The Good Lie

by Robin Brande

  But as for Posie, she already had all the strength she needed. And she was about to prove it.

  The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre

  My mother tried one more time.

  Dinner at Charles’s, six o’clock sharp, wear your least bitchy face.

  Well, she didn’t exactly say that, but I know that’s what she meant.

  She had done up the whole place in hearts and red and white balloons—barf. To celebrate Their Love.

  “Lizzie, Mikey,” my mother said, beaming up at her boyfriend, “Charles has something to ask you.”

  “Children—”

  Oo. Bad start.

  “—I’m asking for your blessing. I want to marry your mother.”

  “Geez!” I shouted. “She’s not even divorced!”

  “Lizzie!”

  Charles patted his hand in the air to calm us. Like we were dogs waiting for his signal. “I know it’s soon, but I wanted you kids to know—”

  “Mikey’s a kid,” I shot back. “I’m not. I’m the lady of the house, remember? Ever since my mother left me that job.”

  Charles cleared his throat. “I thought you should know what my intentions are.”

  “I don’t give a shit,” I snarled. “Thanks for ruining my life.”

  What a great exit line, right? I had no choice but to storm out.

  My mother forgot that her role was to follow me out. I waited for a while, but she didn’t.

  She couldn’t do anything right.

  So I trudged off in the cold to the Circle K, eight blocks away, and called Posie from the pay phone. One thing that sucks about your parents hating you is that you don’t have a cell phone anymore.

  “Can you come get me?”

  “Uh . . . now?”

  “Yes. Please?” Since when did I have to beg? Posie was always ready to help.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “The Circle K on Broadway and Ninth. It’s freezing out here.”

  “Okay, but . . . Brett is here. He’ll probably come, too.”

  “Fine, whatever,” I said, even though my real answer was no.

  “We’ll be right there.”

  “We’ll be right there,” I repeated in falsetto after I hung up the phone. Everyone was hooking up but me. My mother, Posie . . . well, two people at least. Soon Posie would be too busy with her boyfriend for these random rescues. I needed to learn how to drive.

  They pulled up in Brett’s black SUV. He turned halfway around to say, “Hey,” to me in the back seat before screeching out of the parking lot.

  “What happened?” Posie asked.

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  “Was it bad?”

  “I’ll tell you later.” Brett might be her paramour and confidante, but he wasn’t mine.

  Posie smelled good—a new perfume combination, I noticed. She wore her hair up in a massive pile on top, with a few brown curly tendrils spilling down along her cheeks. It took me until then to realize they were both dressed up.

  “Going out?” I asked more sarcastically than I meant to.

  “Brett surprised me with roses. He’s taking me to Michaelson’s for dinner.”

  “How nice for you.” I folded my arms over my chest and sank into sullenness.

  “Want a beer?” Brett asked, handing one over the seat.

  I glared at Posie, but she couldn’t see it. What was she doing driving around with a guy who was drinking? What was up with her?

  “No, I don’t drink. Neither does Posie.”

  Brett grinned at her. “She doesn’t know you very well, does she?”

  Posie shushed him. She turned around in an obvious effort to distract me with some light conversation. Fat chance. I cut her off before she could begin.

  “So when did you start drinking?” I asked.

  “I don’t, really,” Posie answered.

  “Brett said you did.”

  “I had a sip.”

  Brett snorted.

  “A few sips,” Posie corrected.

  “That’s just great,” I said. “You smoking pot, too?”

  “No.” Posie turned back to face the front. She was tired of my foul mood.

  I charged ahead. “How about you, Brett, you a toker?”

  “Naw.”

  “Just beer?”

  He held up his can. “I like my brew—won’t deny it.”

  “How do you get it? Fake i.d.?”

  “Okay, Lizzie, drop it,” Posie said.

  “I just thought we should know a little more about this guy you’re going out with.”

  “I know plenty, thanks.”

  We rode in fuming silence the rest of the way. Brett pulled into Posie’s driveway and left the motor running.

