The Bad Lady (Novel)

by Meany, John

  What? How could she have never told my father about me? She had said that my daddy had walked out on us when I was baby in the crib, supposedly something about how he had been immature and did not want to take on the responsibility of bringing up a child.

  “Mom, why did you lie?” I wanted to be angry with her, except how could I? Not when she lay in the middle of the road, with a cop’s bullet in her back, possibly bleeding to death.

  “Because I was ashamed,” she explained.

  “Why?”

  “I met your daddy at a nightclub, in Cleveland. We had a one night stand.”

  I stared deep into her withering blue eyes, which were now mere slits. “What’s a one night stand?”

  “It means we were only together for one evening.” Her voice had become so soft and feeble I had to literally put my ear up to her mouth in order to hear what she was saying. “We were never married. I made that up. After that night in Cleveland, I never saw your father again. I was supposed to call him the next day but I never did . . . I‘m so sorry Billy. I really am. I should have told you about this a long, long time ago.”

  As much as I did not want to admit it to myself, I could tell that my mom did not have long to go. Even if the ambulance arrived in the next minute, I doubted that the paramedics would be able to save her. She seemed to have lost far too much blood. “Who is my daddy?” I asked. I had to know.

  “Your father-” She gasped for more oxygen. “His name is Hugh. Hugh Sandusky. He‘s a polish man. Polish American.”

  I briefly gazed over my shoulder and saw that one of the cops listening used his hand to mop water from his eye.

  “Billy, I want you to try to find him.”

  “How?” The hysterical emotion I felt caused my chin to tremble.

  Rather than respond to the question, tell me where I could locate my daddy, she says, “You need to find your father because now you’ll need someone else to take care of you.”

  “But why can’t you take care of me?” I asked. I did not want to face it. I did not want to see her go.

  “Because-” Now a heartbreaking tear gradually dripped down one of her white, make up smeared cheeks. “I’ve had it, Billy. I’m dying. I‘m so tired.”

  “No!” I said, hugging her as tightly as I could. I would not let go. “C’mon mom, open your eyes. Please! Please don’t go to sleep.”

  “I’m so tired, Billy.” She shivered. “And so cold. So, so cold.”

  “Mom!” I started to shake her.

  Then it became a reality, she passed away in my arms. Died without even uttering a final good-bye.

  I could not take it. I could not bear the horrifying pain that appeared to travel unmercifully through every part of my body. At that moment, my entire world seemed as if it had been brutally destroyed.

  Enraged, I cursed at the cops. I cursed at the bad lady. I even cursed at God. But most of all I shouted, “I hate you Nancy! I’ll always hate you!”

  PART TWELVE

  THE AFTERMATH

  CHAPTER 24

  It’s true.

  I had suddenly come to the conclusion that I disliked Nancy Sutcliffe more than I had disliked anything, or anyone. I wished I had never met her.

  Yeah, I know I had stated repeatedly that I did not really think what we had done was wrong, but what the hell did I know? I was just a gullible child. I loved my mother more than I loved life itself. And because that pedophile Nancy Sutcliffe molested me, it ultimately took my only parent away from me forever.

  The tears. Oh Lord, I can’t even describe how many tears I cried. Far too many to count.

  Now, some of you may think I should have blamed the bad lady for my mother‘s untimely passing.

  Believe me, part of me did.

  I won‘t lie.

  You heard how mad I was before.

  The whole thing is, if I had never been sexually abused, the bad lady would not have lost it.

  In my opinion, she would not have turned violent.

  You have to understand, before my mother had breathed her last breath, I had known the bad lady for a long time, (probably before I had been old enough to walk), and while she had always been a menacing authority figure, nothing had ever set her off the way finding out that I had been molested had.

  Therefore, in her own demented, misguided way, the bad lady must have thought, when she had run Nancy over, and when she had stolen the gun from the Sheriff Deputy’s holster, and had fired chaotically at the Good Humor truck, that she had been trying to protect me.

  So I guess, in some odd, subliminal sense, you could say I loved the bad lady too.

  ***

  Both Nancy Sutcliffe’s murder, as well my mother being shot to death in the street by one of the Hampton cops, officer Martin Jones (that was his name), had been reported in the Cleveland Examiner. The grim account, just as my mom’s alter ego had predicted, also wound up as a top headline on many TV news channels.

  Officer Martin Jones, age twenty-nine, was never convicted for gunning my mother down in front of our house. Although while the case was being investigated, he had been taken off the street, and his firearm was impounded. The case had been refered to the prosecutor’s office. The DA also conducted an investigation. However, in the end, no criminal charges were filed, as the shooting, in the line of duty, had been deemed as justifiable.

  No civil action had been taken either. Me, a kid at the time, what was I going to do? Plus, how could I blame the cop for discharging his firearm? Unfortunately, the bad lady got what she deserved.

  In terms of what type of background Nancy Sutcliffe might have come from, I would never learn much. After the incident, about the only thing that I would find out about her that I did not already know was, originally Nancy had come from Wisconsin, and that, while growing up, her father, an alcoholic, used to beat her mother. Whether or not there had been a history of sexual abuse in Nancy’s life, I do not know. Before the invention of the World Wide Web, digging up personal information, particulary that sort of information was no easy task.

