I Don't Forgive You

by Aggie Blum Thompson

  Janelle twists her head to me. “Huh? Hon, your business is your business. I’m not judging.”

  “Abole!” Janelle beams at the little girl. “Would you like to try one?”

  I back away with Cole, slightly sickened at just how much everyone is talking about me. When I get to the United Kingdom table, I slide my trays onto a table next to cupcake liners filled with miniature shepherd’s pies.

  “I’m so glad you’re next to me,” I whisper to Leah, who is manning her table along with a father I don’t know. She gives me a funny look.

  “Hello there! I’m Clare. I don’t think we’ve met officially.” I spin around to face a petite blonde in a plaid button-down. Even in teeteringly high boots, Clare comes up to my shoulders.

  Her fingernails tap the triple strand of pearls on her neck. Staring at those perfect pink nails tap-tap-tapping the gleaming beads, I wonder how such tiny beads produce such a loud noise. Clare announces that she needs a “loo break” and tells me she will be back soon.

  “We’ve got shepherd’s pie, your shortbread, and these lovely little watercress tea sandwiches.”

  After about twenty minutes of handing out samples of British food to parents and children, I realize that I am slowing down. It’s taking me a moment to understand what people are saying when they talk to me, as if their words can’t find entry into my sodden brain. The loud laughter and voices reverberating through the big room ping around my skull. I need some air.

  Clare reappears. Cole sees his chance and drags me into the throng.

  He pulls me by the arm through the crowds around the room, stopping long enough to sample the offerings at each table. Maybe food will wake me up, I think, popping little morsels into my mouth. At the Italy table, we find Holly Zoni in a green, red, and white apron, offering mini-meatballs in tiny paper cups.

  “Buon appetito!” she trills.

  I realize this is the first time I have come face-to-face with Holly Zoni, although her triplets are legendary in the neighborhood. The trio of fifth-grade boys are notorious for tearing around corners on their dirt bikes, terrorizing the elderly out walking with their aides. I’ve read more than one thinly veiled complaint on the Facebook group.

  Holly, all décolletage and flashing white smile, bends down to Cole’s eye level. “And what did you make, handsome?”

  “We made shortbread,” Cole says.

  “Actually, Susan baked it.” I give her an appreciative smile. “And we have you to thank for that.”

  “Pardon?” Holly straightens up.

  “Susan Doyle? She works for us now.” Her smile remains frozen on her face, but there is no recognition in her eyes. Maybe I am not making sense. My brain feels sluggish, the thoughts ill-formed. “She used to watch the boys, right?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Susan Doyle? She nannied for your triplets.” I know Susan said the Zoni triplets. I am sure of it.

  “Nope, not us. Never had a nanny or a sitter. I could never leave my children with a stranger. Not that I’m judging. Whatever works for you, but I just could never do that.”

  45

  I step back, confused, as Holly turns from us to a father and daughter who have just arrived. “Benvenuto!”

  Cole pulls at my arm. “There she is! There’s Ava!” He takes off across the room, leaving me to fend for myself. The noise in the room begins to cloud out my thoughts. Did I have it wrong all this time about Susan? I had never bothered to check her references. Maybe she was talking about an entirely different set of triplets and I assumed she meant the Zonis.

  Oh god, oh god, I’ve screwed that up, too.

  A buzzing vibration emanates from my hip. It’s Krystle.

  “I’m in trouble,” she sobs. “I need to talk to you, Allie.”

  “Hold on. I can’t hear you that well.” It’s not just the din of the room. My ears feel like they’re stuffed with cotton. I look for the closest exit to step outside and talk. Cole will be fine for a few minutes. It’s less than fifty feet away, but it feels like I’d have to push through thousands of people to get there. Shoulder down, I delve into the crowd. Someone’s elbow sends me staggering into the Korea table. I manage to right myself without knocking over the bowl of kimchi.

  A woman in a shiny purple skirt glares at me. “What?” I bark at her.

  “You don’t sound normal,” Krystle says. “What’s going on?”