  “Tell my mom I’ll be home late,” Posie said. “You’re welcome for the ride.”

  “Thanks,” I said, feeling a little guilty. It wasn’t her fault I’d had such an awful evening. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  She didn’t look at me. “Yeah. Can you close the door?”

  I did and Brett roared out of the driveway. I turned my glum little self up the steps to her door and let myself in with a key.

  “Posie?” Mrs. Sherbern called.

  “No, it’s me.”

  “Oh, Lizzie.” She sounded a little disappointed—just what I needed.

  Mrs. Sherbern was making herself a smoothie from vanilla yogurt and blueberries. “Want one?” she offered.

  “No, thanks.” I perched on the stool across the counter from her. “I had a terrible night.”

  “You did?” she said pleasantly. “I thought you were seeing your mom.”

  “We had a fight.”

  “That’s too bad.” No follow up questions to encourage me to spill.

  “Well, guess I’ll go to bed,” I said, even though it was way too early.

  “Okay, sugar. Sweet dreams.”

  The words of a mother with none of the heart, I thought. Or maybe I was being too hard on everyone.

  It must have been two-thirty or three in the morning when I heard Posie come in. She crept into the bedroom and tried not to make any noise.

  “Have fun?” I asked.

  No answer. Grumpy to be awakened and then ignored, I flicked on the light and prepared to lecture her.

  There was blood on her shirt. Her buttons had been popped off and her bra torn at the top.

  “Posie, what—”

  “Sshh!” she whispered frantically. “Don’t say anything!” She gingerly removed her top. There were red marks on her back and chest, and blood down her arm.

  “Posie!” I whispered in alarm. “What happened?”

  Tears streamed down her face. “I can’t tell you. Please, just go back to sleep.”

  “You’re insane. Tell me right now or I’m going to go get your mom.”

  “He tried to . . .”

  “Brett? What? He tried to what?”

  “I think I really hurt him,” Posie said. “Bad.”

  The Value of Keeping Your Head

  My favorite book in the Bible isn’t even in my Bible. It’s in one I found at Posie’s. I guess some religions feel differently about which stories should make the cut.

  It’s called the Book of Judith, and it’s about this pious widow named Judith who gets sick of all the weak men around her giving in to the enemy commander Holofernes. So she makes them a deal: within five days she will rescue her city from their enemies, if only the people will pray for her.

  Then she puts away her widow’s black, and rubs her body with luscious oils and fixes her hair and puts on her finest clothes and jewelry. She fills a bag with enough food for the next few days, and then she and her maid head for the enemy camp.

  And here is where she starts spinning her lies. She tells the guards she has fled the Israelites because she knows Holofernes is going to slaughter them. She says her God told her to come to Holofernes and reveal the secret route into the city, as a punishment against Israel for all their late
st sins.

  It helps that Judith is beautiful. The guards are totally smitten. They know their commander will be most pleased to have this woman brought to him. So they take Judith to Holofernes, and he looks her over and thinks every thought a man might think when a gorgeous, sexy, great-smelling woman shows up at your tent one day to hand you the keys to her city.

  Judith tells Holofernes he will surely prevail against her people, but that she must go out to prayers every night so that God can reveal to her the perfect time to attack. Sounds good to Holofernes. For the next three nights Judith and her maidservant tromp out to the field at midnight, carrying the food bag so they can eat right after prayers. The guards get used to the routine, and no one bothers Judith. She returns every morning and sits around charming Holofernes for the rest of the day.

  Finally on the fourth day, Holofernes can’t stand it anymore. He invites her to dinner—alone. No maidservant for her, no guards for him. Judith accepts.

  Holofernes offers her wine. She accepts. Only Judith takes just a few sips, whereas Holofernes drains wineskin after wineskin, he’s so psyched about the whole seduction. Before he can make his move, though, Holofernes passes out. Just as Judith planned.

  She grabs his sword, and with two mighty swipes, chops off his head.

