Lacy Eye

by Jessica Treadway

  Art Cahill had gained weight and lost hair since I’d seen him last, during Joe’s and my meeting with him in his office almost ten years earlier. A few weeks into her sixth-grade year, he called us into his classroom to tell us he thought Dawn was depressed. “I checked with her other teachers, and they all say she doesn’t seem engaged in her classes,” he told us, as Joe sat next to me tapping his fingertips on his knees. I knew the gesture sprang from resentment at this other man for trying to give us information about our own daughter.

  A moment followed during which we all realized that the teacher was weighing whether he should say the next words, and he made the wrong decision. Lowering his voice as if inviting us to make a confession, he asked, “Everything okay at home?”

  “Of course everything’s okay!” Joe exploded before I could send him a message to take it easy. He didn’t lose his temper often, but when he did, it was usually because he felt threatened. I could tell he believed that Art Cahill was challenging his competence as a father.

  “This has nothing to do with home,” Joe went on, and I was relieved to hear that already his tone had come down a notch. “It’s about her eye. It’s about other kids calling her Spaz and Fish Face.” From the side, I could see the vein in his temple twitching. “I mean, how would you like that?”

  Another person might have backed off, but Mr. Cahill continued pressing. “She’s had the lazy eye for years, though, right? Why would it be affecting her mood all of a sudden now?”

  “Amblyopia,” Joe said, irritably. “Not ‘lazy eye.’ There’s nothing lazy about it.” But I knew he didn’t say it because he actually cared to educate Art Cahill about the correct term for our daughter’s condition. He already felt like the villain in our decision not to let her get the surgery over the summer, and he didn’t want to give the English teacher any more ammunition if he saw it that way, too.

  Joe rose then to indicate that the meeting was over, and I knew he was wishing that the teacher would, by way of making small talk, ask how Iris was doing. Joe liked nothing better than to brag about our older daughter, who’d skipped a grade and excelled at everything she tried, and part of me would have liked to do this, too. Didn’t Iris’s success mean that, as parents, we were doing something right?

  But it would have been disloyal to Dawn, under the circumstances, so I knew we both believed it was just as well that Mr. Cahill didn’t ask.

  Driving me back to the medical office before returning to work, Joe seemed subdued.

  Murmuring into the steering wheel, he said, “You understand why I didn’t want her to have the surgery, right?”

  “Of course,” I told him. Now ask me if I agree with you. I wished he would add, but he didn’t.

  “She hates me, doesn’t she?” he said. When I heard that, I felt the anger slide right out of my heart.

  “Of course not,” I said, although I hate him were the exact words Dawn had used.

  When Mr. Cahill leaned close to speak to us in Pepito’s, I saw that his pupils were so dilated that his eyes appeared black, and I remembered that the kids used to call him Mr. Kay-Pill. “I’ve told you that Dawn wrote one of the best papers on Emily Dickinson I’ve ever received from a student,” he said, addressing both his wife and me. In fact, this assessment about the paper Dawn wrote for him, when she was in sixth grade, was part of the letter he wrote and intended to send as a character reference to the grand jury. Peter Cifforelli had to tell him that there was no such thing as a defense in the grand jury; he could submit the letter only if the case went to trial. In the letter, Mr. Cahill left out the fact that Dawn was in English R as opposed to S; R denoted “regular” (although the kids of course said it stood for “retarded”), while S meant “seminar” (or “snobs”) and was for the more advanced students. Iris had been an S student all along. When Dawn entered middle school, we hoped that she could manage S, too. But it didn’t take long for us to realize that this was aiming too high.

  In the restaurant, Dawn mumbled “Thank you” to her old teacher. I could tell she wanted to leave, and I tried to move us toward the restaurant exit, but Mr. Cahill didn’t seem to want to let us go. He asked Dawn what she’d been up to the past few years.

  She stared at him blankly. Feeling alarmed, I stepped in to say, “I think she’s still a little tired. She had a long drive here from New Mexico.”

  “Oh, really?” He cocked his balding head. “What were you doing out there?”

