“Absolutely. Children do not need cellphones,” she said vehemently. “When we put them in the hands of children who don’t have the self-regulators they need to have, whether due to young age or, as with these two, perhaps a sense of entitlement or being above the law—”
“But do kids even know they’re breaking any laws when they’re doing what this pair has allegedly done?”
“Even if they haven’t heard of other cases of sexting, I think they know they’re breaking rules, certainly, and an eighteen-year-old male is going to be well aware that his age is the threshold for legal access to pornography, so producing photos for or encouraging or accepting lewd photos from an underage female would of course be a criminal act.”
“What can viewers do to prevent their children from ending up like Miss Wilkes and Mr. Winter, who theoretically could be facing years of prison time for their misbehavior?”
“Excellent question. Build in them a strong sense of self-esteem and good moral judgment. Let them know that their body belongs only to them, and that it’s not to be shared casually in any manner with anyone. Also, limit or deny access to all these unnecessary gadgets, and never give a teenager unsupervised, unregulated access to a computer. If you must give your child a cellphone, get a model that doesn’t have a camera. Girls of this age, especially the ones like Miss Wilkes, who are both attractive and have advantages that young men desire, often recognize that they have a lot of power over those young men and, without a carefully laid foundation of right and wrong, they’ll make use of that power.”
“What do you think they’re getting from using it?”
“Oh, all kinds of things, but worshipful attention seems to be the primary attraction, in my experience. Their parents are often very busy and neglectful. It’s a sad, but not irreversible, state of being. Counseling, along with education, usually helps build a healthy self-worth.”
“We’re out of time, but thanks very much, Dr. Shriver. Good food for thought. Join us tomorrow at six for the second part of this series, with our guest Olivia Sanchez, who’s with the district attorney’s office. We’ll be talking in detail about the laws affecting teens who sext, and the life-altering consequences of breaking those laws.”
“Neglectful?” Sheri challenged. “I do not neglect my daughter.”
Harlan felt his mouth hanging open, and closed it. His throat was tight, and his face and neck and ears were burning. Sheri rushed over to him, asking, “Are you all right?”
He couldn’t speak. The protest that had been ignited by Shriver’s bullshit, uninformed, sensationalized “expert opinion” of his daughter and his home and his life stayed lodged like a boulder in his chest, threatening to suffocate him. He put his hands on his knees and leaned over, hanging his head, trying to catch his breath. He felt Sheri’s hand on his back. “Harlan,” she said. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
He coughed hard, caught his breath, and, looking up at her, said, “What’s wrong? Did you not hear that woman?”
She moved her hand and sat back. “Yes, of course I did. I just thought that you were …”
“What I am,” he said, sitting up again, “is sick to my stomach over the lies these people are telling about Amelia. And she made us out as failures—practically said we’re the ones to blame!”
Sheri sat down next to him. “Maybe we are to blame—not for all of it, but—”
“This is Winter’s fault, and if any parent’s to blame, it’s his mother, not you. I swear to God, if it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to set the record straight.”
Amelia heard her father’s declaration from where she was sitting in the game room on a luxurious velour sectional, her knees drawn protectively to her chest. The TV, a sixty-five-inch plasma screen on which she’d been watching A Chorus Line to pass the time, was now tuned to the same local news broadcast that had provoked her father.
Seeing her mug shot, and Anthony’s, had horrified her. Hearing the psychologist’s disparaging judgments of Anthony and their parents and herself had horrified her, too. But it was her father’s vengeful words that cut like a newly sharpened blade.
Unbidden came the rhyme, Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Words, oh, they could hurt all right. They could trip you up. They could pull you down. They could cut your heart right out of your chest and make you wish you had never been born—or that you were born to someone else.
21
XPLAIN THIS BOND BUSINESS,” MARTA WINTER SAID TO HER daughter, Kim, in Marta’s sunroom early Friday morning. “The arrest, all right, I see how that all works, but this I’m not sure I understand.”
