“Right. Never mind. I’ll see you then.”
“Okay, yeah,” he said. I waited for him to ask me why I had called, what was wrong, but instead he offered up the information that Scofield was hot, that he was going camping over the weekend, that he wasn’t getting as many hours at the shop as he wanted. I hung up feeling lonelier than before.
One day during our lunchtime, the phone rang, and Mom picked up the extension in the den. She shook her head when I asked who was calling—a hang-up then, a wrong number. Not many people had the number of our landline, not since Dad’s election when numerous steps had been taken to protect our privacy. There was another phone call later that evening, dismissed just as quickly by Mom when I looked up from the catalog I’d been browsing, lazily dog-earing pages. The following night, the phone call came when we were eating dinner, a bounty carefully prepared by Jordana even though it was just for Mom and me, and neither of us had our full appetites. Mom took the phone into the other room, and I heard her say something before she returned, placing the receiver into its holder with a decisive click.
Was it Joe—did he have our number? My heart thudded. Later, after Mom went upstairs, I picked up the receiver and dialed *69. The phone rang and rang, the sound echoing distant and tinny in my ear. Eventually, there was a click and a man, not Joe, said, “Yeah.”
I explained that someone had called me earlier from his number.
He laughed. “Lady, this is a pay phone. Coulda been anyone. Now can you get off the line so I can make my call?”
“Hold on,” I pleaded. “Where are you? Where’s the pay phone?”
“Ah,” he said. “Let’s see. Church and Brattle. Cambridge, Mass.” There was a click, then a silent moment, and a dial tone.
Cambridge, Massachusetts. So Megan was alive and well—just as I figured.
And eventually, she would have to talk to me.
OCTOBER 15–17, 2016
Megan
An attorney, Rachel Hogan, arrived at our house on Saturday morning with a briefcase full of papers to sign. She and I sat at the kitchen table while Bobby paced the room, interjecting questions. Later, a media consultant arrived—Rosie Spiers, looking young enough to still be in college. It would be Rosie’s job to notify the major news outlets by eight Monday morning, and the press conference would be live at ten.
Bobby went shopping with me at the mall on Saturday night for almost the first time in all the years we’d been together. Everything in my closet had been deemed wrong for the purpose—my work uniform was inevitably a pair of black or gray pants and a brightly colored cardigan, paired with my faithful Dansko clogs. Rosie advised me to look for a gray suit, a feminine but conservative blouse, low heels.
Bobby said, “That looks good,” each time I opened the dressing room door, doubt writ large across his smile.
Eventually, I found a suit that didn’t require tailoring and a lavender blouse with iridescent polka dots. In the dressing room mirror, I looked like I was heading into an interview.
“That’s cute,” Bobby said, pointing to the blouse. “You could wear that to work anytime.”
But I knew I would never wear it again.
* * *
Rachel had asked me to prepare my family and closest friends for what was about to happen. “If they don’t already know, that is,” she said, and I shook my head. In fourteen years, I’d told exactly two people, Miriam and Bobby. But on Monday morning, the entire news-watching world would know.
I made the phone calls on Sunday: first to my mom, who bawled and asked too many questions and said she knew something was wrong with me that summer; next to the wives and girlfriends of Bobby’s closest friends, the women who had become my closest friends by default. Finally, I sent a carefully worded email to the counseling department at Northern Essex. Together, Bobby and I wrote a Facebook announcement, which he would post at the same time my statement went live on television. There was no point in avoiding the truth now since the questions were bound to come flooding in. Wasn’t that your girlfriend I saw on TV?
Finally, I logged on to Bobby’s Facebook account one last time and looked up the contact information for Lauren (Mabrey) Leavitt, and I sent her a two-sentence email.
Your brother raped me on July 3, 2002. Tomorrow, I’m going to tell the truth.
I signed it simply Megan.
* * *
We drove into Hartford on Sunday night and had dinner in the hotel with Rachel and Rosie, and I tried not to think about how expensive this was going to be when it was all said and done. Bobby assured me that it didn’t matter, but he ordered the chicken and not the steak.