  “What do you mean?” She asked it as if she couldn’t make sense of the question.

  “Um—for work.” The Cahills glanced at each other. I wondered if one or both of them might be thinking Ding-Dong, with the same singsong inflection all the kids used to use.

  I waited for Dawn to give them an answer, because I’d been wondering what her job had been, too. Instead she said, “I like a look of agony,” and a rope yanked through my stomach as Gwen Cahill gasped, “What?”

  But her husband let a smile cross his lips as he picked up my daughter’s prompt, a look of conspiracy passing between them. “‘I like a look of Agony,’” he intoned, “‘Because I know it’s true.’”

  “Oh, my God,” his wife murmured. “It’s a goddamn poem.” She turned away to exhale so loudly we could all hear it, and I felt the same relief.

  Dawn gave what she probably thought was a surreptitious tug on my sleeve, though it was clear to me that both Cahills saw it. He put his hand up as if to halt us and, leaning closer even though there was nobody else around to hear him, said, “I never got a chance to tell you, and I shouldn’t mention it now because it’s all supposed to be a secret. But my brother-in-law was on your grand jury.” He looked at Dawn blurrily, and if I’d doubted before that he was under the influence of something other than Mexican food, I didn’t doubt it then.

  If it had been me he tried to focus on, I would have taken a step back. But Dawn didn’t. She looked right at him and said, “So?”

  I could tell Art Cahill had expected a different reaction. He seemed to lift himself up out of his shoes in an effort to emphasize the importance of what he had to say. “So, maybe it’s possible I had something to do with the fact that you didn’t go to trial. They needed a certain number of votes to indict. My brother-in-law was all set to vote yes, but I might have persuaded him otherwise.”

  A small smile flickered at the corners of his mouth. His wife looked disgusted by the fact that he had divulged what he did, though the content of it was obviously not news to her.

  “You’re right. You shouldn’t be telling us this,” I said.

  “I just wanted Dawn to know how much I believe in her. Somebody who loves Emily Dickinson that much, a soul who loves poetry like that—no way that person could have been involved in, in what she was accused of.” He stumbled a bit over the last phrase, making me realize he had probably thought better at the last minute of saying the word murder.

  I’m sure he thought Dawn would thank him again. Even though I was aghast at the turn the conversation had taken, I thought she might, too. Instead she raised her eyes in an expression of—defiance? Anger? Shame? I couldn’t tell. “They didn’t indict me because I was innocent,” she said. “You had nothing to do with it.”

  The smile vanished from Mr. Cahill’s face.

  “And I never really did like Emily Dickinson,” Dawn went on. “I just picked her because the poems were so short.”

  Mr. Cahill caved forward a little and gave a gasp. He looked and sounded as if someone had let the air out of him.

  “She’s tired after her long drive,” I told the Cahills again. “I’d better get her home.” Without looking back, I steered Dawn toward the door and out to the parking lot.

  The air was frosty, containing that hard winter bite. She looked up at the sky and murmured, “It’s dark so early.”

  “It’ll be worse in a little more than a week.”

  “Why?”

  “Daylight Savings ends then.” Was she really that unaware?

  “Oh.
” She smiled feebly. “Well, can’t see.” It was a phrase we’d learned as a family on one of our historical visits; the guide had told us that people worked in the cotton mills from before sunup to after sundown—“from can’t see to can’t see.”

  Then it occurred to me that she hadn’t forgotten about the time change. She was just trying to distract me from the discomfort I’d felt during our encounter with the Cahills. I said to her, “That wasn’t like you. What was that all about?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “He thought he was telling you something you’d want to hear.” I paused before adding, “You jumped all over him.”

  “I did not.” She spoke calmly, directing her words at the windshield rather than across the seat to me. A few more minutes passed before she murmured, “He always liked me. But he shouldn’t have.”

  “Why do you say that? A lot of people liked you.”

  “That’s not true, Mommy. But it’s nice of you to say.” She took a deep breath, then added, “I know I was a loser all my life. Until I met Rud.” She mumbled toward the window of the passenger seat. I wasn’t sure I’d heard right, so just in case, I asked her to repeat it.