Kim took the cup of coffee her mother offered and sat down in a chair upholstered in a raucous print of orchids and colorful long-tailed birds. The room, a small add-on to the back of the ’60s split-level that was located in an area called Five Points, had the feel of an exotic aviary. One of her father’s last projects before his illness had been to build what he’d called “your mother’s bird box,” a floor-to-ceiling cage, three feet in depth, eight in length, for finches. Inside the wire enclosure were mounted various branches and baskets and ropes, seed trays, and water bins. The inhabitants were six pairs of finches, two each of zebra, society, and the color-blocked gouldians. They chattered and hopped about cheerfully, which Kim usually enjoyed. Today, their beauty and music and the fact that they paired faithfully, for life, was depressing. Why should it come so easily for them while humans, purportedly the highest of Earth’s life-forms, had so much trouble finding mates—and when they did, their fellow humans so often worked against them? What did people like Harlan Wilkes and Gibson Liles—Liles especially—have against love?
She’d looked up Liles, and what she’d found had chilled her. He was forty-one years old, a handsome enough man (though his ears stuck out a bit far), father of three girls, married to his Kinston, North Carolina, high-school sweetheart. He had the kinds of church affiliations she’d come to expect from politically ambitious men everywhere. None of that troubled her. His agenda, though, the one that had boosted him up from being just one more eager prosecutor for the State, was that he was unapologetically, overtly, rabidly conservative. Now, Kim certainly wanted criminals off the streets and punished appropriately. She believed there were moral “oughts” and “musts.” As an educator of teens, she knew as well as anyone that precocious sexuality was unhealthy, and that young women were especially susceptible to pressures from boys, from the entertainment media, from advertising, from popular music. She was glad that there were laws protecting children of all ages from perverse and predatory activities. It was obvious, though, that in the case of Anthony and Amelia, Liles was using a definition of criminal that happily twisted the intent of the law to suit his moral outlook—or, perhaps, the moral outlook that he knew would propel him further up the prominence ladder. When asked, in an interview Kim watched as an archived video clip, whether he might like to run the state, he had said, “If the good people of North Carolina and the good Lord in His wisdom see fit for me to do it, it would be my profound honor to be governor one day.” Asked on Thursday for a comment on “the Ravenswood sexting scandal,” he’d said, “We cannot have young people behaving in ways that will damage them so profoundly as taking and sending sexually explicit photographs is bound to do. I want to send a message to all the teenagers, my own daughters included, that such behavior is in every way wrong. In every way,” he’d repeated. “We need a lesson here. Actions bring consequences.” Yes, Kim thought, especially when the state’s prosecutor found it expedient to make it so.
Kim shifted so that her back was to the birds and told her mother, “The court sets a bail amount—a ridiculous amount, in both kids’ cases—and then you either pay the entire amount, which they hold until after the case resolves, or, if you don’t have enough, you get a bondsman to pay it for you for a ten percent fee, or you get a property bond—a promise to pay that’s secured by your home’s equity, which is what I did.”
Her recollection of the past few days was a blur. The arrest, a panicked call to the lawyer, a first night with no sleep at all when she’d sat up staring into the darkness wondering if Anthony was doing the same, feeling as if she’d been jettisoned into a nightmare from which she would one day emerge battered and bleeding but, until then, she would remain its helpless captive.
The next morning, Tuesday, could not come fast enough. She’d gotten right to work on Anthony’s release, getting her home-purchase paperwork from her bank safety deposit box, scheduling an emergency appraisal (for five hundred dollars!), then expending her nervous energy cleaning the house from corner to corner and top to bottom in anticipation of the appraiser’s Wednesday morning visit. Throughout it all, she’d watched the clock. Every minute she had to wait was a minute that Anthony was passing locked up unfairly. Caged. Frustrated. Cursing his bad luck, bad karma, the random vindictiveness of the universe. Stunned that his love for Amelia, and Amelia’s for him, could get him into this mess.
