The Good Lie

by Robin Brande

  But I was my father’s daughter, whether I liked it or not, and I couldn’t help thinking the way he did. You don’t spend your money lightly. And you don’t borrow from your friends. You don’t ever let someone hold that over your head. Not that Mrs. Sherbern would do that, but I couldn’t shake that voice in my ear.

  I quietly reentered the house. Posie and her mother were both in their rooms. I closed the bedroom door behind me and sat down on my bed. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” Posie answered.

  I lay out full length and groaned. “I am such an idiot. Your mother must think I’m such an ungrateful little pig.”

  “Of course she doesn’t.”

  “Whose idea was that?”

  “Hers, believe it or not.”

  I lowered my voice so Mrs. Sherbern wouldn’t hear. “Why?”

  “Maybe she likes you.”

  “Maybe she feels sorry for me.”

  “Yeah, I guess that, too,” Posie said. “But she can afford it. That part about the state giving her money—that actually doesn’t matter. My dad left us with plenty. You should let her do this, Lizzie. She wants to.”

  “And what about the foster thing?”

  “She just thought that might make it more official—you know, like you’d always have a place to come home to.”

  Apparently my tears hadn’t fully drained. I swiped my finger at a few of them, then gave up and went to the bathroom for some tissues. I returned with a business-like mind.

  “I have parents, you know.”

  “Oh, I think I know that.”

  “They can afford me to send me, too.”

  “Well, your dad can anyway. But do you really want to ask him?”

  I sighed and slumped back onto my pillow. “No. That’s the problem, isn’t it?”

  “This way you wouldn’t have to.”

  “But I can’t ask that of your mother, either.”

  “You’re not asking,” Posie said. “She offered. Why are you being so stubborn? You know you need this.”

  And here was the point, the one I’d come to on my walk without realizing I had. I heard myself say it and I understood that it was true. “I want to do it myself.”

  “Okay, how?”

  She was too quick. I needed to bask for a moment in my pronouncement. I want to do it myself. Just like graduating early. I wanted to feel how hard it was to work for something, then know that it belonged to me alone because of that.

  “Maybe I won’t start college right away,” I said. “I’ll get a job and save up.”

  “For how long?”

  “I can get loans. Or financial aid.”

  “Yeah, I suppose. Or you could just stop being such a brat and tell my mother thank you very much and let her feel good about spending money on you.”

  I felt better already. A zygote of a plan was forming in my brain. I would do it all myself and show everybody, including myself, that I didn’t need anybody but myself.

  I felt calm and happy in a way I hadn’t for a long time. “That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go tell your mother thanks, but no thanks.”

  “Wait,” Posie cautioned. “Sleep on it.”

  I bounded from the bed. “I need to get it off my chest now. Then I can think clearly.”

  I knocked on Mrs. Sherbern’s bedroom door. “It’s Lizzie.”

  “Come on in, sugar.”

  She was sitting in bed, propped up on double pillows, reading a Nora Roberts romance.

  “God, she’s good,” Mrs. Sherbern told me. She fanned a hand in front of her face. “Too steamy.” She laid the book down and patted the bedspread beside her. “Come talk to me.”

  I’ll admit to a longing just then for those nights when my mother and I sat in the family room talking about my crush on Jason and my school work and whatever play or story I was writing. Yes, I know that whole experience was a lie, but at the time I really loved it. I felt the way a daughter should feel toward her mother. I missed that feeling so much I wanted to scratch my fingernails across my chest and burrow down to my heart and pick it up by the corner and shake it clean like resetting an Etch-a-Sketch.

  “I really appreciate your offer,” I began, and Mrs. Sherbern held up a nicely-manicured hand before I could say any more.

  “Lizzie, I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to refuse me, and that’s fine, but you should know why you’re doing it. It can’t be because it would be a hardship to me—you know it wouldn’t. Posie’s dad did very well for us, and Posie gets Social Security because of him. We have plenty of money to get by on, and then some.