  “I said, until I met Rud,” she echoed herself, louder, turning so that I could make no mistake this time.

  The sound of his name on her lips halted my hand as I went to shift. “Dawn,” I said, intentionally lowering my own volume in an effort to slow my heartbeat, “Why are you bringing him up now? And in that tone?”

  “What tone?” It was the thing that had always angered Iris most about Dawn. She pretends she doesn’t understand what you’re saying, when of course she does. I used to defend Dawn, telling Iris that her sister was just a slower processor than some people. I borrowed the word process from Pam Furth, even though I scorned it when she used it to describe Emmett. “You make her sound like a Cuisinart,” Iris said—clearly pleased with her own witticism, which made Joe chuckle before he realized he shouldn’t have—“when really she’s just being a pain in the ass.”

  I shrugged at Dawn now, trying not to let the motion go out of control the way it wanted to. “I don’t know. Wistful, or something.” It was all I could do not to tell her about Gail Nazarian’s visit, and her suggestion that Rud and Dawn might have been in touch with each other. It was another question I couldn’t ask because I did not want to hear the answer.

  As we drove toward the parking lot exit, Dawn looked out the window and said, “Hey, remember?” She pointed at Little Folks, the store where we had bought her first training bra together. It was a rite of passage Iris had not let me be a part of; she’d gone shopping with a group of friends for her first bra, without letting me know what she was up to. When it came Dawn’s turn, I offered to drop her off at the shop if she wanted to browse by herself, but she said she wanted me to be there, and I knew she was telling the truth. Afterward I took her to Lickety Split to celebrate, and she told me I was her best friend. Though I know it was wrong of me, I felt gratified hearing it, even as I felt sad for her. I couldn’t help loving, that day, how much I knew she loved me.

  Now I followed her gaze to the lighted bank kiosk we had to pass before exiting the plaza. “I meant to ask before, do you think I could borrow some money, just until I find a job?” she asked. “I’ll pay you back, I promise.”

  I told myself that I shouldn’t be surprised—after all, she’d mentioned that part of her reason for moving home was financial. As I went to open the car door, she said, “Do you want me to do it? It’s so cold out. You could just tell me your password, and I’ll get it myself.”

  I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature outside. Insisting to myself that she just wanted to save me the trouble, I told her I didn’t mind doing it and stepped out of the car. When I returned with the cash, she kissed me on the cheek and tucked the wad into her pocket without looking at it. We were halfway home before somebody coming the other way flashed his lights at me, and I realized we’d been driving dangerously in the dark.

  Eye of the Tiger

  Arriving back home, we saw someone standing on the front stoop, and I tried not to let on to Dawn how apprehensive the unidentified shadow made me feel. Then we recognized Cecilia Baugh, with a reporter’s notebook tucked under her armpit as she blew into her hands to keep them warm.

  “I’m freezing my butt off,” she said when we got out, in the tone of someone who’d had an appointment and been kept waiting for hours.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked her, as if I didn’t know.

  Cecilia answered me with the same eerie calmness she’d possessed since she learned how to speak. “I know you don’t like me, Mrs. Schutt. But I heard Dawn was home. And I wanted to talk to you both.”

  I bit back the question How did you hear? It had been only a few hours. Then I caught Cecilia’s glance falling on the Furths’ house next door, and remembered Pam’s slow drive-by when Dawn first arrived. I remembered that Pam and Cecilia’s mother played Bunco together. There was a light on in the kitchen, and I wondered if Pam was watching my exchange with Cecilia the way someone else might watch a soap opera.

  Cecilia said, “We’re working on a story about people besides Rud Petty who might have killed your husband. We’re not getting very far on the Marc Sedgwick angle, but a lot of people seem to like Emmett Furth for it.” Now she inclined her head toward Pam’s house.