  ***

  Immediately following the death of my mom, I never did search for my father, Hugh Sandusky. I did not have to.

  My grandparents from Red Valley, Indiana (whom, as you might recall, I had never known either) were nice enough to take me in, give me a place to stay.

  Rudy did not want me. Although that did not bother me, because as much as I thought he was an okay guy, even if Rudy Knorr would have chosen to become my legal guardian, I would not have wanted to reside with him.

  Besides, it’s a good thing I did not wind up living with Rudy, seeing that, like my mother, he was a junkie. Heck, if I had gone to live with him, who knows, perhaps I would have eventually turned into a heroin addict as well. As they say, misery loves company.

  My grandpa Barry and grandma Nadine turned out to be terrific people, very friendly. Not only did they give me a high-quality home, a big comfortable room with a TV, which overlooked the barn, they had put me to work on their farm, doing what my mother used to do when she was a young girl.

  On a regular basis, I provided the cows, chickens, pigs, goats, and sheep, etc., with food and fresh water. I had to milk the cows. Clean up, with a rake, the waste. Sometimes I doled out medication to the animals, examined them for diseases or injuries, and administered vaccinations. My grandfather Barry, a pipe-smoking jokester who always seemed to have on his old brown hat, had also taught me how to build fences, and pens for the animals to be placed in.

  Being a farmhand, having to be on your feet all day long, was demanding, and tiring, often dirty, yet rewarding work, this had taught me the importance of responsibility.

  Living with my grandparents, I had learned why them and mother had stopped keeping in touch. The basis for separation, in my opinion, was typical of what sometimes goes wrong between parents and their young adult children.

  When my mom had left the farm, after graduating high school, to
go on that long road trip around the country with her giddy, boy-crazy friends, my grandparents had been highly displeased. They had wanted her to stay home and tend to her duties. Driving around the United States, the way my grandparents saw it, chasing after reckless boys, was an out-and-out senseless thing to do.

  After all, women were not supposed to act like that. Women who chased men were viewed as sluts. It should be the other way around, the men were supposed to chase the women.

  If a woman decided that she liked a particular guy, then, before she became intimate with him, she should expect that man to put a diamond ring on her finger. Not sleep with the guy on the first date and wind up getting pregnant the way my mother had done in Cleveland, after a night of drinking and dancing.

  Back then, my grandparents simply could not forgive my mom for that transgression. Therefore, they had told her to stay away, do not return to the farm. Make it on your own.

  I personally did not agree with my grandparent’s philosophy. Conversely, them being devout Christians, and unquestionably old school, I also did not hold their beliefs against them.

  When they had found out that an ice cream truck employee had molested me, my grandparents had been altogether aghast. And had said that, they did not blame my mother for what she had done to Nancy Sutcliffe, running her over in cold blood.

  My grandparents did not believe in murder. No. Not at all. They were actually strongly opposed to it unless the killings took place during war. Nevertheless, in this particular instance, they had stated that they understood wholeheartedly how me being sexually abused could have set my mother off. It was obvious that they missed her very much, and wished that, when she was alive, they had reconciled with my mom.

  Whether or not my religious grandparents knew about the bad lady, I could not say for sure. They hinted that they knew my mother had another side to her personality, a darker more controversial side. Thus far, however, that was all they did, was hint at it.

  In my mind, I think they had full knowledge of the bad lady‘s existence, and probably had had that knowledge for a while. Yet, for whatever reason, my grandpa Barry, and, even more so, my grandma Nadine did not care to discuss the matter. It almost seemed as if they were afraid to resurrect the dead.

  One day, I had overheard them in the barn where we kept the chickens, talking about how my mom had run Nancy down and how she had stolen the cop’s service revolver and had gone ‘Rambo’ on the Good Humor truck.

  My grandfather had looked at my grandmother and in a rather depleted, sorrowful voice, he had uttered, “Nadine, you realize if Bridgette had been in her right mind that would have never occurred.”

  “I agree,” my grandmother had said, in an equally somber tone.

  “We should have kept in touch with her.”

  “You’re right Barry, we should have.”

  “If we did, maybe we could have convinced Bridgette to get some help.”

  “Maybe. We’ll never know now.”

  At the time, I wasn’t sure whether they had been referring to the bad lady, my mother’s addiction to heroin, or perhaps both.

  Again, I could not help but wonder whether the influence the heroin had had on my mom‘s mind, might have had something to do with the creation of the bad lady. That maybe the powerful illegal narcotic may have polluted her thinking.

  Anyway, as much as I appreciated my grandparents taking me in, I missed my mother a lot, and as the years passed, I would think about her quite often. I guess you could say, ever since she had been shot to death, a part of me had died along with her. As if a vital piece of my soul had drifted up, with her spirit, into the clouds of the afterworld.

