The Good Lie

by Robin Brande

  Second, I had to process what she had just said: that it was Mikey who made up this lie.

  What did that mean? Why did he do it? If my mother had let me into her apartment instead of dragging me out to her car right away, Mikey might have warned me. I mean, it’s true that my father had attacked me that one time, but every night? I don’t think so. Mikey had taken the story and run with it.

  I had to think fast, or it might all fall apart, this delicate deception my brother had created and which might be his only hope for salvation.

  I lowered my head as if I could hardly bear to answer. “Yes,” I whispered, “it’s true.”

  And in my little brother’s most extravagant dreams, he couldn’t have wished for what happened next.

  Things Done While in the Flesh

  [1]

  I read a piece in the paper not long ago about a little boy with autism who died when his church tried to cure him. While his mother and aunt held down his arms and legs, the church pastor sat on the boy’s chest for hours at a time. This went on for several nights, until one night the boy’s chest couldn’t bear the weight any longer and he died of suffocation. What strikes me is the bewilderment of the pastor.

  “We were so close,” he told police. “We just needed one more night—we almost got that spirit chased out of the boy.”

  The church can be a wonderful, dangerous thing. It protects and it saves and destroys.

  “They told me not to tell,” my mother began. “I swore to them I never would. They said it was a mistake—just a lab mix-up. I was so young I didn’t know any better.”

  “What are you talking about?” I demanded. The inside of the car was too stuffy. The windows were fogging up. “I need air.” My mother turned the key and lowered the windows a crack.

  She looked around as if she were afraid someone would overhear. “Do you remember your operation? When you were five?”

  “Yeah. On my bladder.”

  “That’s right. You kept having terrible bladder infections, and finally the doctor thought it would be best to open up your urethra more so it could flush through better.”

  “Okay, whatever.”

  My mother’s voice quieted to a whisper. “We had to have some tests done—you wouldn’t remember that, but before we decided on surgery they did some tests. And they found . . . semen. Inside you.”

  The world closed around me and I heard her voice echoing down to me from somewhere up above ground.

  Semen inside you. See men . . . inside you.

  I don’t think I breathed for at least half a minute.

  “What?” I finally managed to force out.

  “I know,” my mother said. “It’s terrible. I didn’t think I should ever tell you because I didn’t think it was true. I didn’t want to believe it.”

  “They found semen in me? What do you mean?”

  “They ran the test twice to make sure, and it showed up both times.”

  I felt sick. I felt—I don’t really know what I felt—I felt like I was being filmed. The conversation was so unreal and so unlike my natural life, it had to be happening to a character I was playing on TV.

  My mother wouldn’t stop. “I told your father about it immediately, and he brushed it off. He said the lab must have made a mistake. He laughed it off and tried to make me feel silly for believing it.

  “But I did believe it, at least a little,” she said. “I started thinking about the boys in the neighborhood—the older boys, the ones who could make semen. There was the brother of one of your babysitters, some kids at the end of the block—I thought about everyone.

  “I kept asking your father to do something. I thought he should question them or do something. He acted like it was a joke at first, then he started to get angry with me the more I pressed it.

  “You had the surgery—you remember that.”

  My mouth was dry as dirt. “Yes.” I remember how much the shot in my arm hurt, the one they gave me to make me sleepy before they wheeled me into the operating room. I remember seeing the surgeon and the nurses. One of the nurses held my hand while the anesthesiologist strapped a green plastic mask over my face and told me to start counting backward from 100. I drifted off at 96 and woke with pain in my crotch where they had poked holes. When I woke up my parents were there, and my father gave me a stuffed dog—a black Scottish terrier with a red plaid scarf around its neck—and that night the nurse brought me ice cream for dinner. That’s what I remember.

  “You were so sweet and little,” my mother said. “I was so worried about the surgery, but you came through fine.

  “You spent the night in the hospital, and when your father and I got home I tried to talk to him about it one more time. I had asked the doctor privately how long semen could stay in your vagina, and he told me about seventy-two hours. You had been sick a few days before we took you in for those tests—a cold, I think—and the only person around you besides me was your father. I knew that for a fact. You hadn’t left the house, and no one else had been over.

  “So I told your father all that, and he was furious with me. He shouted, ‘What are you accusing me of? You want me to swear on the Bible?’ And he ran and got the Bible and he held his hand on top of it and swore he had never, ever touched you.

  “Well what could I do? He was a good Christian—there was no reason to suspect him—”

  “Other than everything you just told me,” I pointed out in disgust.

  “Lizzie, listen. I even talked to our pastor about it. Pastor Bingham—you never knew him, but I always trusted him. I was afraid to tell him about it, but I really needed advice, you know? So I went to him in secret and told him what I was afraid of, and he said I should never mention it again—not to you, not to your father, not to my friends or anyone else. He said it would ruin a fine Christian man, and we would be ostracized for the rest of our lives—no one would ever trust their children with us again.”

  “Maybe they shouldn’t have.”

