Innocent Little Crimes (31 page)

She saw the four friends lounging on the set.
Della sidled up next to Jon, and Dick straddled a chair. All eyes
were on Davis. Then she heard her name mentioned. She leaned her
head to hear better.

“I can just picture her.” Dick spoke with a
raised pitch. “Oh Davis, I can’t. I promised my dear old daddy I’d
stay a virgin until I died.”

“So go on,” Jonathan urged.

Davis cleared his throat. “So, I gave her the
bit about how much she meant to me and then the old sob story. How
no one understands poor Davis; they all want his body and don’t
appreciate his mind. . . ”

A spatter of laughter erupted. Davis
continued: “She fell for it, easy as falling off a chair.”

“Poor Davis, no one understands him,”
Jonathan said, shaking his head.

Lila’s body went rigid. It took a
moment for Davis’s words to sink in. She shook her head, trying to
shake away the truth that rammed her heart. A voice in her head
screamed at her.
Get out of
here
. But she couldn’t move. She was riveted,
paralyzed and horrified.

Della turned to Davis. “Come on, Davis. Let’s
have all the gory details. What’s fatso look like without her
clothes on?”

“Fat!”

They all roared.

“Hey, we all know she’s nuts about you,” Dick
said, “but how did you get her into the sack?”

Davis grinned. “Piece of cake. I told you no
woman can resist my charms.”

Della seemed unconvinced. “Just like
that?”

“All I had to do was say ‘please.’ She was a
pushover.”

Waves of nausea roiled in Lila’s
stomach. Her vision darkened and her head grew woozy.
No, dear God, no!

“Well, you’re a better actor than I guessed.
I would have bet you five hundred that you couldn’t get her to bed
by opening night,” Jonathan said.

Davis laughed, and instead of filling Lila
with joy, his mirth made her gag. “A good thing you only risked
fifty,” she heard him say in between his chortling.

“Well, you won,” Dick said. “The least we can
do is buy you a drink.”

“That sounds great. Let’s get the hell out of
here,” Davis said.

Lila shook herself out of her stupor.
They were coming her way.
Move,
move!
She raced across the recessed stage and out the
door.

Sobbing in hysterics, she ran across
campus not caring that people stared at her.
Oh please God, just let me die
!

She flung open her dorm room door. Without
thinking, she stuffed clothes into her suitcase, then snatched her
toiletries out of the bathroom. Her hands shook as she grabbed
bottles out of the medicine cabinet. She popped two aspirins into
her mouth, then noticed a prescription bottle of Valium belonging
to Millie. After swallowing two, she glanced at the pile of
textbooks on her desk. They looked oddly foreign, out of place
against the glaring reality of her life. She took a last look at
her room: her bed, her dresser, Millie’s things. This room, once
her sanctuary, now felt a prison.

College was over. Her life was over.

Lila boarded the first city bus that
came by, not caring what direction she went. She watched the campus
fade behind her, like a curtain lowering down.
Curtain.
The curtain would go up on “Picnic” in
four hours, but that no longer concerned her. Someone would have to
fill her shoes last minute and she knew it’d be Della. She thought
about Della on stage with Davis. That’s what the whole joke was all
about, wasn’t it? They planned this to make sure Della would play
the lead—the lead she wanted from the beginning. Lila’s eyelids
grew heavy and her thoughts crumbled into pieces. She tried to
imagine Della playing her part, Davis holding Della in his
arms.

Davis,
why did you do this to me? How could you?

All of them in it together. Laughing at her
every day behind her back. Davis and Della. And Jonathan and Dick.
All of them, plotting against her.

Millie? Did she know? All those times
Millie avoided her, her face unreadable these last few weeks. She
was Dick’s girl. She wanted a husband and would do anything to get
Dick.
Oh yes, Millie knew,
too
.

She could see her father’s scowling face. “I
warned you. You put yourself in Satan’s hands and now you’re
reaping what you’ve sown.” As the bus headed downtown, her father’s
voice plagued her. A magnet pulled her back toward her parents’
house in Tumwater, but she would not crawl back and beg for help.
No way. Home was out of the question.

