Little Black Lies (14 page)

I punch in Scotty's cel
l
.

“Yo,” he answers.

“Yo yourself.”

“What's up? I'm busy.”

“Are you off Monday?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Would you in any way be up for a road trip this weekend?”

“Where and why?”

“Where, Chicago. Why, on my never-ending quest for knowledge.”

“And by that you mean all this bullshit with your mother?”

“Sort of. Beth Summers.”

There is a pause. I stare at the corkboard by the phone. A glossy sheet announces flu shot times. “What the hell. Why not?”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. Maybe take my mind off some things.”

“Okay,” I say, wondering what could possibly be weighing on the mind of my playboy, barista brother.

Someone calls outs out his name and he yells “One minute,” then returns the phone. “Okay, gotta go,” he says, and the dial tone hums in my ear.

My cell phone chirps, to the ire of the librarian again, and I throw her a sorry look and pull it out.

Rounding: 1 p.m.

My rounding self-reminder. I stuff the yearbooks back in my bag and take a last look around the table for anything my ADHD brain forgot, ready to take on the world of Sofia Vallano and young girls with cutting scars.

S
o good to meet you.” The principal shakes our hands warmly, and we take seats. Scotty and I spent an uneventful night in the hotel, other than his fairly eventful snoring. I called Dr. Grant with my raspiest sick voice first thing in the morning, and now we are in the principal's office, bright-eyed and bushy-tail
ed
. The principal is a portly African American woman, very put together, wearing coral lipstick, sitting in a comfortable-looking office chair. I can't shake the feeling I'm about to get yelled at.

“I know you told me over the phone about your mother, and I am very sorry to hear about her troubles.” We murmur our thanks. “Now, I did put a ticket into the warehouse, so hopefully we can get that by the end of the day. Though sometimes it does take longer.”

Inwardly I gulp.

“Would you like a tour perhaps?”

Scotty looks at me, and I provide a solicitous smile. I can't stop my eyes from fixating on her exquisite coral lipstick, which reminds me that I forgot to pack my pills. “I was really just hoping to get ahold of that yearbook.”

The principal taps her long fingernails (exact same shade of coral) on her desk. It makes a pleasant thudding sound. “You know who used to keep all the old yearbooks…” she says, “is Mrs. Morgan.” I nod with some hope, ready to hop on over to Mrs. Morgan's class. “But,” she continues, “unfortunately Mrs. Morgan passed away last year.” I nod again, hopes finely dashed. “Heart attack,” she adds.

Scotty starts jiggling his leg, which is his “I'm bored” tell.

“Hey, I know someone who could help us. Bob Sulin, our librarian. When I need to find out just about anything that's who I ask.” She lifts a long-nailed finger, motioning “Just a minute,” and puts a call out to said librarian. Moments later, we are walking briskly (she is faster than her portliness would imply) down the hall, which looks exactly like any other school hall from time immemorial.

Dark, green-brown marbled cement under our feet and steel-gray lockers line the way, with posters of art projects, science photos, and inspirational messages such as Bullying hurts…don't do it. A bell clangs, and hundreds of kids spill into the hallways like ants, buzzing in a fever pitch. Sneakers and boots squeak down the hallway, girls laughing, lockers banging. I am transported back to high school for one vertiginous moment before we peel into the library and shut the door, quiet descending over the room.

Bob Sulin walks directly over to us, hand out, and the principal waves a good-bye and makes her escape. “Bob Sulin, pleasure to meet you. What can I help you with today?”

I explain the situation, with Scotty leaning against a counter and tapping his foot, and Bob Sulin puts his chin in his hand like
The Thinker
. I have never actually seen anyone do this to think, except maybe as a PowerPoint icon, but Bob Sulin is doing it with brio. “We keep all the yearbooks in the warehouse at this point,” he mutters into his fist. “I told them it was a bad idea, but they wanted to clear up the back room.” After a full thirty seconds, his head pops up. “Okay!” he yells, making me jump an inch. “I got it. The answer, my friends, is microfiche.” He smiles and gazes at us as if he is trying to convert us to Mormonism. “Have you ever heard of microfiche?” he asks earnestly.

“Uh, yes,” I answer, and Scotty nods. I feel bad that I have heard about microfiche and have even utilized it before, because it seems to be a heartfelt cause for Bob Sulin, and one on which he'd like to expound a bit more.