Sleep was elusive that night, although we had the luxury of a king bed and thousand-thread-count sheets. I couldn’t stop thinking about the Mabreys, and how they would react to the press conference. I wondered how long it would take Lauren to assemble a list of lies and misdeeds, so the process of discrediting me could begin. Not too long, I figured. I’d certainly provided her with enough ammunition. Or would she believe me, the email triggering her memories from that night on The Island? When the alarm went off at five, I was still awake, exhausted from my mental marathon.
Bobby went down to the lobby for coffee when a short, bustling woman arranged by Rosie arrived to do my hair and makeup.
“I don’t want to overdo it,” I warned her. “I don’t usually wear a lot of makeup.”
She consulted her notes. “Confident and trustworthy,” she read and pointed at the dark circles under my eyes. “That means we’ve gotta take care of those.”
In the end, I was grateful to put myself in the hands of a professional, someone who could sweep away the years with a few strokes of the brush. Rachel and Rosie met us in the lobby at nine, and we climbed into the back seat of a town car. Behind the hair sprayed to stiffness and the layers of foundation, the real Megan Mazeros was a quivering mess.
* * *
By 9:30 we were in place, waiting behind the scenes as the press swarmed into the building. I’d rehearsed my statement so many times, I could have said it during the sleep I wasn’t getting.
“It’s not too late to back out, if you want,” Bobby told me at one point while I paced the room nervously.
I stared at him. Of course it was too late. “I’m doing this.”
He smiled. “Good.”
Miriam entered with a fresh cup of coffee and held my hand while Bobby read the headlines off social media.
“The Huffington Post has picked it up,” he said. “They’re reporting that another woman has come forward in the Michael Mabrey case.”
Miriam squeezed my hand, one of her oversize rings digging into my flesh. She looked the same as she’d looked eleven years ago when she’d delivered my belongings from Keale, when we’d sat side by side on a park bench and I’d told her the entire story, every horrible second of it. Over the years, she’d urged me to come forward, a gentle insistence that I’d been only too eager to ignore. Now she stared at me from behind her magenta frames, nodding encouragement.
Bobby frowned, still staring at his phone. “Some hack site is reporting this as political maneuvering. Well, never mind them. The Globe is all over it. They’re saying it’s suspicious that Anna Kovics has disappeared so completely from the media.”
I took a sip of coffee, my mouth suddenly dry.
“They’re also saying that his career is over, this close to the election. Absentee voting starts this week.” Bobby stopped scrolling and slid his phone into his pocket. “You’ve got this, kiddo. Boot this guy back to where he came from.”
I gave him a shaky smile. Michael Mabrey came from Simsbury, Connecticut, from generations of money and privilege. He came from a family that would defend him, no matter what. A team of lawyers was probably preparing his defense right now, drafting generic statements designed to praise him and slam me. Once I opened my mouth, I w
ould be fair game.
* * *
At 9:50, I checked myself one last time in the mirror, giving my lipstick a quick touch-up. Miriam straightened the shoulders of my jacket, and Bobby gave me a careful hug, not wanting to ruin the effect.
“I’m so proud of you,” she said.
“I’ll be right there in the back of the room,” Bobby told me. “If it gets to be too much, it’s okay for you to stop. I’m right there, I’ll come rushing forward. I’ll fight my way through the crowd if I have to.”
I swallowed back a lump of tears. “My knight in shining armor.”
He smiled. “Okay, I’ll take that.”
* * *
The room was full; I could hear the commotion inside, the bubble of voices. It was just as loud when the door opened, although the energy focused, flashbulbs popping. I followed Rachel onto the raised platform, planting my feet where she had planted hers, as though I were tracking her in the snow. She read from her statement, and I didn’t hear anything but the words echoing in my own head. In my hands, I clutched a single piece of paper.
