Lies of the Heart

by Michelle Boyajian

  “And then something would work out, something good—I’d ace a test, get into the right college—and I’d think, Okay, maybe she’s right. Maybe I deserve this, maybe I am just fucking brilliant.”

  He crosses his arms, his face slowly closing up.

  “Nick, don’t stop. Please. All these years—all this time.”

  His voice changing now, too. Becoming harsh, accusatory. “Always, always at the back of my mind, right until I moved out. I knew. It was just talk, she was just afraid that she would lose me, too.”

  “Nick, I know your mother isn’t perfect, but I don’t think—”

  “You weren’t there! You weren’t in that house, with her eyes hunting me down. Years! Like you, that’s all you do. But you, Katie, I believed you. From that first night, I thought you saw someone else, someone better. My biggest fan, right?”

  “I am, of course I am.”

  “Really?” Suddenly sneering now. “Still?”

  “Yes. Always.”

  He shakes his head again. “Right.”

  “It’s true, Nick. I swear it,” she says. “What can I do? I’ll do anything.”

  “I don’t know. I’m trying to figure it out.”

  “Do you think you just need a little time?”

  He stares for a few seconds. Lowers his head. “I found an apartment. I can rent it month to month.”

  She turns back to Jerry’s bed, sits down on it. Tries to draw air into her lungs. “You’re leaving?”

  “I can’t breathe here,” he says, looking around the room.

  “But—but what will we tell Jerry?” she says.

  “You’ll figure something out.”

  “Me?”

  But he only glares at her, waiting for her understanding.

  . . . And now she does, after all this time . . . Jerry was hers, right from the start . . . It didn’t matter why anymore, only that he had picked Katie . . . It was Katie he wanted, Katie he needed . . . And maybe even this, even this, was another failure in Nick’s eyes . . .

  “He’ll have to spend weekends with you,” Katie says. “You’ll have to tell him.”

  Using Jerry as a punishment, the child in the middle of the divorce.

  “Fine.”

  Her fingers dig into Jerry’s blanket. She watches Nick turn now, walk away from her. Listens to the sound of his footsteps as he walks to their bedroom.

  She listens to their bedroom closet open, the plunk of the suitcase hitting their bed. “I want you to leave,” Katie calls out to him. “Just go.”

  And then, when he doesn’t answer, in a hopeful voice: “Just for a little while.”

  . . . Pretending it was her choice, her decision . . .

  The dry squeak of drawers opening. Katie still on Jerry’s bed, cement in her limbs.

  She curls up on Jerry’s bed now, her body like lead. All this time she blamed Jerry for taking Nick away from her. For losing Nick.

  But I lost him myself, she thinks. He was already gone.

  6

  Jill and Sandy are in the courtroom now, waiting for her, and her entire family is there, too, filling the benches, standing at the back of the room. Dana must have called their parents early this morning, replayed the long conversation she had with Katie on the couch and then later, in the middle of the night—working through that last fight with Nick again. Her mother probably took over from there, burning the phone lines, making demands that no one dared refuse. Katie can hear her now, as she bends over the bathroom sink to wash her hands for the third time. What do you mean you have to work? For God’s sake, Katie needs you there today!

  The rows behind the prosecution table are filled with uncles, aunts, cousins she sees only twice a year and barely knows. Even her parents’ neighbors are there, along with Mr. and Mrs. Potter, the couple they go to Gregg’s restaurant with every Saturday night.

  Her mother didn’t say a word when Richard walked into the courtroom earlier—she just touched Katie’s arm, gave her a look of teary pride. But Katie could see the fear there, too, and in her father’s eyes as well. There would be consequences for what she said today, and Richard would be unforgiving.

  It was as if Richard were reading her mind at that very moment; he swiveled around in his chair to check on Katie, his speculative gaze urging her to her feet. “Bathroom,” she muttered to her mother, and raced out of the front row.

  Only seconds now before she’s called up to testify. Richard and Donna stand in front of Judge Hwang, arguing. She senses Jerry looking at her, turns. Jerry stares, his light blue eyes huge. He’s gaping at her, but it’s different this time: he sees her. He must have his contacts in, because this time he actually sees Katie.