  It is my opinion that when a child loses a parent that they are close to, whether through death or as a result of other circumstances, that child will always feel a kind of silent emptiness deep within. And the agony of losing that close relative will never completely subside.

  ***

  At my grandparent’s request, from the age of thirteen to about sixteen, I had gone to see a psychiatrist, and had learned a lot about myself, particularly how I had in no way enticed Nancy Sutcliffe to abuse me.

  No.

  My psychiatrist had taught me that Nancy Sutcliffe, being the adult, had been the one who had clearly violated the boundaries of suitable behavior. Me, being the child, I had nothing to do with what had transpired in the summer of 1998.

  As I’ve gotten older, I had begun to understand how Nancy’s inappropriate actions had left me with a profound emotional scar. As much as I am attracted to members of the opposite sex, especially from a physical standpoint, I have an exceedingly hard time trusting them.

  In fact, because of Nancy, you could even say sometimes I view females as having secret hidden agendas, evil motives. Unparticular I frequently feel this way about older women, about many of the teachers I’ve had, and many of the random older women I have met through my daily travels. Mostly I have this warped attitude toward females who are very polite to me, the way Nancy had been.

  The unusual thing about this is this problematic issue with trust is buried so far down in my subconscious, that, in terms of me wanting to change this irrational stance, I am virtually powerless.

  But I am trying.

  Believe me; I am desperately trying to change this attitude and learn how to trust.

  Shame is another thing I have had to try to overcome. Or maybe I should say it is the main thing that, as the years have passed; I have had to somehow attempt to erase from my psyche.

  You see, when I was that ten-year old boy who had been sexually intimate with an adult, I felt no shame. No. When you are that young and innocent, you do not know what shame is. Therefore, you do not experience it. At least not on a conscious level the way you feel shame when you are older, and more educated as far as what society defines as unacceptable conduct.

  “So Billy,” my psychiatrist Dr. Frederick Sedevic had said to me during one of our sessions at his office in downtown Indianapolis, “you think the shame you feel stems from the fact that you, being a male, should be able to easily shrug off what had happened to you? Because you weren’t, quote on quote, violated the way a male pedophile might violate a female child through the act of penetration?”

  “Sort of,” I had replied. “I mean, most people, when they think of child sexual abuse, automatically get an image in their mind of a perverted man either fondling or outright raping a girl. Or a perverted man doing that to a helpless boy. You hardly ever hear about a woman taking advantage of a male child. And if you do hear about it, it seems like most people either don’t believe that abuse really took place, or they don’t take it seriously.” During this specific session, I had been more open regarding my feelings than I had been during most of my prior sessions.

  “And you’re saying,” Dr. Sedevic interrupted, “that you don’t think most people consider you as much of a victim, because your abuser was a female?”

  I nodded. “Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “By why Billy, why do you feel that way?”

  “I don’t know. I just do.”

  “It doesn’t make any difference whether your abuser was a man or a woman,” my psychiatrist assured me. “Abuse is abuse. What that woman Nancy Sutcliffe did to you inside that ice cream truck was, on her part, a shameful act. And just because at the time you didn’t know it was wrong, or because maybe, on some level, you might have enjoyed the experience, doesn’t take away the fact that she never should have put you, a naïve child, in that kind of compromising position to begin with.”

  I had also informed my shrink that some of my shame, I believed, stemmed from me thinking that I never should have told my mother about the abuse. That had I been mentally strong enough to keep the secret to myself, my mom would have still been alive.

  “You can’t keep blaming yourself for that either,” Dr. Sedevic added. “A ten-year old cannot be held accountable for the events that unfold as a
result of something so reprehensible such as this.”

  He had given me a minute to collect my thoughts.

  “Yeah,” I finally said. “That makes sense.” That was my response. Yet, as I said those words, I had broken down, into loud, uncontrollable sobbing. In fact, I had sounded like the whining baby that I feared I might always be. Someone who might never be able to get past, not only what had happened to me inside that stupid lewd ice cream truck, but also the death of my mother. That’s right; a part of me felt that it was my fault that she had died.

  “Billy?”

  “What?”

  “Are you listening to me,” Dr. Sedevic questioned, in an urgent, yet proffessional tone.

  “Yes. I’m listening.”

  “You did not have a hand in your mother’s death.”

  “I know,” I said, still extremely choked up.

  “No. I don’t think you do know.”

  “I miss her doc. I still miss her everyday. I don’t know how to stop the pain. Every so often, I still see my mother in my dreams. But when I try to reach out to her to tell her that I’m sorry, that’s when she suddenly disappears, and then I see the bad lady at the funeral, lying in the coffin, clutching the red rose . . . Then I always wake up!”

  At that instant, Dr. Sedevic, who was tall, about six-feet-four, with a grayish-brown beard and scholarly-looking spectacles, had to come over to the couch and shake me. My body had seemed to go into a state of convulsions.

  “Billy,” he said. “Calm down. You will always miss your mother. As a small child, she was the only caretaker you ever had. She was all you ever knew . . . But you need to move on. To think you had something to do with her death is paranoia, borderline delusional. It’s not reality. Do you understand me? It’s not reality at all.”