Lila stumbled off the bus on the west side of
Olympia and searched the street. A seedy bar with dark windows sat
on the corner. She needed time to think. The pain in her heart
spread through her body like penetrating poison. In a daze, she
slid into a stall in the back of the smoke-filled room and ordered
a vodka straight, glad the darkness masked her age. She had never
tasted hard liquor before, but she downed it without reservation.
The pain in her heart began to subside. Signaling the bartender,
she ordered another. The thoughts that lay shattered in her mind
now dissolved into hazy obscurity. Why was she here? Just where was
she?

Hours passed, and by the time she exited the
bar, a dark, starless night greeted her. She struggled to keep her
eyes open. A warm rain splattered her face as she tried to get her
bearings. Nothing looked familiar. She searched her mind and the
image of Davis formed like a diaphanous ghost. Hot tears poured
down her cheeks as she trudged along the sidewalk. What could she
do with all this pain? Her wet clothes stuck to her skin and
strands of dripping hair flopped in her eyes.

By now the play would have started. She was
supposed to be up on the stage, under the lights in her first
starring role—the pinnacle of her life. Instead, this. She had an
urge to burst into the theater and scream, embarrass the whole lot
of them. She sobbed and stared at her feet, one step lifting and
setting down in front of the other, leading nowhere. She was a
weak, gullible fool and her “friends” would laugh at poor, pitiful
Lila. Their laughing faces trailed behind her, breathing down her
neck.

Headlights flew past as she braced herself to
cross the street. She had a hard time distinguishing the distances
of the cars. Color and sounds all merged in a vague pattern,
splattering red and yellow lights against the sidewalk. As she
staggered to the other side, cars honked and splashed up water
around her ankles. Then she remembered she left her suitcase in the
bar. She spun around on the pavement and headed back across the
street. A screech erupted in her ears and she felt a heavy thud
against her leg. The last thing she remembered was her head
smacking concrete and a sharp pain shooting up her neck.

When she awoke, her mother was leaning over
her. She strained to lift her head, but a jolt of pain shot up her
spine. It took a few moments to recognize she lay elevated in a
hospital bed. A glance down her arm stopped at the IV needle taped
to the back of her hand, the plastic tube trailing up to a pouch of
clear liquid.

“Father, she’s awake,” Darla Carmichael
whispered.

Lila was aware of her father’s shape
alongside her, although the image was fuzzy. His voice rang like
tin in her ears as he bent over her bed.

“Well, young lady, you should thank your
merciful God you’re alive. What with all the alcohol in your
blood.”

Darla patted Lila’s hand. “Now, George, she’s
supposed to rest. You can speak to her when we get her home.”

Lila managed to open her mouth. Her lips felt
like jelly and her words lodged in her throat. “I don’t want to go
home . . .”

“I’m afraid you have no choice,” her father
said. “You need serious care. You were hit by a car, for God’s
sake. You certainly aren’t going back to that school!”

Lila sighed and let her heavy eyelids close.
She was in no condition to fight her father. She would take her
bitter medicine, helpless before his mercy. She deserved it. No
punishment was too great for her sin. Her sin of stupidity.

Her parents fixed her up in her old room and,
for a week, fed her soup and bread and Bible Scripture. Her father
pounded her night and day with admonitions about her behavior,
reminding her she got what she deserved.

“You went out into the world, not like Jesus
ordered—as a messenger of God, a light in the dark—but to delve
into the evil ways of the ungodly.” The Reverend sighed deeply and
raised his hands to heaven. “ ‘O that thou hadst harkened to my
commandments. Then had thy peace been as a river and thy
righteousness as the waves of the sea.’ ”

Lila never told her parents what happened to
her and they never asked. Her depression and pain told them all
they needed to know. After making little improvement the first
week, they decided harsher measures were needed to rescue their
only child from Satan’s clutches. Her father prayed over her each
day and forced Lila to go on a fast to cleanse out the filth. Not
that it mattered; she had lost her appetite anyway. After a few
days without food, she was so dizzy she couldn’t stand. Her father
grilled her to recite Bible verses and screamed at her when she
faltered. He allowed her only water. What they didn’t realize was
she didn’t care—she only wanted to die. What was there to live for?
She could waste away on her bed until she lost consciousness
forever.