Love: it had the power of flowing water to find even the most miniscule crack and to seep through it, then widen it, and then, in the case of a dyke or a dam, to burst the structure entirely. Love was a pleasure and a danger at the same time, a force of nature that humans naïvely imagined could be controlled.
Kim said now, “I could have gotten him out sooner if I’d used the bondsman, but I can’t afford to just give away three thousand dollars—that would’ve been the fee, ten percent of thirty grand.”
“I wish you had called me first. Maybe I could have liquidated something and paid the whole thing.”
“Mom, thank you, but I wouldn’t think of compromising you that way. If the accused person doesn’t show when he’s supposed to, the court keeps all the money—which isn’t to say that I don’t trust Anthony, but …”
“But?”
“But, there are a lot of pressures on him, and he’s very angry, and I think he’ll handle the next weeks, or possibly months, all right, but what if he doesn’t?”
Her mother looked aghast. “If the accused person doesn’t show up, the court gets to keep the money, really?”
“Yes—to pay for pursuit efforts, I suppose. It’s …” Kim clenched her fists, then opened them. “It’s insane, this whole thing, it’s just ludicrous. Both kids are being treated like criminals, and for what?”
“So the DA can look like a hero to his supporters, I’d imagine.” Her mother wrote out a check, then carefully folded it back and tore it from its pad. “Here. Please let me know if I can do more.”
Kim took the check gratefully and said, “Everything I’d put aside for his school is gone to the lawyer. Our trip to France next summer: gone. My house is tied up until everything gets resolved, so I can’t even touch the equity if I need to. I can’t buy groceries unless I use a credit card—or couldn’t, without your help. Thank you. I’m paying you back as soon as I get paid.”
“It’s all right, there’s no rush.”
“Look at me. A professional woman, a homeowner, and thanks to one uptight, reactionary father and an all-too-eager DA, I can no longer help my son afford college—assuming there will still be a college that will let him in when this is done—and I’m scraping the barrel just to get by until payday. My son is being painted as a sexual predator and pervert, and I’m being made out as neglectful. He loves Amelia. It’s ludicrous.” She put her hand to her forehead and said, “And listen to me, I’m a broken record. Ludicrous, that’s my new favorite word.”
“It’s apt,” her mother said.
Kim slumped back in the chair. “Thank you for not judging him, Mom.”
“He’s not the first, you know. They’re not the first, none of the kids out there who are doing this are—and I’m sure there are plenty. A lot of people did the same thing with those early instant cameras. You won’t remember, probably, but we had that Polaroid, the Swinger—and so did a whole lot of teenagers, who took a whole lot of what everyone called ‘dirty pictures’ when, of course, plenty of adults were doing it, too. The difference between using those instant cameras and using cellphones and such was there was no way of tracing where the picture had come from.”
“The real difference is that sending pictures of a minor by text or email, or even viewing them electronically, is a federal crime, Mom. It’s already ludicrous—Christ, there I go again—it’s already ridiculous, crazy, insane, unbelievable, absurd that they were charged with possession and production crimes, but we’re also waiting to see whether the Feds get involved.”
“Oh, honey.” Her mother reached for her hand and held it between her own. “What would happen then?”
“I’d have to find about a hundred thousand dollars somewhere, for one, just to pay the lawyer. Buy a lottery ticket or two, will you?” She laughed ruefully. “And Anthony … God, I can’t imagine.” She could, though, and what she imagined struck terror in her heart. He was not a person who could be imprisoned—especially for such a noncrime, not without losing every meaningful part of himself, not without his soul withering and leaving him an empty, angry pessimist. The world certainly didn’t need more of those. And she knew she would not be able to stand having him locked away, knowing what he was going through. She would fight for him, do everything she could to right the wrong. But you didn’t get to almost-fifty without seeing, again and again, travesties of justice that took years to work their way through the appeals system—and no guarantee of a good outcome. Even if his sentence were short, he’d spend the decades afterward as a registered sex offender. How would he ever get a job, or credit? How would he be able to rent a place to live—and supposing he managed that, would his neighbors fear him, harass him, assume the worst without ever asking for his side of the story? And if they asked, would they believe him?
