Pee-Shy

by Frank Spinelli

  As much as I tried, I was never able to predict my mother’s reactions. The more I thought about it, the more confused I became. Whatever her reasons, I found it reassuring that she wanted to come to the hearing, even though I knew she wouldn’t. I suppose it brought her some degree of peace knowing Bill was in jail for the time being.

  CHAPTER 36

  Vertically Challenged

  IN PREPARATION FOR THE UPCOMING HEARING, I asked Chad whether we should rent a car and stay overnight in Tioga County or drive up early that morning. He was working at his desk, alternating between his computer and BlackBerry.

  “Hello, Earth to Chad. Are you listening?”

  “Hmm?” he said. He could barely tear his eyes away from the screen before he realized how frustrated I was becoming. “The hearing. Right. I think we should just drive up that morning.”

  “It starts at 9 A.M. sharp. Tioga County is five hours away. We’ll have to leave here by 3:30 A.M.”

  This information seemed to overwhelm Chad. He studied my face, the corners of his brows curling up in confusion.

  “There’s no train?” he asked.

  “I checked. The closest train leaves you in Harrisburg, which is a forty-five-minute drive to Tioga County. We’ll still have to rent a car.” Chad continued to stare at me without uttering a word, without changing his expression.

  I started to get angry. “If you don’t want to go with me, Chad, just say so.”

  “No, if you want me there, then I’ll go.”

  It was then that I concluded the world was made up of two sets of people: the Doers and the Don’ts. The Doers are proactive and two steps ahead. The Don’ts are the ones who sit by and hope someone else will take up the slack. I was beginning to think Chad, like my mother and sisters, was a Don’t. Since Bill’s arrest, I’d become invigorated by the prospect of attending the hearing. And even though everyone around me acted as if they wanted to help, they really didn’t mean it. Like most Don’ts, they were being polite.

  My mother shrouded her fear with concern by cautioning me that Bill or his family would come after me if I continued to pursue him. Maria was probably thankful she lived out of state so she had an excuse not to be by my side. Even Josephine, whom I had grown quite close to as an adult, kept me at arm’s distance with regard to Bill and this case. They still lived in a world of denial, thinking that if I just let it go, it would simply go away. Even when they learned that other boys had been molested after me, I would have expected them to feel compelled to right this wrong. Instead, they let their guilt weigh them down. In a sense, they were repeating the same actions they’d committed thirty years ago—when they sat back and watched a molester go free. When it came right down to it, no one wanted to get involved, not my mother, not my sisters, not even Chad.

  “How could you say that to me?” I said.

  “What do you want me to say? I’m busy.”

  “You’re always busy. There’s always something going on in your life, whether it’s a meeting or a conference call. The difference between you and me is that you wouldn’t have to ask me to go with you if the situation was reversed.” My eyes began to twitch. I squeezed them shut.

  “Don’t start crying now.”

  “I’m not crying.” I rubbed my eyes. “I feel like I’m eleven years old again. You’re being so passive-aggressive.” Chad was sitting barely four feet away from me, yet it felt as if we were miles apart. Bill’s arrest and the impending hearing hadn’t brought us closer together. If anything, it had pulled us in opposite directions. “We need to come to a compromise.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I suggest we rent a car and drive up that morning. Even if we have to leave at the crack of dawn, it’s still better than sleeping over in some cheap hotel. We’ll drop the dog off at the Puppy Loft the night before so we don’t have to worry about him. Then we’ll just leave in the morning like you suggested.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “It will all be over soon. I promise.”

  Sooner or later, I knew it would come down to this. We had been ignoring the fact that the hearing would eventually happen. It wasn’t until dinner was over, right after we watched the news and turned off the lights, that I began to feel that churning sensation below my ribs.

  Next to me Chad tossed and turned. He moved closer and whispered, “How do you feel about seeing Bill again after all this time? It’s one thing for you to talk with him on the phone. It’s a completely different situation to see him in person.”