  “Second, if you think Posie pressured me into it—”

  “Oh, no, I don’t—”

  “—well, she didn’t,” Mrs. Sherbern said. “I wanted to do this myself. I think you’re a fine girl, Lizzie, and I appreciate what a good friend you’ve been to my daughter. I have the feeling you keep Posie on the straight and narrow.”

  “It’s her,” I protested. “She does that for me.”

  “I like seeing my daughter with a good girl like you. I’m not stupid—I see what’s out there. Some of her old friends . . .” Mrs. Sherbern shuddered theatrically. “That Megan was a tawdry girl and I don’t mind saying so. I know her mother, and I’m not surprised.

  “And,” Mrs. Sherbern went on, “I think you’re brilliant, Lizzie, and that’s the truth. I’ve watched how hard you study, and I know it’s not every kid in your situation who’d have the brains and focus to finish high school in three years. I’m proud of you, and I hope you’re proud, too.”

  I was so tired of crying, but here it was again. I laid face down on her bed and let it come. Mrs. Sherbern was kind enough not to stroke my back or mother me in any way. We were two grown women discussing a serious matter, and if one of us had to keep crying about it, that didn’t change the nature of our talk.

  I sat up again in due time and wiped my eyes.

  “Why don’t you rinse your face and come back,” Mrs. Sherbern suggested. “You can use my bathroom.”

  I had only been in there a few times, briefly—maybe looking for extra toilet paper or a tampon. It wasn’t like my own mother’s bathroom. This one was all girl—bras hanging to dry in the shower, makeup cluttering the counter, perfumes and hair spray out on display like you would if you didn’t have to make room for your husband.

  I rinsed my face and dried it and blew my nose a couple of times. I composed myself, because I knew the last final push was coming, and if I wasn’t careful she’d talk me into what I’d already, wisely, decided against.

  So I tried to seize control. “I really appreciate all you’ve said—really. But it isn’t right. It’s not your job. I can—”

  “I know it’s not my job, but I’d like it to be.”

  “Mrs. Sherbern—”

  She smiled at my exasperation. I could see she thought she had already won.

  I decided to stall, rather than continue the argument. “I’m meeting with my counselor again pretty soon. She already helped me apply for scholarships. Maybe she’s heard something. Let me see what she says, okay? Then we’ll talk again.”

  “It’s too late for a scholarship, isn’t it?” Mrs. Sherbern asked. “Don’t those get handed out by now?”

  “Uh, well—” I swallowed hard. Maybe I had already lost my shot, and Miss Stewart had been afraid to tell me so. “Okay, so maybe I’ll have to sit out the first semester—”

  “No, you won’t. You’re starting with Posie this fall and that’s that.”

  She was more stubborn than I knew, and a little bit imperial. There was no point in arguing. I would have to do what I was going to do in secret and let her think I had given in.

  “We’ll see,” I said.

  Mrs. Sherbern smiled. “Then it’s settled.”

  “No, we’ll see. Let me think about it some more.”

  “Don’t think too long, Lizzie. We should start making plans soon. Do you and Posie want to keep living here? Might as well,
huh? I might get lonely if both my girls move out at once.”

  Both my girls . . .

  “Okay,” I answered, “I’ll think about it.”

  [2]

  I got right to the point.

  “How much are you going to ask for?” Angela and I had discussed various numbers in the past, but she still hadn’t decided last time we talked.

  “Okay,” she said, “I think we’ll start at four hundred thousand, let him talk us down to two-fifty—that sound fair?”

  “Two hundred fifty,” I repeated. It sounded like a mint.

  “It’s not much for someone my age,” Angela told me, “but for you, it could mean instant independence. You could send yourself to college, for one.”

  “I could do that with a fraction,” I said.

  “But this way you know you’re taken care of. You don’t have to go to daddy for anything. A lot of my clients like that—the realization they don’t have to suck up anymore. You’ve already broken through, Lizzie. Now let’s get you just a little more freedom.”