  “Hold on!” I shout into the phone. As I try to steady myself, a tray of naan on the India table catches on my sweater and goes flying. The platter skids a few feet across the floor. I stumble toward it, but a woman with a dark topknot beats me to it. I realize it’s Priya, the counselor from Georgetown who wanted me to come in the other day, and I scuttle away before she can greet me, like a feral animal caught in headlights.

  “What the hell is going on, Allie?” Krystle’s voice echoes in my ears. My head weighs a lot, I realize. More than normal.

  “Too many people here. I need space,” I say.

  “Allie, this is important. I need you to focus. I spoke to the detective, and they tracked the money that was taken out in the reverse mortgage.”

  “Go on.”

  “It went to an account in Queens. They have a name.”

  I lean against a bulletin board, careful not to rip down any of the artwork. “Queens. Is that good?”

  “No, listen, it’s not good, Allie.”

  “Why? Who took the money?”

  “Well, the name on the account is Krystle Healy. But I swear, I swear I didn’t do it.”

  I pull the phone away from my head, so Krystle’s voice is garbled and unintelligible. I’m having trouble following what she’s saying. My thoughts keep drifting away from me before they are fully formed. “You took the money?”

  “No, I didn’t! That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” She’s yelling through tears now, and I’m having trouble understanding what she is saying. “The detective, he thinks … He told me to get a lawyer. I’m so scared, Allie. What should I do?”

  My phone beeps. I have another call. The screen reads: Artie Zucker. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the sign for the girls’ bathroom. I need quiet, room to breathe. “Let me call you later.” I hang up.

  I answer the call from Zucker.

  “Hello?” My voice sounds slurry. I must have drunk more champagne than I’d thought.

  “Allie, this is Artie Zucker. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but I think police officers are going before a judge tomorrow to get a felony warrant for your arrest.”

  “My arrest.” I lean my shoulder against a cinder block wall and let those words sink in.

  “We have to be prepared. I’ll let you know more tomorrow, but it’s a good idea for you and Mark to get your financing in order. Chances are bail is going to be high.”

  I stare at the phone after Artie hangs up, cold fear gripping me. An arrest warrant. Bail. I’m overheated. I need to splash cold water on my face.

  The door to the girls’ restroom is within reach when someone grabs my shoulder. I stumble, but right myself against the water fountain.

  “What the hell?” My words bleed together as if embroidered with one piece of thread.

  An enraged face zooms into view, a few inches from my own. It’s Vicki, her curly hair piled into a tower atop her head. She’s wearing a red peasant dress that clings in all the wrong places, but I can’t identify what country she is representing.

  “We need to talk,” she declares.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I did a little research on you, Allie Ross. Or should I say, Alexis Healy?”

  She spits out my maiden name as if it’s venom and can wound me, and she seems disappointed that I don’t collapse immediately. I’ve been called worse, I want to say.

  “Calm down, Vicki,” says a woman whom I’ve just noticed standing next to her. She adjusts her cat-eye glasses. “Don’t let her get to you.”

  “Yeah,” I
slur. “Calm down, Vicki.” I’m in no mood for her bullying.

  “You think this is funny?” Vicki’s face shines with sweat. A blue snakelike vein throbs along the left side of her temple. I stare at it, tempted to touch it.

  Behind her, a small crowd has gathered, Karen Pearce and Oliver’s mother at the center of it. They are far enough away for plausible deniability, but they are obviously rubbernecking. I see two figures approaching. The one with long, glossy hair is Leah, and the other is Janelle in her African gown and head wrap. My friends are coming to help me.

  Vicki puckers her thin lips into a tiny circle as pink and wrinkly as a cat’s asshole. “I know you had something to do with Rob’s death. You’re not going to get away with this—”

  “Shut. Up. Just shut up.”

  Vicki’s mouth opens in shock. “Did you just tell me to shut up?” She stretches her thin lips into a sneer and turns to the woman standing behind her. “Her whole ‘I’m a victim of sexual assault’ story is bullshit.”

  “Survivors, Vicki,” the woman behind her whispers. “The term is survivors.”