  Then she calls in her maid. “Empty the food bag. Quickly!” They hide the head in there.

  And then, just like they have for the past three nights, they calmly walk past the guards, out into the field to pray, carrying their food bag with them.

  Only this time they keep going.

  It’s still dark outside when Judith and her maid arrive back at their city with a bloody souvenir.

  Judith tells the Israelites to mount Holofernes’s head on a post, and then attack at daybreak. They do, and just as Judith predicted, as soon as the soldiers go to alert their commander and find him missing his head, the whole enemy army freaks. They scatter to the winds. The battle is over before it begins.

  The story ends with Judith receiving many marriage proposals over the years, and refusing them all. She takes off all her fancy clothes, returns to her widow’s wardrobe, and lives out the rest of her days in quiet seclusion.

  Rock on.

  I thought about that while Posie told her mother and me everything that had happened. How sometimes it’s the beautiful, feminine, wily women who win out over brutes like Holofernes.

  Posie, thank God, is smart. Posie’s brain keeps working even when some of ours might stop. She understands the value of keeping your head, and not giving in to hysteria.

  She had already tried screaming for him to stop. She had slapped him, scratched him, begged him—Brett wasn’t taking no for an answer. He had waited long enough.

  He’s stronger than she is, and he had her pinned. So what did Posie do? She thought about his hands. Both of them were on her wrists. He had gotten her pants down, but his pants were still on. To undo them, he would have to use one of his hands.

  So Posie told herself to breathe. Don’t panic, don’t panic. And she waited for her moment.

  As soon as Brett reached for his zipper, Posie struck.

  A knee straight up to his groin and at the same time a hard palm straight up into his nose.

  Brett howled. Blood gushed. Posie kicked and scratched and kept kicking and scratching until he was off her and she could jump out of the car.

  Then she ran. She hid behind some bushes. She waited. Brett drove around, shouting for her, but Posie didn’t budge. When he finally left, she walked home.

  Mrs. Sherbern made Posie report it to the police. They came over and took a statement, and said they’d look into it. I can only imagine what they thought when they showed up at Brett’s later that day and saw what Posie had done to his face. It was a few more days before Brett came to school and showed the rest of us.

  He looked like he’d been in a car wreck and had flown through the windshield. The bruises on his face were yellowing, and the scratches had just started to scab. He looked like he’d been attacked by a cheese grater. And then there were the two black eyes and the bandage across his nose. Posie had managed to break it.

  I have hardly been more proud.

  The rumors flew, of course. About how Posie was a you-know-what tease, and when Brett fell for it Posie freaked out and attacked him. About how Posie had mental problems and was paranoid and thought every guy was trying to rape her. About how these police charges were a crock, and Brett’s parents would have it sorted out in no time, and then they’d be suing Posie for defamation.

  Posie held her head high, because that’s her way, but it looked like people actually believed Brett’s lies.

  At first, anyway.

  But then, like the buds coming back to the trees after winter, things started to change. Slowly, at first, but then picking up speed.

  Graffiti on Brett’s locker: “Date rapist” with the word “date” crossed out.

  The words “Nice try” spray-painted on his parents’ garage one night.

  Printouts taped to the mirrors in every school bathroom: “How come muggers never accuse their victims of teasing them with their purses?” and posters with Brett’s picture from last year’s yearbook with the words, “Wanted—but not as much as he thinks” underneath.

  I swear Posie and I had nothing to do with any of it.

  But I had my suspicions who did.

  I pulled him aside next time I saw him in the hall.

  “Is it you?”

  Jason smiled that sly half-smile. “Me what?”

  “It is.”

  Jason shrugged.

  I punched him in the arm. “I like you.”

  Jason kissed my cheek and moved on.

  I more than liked him. Damn it.

  And then—I can’t prove it, but I really think this is true—Jason got his harem of exes into the act. Pretty soon the administration was getting calls every day from a lot of girls’ parents, complaining about the date rapist in our midst, and the fact that the school wasn’t doing anything about it.