I looked out at the room to where I knew Bobby would be standing, and he was looking back at me, nodding. Maybe I would say yes, finally, when all of this was done. There were dozens of people in the room, behind cameras and on their phones, and all of them were looking at me. And then the door opened, and a woman entered, moving through the clump of cameramen by the door. I would have known her anywhere, anytime. She was still tall and slender, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, a shoulder bag hanging on her arm.
It was Lauren.
She had come.
2002 AND AFTER
Lauren
Megan didn’t call again, even though I hung around the house for the next few weeks, barely venturing beyond the back deck, and my emails to her Keale address went unanswered. She would contact me by the end of July or the beginning of August, whenever her seminar was finished, whenever she was ready to start planning for the fall, I figured. But eventually the summer wound down, Mom and I packed up the house, made our way to Yarmouth and then on to Simsbury. Four days before classes were scheduled to start, I repacked the Saab and drove to Scofield, rehearsing in my mind how my reunion with Megan would go. Tears, accusations, screaming. Or would it be explanations, laughs, forgiveness?
We were supposed to share an on-campus apartment with four other girls, but by the day before the semester started, she still hadn’t arrived. I kept telling myself that the next time the door opened it would be her, lugging that tired duffel bag, spilling some horrible travel tale, but it never happened. Classes started; our senior year began and Megan still wasn’t there. I waited in a long line at the housing department and eventually explained to a woman in an ill-fitting sweater that my roommate hadn’t arrived, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do.
She typed some information into a database on her computer and said, “Oh. Megan Mazeros. That’s right. There’s a note here that she contacted us last week about her deposit. It looks like she’s not coming back this year.”
I leaned forward, nearly toppling my chair. “She’s not coming back? At all?”
“I don’t know about that, but it does say she won’t be here this fall.” She made a few more clicks, smiling absently at her computer screen. “It’s a good thing you’re here, then. We have a number of returning students on the waiting list for housing, and if there’s an empty spot in your apartment—”
I stood up. “No, no way. You’re not giving me a new roommate.”
The woman looked surprised, two warm round dots appearing on the apples of her cheeks. “It’s the school’s policy to charge extra for a single room, you know.”
“I don’t care how much it costs.” I seethed. “Add it to my bill, then. But you’re not giving me a different roommate.” This, at least, my parents would understand.
Over the next week, I tracked down everyone Megan knew—some of the Sisters had graduated last spring, but the ones who were still on campus had the same story. All they knew was that Megan was spending the summer with me before heading to her Harvard seminar. No one had heard from her since May, and they were equally shocked that she hadn’t come back.
“Shouldn’t you know where she is?” one of them demanded. “Didn’t she spend the summer with you?”
Of course I didn’t say anything about Megan and Michael or our fight or the boat she’d stolen. It seemed more and more ridiculous every time I thought about it. Three years of friendship, and it was all gone in a night.
I even tried Dr. Miriam Stenholz in the political science department, the tiny, intimidating woman who had taken Megan under her wing last spring and gotten her into the program at Harvard. After our initial introduction, Dr. Stenholz cleared off a cluttered chair in her office and insisted on making me a cup of tea.
She sat across from me, squeezing the tea bag with her spoon, dark swirls staining the water. “It’s very strange that Megan didn’t contact you. Why do you think that is?”
I shook my head, shifting the warm mug from hand to hand without bringing it to my lips. I hated even the smell of chamomile tea. “I haven’t seen her since the beginning of July, before she left for her seminar at Harvard. I don’t know what happened after that.”
Dr. Stenholz stared at me, lowering her cup to her desk. “But she didn’t go to the seminar, of course. There was a family emergency. She told me she went directly from her time with your family back to Kansas.”
I chewed my lip, thinking this through. Megan hadn’t mentioned anything about her family that last night we were together. I was sure of it. If there had been an emergency, she would have told me.
“She was so disappointed, of course, poor thing. After being so excited to receive the scholarship and all those hours of studying...” Dr. Stenholz shook her head. “I can’t think why she didn’t tell you.”
I could think of a few reasons. “Do you think she’s still there? In Kansas?”