  “I have this ridiculous concern that I’m going to be the shortest person in the courtroom.”

  “What the hell does your height have to do with anything?”

  “Chad, I’m practically the same height I was in grammar school. I’m worried that when I walk into that courtroom tomorrow, Bill won’t see a man; he’ll see a little boy.”

  “Why are you so obsessed with your height? It’s probably one of the most attractive things about you. I don’t understand why it bothers you so much.”

  “I told you it was ridiculous. You know there is this old Italian wives’ tale that if you walk across someone’s legs, you’ll stop them from growing. Every time I got up from the couch, my mother would yell at me if I walked over someone’s legs to get past them. I believe that being molested by Bill Fox stunted my growth.”

  Simultaneously, we both laughed out loud. Chad shuffled his feet under the covers, waking Hoffman. I loved making him laugh.

  “It makes total Spinelli sense. It’s reverse logic. You think you were stunted when, in fact, you chose not to live in denial. You became a doctor, you’re in a relationship, and you’re dealing with this head-on. The others, like Jonathan, Nicholas, and Bill, are in denial. If anything, their lives were stunted.”

  “I know you’re right. It’s something I need to work on. The funny thing is that when I was in Denver visiting Jonathan, I immediately noticed he was short, too. You don’t know how happy that made me.”

  Chad nuzzled and kissed my neck. “I’m not surprised, and just for the record, I don’t think of you as short.”

  ON APRIL 6, I WOKE UP PROMPTLY and stared at the digital clock. It read 3 A.M. I had barely slept, thinking about the long drive ahead of us. Without waiting another second, I got up and began to get ready. After I showered, I put on a pair of black slacks, a solid blue shirt, and a charcoal blazer. Inside my shoes, I placed two-inch lifts. When I assessed myself in the mirror, I felt confident and tall. Then I sat in the living room, sipped coffee, and waited patiently for Chad.

  When we were on the road, heading through the Lincoln Tunnel, I looked at my watch: 4:30 A.M. In New Jersey, I pulled into a coffee shop so we could buy enough rations to keep us going until we arrived at the courthouse.

  The weather changed once we entered Pennsylvania. The air became cooler, even as the sun began to rise over the mountains. There was even a brief flurry. Driving the long stretch of highway, I grew anxious with each passing minute. By 8:45 A.M., I began to panic when I realized I hadn’t seen an exit sign for miles. “I think I passed it,” I said.

  Chad sensed my rising anxiety and tried to remain calm. “It’s just a few more miles,” he encouraged.

  Skeptical, I stared intently at the road ahead until a sign emerged indicating our exit was the next right. “To think we drove all this way, and we still might be late,” I said.

  “It’s not much farther. The directions show the courthouse is just two miles from the off-ramp.”

  I turned left onto a main road that looked as if it could have been lifted from any small town. I couldn’t help but notice that nothing seemed quite real. It felt as if we were on a movie set. There were rows of dilapidated homes with pickup trucks in nearly every driveway. Some houses were so beaten down by weather and disrepair that I couldn’t imagine anyone lived in them. We passed a strip mall with several abandoned stores. There was one dress shop open with no mannequins in the windows, just clothing tacked onto white boards. Up ahead, an old-fashioned diner with
faded blue siding and large windows was empty except for a woman standing behind the cash register.

  To my left, I noticed a simple one-story building that looked like a roadside motel. “That can’t be the courthouse,” I said. “It’s a lot smaller than I expected.” We pulled up to the front and parked in the only remaining spot. It suddenly occurred to me that the courtroom was going to be packed with family members there to support Bill.

  I bet they’re all tall.

  I looked at my watch. It was just two minutes after the hour. Rushing ahead, I opened the door to the courthouse. Inside, I found myself in a small vestibule with two doors. Like Alice in Wonderland, I chose the one to my right, hoping it would make me taller. It opened into the actual courtroom itself, which was smaller than I expected, roughly the size of my parents’ living room. There was no marble floor, only cheap carpeting. The walls were covered with panel, not paint, and nearly every folding chair was occupied. I took one of the few remaining seats, in the last row next to a middle-aged woman. Once I sat down, I realized she was Bill’s sister. Chad entered soon after me and sat in an empty chair by the door. Seconds later, I heard, “All rise, the Honorable Judge Carlson presiding.”

