The Good Lie (10 page)

The story is that when you were
5 years old I “molested” you in some way.  Despite the fact that I do not have
the slightest memory of this event, the most important thing is that you
believe it happened.

I know you must have a lot of
trouble believing that I could engage in such an alleged evil event and not
recall it, but that is the
absolute
truth as I know it.  I am in no way
trying to excuse myself for what is supposed to have happened, but after 11
years I have not one memory of such an event or any “dark” side of my character
which would explain my actions.  I can only ask myself the question whether I
was capable at some point in my life of such a horrible act.  These alleged
actions run so counter to my beliefs as a Christian, but yet I know also that
as the Bible says “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure” so
anything is possible when it comes to the human condition.

After all these years it would
be pointless for me to deny this whole episode.  The accusation, regardless of
whether it is true or not, is really all that seems to count.

If there is a “bright” side to
any of this I suppose it is that I finally understand your behavior toward me
lately and why, as your mother said, you despise, distrust and even fear me.  I
certainly can understand why you have such feelings toward me if what happened
11 years ago is true.  Believe me when I say how very sorry I am to have caused
the pain you have suffered.  There is of course nothing I can do to undo the
past.  I guess we both will live with this story “til death do us part.”

Although I have asked for God’s
forgiveness and believe with all my heart that He forgives sins I have
forgotten about, this story is one I will certainly take to the grave with me. 
If you cannot find it in your heart to forgive me at least someday the “truth”
whatever that is will be known.  As the Bible says “We must all stand before
the judgment seat of Christ so that each one will give an account to God of
things done while in the flesh—whether good or evil.”

I will always love you and thank
God for making you my daughter.

Dad

Angela Peligro came to the end of
the letter and took a drag from her cigarette and squinted at me with a
harshness I wasn’t ready for and said, “Yeah, I don’t exactly remember
everything I did eleven years ago, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t fuck a child—I
think I would have remembered that.  Georgia,” she barked into the intercom, “come
make copies.”

God Bless the Liar

[1]

“It’s not enough,” Angela told me.

The door to her office stood open
while Georgia made copies.  Posie, eavesdropping from the reception area,
bolted from her chair.

“How could it not be enough?” Posie
cried.  “He practically admits it!”

“Practically is nothing,” Angela
answered.  “We need actually.”

The heat was still on my cheeks.  I
trusted Angela, but it embarrassed me to have her read those words.  They were
too personal, almost even for me.

What bothered me most—what I couldn’t
get past despite all the Bible verses and the claims of regret and sadness—was
that he didn’t completely deny it.  “
The truth as I know it . . .
anything
is possible when it comes to the human condition
. . .
if what happened
11 years ago is true . . .He forgives sins I have forgotten.
”

If I had ever doubted my mother’s
story, I didn’t any longer.  Angela was right:  screwing your kid is something
you’d remember either way.

She waited for Georgia to hand her
the copies and close the door so we were alone once more before saying, “It’s
not strictly ethical for me to tell you to do this, Lizzie, but I’ve always
been straight with you.  Let me put it this way:  it would be most helpful to
your case if you could get your father on tape.  Get him to talk to you—get him
to confess.”

A splash of fear hit my spine.  “How
am I going to do that?”

“You talk to him.  Tell him, ‘Daddy,
thanks so much for your letter.  It really helped.  But why did you do it?  I
thought you loved me.’”

“But he says he didn’t do it.”

“He says he doesn’t remember.” 
Angela pointed her cigarette at me.  “There’s a difference.”

“But I can’t just say, ‘Why did you
do it?’—he’ll deny it.”

“So you’ll have to ease into it. 
Get him talking about it—maybe share what you remember.”

“Which is nothing.”

“Make something up.”  Angela halted
my next objection.  “I’m not saying make up a big whopper, but finesse it—know
what I mean?  Say, ‘I remember things now—things that scare me.  I don’t know
what to think.  I thought you loved me.’  Then let him do the talking.  ‘I did
love you, sweetheart.  I loved you so much.  I wanted to love you more—that’s
why I touched you that way,’ or whatever his particular brand of bullshit is.”

“Do people say that?”

“All the time.  You wouldn’t
believe the shit I hear.  Dads like to kid themselves into thinking this is
just one more way they’re showing love to their child.  I had a guy once who
claimed he was fucking his six-year-old daughter because he wanted her to know
what to expect when she got married—he was preparing her, see?  Like any good
dad.”  Angela shook her head and inhaled deeply.  “Makes you crazy,” she
exhaled, “all these sick fucks in their own little worlds.”  She stabbed out
her cigarette and leaned back in her chair.