Ludicrous.
She thought of what he’d said in the lawyer’s office yesterday afternoon, the questions he’d asked about Amelia, the objections he’d raised to Mariana Davis’s defense strategy. She told her mother, “He’s more concerned about Amelia than about himself.”
“You raised him well.”
“I have a feeling you’re in the minority with that opinion,” she said, standing up.
Her mother stood too, and followed her to the front door, saying, “I’m sure that’s true. We have to admit, there’s no question that the kids would have avoided all of this if they had just been more judicious and stayed clothed—”
Kim turned. “Of course they would have! But for God’s sake, when was the last time you saw a pregnant teenager and her teenaged boyfriend arrested for what they’d done? When were the musicians and filmmakers and advertising agencies and, and, and magazine publishers hauled in for subjecting children to explicit language and soft porn? I mean, yes, I wish they had kept their clothes on, and I’m pissed that they didn’t, because wouldn’t we all be a lot better off right now if they had? But can we please get some common sense here?”
Her mother’s eyes were sympathetic as she said, “I doubt it, but I hope so.” She hugged Kim, then kissed her on the forehead the same way she’d done when Kim was a fourteen-year-old raging at the world’s injustices.
“Thanks for letting me vent. I better get going. I’ve missed three days already. It won’t look good if I’m late this morning.”
“If there’s anything I can do for you, you’ll let me know, right?”
The lump in Kim’s throat grew. “I feel so powerless,” she whispered. “I’m his mother; I’m supposed to be able to fix things for him. It’s all so wrong, and this time I can’t undo it.”
Her mother drew back and looked into her eyes. “Believe me, I know just how you feel.”
At Ravenswood, Kim walked into the faculty lounge, a square room arranged with chairs and sofas and resembling, more than anything, a Starbucks, and conversation stopped. Then, following an awkward pause in which she simply stood and returned the stares, it resumed in such a way that Kim could tell everyone in the room had abruptly changed t
heir subjects.
Astonishingly, not a single one of her fellow teachers greeted her. No one offered support, or asked for information. These people who had welcomed her, commiserated with her, laughed with her over coffee or cocktails, were now apparently reconsidering their fondness for the mother of an accused sex offender. She was the elephant in the room. She pulled her shoulders back, gritted her teeth to keep her lips from trembling as her colleagues resumed their exclusive conversations. So be it, then.
She was pouring coffee into her mug when William came in. The room quieted again as he came up to her. In his black pants and pin-striped dress shirt, cuffs rolled to his elbows, wire-rimmed glasses giving him a studious look that disappeared when she saw him in sunglasses, tennis shoes, and shorts, he was every bit Mr. Braddock. He kept his hands at his sides and said, “Can I have a word? In my office?”
“Of course. Sure. I’ll be right there.”
“Great, thanks.”
She watched him pivot and leave without engaging anyone else in the room, rare for him. At work he was, under ordinary circumstances, that lovely combination of sociable and authoritative, resulting in respect given freely rather than grudgingly—which was more often the case with administrators, if respect was accorded them at all. As a headmaster and as a friend, he got invited to and welcomed at cocktail parties and dinners and birthday celebrations and nights on the town. Which explained in large part how he had managed to see her publicly without raising suspicions. That he had been so brief just now did not bode well.
Kim took her time getting the pint of half-and-half from the refrigerator, opened it slowly, poured it slowly, closed the carton, and returned it to its spot on the top shelf. If she didn’t appear stressed or hurried, her son would look less guilty, wasn’t that how it worked? As conversation resumed once more, she took a teaspoon from the sink, rinsed it off, stirred the cream into her coffee, rinsed the spoon again, and set it in the drainer. On her way to the door, she stopped to speak to Shirlene Marshall, a fellow art teacher whose specialties were pottery and papier-mâché.
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