  Bill was no more than twenty feet away from me, dressed in an orange jumpsuit with the letters TCP (Tioga County Prison) printed on his back. For years, I’d kept an image of Bill in my mind, but he now looked smaller, hunched over with rounded shoulders. His gray hair was shellacked back against his scalp. When he turned slightly, I noticed he was wearing glasses. Behind them were those same blue eyes. Yet now they seemed tired and confused.

  Once Judge Carlson sat down, the hearing began. I took out my cell phone and began typing notes as Deputy Attorney General Sprow presented his first witness. A man sitting in the row directly in front of me turned around and glared in my direction. He was very large and wore a flannel shirt. Next to him was someone who looked like he could be his twin. It occurred to me then that they were Bill’s adopted sons. I heard Bill’s sister whisper to her husband. Then he turned and gave me a stern look. Other than the lawyers, I was the only one in the courtroom wearing a suit.

  The first witness was Shane Fox, the victim who’d written the comment online that I’d replied to. He looked very much like the two men sitting in front of me—large, with fair skin, dark hair, and light eyes. Shane testified that Bill adopted him in Florida when he was fourteen years old. They moved to Pennsylvania, and there the sexual activity progressed. “The night my adoption was official we had anal sex.” Shane described how Bill woke him up to have sex almost every other night. He testified that when he submitted himself sexually to Bill, he was rewarded with gifts.

  “What kind of gifts?” asked Sprow.

  “He’d take me out to lunch,” said Shane. “One time he took me to get my ear pierced.”

  I listened as Shane spoke in simple, short sentences, punctuated with the inflections of a little boy standing before the principal.

  “It was hard falling asleep,” said Shane, “because I was scared of being woken up in the middle of the night to have sex.”

  Bill’s lawyer cross-examined Shane next. When the attorney stood up, I noticed he was wearing snakeskin boots. Immediately, he tried to throw Shane off by asking him for dates and about how old he was during various incidents. Shane struggled to remember, unable to do the math in his head. Then I remembered Trooper Iverson telling me that many of the boys Bill adopted were mentally challenged to varying degrees. Watching Shane become confused under cross-examination left me feeling frustrated. The hearing was spiraling downward.

  “So you were adopted in Florida?” asked Snakeskin Boots. “By the time you moved to Pennsylvania, you were already a teenager, correct?”

  Shane nodded.

  “At that age, you could say the sex was consensual?”

  “Objection.”

  I glanced over at Chad to observe his reaction. That was when I felt the skin on my face begin to tingle. After Shane’s testimony, I watched him walk back with his head held down. He sat next to a woman, who whispered in his ear. Then they turned around and smiled at me.

  The next witness was a redheaded young male who testified that he was never sexually molested but that Bill often showed him pornography online. Upon further questioning, he admitted that Bill had touched his erect penis once. Then he said that Bill regularly searched online for boys to adopt, considering only those who had emotional or mental disabilities. Bill’s attorney was less successful at discrediting this witness on cross-examination because he was clearly not handicapped like the others, maybe not at all.

  The final witness, escorted into the courtroom by a social worker, was a skinny, greasy-haired male in his twenties who appeared anxious as he took the stand. Sitting there, he repeatedly flattened his hair down and around his ears. Then he adjusted his glasses over and over again. Under oath, he testified that Bill never molested him. The man in the flannel shirt in front of me smiled and nodded eagerly. I began rubbing my temples. The burning sensation on my face felt worse as the hearing progressed. Since the first witness, I’d been feeling a sinking sensation that the entire proceeding hadn’t produced enough evidence for the judge to conclude that Bill should stand trial.

