Lies of the Heart

by Michelle Boyajian

  Jerry lay in bed that night, eyes locking onto every object, his hair still wet from a shower.

  —Did you remember to shampoo? Katie asked him, sitting at the edge. She ran her fingers through his thin brown hair.

  —Uh-oh.

  —That’s okay. Tomorrow.

  —I forget.

  —It’s okay. We’ll have to change your contacts tomorrow, too.

  —Yuck.

  —I know.

  Jerry’s eyes were wide as he scanned the walls, the dresser.—Dis my room.

  —It really is.

  —Wow.

  —It will always be your room, buddy.

  A few seconds of thoughtful mumbling, then looking at Katie expectantly. —God not come here mad.

  —Never, Katie said.—No way.

  —Oh. I forget.

  —That’s what I’m here for, right?

  —Right, Jerry said, hiding his relieved smile under the sheet.

  —Now, what book should we have on your first night? In the mood for a Gruffalo?

  He looked around his room again, at Katie.—No book, he said. He wriggled closer to her.—You know.

  —Again?

  —It May, Jerry said, and waited.

  Months later, when the weather turned cold and she started editing the footage in the basement—months later, when they realized that Jerry’s episodes had suddenly ended because he finally had a home, a real home with a mother and a father every weekend, and sometimes during the week, too—Katie knew she had the perfect ending to his film: Jerry twirling inside his room, staring in wonder, the kind of amazed relief you could almost touch.

  After the holidays Katie reviewed the final edited footage while Nick was at work. She kept rewinding to that last episode caught on film, Jerry’s final outburst of anguish on their boat before the incidents disappeared forever—the only one captured from beginning to end, because Katie had neglected to turn the camera off before she put it down on the cushioned seat of their boat to race to Jerry’s side. The camera recording the aftermath for the first time—Jerry clinging to her, gulping his fear into her neck, calling her name. Why, she wondered absently as she looked at the screen, why hadn’t she edited herself out? Katie stood in her cold basement, watched herself in Jerry’s arms, saw her own arms securely around him. And she knew.

  It didn’t matter that her old classmate who worked at PBS hadn’t returned any of her calls since the initial one, wasn’t important that she didn’t have any real contacts she could call. Jerry’s film was everything a filmmaker could wish for: compelling, sweet, frightening, hopeful—the journey of a mentally handicapped man who had risen above his past, who had discovered the secret to living with his fears. The film would be snatched up, there might even be bidders—but still, Katie knew.

  Standing alone in the basement, she replayed this entire scene, again and again—strange to see herself on the screen like this, a part of Jerry’s life for the first time on film. Strange that her time behind the camera, and watching and editing footage that didn’t include her had in some ways erased her existence in his story. But here she was now, and here was Jerry, holding her, needing only her, and Katie knew in that moment, before she turned off the projector, that she couldn’t do it. Knew, for reasons she couldn’t explain right then, that displaying Jerry’s private pain and offering his tortured history to strangers would be a betrayal. Katie could easily edit herself out of the scene, out of Jerry’s story on film, but she couldn’t erase those times when Jerry’s past came bursting out of him, when the camera was put aside and he fell into her, trusting that Katie would keep him safe. And without the actual violent episodes on film, the entire direction of the documentary crumbled.

  She turned off the camera, and the darkness unfolded inside their basement. She pictured Nick’s reaction when she told him tonight that they didn’t need to do his voice-over after all. When she told him they were done, and started packing the reels away forever.

  They stood in a row, facing the screen. Nick was right beside Katie, but he wouldn’t look at her. His eyes skipped from the screen to Patricia, who held her elbows in her arms, watching the footage:

  Jerry, sitting on the long cushioned seat at the stern of the boat, smiling up at the sky, his eyes half open—the camera zooming in on the look of blissful happiness on his chubby face. Over his shoulder, sunset on the ocean, haunting and a little sad in its perfection, the sun slowly falling in the pink- and orange-ribboned sky. But then a sudden, dark rumble. In the distance the gray underlining of puffy clouds filled with light from above, and seconds later another shock of thunder—louder, longer, the kind you could feel right in your bones. A bolt of lightning knifed across the sky, and a small child on a nearby boat wailed in fear. Jerry’s lips moved, silently at first, and then the words, barely audible. —Lord come with fire.

  Within seconds, the camera was sideways on a cushion, tracking the lower half of Katie’s body, her legs moving quickly to his side, her arms fastening around him. The basement filled with Katie’s whispering: —I’m here, Jerry, I have you, you’re okay.

  —Is God come now? Jerry said, his thick arms shaking Katie. Katie, who would not let go, even as the boat lifted up into the water and tipped them over, falling out of the camera’s view.

  Katie stopped the film, flipped on the lights.

  —I just can’t, she said.—He trusts us, and—I don’t know, but when I picture people watching him, if I even think about Jerry knowing we’ve shared this—

  —We’ll explain it to him, we’ll tell him why. Nick said this to Patricia, ignoring Katie’s pleading look.

  Patricia held Nick’s gaze for a moment.—We have to trust Katie’s judgment, she finally said, then turned to Katie.—Thank you, she said.—Thank you for your compassion.