“All righty then. Abso-tively fantastic,” he says. Scotty tries to catch my eye, but I am assiduously ignoring him. Without my Adderall, riotous laughter would most definitely
ensue. Bob Sulin leads us over to the microfiche machine in the corner and shows us the ins and outs, for over ten minutes, which doesn't sound like a long time, but believe me when going over the microfiche machine, it is. Bob Sulin has come up with the clever idea of sorting through the Chicago area newspapers for that time frame, on the off chance we could find out anything on Beth Summers. Meanwhile, he is going to double check the storage room in the basement, in case the missing yearbook hasn't been sent to the warehouse after all. The thought that I probably could have looked through microfiche at my local library does strike me, but I shove it down into the lowest mammalian part of my brain so I do not have an absolute breakdown at the microfiche machine about having driven twelve hours for a hopped-up lecture on the many attributes of microfiche.

We scroll.

It takes us some time, whipping through the gray, grainy images in the machine. I twist the knob until my hand is tired, while Scotty is relaxing in a chair, reading today's newspaper, his fingers flapping through each page. This is my craziness, after all.

“This is a lot of fun,” Scotty says, folding up the sports section.

“Fuck off,” I murmur, then realize I'm in a library, a high school library. And then out of nowhere, the name leaps onto the screen in front of me. Beth Summers. “I got something!” I yelp unintentionally. Scotty, for all his nonchalance, comes over to see. I read the article out loud from beginning to end: “Tragedy struck last night when seventeen-year-old Beth Summers was killed in a motor vehicle accident. The accident occurred on Hepworth and Main Street when the driver of the vehicle apparently fell asleep at the wheel and hit a utility pole. Estimated time of the accident was three a.m. There were no witnesses, but several neighbors came out after the accident occurred to investigate. Power was lost in several surrounding houses for nearly two hours. Miss Summers was pronounced dead at the scene. The driver suffered only minor injuries and was treated at Glenview Covenant Hospital. The driver's name is not currently being released, but she was reportedly a close friend of the victim.”

There is a picture of a decimated car hugging a utility pole, a desolate
night.

“Holy shit,” says Scotty. I am speechless. Just then, we hear Bob Sulin clamber up the stairs, abso-tively beaming.

“Success!” He holds the yearbook up high like a trophy. “I remembered where I hid my stash.” He cackles, then lays the yearbook open on a big wooden desk, a bit disappointed at our lack of excitement over his find. I shift over to leaf through the book while Bob Sulin leans next to us, the smell of his orange Tic Tacs wafting around us. The yearbook is unremarkable on the whole. More class pictures, goofy candids, overearnest aphorisms in flowery italic print. Except for the last page.

Underneath is a collage of photos of Beth Summers. The huge center photo is one of Beth and my mom, lying in a pile of leaves, throwing up handfuls and laughing. I smile just seeing it—the joy is infectious.

“You can take it with you,” Bob Sulin says. “If you promise to send it back.”

“No, no,” I say, my mouth bone-dry, feeling sick to my stomach. “Thank you. I think I got all I need.”

The words from the microfiche article swim dizzy circles in my head. “The driver's name is not currently being released, but she was reportedly a close friend of the victim.” The driver's name was not released, but I know her name: Sarah Goldman, née Meyers. My mom.

“Where are we?” Scotty asks.

“Not sure.” I point to my navigator on the dashboard. “She told me to drive for the next sixty miles and turn right on Exit 54.” “She” being my GPS, named “Karin” with an
i
and a mild Australian accent. That must be how they spell Karen in Australia.

“Hmmph.” He unfolds the map. “If she told you to drive over a cliff, would you do it?”

“Probably.” And I would. I trust her that much. Since I've been geographically challenged my entire life, my navigator has been a godsend. I have deep, questionably romantic feelings for my GPS with her Australian accent, her soft but confident voice, her gentle, chiding “Recalculating” when I make a wrong turn.

“Okay,” he says, refolding the map with care. “We're in Morrison.”

“Oh yes, that's right, I did see a sign for that.” We ride through the flatlands in silence, the fields a monotony of tan and white, with patches of yellow grass poking up here and there through the snow, like stubble. A group of deer stands in the distance, their pelts the color of the trees.