  “What’s going on up there?” her mother whispers to Dana.

  Behind her, the sounds of her family’s agitation—moving restlessly in their seats, whispering. On the other side of the aisle, only silence. The jurors flick their eyes from the front of the room to Katie, and then to Jerry. Jerry, who doesn’t look away, his big eyes asking questions.

  Listen, Dana had said this morning. Listen to yourself. Only you.

  How will Katie lift her body off the bench? Stand? Walk to the front of the room? The jurors, her family, Jill, Dottie, Patricia, even Jerry now—witnesses to her stumbling confessions. Richard will humiliate her, he’ll cut her down, disgrace her. He’ll have to if he wants to win.

  And he will. Even after she tells them everything today, she knows Jerry will be convicted. She knows this now.

  Please God. Help me hear.

  The courtroom door opens, heads turn. Katie doesn’t move—she’su trying to will the pressure to lift up and out of her body; she’s trying to listen.

  Up at the bench, Donna slaps her hands at her sides, and Richard scowls at her, then whispers urgently to Judge Hwang.

  Time is jagged now, moving too fast, slowing down, racing ahead. On the other side of the room, bodies are stirring. The people behind Jerry turn to the back of the courtroom. Out of the corner of Katie’s eye, she can see them turning to her, too.

  She closes her eyes.

  Forgive me. Not knowing whom she is asking this of: God? Jerry? Herself?

  A dull hum of conversation starts on the other side of the room, grows in volume.

  “Quiet!” Judge Hwang orders, banging her gavel.

  Instant silence, but Katie is listening now. She opens her eyes, turns. Sees her.

  A woman well into her eighties—small, squat, her pink scalp showing through thin tufts of white hair. Leaning on a cane, led to a seat by Patricia. Jerry turns, too, peers. His huge frame jerks once, twice.

  Patricia’s face is grim as she helps the woman into the row behind Dottie and Eddie. The woman struggles to get her cane into the row, and it bangs the seat. Dottie’s body jumps, and she looks at Katie. A frown at first, and then she mouths something to Katie.

  “What is that woman saying to you?” her mother asks, and Katie mouths her own silent question back to Dottie: What?

  This time Dottie forms the words perfectly: Jerry’s mother.

  Katie shakes her head, a refusal. Dottie nods solemnly, and Katie hears her father’s voice as if from a distance.

  “You okay, sweetie?”

  Jerry’s mother? Jerry’s mother is alive? That’s her? That elderly woman sitting behind Dottie is the one who beat him and pushed lit cigarettes into his leg and drove a hot iron onto his back and starved him and told him that his existence was a sin? She’s in the room right now? That sweet-looking, grandmotherly little woman in the ruffled dress and the white knit sweater who peers around the room with a scared, uncertain smile on her face? That’s Jerry’s mother?

  Katie’s mother is talking, too, asking something Katie can’t hear because her heart is pounding the blood in circles around her head, deafening.

  Jerry’s mouth is moving now, his eyes frantic as he looks at the back of the courtroom. But how can he recognize her, after all this time? And why would Patricia or Donna Tr
eadmont want him to?

  Jerry turns to Katie. Eyes begging.

  “Jerry,” Katie whispers.

  She stands. Stumbles to the end of the row, swipes away the hands trying to stop her. Jerry’s lips mumble, mumble, there’s only Jerry now, how his eyes narrow at her. The terror and hope fighting inside them.

  “I’m right here,” Katie says loudly, tripping over Detective Mason’s foot at the end of the row.

  Judge Hwang’s voice echoes, calling out from the other side of a tunnel. “Mrs. Burrelli? We’re not ready for you yet.”

  But Jerry stands, too. He’s ripping at his ears. Earplugs—he’s pulled them out, two blue sponges. They drop to the floor, his chest heaving in and out, waiting. He can hear her now.

  “Everyone sit down!” Judge Hwang barks.

  “Jerry,” Katie calls out. “It’s me.”