  People are sheep. Or maybe they’re sharks smelling blood in the water. Because it didn’t take long for the school to get nervous, and to put Brett on temporary suspension while they “investigated” (their way of saying, “Let’s get him out of here until things cool down”). He lost his sports eligibility for the year, poor baby, and along with the black mark on his record, he suddenly wasn’t quite the golden boy prospect for colleges that he’d been a little while ago.

  And meanwhile the county attorney had decided to prosecute. They set a trial for mid-July.

  It still wasn’t enough for Posie, though. Can’t say I blame her.

  “I want to sue him,” she told Angela Peligro. “For assault. Attempted rape. Brutality.”

  Angela puffed away and considered it. “It’s iffy,” she said. “Believe me, I’d love to snip off that boy’s cock and hand it to him, but the truth is he didn’t actually do anything—thanks to you. I could sue him, but if he doesn’t have a history of this, the jury probably won’t do much with it. We can hire private detectives, dig up what we can—”

  “That’s not fair. So what if I was the first one? What if he had actually raped me?”

  “If he had raped you,” Angela said, “I would have sued his parents for everything I could get and then I’d take a third of it and hand you the rest and you’d still be a girl who was raped, right? The truth is, Posie, you fought hard and you protected yourself and that’s something you should be proud of—no, not just proud, happy. Do you know how many girls and boys I see who wish they could have fought back?”

  “But it’s not fair!” Posie railed. “He’s getting away with it! I want to make him pay!”

  Angela smiled and said with equal fervor, “Honey, from everything I’ve heard, you already have.”

  Tribulation

  [1]

  April. Posie had managed to distract me for a while with her troubles, but now it was back to my own.

&nb
sp; It was a day I had pretended wouldn’t come. It’s like throwing an anvil into the air and convincing yourself it won’t fall back to earth and land on top of you. I had started this—or really, Mikey had—no really, my father had—and now all the formalities of justice were bringing it to a head.

  Here’s what I was thinking as I sat there, waiting for our case to be called:

  It’s one thing to say it to a counselor. Another thing to say it to your mother or even in front of your father, but none of that was swearing on a Bible “this is the truth, the whole truth, and etc., so help me God.” That was a whole other business.

  It was like this:

  I couldn’t stop shaking. Posie pressed her thigh against mine to stop my foot from bouncing on the floor.

  “Settle down,” she whispered.

  “I can’t.”

  “Try. Breathe deeply.”

  I tried that, and only choked on the intake. I went back to worrying a cuticle with my teeth and tapping my heel on the ugly brown courtroom carpet.

  Toni Margress turned around to give me a confidence-inspiring smile. I withered through a brave smile of my own. My father turned around. He was stony, sullen, pathetic. He wanted to make sure I knew I was ruining his life. I knew.

  Judge Beacons was in his fifties, I’d guess. He was nearly bald, but had a nice brown and gray beard trimmed close. He wore a black robe, of course, because that was his costume and this was just a play (I told myself over and over) and I was the innocent young thing wearing this brown shapeless dress I had stolen (borrowed) from the Drama wardrobe, and this was my dashing friend Posie in her cherry blouse and smart black skirt, and my mother wore a modest navy dress while her lawyer wore a black linen suit with a crisp white blouse, and there was the villain in his expensive suit and a tie—oh, my God, a tie I had given him one Father’s Day, I remembered that distinctly—and Samuel Greaves wore tan slacks and a light blue shirt with a blue plaid bow tie and a navy sports coat and we were all in our places waiting for Act I to begin, and wouldn’t this be fun?

  The courtroom scenes in Measure for Measure and The Merchant of Venice show what a great mystery writer Shakespeare would have been. He holds back his cards until the very end, and whether or not you believe the characters would have behaved as they did, you enjoy the spectacle of it, and you appreciate being surprised by someone so masterful at manipulating his audience.