  “A lot more,” I pointed out. “Two hundred fifty thousand!” Forget Mrs. Sherbern, I could send both Posie and me to college if I wanted.

  I could send Mikey.

  Now that was a sweet thought. I could take care of him for a long time. He wouldn’t have to depend on either of my parents. I could afford an apartment—maybe share it with Posie—and Mikey could come live with us. This salvation was working better than I had hoped. My heart felt lighter than it had in weeks, since I first starting telling my lies.

  “I want to wait until your mother’s custody hearing is decided. Molests are much easier to prove in domestic cases. Assuming she wins—”

  “She will.”

  “Assuming she does, we’ll send out a demand right afterward, okay? We’ll get him right after they’ve softened him up. Call Georgia when you’re ready and we’ll get you in. Sorry I’ve been so busy lately—there’s a lot of human garbage out there.”

  Father Gunderson was one of them.

  Job

  [1]

  For once I had beaten Posie to the morning paper. It was her turn to watch me read and shake my head.

  “What?” Posie asked.

  “Nothing.” I shoved the paper under my thigh and insisted she eat a good breakfast and think pleasant thoughts for once. “We’re going off to school happy today.”

  “Give it to me.”

  “No. You can read it this afternoon. Don’t you agree?” I asked Mrs. Sherbern.

  “Whole-heartedly.”

  Posie glared at us both, but she knew we were right. Lately mornings had been hell. Angela had a bunch of new cases, and the paper was reporting on them daily. Posie was getting a pronounced hash mark between her eyebrows from frowning so much every time she read about them.

  Posie sighed. “Okay, I’ll wait. Just this once.”

  Which was good, because when she finally did get around to reading it after school I thought her brains were going to explode right out of her head.

  “Can you believe this?” she cried. “I mean can you believe this?”

  Even Mrs. Sherbern was willing to admit the Church had gone too far protecting this one.

  Angela Peligro was quoted throughout the article, and as usual she came across in print much more sedate and clean-mouthed than she was in person.

  “Father Gunderson is just one of many priests in this country who has used the children in his care to satisfy his own deviant desires.”

  To say the least. His activities first came to light when a five-year-old boy told his mother “Gunny burned my butt.”

  “He what?” the mother asked.

  “He burned my butt.”

  It took a while for the mother to realize that “burn” was the only word her son knew of to explain the kind of pain Father Gunderson had caused.

  It’s the ripping I always think of—this enormous peg in such a small hole, girl’s or boy’s, front or back. But why a child so young? It’s no better when it’s a fourteen-year-old, but there’s something so much more agonizing about imagining a tiny little body having to contain all that filth.

  Too many details for Posie’s taste. She kept closing the paper and opening it again and forcing herself to keep reading. “I have to call Angela.”

  “And say what?” I asked.

  “I have to tell her she’s doing the right thing.”

  “She already knows that.” But Posie was already dialing.

  “Hi, Georgia, it’s Posie Sherbern. Is Angela available?” Just like they were colleagues.

  Angela took the call. I could picture her, leaning back in her fake leather chair, a fresh cigarette burning between her fingers. Her gruff, “Hello?”

  “Hello, Angela, it’s Posie. I just read today’s paper. I just have to tell you, BRAV-O. I’m so glad you’re doing this. So glad.”

  Posie listened for a moment, then, “I know. That’s exactly what I thought. How many kids were there really?” Pause. “Oh, my God.” Posie dropped her head into her palm. “That many...”

  Angela’s turn again.

  “Uh-huh, uh-huh . . .” Posie kept nodding. I wondered if Posie knew she was being filmed at that moment, because she certainly wasn’t herself. She was larger somehow, and older, and wiser. She wasn’t my seventeen-year-old friend at all. She was someone huge in this world, with a spark inside her that needed only the right excuse to combust.

  “I’d love to,” Posie said, her smile wide. “I’d really love to. How about if I start in June?”