Dr. Stenholz’s brows pinched together. “I suppose she must be. I’ve emailed her multiple times—she was supposed to TA for my fall class, but I had to find someone else. When you get in touch with her, will you let her know I would love to hear from her?”
I nodded, setting the untouched tea on the edge of her desk. My next class started in half an hour, but instead I blew it off to get in my car and go for a drive, slowing as I passed all the places I’d been with Megan, as if she might somehow be there, waiting for me. Had there really been a family emergency? But why wouldn’t she have called or emailed or dropped me a note—anything? And if she had gone back to Kansas, who had called the house on The Island from a payphone in Cambridge?
* * *
I was dealing with another disappearance that fall, too—Joe Natolo was gone. I’d called him my first night back in Scofield, hoping to put the awkwardness of our summer conversation behind us and pick up the pieces again. Maybe he would want to grab a bite and catch up and help me unravel the mystery of Megan. And sure—I would have happily gone back to his place, stripped off my shirt and shorts, and slid into the sheets that probably hadn’t been changed since I left in the spring. But instead of hearing his voice on the other end of the line, I’d received a tri-tone alert and an accompanying message by a mechanical woman: The number you are trying to reach is no longer in service. I dropped everything, rushed out to the Saab and drove into Scofield, laughing at my frenzy. There was some obvious, uncomplicated explanation, because that’s how Joe was—obvious and uncomplicated. I’d probably dialed the wrong phone number in my hurry, or Joe had forgotten to pay his phone bill that month. When I knocked on the door to his apartment, he would say, “Hey, there,” and I’d fall into his arms and tell him the whole terrible story of Megan and that summer and wait for our conversation to become kissing, for day to blend into night and night to blend into day.
But Joe’s car wasn�
�t in his usual spot, and new curtains, white with royal blue fleurs-de-lis, hung in his windows. There was a flowerpot on the windowsill, the dangling limbs of a fern reaching out to the sun. No one answered when I knocked on his door, so I descended the steps and rang the bell on the detached house. A friendly, frosted blonde woman opened the door, an apron tied around her hips.
“Joe Natolo,” I said, unable to form a sentence, the name itself a question.
She smiled at me, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, dear, he moved out a few weeks ago.”
As she began to shut the door, I blurted, “I’m sorry, I don’t know if this is inappropriate or something, but do you know where he’s moved to? I need to see him.”
She shook her head, her eyes kind. “He mentioned something about a job in Minnesota. No, Michigan. I think it was Michigan.”
Minnesota. Michigan. I was going to be sick, right here on the front porch of Joe’s landlord. Former landlord. “Did he leave a forwarding address? I mean, for his mail and things?”
She frowned. “I don’t know that he ever got mail here. But that would be something to check with the post office, I think.”
I checked with the post office, and I checked with the machine shop where Joe had worked, and I tracked down leads for a Cathy Natolo, the mother I’d never met, like I was some kind of private investigator. She lived in the Philly area, Joe had told me, but 411 didn’t have a number listed for a Cathy or Catherine Natolo anywhere in the vicinity. I called Michigan information and found forty-seven Natolo surnames, eight beginning with a J. I called the first five, and then I stopped. What was the point? Joe Natolo knew exactly where I was. He could have reached me through the switchboard at Keale at any time. I wouldn’t have been particularly difficult to locate, if he was interested in trying.
That fall, as I stumbled through my classes and returned each night to my unshared bedroom, it was impossible not to imagine the two of them together somehow—Megan and Joe, the missing pieces of my life. I missed Megan’s openmouthed snores, her infectious laugh, her crazy stories. I missed those nights with Joe, the two of us wearing only our underwear, eating Pasta Roni straight from the pot. They’d both disappeared as surely as if they’d been plucked by an alien hand reaching down from a hovering spaceship. And if I allowed myself, even jokingly, to entertain that possibility, how much more likely was it that they were simply somewhere together, their connection reestablished, their bond forged over stories of me?
Here We Lie Page 29