  But Sprow forged ahead and proceeded to read the witness’s previous grand jury testimony to the courtroom. Several months earlier, this same witness had testified that Bill molested him repeatedly. The more Sprow read, the more flustered the witness became. Sprow warned him that changing his testimony now meant that he’d lied under oath to the grand jury. The witness clumsily explained that he didn’t lie under oath but was confused at the time. Sprow made it clear to him that if he perjured himself, he could face prosecution. The boy glanced over at his social worker. It was obvious that he didn’t know what to say. The judge excused him when there were no further questions.

  Once all three witnesses testified, Sprow offered up his final argument to the court about why Bill Fox should stand trial. Bill’s attorney argued against it. The judge then took a half hour to deliberate. I immediately left the courtroom with Chad and sat in our rental car.

  “Look at your face,” said Chad.

  In the rearview mirror, I saw hives the size of quarters on my forehead and cheeks. I looked like Freddy Krueger in Nightmare on Elm Street.

  “I don’t feel good about this at all,” I said.

  “What are you talking about? I think it’s going well.”

  “You do?” I said in disbelief. “Chad, one kid recanted his testimony. The second one said Bill never touched him, and the first witness was the only one who emphatically stated Bill molested him. Then Bill’s attorney confused the hell out of him on the stand. And did you see Bill’s lawyer is wearing snakeskin boots? What kind of an attorney wears boots? Let alone snakeskin.”

  “Frank, you need to relax,” said Chad. “The purpose of this hearing is for the judge to listen to the evidence. If you ask me, the attorney didn’t have to put all three witnesses on the stand. After the first one testified, he had more than enough evidence.”

  Chad’s confidence was reassuring. For the entire length of the deliberation, we remained in the car with the doors locked, holding our hands up to the heater for warmth and protected from the Foxes outside. The half hour passed quickly. Before I got out of the car, I looked at myself again in the rearview mirror. Freddy Krueger was gone.

  Back inside the courtroom, Deputy Attorney General Sprow introduced himself to me, along with State Trooper Iverson. Then Sprow took me aside. “I’d like to ask you a question. The judge informed me that he received an anonymous letter today, which included a photograph of Bill with some boys.” He motioned to the folder in his hand. “I want to know if you sent it.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “I didn’t think so,” he said. “The judge is a little concerned. Honestly, Dr. Spinelli, if this goes to trial, and we get you on the stand, Mr. Fox’s attorney is going to paint you in a very unflattering
way. I just want to make sure you keep your nose clean.”

  “I appreciate you looking out for me,” I said. “I’ve already received one threatening phone call since this all started.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Have you notified the authorities?”

  “Yes, they’re looking into it. What I find encouraging is that someone thought I was important enough to be threatened. Perhaps this means that I’m on to something big?”

  “I agree. It’s still concerning to hear that you’ve received threats.”

  Over Sprow’s shoulder, I saw the guards escort Bill back into the courtroom. His wrists and ankles were shackled and linked together. Now in full view, he no longer looked as threatening to me as when I was younger. With that sad expression and sagging cheeks, he looked more like an old bulldog chained to the fence.

  At that moment, Judge Carlson entered the courtroom and everyone stood up. As he cleared his throat several times, I held my breath, anticipating the worst. If he decided there wasn’t enough evidence to go to trial, I didn’t want to fall apart in front of Bill’s family. I knew their jubilant cheers might provoke me into crying, and I couldn’t let them see me like that.

  “In reviewing the evidence,” said Carlson, “I feel the state has met the burden.”

  I was slow to grasp the meaning of his verdict, so I looked over at Chad, who stared back at me, beaming. Then I heard the judge ask Bill whether he understood.

  Bill Fox was going to stand trial.

  Soon after the judge departed, the police took Bill away. I practically leapt out of my chair as they escorted him to the exit. Bill stopped momentarily and whispered to the man in the flannel shirt. It looked as though he was giving him instructions. I stared at Bill, willing him to look in my direction, but he never did, or at least that’s how it appeared to me.