  She hung up the phone and practically hugged herself. “Well!”

  “Well what?” Mrs. Sherbern asked.

  “I’m going to work for Angela. We’re going to get those bastards together.”

  [2]

  Why does God allow there to be evil in the world? Don’t we all wonder about that? It’s a curious thing, this relationship between God and the devil.

  If you read Paradise Lost by John Milton you get this great sense of the sadness and loss Satan felt being thrown out of the kingdom of Heaven. You actually pity him for blowing it so badly. But there’s still a relationship there. Even as Satan is building cannons and blasting the angels to pieces, and the archangels are retaliating by picking up mountains and heaving them at Satan’s army, you know Satan still bleeds in his heart for those days when he stood beside God’s throne, whispering in his ear. You keep thinking if only Satan would bow down and beg for forgiveness, God would take him back in. But Satan is too filled with Pride ever to do that. It was the cause of his downfall in the first place, Pride, and he clings to it like a man devoted to the anchor sucking him beneath the sea.

  Paradise Lost is fiction, of course, but then you read Job, and you have to wonder if John Milton wasn’t that far off.

  Job starts out with a scene from Heaven. God is holding court, catching up on the news of his kingdom, and all his angels present themselves, including the Dark Angel himself.

  I can’t get over that. What was Satan doing there? Did God invite him, or did Satan crash the party? God doesn’t seem upset to see him there, and in fact chats with Satan as if they’re old friends.

  “Where have you been lately?” God asks Satan amiably.

  “Oh, here and there. I’ve been roaming to and fro throughout the earth, walking up and down in it.”

  “Have you seen my servant Job?” God brags. “Have you ever seen anyone like him? So upright, so pure of heart, so earnestly devoted to me.”

  “No kidding,” Satan snorts. “Of course Job is devoted to you—why shouldn’t he be? You’ve given him everything a man could ever want—wealth, power, possessions, sons—I’ve never seen a man with a life so easy. But I’ll bet you if you took away all of those things, Job would curse you to your face.”

  God scratches his chin. “Hmm. An interesting wager. All right, Satan my old friend, I’ll tell you what. Put forth your hand and do to him what you will, only be sure to spare his life. I still have faith i
n Job. He will never curse me, no matter what you do.”

  And we know the rest. Satan smites him with everything he’s got—kills Job’s children, destroys his property, robs him of wealth and position, and finally strikes him with the most hideous diseases that make his skin itch and puss up and peel away in great sheets. Then to squirt lemon juice in his eye, his friends show up and criticize him for bringing all this misery on his own head.

  “You must have done something to deserve this,” they berate him.

  “Gee, guys, thanks for stopping by.”

  The point is, even when Satan robs him of everything, Job stays true to his beliefs. He might not be happy with God at that moment as he’s scratching his bleeding feet with a broken pot shard, but he still refuses to curse God. In the end, Job is rewarded tenfold—even a hundredfold—for his resilience. And that is the lesson everyone tells us we’re supposed to take to heart: No matter how bad things get, if you keep loving God He will reward you one day.

  But what if the lesson is also this: What if the lesson is that God needs there to be evil in the world? He needs to unleash Satan every now and then to test us and fortify us and see where we stand. When things go so horribly wrong—bombings and death and destruction, and children tortured and innocents slaughtered—all those things we look at and shake our heads in despair at—is our impulse to pray to or denounce our God? Do we run toward him or away from him? Exactly what is each of us made of?

  I think Posie is made of stronger stuff than any of us. When I hear her talk sometimes, I can’t believe she’s real. I’m her friend, so I can say this: She does have her faults. But if you struck her with leprosy, and took away her mother and her house and you starved her and locked her in prison, she’d still find a way to keep living and fighting. There’s a flame in the core of Posie that I don’t have, and I think she was born with it. But I believe you can get that fire for yourself if you want it bad enough and work hard to find it. You can make yourself stronger than you are. That’s my theory, at least. I’m still struggling to see if it’s true.