  She’s at the gate, pushing. Jerry’s huge frame starts to spasm, mouth opening wide, eyes flaring. Donna sneaks into the frame, pulling on his arm.

  “Everyone, take your seats!”

  I’m coming, Katie thinks.

  Daniel and Patricia come into focus, too, they pull at Jerry’s arms, but he is fighting them, his fists tightening, and Katie pushes at the gate again—stuck, but no, a bailiff is there, blocking her, his arm coming up. Then more arms, touching her, and Dana’s voice.

  “Honey—”

  “Order!” The gavel pounding inside her head.

  Richard is rushing toward her, and people are standing, talking, the words growing louder. Katie zips her eyes to the jurors: standing, too, watching. She twists her body left, right, tries to wrench off the hands that keep holding her back.

  “Kay-tee!” Jerry screams—trying to rip himself out of the arms that grab at him, too, and then one arm flies free. His fist connects with Donna’s face.

  They yank at Katie, but she fights, the bailiffs charging at Jerry, then officers in beige, all of them descending on top of him.

  “Stop it!”

  An arm hooks around Jerry’s neck, khaki limbs wrapping around his legs, tackling. People shouting, people pulling at her as she wrestles away from them. Jerry falls behind the table, groaning, screaming, and Katie can’t see him anymore. She can only hear him, his choking sobs, her name on his lips, and then she feels it, the heaviness finally slipping free from her body, the sheer weightlessness of falling.

  “Here,” her mother says. “Sit up.” She guides Katie up from the pillow and hands her a mug of tea. “Be careful, it’s hot.”

  Dana, stretched out on Nick’s side of the bed, nuzzles Jack in her arms.

  “Is that what you have to do to get a drink around here? Faint?” Dana teases. “Kind of dramatic, isn’t it?”

  “Not the time, Dana,” her mother says. “And get that dog off the bed.”

  “Has anyone called yet?” Katie asks.

  Her mother curls Katie’s hair around one ear. “Patricia said she’d call as soon as she can get in to see him.”

  “She said to thank you, too,” Dana says, propping up on an elbow. “For trying to help.”

  “I think I just made everything worse, though, don’t you?” She asks this of her mother, whose face flushes guiltily. “Oh, I didn’t mean it like that, Mom. I’m not trying to throw that comment about me back in your face. Honest.”

  Her mother waves her off. “I know it, hon, don’t worry about it. I know, this mouth of mine,” she says, shaking her head. “Sometimes it doesn’t come out the right way.”

  “You were right, though,” Katie says quietly.

  “I’ll give this bedding a wash when you get up,” her mother says. She fusses around the bed, fluffing pillows, smoothing the comforter around Katie.

  “Even if it didn’t come out right, Mom, thank you. I’m going to pay more attention from now on.”

  “For the record,” Dana says, grinning from her side of the bed, “I think we all agreed that you have to pay less attention to everything around you. Isn’t that right, Mother?”

  “Really, Dana,” her mother says, hands on hips, “I don’t understand your need to make a joke out of everything today.”

  But it was Dana who’d whisked Katie out of the courtroom, one arm securely around her waist, her face tight with concern. Get the hell out of the way! she’d screamed at a group of reporters outside who hadn’t even noticed their approach.

  They all turn at the sound of Katie’s father pounding his way up the stairs.

  “Everyone decent in there?” he bellows outside the door.

  “Yes, Jimmy, and we don’t all wear hearing aids either.”

  “Listen, Grace,” her father yells from the hallway. “There’s a guy downstairs looking for Katie. Ben something. Says he’s a friend, but he looks a little suspicious to me. Possibly a reporter or a private detective.”

  Loud enough for the entire neighborhood to hear.

  Her mother stares at the doorway. “God bless him,” she says, wagging her head.

  Her mother has stationed Katie on the sofa with her favorite blue plaid blanket over her legs, like Katie has just returned home from surgery. A slice of sunlight cuts through the bay window and across her knees, and Katie flutters her fingers in it as she waits for Ben to settle his lanky frame into the chair her mother placed beside the sofa.

  “It’s good to see you again, Ben.”