  If I had been fond of Cecilia, I might have smiled at the way she used the lingo from TV cop shows, as in people liking Emmett for the crime. I also understood then that if Pam had been the one to notify Cecilia of Dawn’s arrival, she had no idea that the story Cecilia planned to write might suggest that her son was to blame for the attack against us.

  Looking at her, I couldn’t help seeing—along with the adult reporter I would not invite into my house—the four-year-old girl, with black pigtails long enough to sit on and the bearing (even back then) of someone who knew she was admired, who used to come over to play Chutes and Ladders with Dawn on the days I picked them both up from preschool. If Cecilia ended up with a bad draw from the card pile, she always managed to convince Dawn that she should get to choose a different card. I used to listen to her say things like “It’s not fair, because you’re taller” and “Since we’re playing at your house, you should let me go again,” and I’d want Dawn to stand up to her and say, “That doesn’t make sense” or “That doesn’t matter,” but I stayed out of it because of Joe’s belief that kids should work things out for themselves.

  “When you say ‘we,’” I asked, “you mean that Bloody Glove website, don’t you?” Cecilia was still in college, majoring in journalism at the university, but she freelanced for the town newspaper and, more recently, the sensationalistic online tabloid that was trying to give The National Enquirer a run for its money. Somehow, she’d convinced them that she had an “in” on what had happened in our house three years earlier.

  “Maybe.” She shrugged and smiled, and I had to look away because I hated her so much. She went on: “Some people seem to think Emmett’s a distinct possibility. If the defense can put enough doubt in the jurors’ minds, they think Rud Petty might get off.”

  Until now, Dawn had remained in the darkness behind me. But now she stepped forward and said, “Hi, Cecilia,” in a fawning tone that made me want to shake her.

  Cecilia gave Dawn a smile she would never have wasted on her five or ten years earlier. “Hi, Dawn. You look great,” she said, and then I wanted to shake her. I watched her glance narrow as she peered closely, without wanting to be caught doing it, at Dawn’s face; I could tell she was noticing that the operation to fix the lazy eye was coming undone. Surely sensing an advantage, Cecilia continued to press. “I was hoping you’d be willing to sit down with me to talk about the tree house.”

  Behind me, I heard Dawn make a noise. “No,” I told Cecilia. “We have no desire to talk to you about the tree house or anything else.” I could feel Dawn begging me silently not to mor
tify her.

  “Okay, Mrs. Schutt.” Cecilia closed her notebook. “I understand. I’m sure I can get what I need from somebody else.” She leaned around me as I moved in front of Dawn to try to protect her. “What do you think, Dawn?”

  Dawn looked at me, and I could tell she felt trapped. “You don’t have to answer any questions,” I told her.

  “But why not?” Cecilia pointed her pen at me. “Is there something to hide?”

  In a faint voice, Dawn said, “Emmett didn’t do it.” Probably without realizing, she gestured at the bedroom window above us behind which the attack had taken place. “It was Rud Petty.”

  “And you know this how—did he confess to you? Are you going to testify?”

  Cecilia and I both watched as Dawn shook her head.

  “Then you can’t be any more sure than anyone else, right? Did you know Emmett was arrested two weeks ago for breaking and entering? A house over in Shelby Falls?” I could tell how much Cecilia enjoyed telling us this, so I tried not to let her see my surprise.

  “Breaking and entering isn’t the same thing as murder,” I said.

  “True. But the homeowners in that case caught him and called the police before he could do anything. Who knows what he was intending?” Her eyes were sly.

  I said, “I think you’d better go now.”

  “Mom,” Dawn whispered desperately. “Mom.”

  Cecilia turned and made as if she were returning to her car, which was parked at the curb. Then, as if she’d only just in that moment thought of something else, she turned and called out, “Oh, I almost forgot. Do either of you want to comment on the vandalism?” She gestured toward the driveway.

  At first I had no idea what she was talking about. Then, through the darkness, I saw that someone had used blue spray-paint to write KILLER! on the passenger door of the Corvette.

  Dawn stared at the car, then held a fist up to her forehead and pressed it into her skin. “But I was found innocent. What’s wrong with these people?” she said, sounding not indignant but hurt.