  “I don’t know,” my mother said. “The point is, I was young, and I didn’t know what people know these days. I just wanted to have my family, you understand? I wanted us to have peace. Anyone who looked at your father would know he loved his kids. I never wanted to believe he did it, but it was always in the back of my mind. I didn’t ever want to leave you alone with him—”

  “But you did,” I reminded her. “You left both of us. Mikey and me.”

  “I know!” my mother wailed. “And I’m sorry! I should have known what could happen. Oh, Lizzie, I’m so sorry—you don’t know how much this breaks my heart.”

  I was into my part now, and I admit I relished her anguish. She was sorry for the wrong reason, but finally—finally—at least she was sorry.

  “You left me alone with him knowing what he was.”

  “I didn’t know!” my mother cried. “Not for sure. I thought—all that time had gone by and nothing happened.”

  “Once a child molester always a child molester.”

  My mother steeped in her pain. She was past excuses. She knew she had screwed up, and now here was the worst possible consequence.

  “I’m taking you out of there,” my mother said. “I’m filing for divorce and getting custody of you kids.”

  “You haven’t even filed for divorce yet?”

  “No, I wasn’t . . . I wasn’t sure I was ready. But now I am. I can’t let you kids stay there another minute.”

  Satisfaction crept into my organs and settled there in my heart and lungs. I breathed deeply, even though I knew I needed to act more distressed. I couldn’t help it. Mikey’s plan had worked. My shy little brother was a master of strategy. It must have been all the video games.

  I waited for my mother to calm herself, then I said quietly, “It’s all right. I’m glad you know. Now we can do something about it.”

  “We will. I promise.”

  “Don’t tell Dad. I can’t face him.”

  “But I might have to, to get custody. He’s already said h
e won’t let me have you—either of you.” She grimaced. “He said no judge will take them from a good Christian father and give them to a whore.”

  [2]

  After the flush of victory had passed, and I had eaten my mother’s stuffed cabbage rolls with brown sugar and ketchup baked into the top, and Mikey and I had exchanged knowing smiles, I returned to Posie’s house and the poison of my mother’s words began to seep into my veins.

  Semen inside you.

  I sifted those words around in my head. I tested them. I poked around my heart to see how I felt. Was it true? It didn’t feel true, but then what did I know? I tried to remember everything about that time, the surgery, the little stuffed dog, how I felt about my father—nothing tangible came to me. No images of him coming into my room, lifting my nightgown—none of that. It would have hurt terribly, wouldn’t it? Unless he somehow shot outside my vagina and the semen seeped in on its own. But that didn’t sound right either. Maybe it was a lab mistake. Or maybe my brain had its own reasons not to remember.

  I told Posie, because there was no point in keeping any of it secret any more.

  “Oh, my God.” She gaped at me, so sympathetic, a dull anger filtering through her eyes. “I can’t believe she told you that.”

  “Do you think it’s true?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Can you believe it? Mikey thought he was making it up.”

  “Yeah, what about that?” Posie asked. “Why did he say that—what’s he up to?”

  “I think he wants my mother to take both of us out of the house, but he doesn’t want to say what’s really going on.”

  “That was risky. He didn’t know what you’d say—you might have denied it.”

  “He knows I know what my father is doing. Mikey knows I’ll protect him.”

  We pondered this in our respective silences for a while, until I broke the tension with a sigh. “That sick bastard.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know what to think about my mom.”

  “Sounds like she didn’t believe it at the time.”

  “I’m not so sure,” I countered. “I think maybe she knew it was him, but she was afraid to mess things up by pushing it.”

  “Do you think he ever molested you again?”

  I had thought of that. “I don’t know. I guess once you get away with it once—”

  “But you would have remembered, wouldn’t you?”

  “I don’t remember the time she told me about.”

  “You were only five,” Posie pointed out. “If it was still going on when you were older, I’m sure you’d remember.”

  It sounded reasonable. What I didn’t want to tell Posie, or admit to myself at that moment, was that the times I did remember with my father from that long ago were actually very pleasant.

  When I was little—maybe five or six, I guess—he used to call me up for dates.

  “Brrring, brrring,” he’d say into his imaginary phone. I’d be sitting right there, and I’d pick up my own invisible phone—it was pink fur in my imagination—and say, “Hello?”

  “Hi, may I please speak to Miss Elizabeth Aimes?”

  “This is she.” I had learned the proper way to speak on the phone early, partially, I think, from these exchanges.

  “Hello, this is Richard Aimes. I would like to ask you out on a date this afternoon.”

  I was usually giggling by this point. It was Saturday morning, and he had already made plans for us. I think that was the most flattering part, that he had thought ahead about what we could do together—he had thought of me, specifically, only me, and we were going to do something just the two of us.

  Then I’d get dressed up, just like it was a real date, and we’d go to the movies or out for ice cream or once even to the petting zoo.

  I adored this private time, being the center of attention.