  “Rob isn’t the first man she’s falsely accused of rape.” Her words silence the crowd. I don’t need to look up to feel the glares. “She did it to her teacher in high school, didn’t you, Sexy Lexi?”

  “How do you know about that?” Wooziness washes over me.

  Vicki holds up her phone and begins to read in a clear loud voice. “All day long I daydream about your hands on my body. I want to feel you rub your cock against me. Your hot pulsing—”

  “Shut up!” I slap at the phone. “Just stop!”

  “Does that sound like a victim to you?” she asks the crowd.

  I pinch the bridge of my nose in an attempt to focus. I don’t remember a Vicki from Overton. But with those words comes thundering a memory of walking into French class one late spring morning and the entire room falling quiet, all eyes on me. It was a few days after I had missed my movie date with Madeline. She had been giving me the cold shoulder since then. I’d thought it was because she was so hurt, but now I know it was because she had lit a fuse on a bomb that would soon detonate my life, and she couldn’t bear to look me in the eye.

  Someone whispered, Sexy Lexi.

  The entire class exploded in laughter.

  Our teacher, Madame Saheb, came in and shushed everyone into silence, but it did nothing to stop the horrible shame growing in me like a cancer during the lesson. My naked photograph online was bad enough, but worse were those letters, laying out my innermost desires, naked and vulnerable for the world to mock.

  I had signed them all Sexy Lexi.

  It was a private joke, which now everyone knew.

  “I have a friend who went to Overton Academy,” Vicki says. “She told me everything. How you got him fired. Arrested. And then it all turned out to be bullshit.”

  “No.” I shake my head. “That’s not what happened.”

  She exchanges a knowing glance with her friend and snorts. “I told you she was mental.”

  I lean in close to her face and watch her beady eyes expand in fear. “You know what?” I say. “Fuck. You.”

  I turn my back on her and her friend and head into the girls’ bathroom, which is empty, thank god. The only sound is the old radiator near the window, clanking as it belches out copious amounts of steamy heat.

  Bone-deep fatigue grips me. My eyelids droop, and the urge to close them is impossible to resist.

  “Fuck you,” I repeat in a soft voice. Fuck Rob Avery for assaulting me in the bathroom. Fuck the police for not believing me. Fuck Paul Adamson for seducing me. And most of all, fuck whoever is doing all this to me.

  I take refuge in the handicapped stall. I slide down into a corner, pulling my knees to my chest. The cool tiles feel so good against my hot skin.

  I will rest for just a moment. Then I can figure all this out. No one will notice if I’m gone for a minute. Cole is running around with his friends. Clare can handle the UK table.

  My eyelids are so heavy. I’ll let them close, just for a few moments.

  46

  When I crack open my crusted eyes, daylight is pouring through the window. I am in my bed, but I don’t remember how I got here. I’m wearing only underwear and a bra. I try to move my legs, but they are trapped, tangled in the sheets.

  My lips crack when I open my mouth. I’m so thirsty.

  Someone presses a damp washcloth into my hand. I wipe it across my lips, desperate for a drop of water.

  The world comes into focus. I’m lying on my side at the edge of the bed. Before me are Mark’s feet, wearing socks with pictures of little tacos on them, a gift from Cole last Christmas. He passes me a cup of water. I bring it to my mouth and sip eagerly.

  “What happened?” The words grate against my sore throat. Even in incremental movements, sitting up hurts. “I don’t remember anything.”

  “What happened?” Mark glares at me, radiating fury. I search my brain for what I could have done. “Let’s see, you passed out drunk at International Night. Leah found you in the bathroom. She was about to call an ambulance when someone came and got me.”

  Bits of the night bounce around in my brain in an incoherent collage—the articles in Mark’s drawer, the confrontation with Vicki, Krystle and the reverse mortgage.

  “I kind of remember going into the girls’ bathroom.”

  “I had to carry you out fireman-style,” Mark says. “In front of the entire school community. Cole watched.”

  “Is he all right?” I cringe, thinking of Cole seeing me that way.