  His gray hair is thinner now, his face pale and flaccid. It’s startling seeing him this close, but not just because he has aged so much in the past year; Katie is shocked by how much he looks like Sarah. He has his mother’s eyes, Arthur said once, and he was right. They are the same deep blue as hers, curving up at the sides.

  “Are you sick?” Ben asks her.

  “No, I’m fine. I fainted today,” Katie says. “In court.”

  His face grows pensive. “I should come back, Katie. Another day. I do not want to intrude, dear.”

  Inside the kitchen there is only silence: her family sitting at the table, eavesdropping.

  “No, it’s fine, Ben.”

  Ben nods his head thoughtfully. “I thought—and maybe I’m wrong, so if I am please excuse me—but I’ve been reading about the trial. In the paper. I thought your head would be filled with grief. I hoped I could take some of it away, if that is not too arrogant. My parents wanted that.”

  Katie nods, looks at her hands folded on top of the blanket. “I miss them, Ben.”

  “Me, too,” he says quietly.

  The sound of two short squeaks interrupts their shared sadness—a chair inching forward inside the kitchen. Probably her mother, so she can hear their conversation better.

  “You’re sure I’m not disturbing you?” Ben’s face wrinkles up with worry, another reminder of Sarah.

  “No, but there’s something I have to tell you, too.”

  “Okay,” he says with a smile. “Ladies first.”

  He listens to her story with a calm expression on his face, takes it better than she expected, her admission that she is still having trouble with his parents’ documentary. He only nods when Katie tells him how much she watched Sarah and Arthur, how seeing them together, and listening to them, should have taught her something about her own marriage, but she wasn’t willing, or able, to understand until recently. Katie only hints at the specifics, too embarrassed to tell Ben about her relationship with Nick—the passion, the physical connection that they shared almost until he left. How seeing Sarah and Arthur, who learned how to communicate and love each other so deeply without even touching or seeing each other, made her feel restless at times. There is not only one way to show that you love someone, Arthur had said once. A lesson, apparently, that Katie had refused to understand.

  “That day you met my parents, Katie. At the restaurant?”

  “They told you about that?”

  Katie’s face grows hot, wondering what Arthur and Sarah said to him. She imagines Arthur telling his son about her behavior, his big eyes even wider with disbelief. This woman, she walks up t
o our table and stares at us for a full minute! I thought she wanted one of your mother’s french fries!

  “They saw your unhappiness that day,” Ben says. “My parents, they always said that you found them for a reason. That they could not let you down.”

  Her chin trembles, and she reaches up to cover it with one hand. Very soon Katie will have to tell Ben the truth, that she is the one who will let them down, because she doesn’t think she can finish their documentary after all.

  “You talked to them about your husband?” Ben prods gently. “Your marriage?”

  “A little. They asked questions.”

  “They listened,” Ben says. “And they watched you back, dear. They saw.”

  Those doubtful looks that Katie missed until recently, the questions about Nick and their marriage—not just light chatter to pass the time, but a lead-up to the real business of their meetings.

  “Arthur was sick, wasn’t he?” Katie says.

  “All the coughing? Yes. But it was nothing serious,” Ben says. “It was my mother who was becoming very ill.”

  “Sarah?”

  “The doctors said she had Alzheimer’s. Not a bad case yet, but she was starting to forget things. And she was starting to have trouble sorting out the present with her memories. Her thoughts were getting jumbled up quite a bit.”

  Katie recalls Sarah’s looks of confusion, her blank stares, her frequent disorientation. Arthur’s gentle nudges for her to focus, or to answer Katie’s questions. And in the last reel Katie watched, the odd, girlish tone of Sarah’s voice when she described the first rape. A dozen different things that should have alerted Katie that something was wrong with her—but again, she missed what was right in front of her.

  “That’s why they took their lives?” Katie says.

  “They didn’t want to experience it again, to live in the past. They wanted to move on. But before that, they both wanted to leave something behind.”

  Katie looks down. “I don’t think I can finish the documentary, Ben. I’m so sorry.”

  He leans forward, places his hand on hers. Smiles. “They didn’t care if you finished, dear.”