The days passed endlessly. She stared at a
picture of Jesus on her wall and asked him why it was taking so
long to die. When her parents weren’t home, the only sound she
heard was the clock ticking. Like waiting in limbo, or
Purgatory.

One afternoon, her father lost his temper.
“Get down on your knees, you Jezebel!”

Shut up!
she
screamed inside her head. Standing at the window, her back to her
ranting father, she made a fist. As her father raved in
midsentence, she pummeled that fist through the glass, shattering
the air with a loud crack and sending shards flying. Her father
fell silent as he watched the rivulets of blood pour down Lila’s
arm.

That evening he put her in a straight jacket
and fastened her to the bed. Her mother wouldn’t even come into the
room. George Carmichael left the gaping hole in the window
uncovered, and the rain and wind blew in, soaking Lila’s curtains
and floor. He turned off the heat in the house and left her in bed
in the cold. He would force the devil out of her. Each night, in
the dark, he sat at the foot of her bed and mumbled fervent
prayers, working himself into a sweat. By then, Lila was so weak
and malnourished that she lay without expression, staring into the
blackness.

How long this went on, she had no idea. Only,
one day she found her bindings loosened and the house empty. Dying
was taking forever and this religious torment was a punishment in
hell. Slowly she sat up, the first time in days. Kicking the bed
pan off the night stand, she wobbled over to the broken window and
looked out. Every muscle in her body ached from confinement. The
glare from the bright sunlight hurt her eyes and the smell of cut
grass filled her nostrils. Somehow, summer had arrived.

After removing the loosened straight jacket,
she leaned her weight against the window sash and pushed. The
window lifted easily. She found some old clothes in one of her
dresser drawers and, in slow motion, put them on. They hung from
her limbs.

As she hobbled down the street, the world
tilted around her. She knew if she just kept walking, she’d get
somewhere. Hours later, the smell of pizza assaulted her nose. How
long had it been since she tasted food? Suddenly, there she was, in
front of Jo Mama’s. She hesitated a moment. What if she ran into
someone she knew? But it was summer. Most students were home for
the break. All her “friends” had graduated or left for the summer
and had surely long forgotten the pathetic Lila Carmichael.

She smoothed out her hair and walked into the
restaurant. The wafting aroma of pizza made her mouth water. She
realized she had no money, but needed to eat. She walked up to the
manager, whose back was turned.

“Hi Sam.”

He looked at her, startled. “Where the
hell have
you
been?”

“Oh, here and there,” she said. Just the
effort of talking made her winded.

“Don’t think you can just walk in here after
you left me high and dry.”

She felt herself wilting before him. “I was .
. . sick. Sorry.”

He softened as he took in her appearance.
“Hey, I’m sorry. Nothing serious?”

“No, just cancer.” Lila didn’t know where the
words came from. They just popped out. Sam looked abashed.

Lila shrugged. “Hey, but I’ll live. So they
tell me. I just stopped by to get my back pay and maybe a bite to
eat. I sure do love the food around here.”

The manager went to the register and took out
some bills. He handed them to her, his face averted. “And help
yourself, okay? I’m needed in the back.” He hurried away into the
kitchen.

Lila managed to keep down a half slice. Her
stomach had shrunk from weeks of starvation, but she drank glass
after glass of water. Sitting at a back table, she tried to decide
what to do next. Bitterness coursed through her veins, giving her
new motivation to live. The semester was long over and who knew
where all the Thespians had gone.

Lila pictured each of them in her mind. Della
gone off with Davis, back to his easy life in Marin, living in high
society. Dick and Millie married and starting a miserable life
together. Jonathan off to Hollywood to make his fortune. She felt
nothing but anger, an anger that festered each minute.