  “Not really. He was hysterical. He wanted to know if you were dead.”

  “Where is he?” I swing my legs over the edge of the bed. Bad idea to move so fast. The sudden action makes me feel like I’m going to puke.

  “Don’t worry about Cole. He’s all right now.”

  I look at the clock. “It’s almost ten. He’s at school?”

  “He didn’t want to leave you, he was so worried about you.”

  “This doesn’t make sense. I didn’t drink enough to get drunk, let alone pass out for this long.” I push back the covers and try to stand up. I make it on my second try, with no help from Mark. I’m unsteady on my feet. “I don’t know what happened.”

  “You don’t? Let’s see if I can fill in the blanks. For starters, there was an empty bottle of wine in your back seat. You’ll need to do a better job of hiding those, Allie.”

  “Bottle of wine?” I shake my head. “That’s not right.”

  “And the travel mug trick. It only works if you rinse it out, Allie.”

  “What travel mug trick?” I pull on my terry cloth robe. Unable to locate the belt, I leave it hanging open.

  “Your travel mug? You almost emptied it, but it stank to high heaven. I just thank god that you didn’t get into an accident. When I think of what could have happened to Cole.”

  “Travel mug? You’re not making sense.” I sit back down on the edge of the bed.

  “The travel mug you drank the wine out of, Allie! I found it. In the car. Stinking of booze.”

  I recognize the words, but the meaning eludes me. “Are you saying you think I was drinking and driving? Never. You know that.” Even as I say it, I remember feeling a little tipsy as I pulled into the school parking lot. But I wasn’t drunk. “I had a little bit to drink with Daisy and Leah, but not enough to get drunk.”

  “Stop.”

  “Listen, Mark. I don’t know what you think you found, but if there was a bottle of wine in the car, I did not put it there.”

  “Enough, Allie.”

  “Someone else did. In fact, I think someone might have drugged me.”

  “Drugged you? Are you serious? No one else put an empty bottle of Matua in your car. No one else put your travel mug in the car.”

  “Listen to me, Mark. Someone is doing this to me. I swear—”

  “Shut up! Just shut up!” He slams his open hand on the wall. The impact sends a black-
and-white framed Man Ray photograph onto the floor. I freeze, staring at her cheeks, dotted with round tears. Neither of us makes a move to pick it up. Mark takes a deep breath. “I called the studio today to let them know that you’d be out sick. Imagine my surprise to find you don’t work there anymore. That you were fired.”

  His face is beet red, his anger unfurled like a flag.

  “I was going to tell you,” I say evenly. “I swear. It just happened.”

  “Bullshit. You lied to my face yesterday. When I asked why you weren’t at work.”

  “I wanted to tell you, but there were so many other things going on—”

  “Uh-huh. And what about this, Allie?” He pulls a silvery object out of his pocket and flicks it at me. It lands on the floor. “How do you explain that?”

  The sunlight streaming through the window glints off the object. I bend down and pick it up. It’s an empty condom wrapper, the top torn off.

  “Where did you find this?” My voice is so soft, I can barely hear it.

  “Under the front passenger’s seat.” He sinks down into a crouching position, his head in his hands. “I can’t do this anymore, Allie.”

  “You can’t think that was mine. Mark. Someone must have put it there.”

  “Please stop acting like you are the victim here.”

  “I am the victim, Mark. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. And if you loved me, you would listen.”

  “That’s not fair. You know I love you. I have tried to be understanding. I have tried to help.” He stands up and clears his throat. “I’m heading out to the Eastern Shore to meet Caitlin. She’s already taken Cole. I’ve made an appointment for you at Bridgeways for this afternoon—”

  “You did what? Listen, you can’t do this. There’s a chance I’m going to be arrested.”

  He jerks his head back. “What?”

  “That’s what Artie Zucker told me last night. He said to be ready.”

  “That’s convenient.”

  His cold reaction stuns me. I know he’s upset, but still, I expected sympathy. “It’s true.” I spit the words at him. “You think I’m lying about being arrested?”