  Once Mikey came along the dates stopped, and that made me sad for a while until I realized how much fun it was to have a baby around. But my father had already secured a place in my heart by playing make believe like that: the pretend phone call, the formality of asking me out. How do you shake a good feeling like that? When did I lose it?

  “You have to tell Angela,” Posie said. “Right away.”

  “We’re seeing her tomorrow.”

  That probably wasn’t soon enough for Posie, but she accepted it.

  When I entered Angela Peligro’s smoky chamber once more, I felt I had a better story to tell.

  “It’s me,” I said straight off. “We’re going to sue for me. He molested me when I was little—my mother told me last night. I want to sue him for as much as we can. Let’s get it over with.”

  [3]

  And still it hadn’t sunk in.

  Maybe this seems strange, but it wasn’t until days later when I really started to feel the evil of what my mother had told me.

  Was it on those dates? Did I only remember the good parts—my fancy dresses, the ice cream, how flattered I felt—when there was something much more sinister behind them? Did he take me somewhere and have sex with me? I didn’t want to think about it, but I did without ceasing. I thought about every minute that would have led up to it—what did he say to me, how did he get my clothes off, how did he work his way inside? Did he have to use petroleum jelly or some other lubricant? Did I cry? Did I scream?

  I spent eight or nine or fifteen hours thinking only the most wicked, depraved thoughts, and then when I knew they would turn me inside out and spill my guts on the floor, I knew I had to stop. Completely. Never to be thought of again. La dee da, life is so good, father, what father? I can do that better than you might imagine. I can take a thought and carve it out and hide it away someplace and even forget where I’ve left it.

  The key is it doesn’t touch you inside. It’s always outside, in that pocket where you’ve stuck it, and though it might try to creep into the center of you—into your pure core—you notice that, and you strike immediately and mercilessly, and you send it back out where you’re not thinking of it ever again until next time.

  That’s why when I got his letter I could read it sort of coldly, like it was a new script I was helping Posie learn for Drama. It was all soliloquy, there was no part for me, so I read it with a detachment I truly admired about myself.

  Dear Lizzie:

  This is the hardest letter I have ever had to write.

  Last night your mother called to tell me she was keeping Mikey because I am “dangerous.” She told me a story that I have absolutely no recollection about, but she says you do. I was so sick after that phone call I ended up in the emergency room for 7 hours. It is such a repulsive story to me, but I cannot ignore it.

  The story is that when you were 5 years old I “molested” you in some way. Despite the fact that I do not have the slightest memory of this event, the most important thing is that you believe it happened.

  I know you must have a lot of trouble believing that I could engage in such an alleged evil event and not recall it, but that is the absolute truth as I know it. I am in no way trying to excuse myself for what is supposed to have happened, but after 11 years I have not one memory of such an event or any “dark” side of my character which would explain my actions. I can only ask myself the question whether I was capable at some point in my life of such a horrible act. These alleged actions run so counter to my beliefs as a Christian, but yet I know also that as the Bible says “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure” so anything is possible when it comes to the human condition.

  After all these years it would be pointless for me to deny this whole episode. The accusation, regardless of whether it is true or not, is really all that seems to count.

  If there is a “bright” side to any of this I suppose it is that I finally understand your behavior toward me lately and why, as your mother said, you despise, distrust and even fear me. I certainly can understand why you have such feelings toward me if what happened 11 years ago is true. Belie
ve me when I say how very sorry I am to have caused the pain you have suffered. There is of course nothing I can do to undo the past. I guess we both will live with this story “til death do us part.”

  Although I have asked for God’s forgiveness and believe with all my heart that He forgives sins I have forgotten about, this story is one I will certainly take to the grave with me. If you cannot find it in your heart to forgive me at least someday the “truth” whatever that is will be known. As the Bible says “We must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one will give an account to God of things done while in the flesh—whether good or evil.”

  I will always love you and thank God for making you my daughter.

  Dad

  Angela Peligro came to the end of the letter and took a drag from her cigarette and squinted at me with a harshness I wasn’t ready for and said, “Yeah, I don’t exactly remember everything I did eleven years ago, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t fuck a child—I think I would have remembered that. Georgia,” she barked into the intercom, “come make copies.”

  God Bless the Liar

  [1]

  “It’s not enough,” Angela told me.

  The door to her office stood open while Georgia made copies. Posie, eavesdropping from the reception area, bolted from her chair.

  “How could it not be enough?” Posie cried. “He practically admits it!”

  “Practically is nothing,” Angela answered. “We need actually.”

  The heat was still on my cheeks. I trusted Angela, but it embarrassed me to have her read those words. They were too personal, almost even for me.

  What bothered me most—what I couldn’t get past despite all the Bible verses and the claims of regret and sadness—was that he didn’t completely deny it. “The truth as I know it . . . anything is possible when it comes to the human condition . . . if what happened 11 years ago is true . . .He forgives sins I have forgotten.”

  If I had ever doubted my mother’s story, I didn’t any longer. Angela was right: screwing your kid is something you’d remember either way.