The ride home is long. Scotty takes over as night descends, leaving me to stew about Beth squared.

“Do you think Mom remembers Beth Summers but just doesn't want to talk about it?”

“She sure flipped the fuck out when you took that yearbook,” he says.

I shut my eyes, trying to sleep, but the rhythmic blare of the streetlights lighting up my retinas every four seconds doesn't allow it. I am moving the seat belt off of my collarbone when the question hits me. It is so obvious that I don't see how I have not asked it before.

Who is Beth Winters?

Assuming that Beth Winters is just a play on the name Beth Summers, and not actually a real person, then who is “Beth Winters,” this person in the picture holding me? And is she even my mother at all?

Who is the person from all the articles? The images and words I know like the scars on my own hands. The woman in the social work agency picture, the obituary? The woman featured in the articles about the fire? Who is the Beth Winters on my birth certificate, and the name penned in blue on the back of the fuzzy-haired baby picture?

If there is no Beth Winters, then who is this woman?

“Scotty?”

“Yeah.” He is moving out of the left lane.

“You know all the stuff I have on Beth Winters?”

“What do you mean?”

“The stuff Mom and Dad gave me. The picture, the copy of the newspaper?”

“Yeah, I guess.” He taps his fingers on the steering wheel.

“Do you think they could have been faked?”

He groans. “What are you talking about now?”

“No, really. Hear me out a minute.” I push the seat back to give me more legroom. “If Beth Summers was Mom's best friend, then maybe Beth Winters is a fiction, not my actual mother.”

“Okay. That's a pretty big leap, but not impossible.”

“Then how did she get in those pictures and all that stuff Mom and Dad gave me?”

Scotty doesn't say anything but crinkles his eyes. The wheels are spinning. A truck roars by us, spitting up gravel and ice. “You think they just fabricated them?”

“That's exactly what I think.”

Scotty stares at me, not as if I've come up with a brilliant insight, but as if I am certifiable. “You know that sounds crazy, right?”

I shrug. “Crazy is what I do best.” Though how I'm going to figure this out is not yet clear to me.

Scotty turns on the radio and twists around the knob through the static to find a station. Maybe he's trying to shut me out. We listen to aging rockers while my brain marinates on this newest bit of information. My focus has changed. I'm no longer “fixated” (as Sam would put it) on finding out more about Beth Winters. Maybe there
is
no Beth Winters. So the real question becomes who is this woman in the photo?

And who is my mother?

T
he next morning I have miraculously recovered from my flu and am getting ready to Skype with Jack Vallano.

I convinced him to Skype instead of making the drive from Chicago. But he didn't want to just talk over the phone because he still wanted to see me “face-to-face.” He is on lunch at the post office in a back room that looks like a warehouse, stacks of boxes and tied envelopes everywhere. A friend helped him to set up the session on his computer. I am in the family therapy room again, the only room available for a private conversation right now. Jack is dressed in a dark blue postal uniform. He looks directly at me in the camera, one bright eye sparkling blue. His freckles stand out on the screen, which makes me wonder if mine do the same.

“I'm not used to this Skype thing,” he says, playing with his screen. His face widens and distorts in the camera as he leans over to adjust something, then narrows again as he leans back.

“So we were going to talk about Sofia's claims,” I say to start the conversation.

“She's lying,” he says.

I tap my pen against her chart, thumping the page in a rhythm.

“Although I can't say for sure,” he adds. “I've had some time to think about it since our conversation, and I should say that up front.”

“Okay,” I say.

“But I will say this: I met my father, and I just don't think he's that kind of guy.”

I nod. But I'm not convinced. There aren't many child rapists out there with “I heart pedophilia” bumper stickers on their cars. “You say you met him?”

“More recently, I mean. Of course I have vague memories of him from when I was younger, but not much. He left when I was…I don't know, five, six maybe. But then I met him again as an adult.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Drinker. That was his vice.”

Two security guards walk by my door, laughing, then it is silent again. “Was he abusive at all? Do you remember?”

Jack nods, as if it's an admission. “To some degree, sure, when he was drinking. Verbally, anyway. He'd get in your face and scream at you.”

Which to me meant it wasn't a big stretch to turning physically abusive, too. Sexually abusive, hard to say. “Do you remember him leaving?” I ask.

