’s heaving up the rest of the sandwich from earlier. Katie can see only the stub of his white tail sticking straight up, stiff with concentration.

  The phone rings again, and this time Katie hears two long beeps, which means the caller has decided on this fifth try to leave a message. Just as she is about to turn to the house to investigate, the gate opens on the side of her yard and Dana steps through, her cell phone raised at Katie.

  “You are familiar with how this phone thing works, right?” Dana asks blithely. She says hi to Jack, who trots over to greet her, a small, dark lump hanging out of his mouth. “I dial some numbers, and your phone rings, and then you pick up your phone, and then we get to talk?”

  “I didn’t feel like hearing any more of Dad’s drama about last night,” Katie says, surprised by the unexpected flood of happiness she feels.

  Dana snaps her phone closed. “Forty-five minutes. That’s how long I had to listen to what could have happened if the thieves were a couple of minutes earlier. And I blame it on you,” she says with a sly smile. “You couldn’t take a little heat off me?”

  Dana crouches down to Jack, who opens his mouth and lets the lump plop onto the lawn.

  “What is that?” Dana says, standing and covering her nose. “Ewww. It stinks.”

  Jack wags his tail, then proceeds to drop to the ground and roll gleefully all over what appears to be a dead bird.

  “Oh, shit,” Katie says, and rushes down the deck stairs.

  “I’ll get the plastic gloves from under the sink, you fill up the tub,” Dana says, walking past Katie and punching her lightly on the arm.

  “Jack!” they yell in unison, which does nothing to stop him from shaking off the thick suds from his fur. Soapy bubbles fly in every direction, landing on their arms, shirts, hair. For a few minutes, they dig in and scrub on opposite sides.

  “I’m mad at you, Dana,” Katie finally says. She pushes away her sister’s hand when it creeps onto her half of Jack’s body.

  “I know.”

  They massage Jack’s twisting body in silence, and then Dana grabs the shower hose. Katie puts her hand up to Jack’s face: stay. Dana stands and sprays him off, and then Katie lifts him out of the tub and onto the bathroom mat. They both get down on their knees to dry him off, but Katie tugs the towel out of Dana’s grip.

  “I can do this part alone.”

  Dana sits back on her heels, slowly peels off her gloves.

  The wiry white fur on Jack’s back stands straight up on end as he pants with impatience for Katie to finish. When she stops toweling to face off with her sister, Jack sees his chance; he sprints away and bounds out of the bathroom and up the hallway. Dana keeps her head tucked down, fingering the tips of her wet gloves.

  “How could you all gang up on me like that?” Katie asks her sister.

  “I told you, it wasn’t supposed to be like that. Mom was coming over to continue your conversation from the night before, which is the only reason I was there. To make sure she didn’t freak you out.”

  “Great job.”

  “I know.”

  “So care to clue me in now?”

  Dana stands and takes Katie’s wet gloves, drops both pairs into the tub.

  “What did she mean by ‘more of the same,’ Dana?”

  “Mom said she wants to wait until the trial is over to discuss it with you again, and I agreed. It would be too much right now, but it isn’t anything horrible.”

  “No, not horrible, just ‘worse.’ ”

  All of a sudden, Dana is intensely interested in making sure the wet towel is hanging perfectly straight ove
r the shower rod.

  “Dana?”

  “Okay,” her sister says, studying the towel. She brushes her hand against it, turns to Katie. “Okay, then let’s just do this.” Dana sits down on the toilet, places a steadying hand on each thigh.

  Katie settles herself on the rim of the tub, ignoring the water that immediately sinks into the seat of her jeans.

  “I have to warn you, though, it isn’t that simple,” Dana says.

  “What in my life is simple right now?”

  “Oh, honey, I know,” her sister says, and tries to grab her hand.

  Katie shakes her head. “Just tell me.”

  “Okay. Well,” Dana says, and then becomes quiet, as if she’s selecting her words carefully first. “Well, do you remember when you were little? How much you loved to watch movies all the time? And you—”

  “Wait,” Katie says, leaning forward. “Why would you bring that up now?”

  “What?”

  “Richard said something about me watching movies just a few days ago.”

  “He did? What did he say?” Her sister looks at the doorway, like she’s waiting for Jack to reappear.

  Katie pictures herself in the courtroom, Richard asking her to act, her dramatic reaction to the gun. “Never mind, just get to the point.”

  “Kate, you need to be patient, because I really do feel like shit about this. I know I should have said something to you a long time ago, and I was wrong not to. I mean, it’s my job—”

  “I’m not one of your clients, Dana. I shouldn’t be a job to you.”

  “No, you aren’t, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just the opposite, actually. My training, my objectivity is almost nonexistent with the people I love. Like that time Michael—”

  “Can we just focus here?” Katie interrupts. “How all the trouble began when I was a little girl and used to watch movies all the time?”