  —But he hasn’t had an episode since this last one, Nick argued, gesturing to the dark screen.—Not in months, not since the summer. We show that in the film, how he eventually overcame them.

  Katie felt a tug at the “we,” how strongly Nick had aligned himself with one of her projects for the very first time. Patricia remained silent as she faced Nick, her mouth pinched—Katie’s decision confirmed. The program director turned back to Katie.

  —I didn’t realize, Katie, she said.—I had no idea how much Jerry relied on you.

  Katie was unable to see Nick’s reaction to this, because he was already storming toward the basement stairs.

  —I don’t believe it, he said angrily.—This is what it’s been about all along. We knew this from the beginning.

  —He can’t—I can’t share it. It isn’t our right, Katie called after Nick tearfully, watching him disappear upstairs. She turned back to Patricia.—He’s my family now, I have to protect him.

  —I agree, Patricia said.—And I respect your decision, Katie.

  For weeks she tried to make Nick understand, to explain why she had to abandon the film.

  —Even if Jerry never sees it, it’ll be out there, she told him.—And we’ll know that we’ve taken the most painful parts of his life and given them away to strangers.

  —Aren’t most of the people who watch documentaries strangers? Isn’t that the whole point?

  —But Jerry only showed this side of himself to us, no one else, because he trusted us.

  —There were other people around every time, Katie. Every time.

  —He didn’t see them, he only knew that we were there, that we would help—

  But Nick’s dark eyes filled with contempt each time before he turned away.

  Her documentary, so close to completion, would never be shown to the world, and this fact ripped into her marriage like a storm, tearing apart the peace and companionship that she had shared with Nick for so many months. Nick looking at her as if she’d betrayed him, no matter how many times she insisted that she loved him more, she wasn’t choosing Jerry over him—but she had to follow her heart.

  When Candice called (frequently now, her happy voice fu
ll of mild victory when Katie answered) Katie would watch Nick standing in the kitchen, the phone crushed against his ear, nodding emphatically at his mother’s words. Chewing on the inside of his mouth, skipping his eyes toward Katie, waiting until she found other parts of the house to hunt restlessly. Katie didn’t need to hear her mother-in-law’s words to know what she was saying; it was written all over Nick’s face: I told you. Selfish woman. A mistake, right from the start. And she didn’t have to look at Nick to understand his angry displeasure, because it radiated from him every time they were close—close but completely separate, the miles yawning between them.

  Jerry still slept over every weekend, and occasionally during the week, but now he watched Nick carefully—seeing but not understanding the tension, the palpable disappointment and resentment Nick’s face revealed whenever he walked into a room and found them together. Like he had entered a room in their house that he didn’t know existed until that moment—and he wasn’t happy about the discovery.

  —Nick feel mad?

  —No, of course not.

  —Sure?

  Jerry’s eyes always tracking Nick closely now, the questions growing. Why Nick shower so long? Why Nick not watch movies with us? And at the Warwick Center: What Nick do in room with Carly? Why he eat lunch in office today? He mad?

  On the weekends there were ways to make the questions stop. A pair of T-strap silver pumps with clear side buttons, a rounded peep toe, and a wedge heel. Red Mary Janes with an ankle strap and plenty of places to take hold and tear.

  Afterward she hid the remains in the garbage can outside, then went back inside to Jerry, who would retreat to his room to draw.

  —Your dad say he pay me for to rake old leaves, Jerry said one afternoon, looking up from his pad.—Okay?

  —I’ll drive you over tomorrow.

  —Maybe your mom cook?

  He loved her mother’s cooking, almost as much as her father’s constant teasing about the growing tab he was calculating for Jerry’s food consumption. How her father would wink at Katie, so Jerry could see, and pull out a small notebook from his back pocket. Let’s see, a hunk of lasagna that big would be at least six dollars, so I think we’re up to one million, four hundred thousand . . . Wait a minute. Grace, did you give this boy garlic bread, too? How much we charging for that now?

  —Nick not mad? Jerry said more and more on his visits.

  —No.

  —He come with us to your mom’s dis time?

  —Maybe.

  She saw his looks of doubt, tried to ignore the way his eyes trailed down to her feet.

  13

  On Monday morning Katie wakes somewhere near dawn, kicking away the down comforter and the knotted sheets around her ankles. Her foot clips Jack, lying at the end of the bed, and he grunts and hops off the bed. He stands beside it, tail between his legs, looking up at her.

  “Sorry,” she murmurs, running her hands over her face.

  Outside the window the blue-gray morning is beginning to reveal the outlines of the day, the start of another long week in court. But first this, first Nick—so close only moments before that she could smell his skin, feel the silk of his hair between her fingers.

  In the spring, when he moved out, Katie’s dreams had started to change, so slowly at first that she hardly noticed. She’d wake up the same as always, recall snippets of the vivid images that came from childhood—a birthday party at Judi’s, her best friend in the sixth grade until her family moved to California, or swimming at Matunuck Beach with her family, or walking the crumbling military edifices in Beaver-tail with Amy and Jill as teenagers. She’d remember bits of dreams with childhood dogs that bounded up to her, wagging their tails, no signs of the crippling arthritis or kidney failure that took them away years later, or that same dream she still has today, where she’s sitting in her senior-year history class, realizing with an acid panic that she hasn’t been to the class the entire year; she would fail the final, wouldn’t graduate, and her mother would kill her. But then others came, and she’d wake in the morning, rub the sleep out of her eyes, and suddenly remember: Nick had visited her in the night, buried in between the other dreams, his face slowly taking shape.