“Kind of. I think basically my parents had one too many shouting matches, we were going to get evicted, and my mom threw him out.”

Sounds like a gem of a guy.

“I don't remember much about that time. But I remember the sad, gray feeling when he left. Like there was this pall that just descended on the house.”

Which is exactly how Sofia described it, her mother falling into a severe depression after he left. Lying on a couch, drinking vodka, ignoring the phone, the doorbell, and everything else. Sofia pretty much picking up the slack and raising her brother. But maybe that's just what she remembers. Sofia the saint.

“I don't want to! I don't want to! I don't want to!”

Jack widens his eyes at the ruckus, which is loud enough to hear through the speaker, though he can't see anything. I recognize the voice as Trish, one of our more intractably psychotic patients. It routinely takes a few staff members to get her back to her room from lunch. I am so used to her bellowing by now that I don't even notice it. “It's like a loony bin in there, huh?” he says.

I smile in response. There is the thumping of feet and soothing words from burly male staff as a crowing Trish gets escorted down the hall.

“So your father wasn't there the night your mother was killed.”

“No, he wasn't,” Jack says, lifting his hand and cracking his knuckles. “That was a lucky break, huh?” he says, raising his eyebrows. His eye patch folds in, then out. “Not lucky for my mom, though.”

“No. Not lucky for your mom. Or you either.”

Jack attempts to crack his knuckles again without success. “He was an asshole, sure. But raping his own daughter?” He shakes his head, his face taking a pale greenish cast, though it could be the computer connection. “I just don't think so.”

I tap my pen on the paper again. Wind rattles the window in my room, brushing snow against the glass. The room, with all its encouraging inspirational photos and mismatched furniture, feels empty, verging on deranged,
with just me and my computer in it. “Sofia acted pretty sure about it,” I say, trying not to sound accusatory.

Jack barks out a laugh. “Of course she does. She wants to get the hell out of there. What better excuse could she possibly have? She gets raped by her father, goes crazy, and then kills her mother half makes sense. But I ask you again, why would it come up now, after all these years?”

“Maybe she's just able to face it now.”

Jack shakes his head. “It seems awfully convenient.” He pauses, then exhales. “On the other hand, who the hell even knows?”

This seems as reasonable a statement as any. “I want to go back to something you said earlier,” I say. “You mentioned that you met with your father when you were an adult. So did you lose touch with him after he left?”

“Lost touch,” he echoes. “Yeah, you could say that. The man fell off the face of the earth. But about ten years ago, I reconnected with him.” He puts his elbows on the table, the blue cotton stretched and worn, with the pink of his elbows showing through. “He tracked
me
down, actually. I had tried for a while to find him but I never could, and I guess my heart wasn't really in it anyway. So I gave up. But he ended up writing to me, telling me he was on his deathbed and wanted to make amends to everyone he had ever hurt.”

I put my elbows on the table, too, my stiff white jacket scraping the surface.

“Twelve-stepper, you know. But he got there a little late—he was in liver failure.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Yeah, well. It was very sad.” Jack pauses. “He told me he was never a good father or a good husband.”

“Had he heard what happened to your mom?”

“No,” he said. “He didn't know. He asked how my mom was doing, and I didn't have the heart to tell him the truth. I told him she died in a car accident, where I lost my eye.” He looks away from the camera for a moment. “I don't know. Maybe I should have told him the truth. It just felt wrong to me. Like he didn't need to deal with that in his final days.”

“That would have been a lot,” I say, wondering what I would have done. It's beyond conception. “Did he ask about Sofia?”

“Yes. I told him she was in jail, that she killed someone. I figured that was close enough to the truth.”

“What did he say to that?”

“That's a funny thing, you know?” Jack scratches the back of his head. “I never really thought about that until lately, when this whole thing was brought up. He said, ‘There was always something not right about that girl.' I mean, he's on his deathbed, and if he had been”—he swallows—“abusing his daughter, you would think that would be a perfect time to admit to it. To make his final amends. But he didn't say that.” He shakes his head again.

“Hard to know,” I say. Yes, he might well have admitted this on his deathbed, but then again, maybe not. In the end, we all want to think well of ourselves, even pedophiles and rapists.

“I don't know. What do you think, Dr. Goldman?” Jack asks, staring directly into the camera, his blue eye looming out at me. “Do
you
think she's telling the truth?”