  Nick had made it into her dreams when they were together, but in all those years his image was more like a mirage—his outline wavering, like the camera in her dreams was permanently out of focus. But shortly after he packed his things and left the house for what she thought would be a brief respite, his image started to form completely. A month later, after he had left her world for good, she’d wake in the darkness with a start, swallowing back her tears, her hand sweeping across his side of the bed. She’d remember the dream—Nick whispering her name, his face above hers, Nick laughing at her as she danced under a spray of water on the docks, and, later, Nick lying in a pool of blood, his eyes blank but lips moving and saying something she couldn’t hear—and then the bubbling would start on the underside of her belly, and she’d sit up in bed. Dead. Nick was dead. Sometimes she said it out loud, and other times she willed herself back into the dream so she could be with him again, feel his body close to hers, even if his head was framed by a dark puddle of his own blood.

  But this morning’s dream was worse, because it didn’t have any of the confusing yet familiar shifts that dreams usually have, the jarring skips in time or location, the sudden replacement of her mother for her eighth-grade algebra teacher. It mimicked reality so closely that the voice inside her head that should have reminded her that she was dreaming was absent, and she felt the full force of the fight inside her, as though it were happening in real time: Charging into Nick’s office upstairs, confronting him about the abandoned documentary because the spaces between them were still there, gaping, six months later. Don’t you get it, Nick? I’m your biggest fan, she had said, and in the dream she saw it again, the light of wonder on his face as he looked at her. I’m nothing without you, I’m not even here, she said, and looked up to see Nick’s face, so clearly, so clearly right in front of her. You’re everything, she said, and closed her eyes. She felt him pull her body into his, sank into his embrace. Katie, Katie. His voice the same as that night, tormented but with a hint of awe in it, too. I’ve been so lost, Katie. And in the dream, with Nick’s arms around her, she felt the hope from that night, the hope in Nick’s need to have her see him, to really see him and believe in him, how important he was to her—how important she could still be to him.

  She wipes the sleep out of her eyes now, and in a wavery voice asks Jack to come back on the bed. The little dog eyes her, still wary. She hugs her knees into her chest, relives the rest of that night with Nick, what the dream didn’t capture. Later, in bed together, lying side by side.

  —Let’s start a family, she had whispered, needing to keep him close, knowing how easily he could retreat again.

  —I don’t know.

  —It will be a boy, and he’ll look just like you.

  Katie listened to his rapid breathing, the doubt with every inhale and exhale. Said the words he needed to hear:—You’ll be an amazing father. He’ll make you proud.

  Her own breaths matching his then.

  —When? Nick finally said, and Katie pulled his hand onto her stomach.

  —Now.

  Now, she had said to him, and heard Nick draw in his breath as she pressed his hand into her flesh.

  A little girl who laughed like him or, better, a boy who had his eyes . . .

  She can almost feel Nick’s body against hers right now, the hope speeding through him, dreaming of his son. And then Katie sees Dana’s arms thrown wide to include Katie’s entire life—this moment with Nick, and the years before she met him, the months since he’d left, and everything in between. Wanting Katie to talk to a professional, to tell a complete stranger all of it.

  “How?” she says, and buries her head inside her hands. Jack hops up onto the bed, pushes his nose into her.

  When, Nick had said that night, finally coming back to her all the w
ay. Now.

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” she says helplessly to the dog, enough for him to lean his body into hers with a nervous whine. She hugs him into her lap, stares into his black eyes. “What else could I give him?”

  THREE

  1

  On Monday morning Jerry’s current social worker, Amanda, is on the witness stand first, immediately floundering under Richard’s pounding questions. The young woman’s eyes protrude a little, which adds to the dazed look on her face; she blinks at Richard and around the room, struggling to keep her composure.

  “So if someone filed an incident report at the Warwick Center about the defendant’s violent behavior, your office would be notified and a copy of it would be sent for your files as well?”

  “Yes, but Jerry hadn’t been violent in such a long time—”

  “But the reports should be in the files regardless of time, right?”

  “They should be,” Amanda says.

  “But they aren’t, so how have you tried to account for that?”

  “I haven’t . . . I can’t, actually. I thought we sent you the complete files when you subpoenaed them.”

  Richard raises his eyebrows at the jurors. “As his current social worker, are you aware that the defendant went through a period of time when he was aggressive and disruptive? Or didn’t you even read the reports?”

  “No—I mean, yes, I knew and I read them, but it was my understanding—”

  “That they weren’t important anymore?”

  “No, not that, it’s—”

  “And how long ago did you read them?”

  “When I was assigned his case, about eight months ago.”

  “And now they’re just”—Richard snaps his fingers—“missing.”

  “That’s what I heard—but I when I sent them, I think they were in—”