“How am I supposed to record him?”

“Voice-activated recorder in your
pocket, phone with a built-in recorder—there are lots of ways to do it without
the other person knowing.  Now remember, I’m not telling you to do that.  I was
just answering your question about how it’s done.”

“But what do I say?”

“You’ll have to practice,” Angela
answered.  “Get Posie to help you.  You have to remember that what he likes is
control—they all do.  You can’t go in there guns blasting, accusations flying. 
It’s got to be real low-key—‘Daddy, I’m confused.  Why did you hurt me this
way?’”

“That wouldn’t sound real.”

“Then you’ll figure out what does,”
she said.  “The key is to let him do most of the talking.  Draw him out.  Be
real clear that you know what happened—what you want to know is why.  You’re
confused.  You want a good relationship with him.  You’re not trying to get him
in trouble, you just want to understand what happened so you can rebuild your
love. Something like that.”

I wasn’t convinced.  “And that
really works?”

“I’ve been doing this twenty years,
and it never fails to amaze me how these guys think.  They convince themselves
it’s not a crime.  They pretend they’re not hurting their kids.  It’s just ‘love’
or ‘practice’ or whatever bullshit they want to tell themselves.  When you come
after them it’s almost like you’ve told them they were born a different sex—it
doesn’t compute.  They’ve lived like this so long they have their own story for
making it work.  They don’t want to believe when you tell them it’s wrong.”

“My father knows it’s wrong.”

“Does he?” Angela challenged.  “How
do you know that?”

“Look at his letter.  He wants
forgiveness.”

“No, he wants an out.  He says he
doesn’t remember, but golly, if he really did those things, what a terrible man
he was, but God will forgive him some day.  Bullshit.  Either you did or you
didn’t.”

“What about my brother?”

“What about him?”

“Should I bring him up?”

“Sure.  Absolutely.  Get your
father to admit as much as you can.  If you can get him on tape saying he’s been
screwing your little brother, I’ll take that straight to the county attorney.”

My heart sped.  “I don’t want that.”

“It’s probably not going to matter—trust
me.”

“What do you mean?”

“They don’t prosecute these cases—they’re
too hard.  The county attorney’s office is a bunch of weenies.  Unless you’ve
got the molest on video, they don’t want to touch it.”

“How can that be?”

“Look,” Angela said, “if you’ve got
hundreds of cases you have to push through, you want winners, right?  They’ve
got more files than they know what to do with.  I’ve brought them taped
confessions and they don’t give a shit.  They figure the guy will just hire a
good defense lawyer and make nothing but trouble for them.  They hate when it’s
a kid’s word against an adult’s—hate it.  Give them a bloody knife or a
multiple rapist with DNA or a guy selling weed to a cop.  Those are the glory
cases.  They don’t deal in kids.”

[2]

Is it wrong to lie?  Proverbs says
the Lord detests lying lips, but the evidence doesn’t bear that out.  To the contrary,
a deception well-executed seems to hold a special place in God’s heart.

Jacob was the worst of liars.  To
steal his brother’s blessing from their blind father, Jacob dresses in Esau’s
clothes, wraps goat skins around his throat and across his hands to imitate
Esau’s hairiness, and carries in Esau’s signature dish to his father’s bedside.

“Here I am, Father,” Jacob says, “it’s
me, your firstborn, Esau.  Lay your blessing on me.”  And his father does. 
When Esau finds out, he’s outraged and so are we.  Yet what does God do?  He
makes Jacob the father of a nation and lets Esau slip into obscurity.

And what about the prophet Elisha? 
There’s a great scene where the enemy army is about to attack, and Elisha prays
that the soldiers will be struck blind.  God complies.  Elisha then tells the
soldiers, “Oh no, you’re going the wrong way.  Here, let me lead you to the men
you’re looking for.”  Instead he leads them into a trap and they’re captured. 
Do you think God tells us that story to discourage us from similar behavior? 
No, he’s proud of it and wants to inspire us.

Face it:  under the right
circumstances, God blesses the liars.

At the electronics store Posie and
I sampled recorders.  There are some so small you can hide them in your
cleavage.

We practiced at her house.  “Testing,
testing . . .” from different distances, with different background noise.  I
needed to be sitting close, we decided, somewhere fairly quiet—a park or the
house, as opposed to McDonald’s.

With all the details to work on I
tried to push away the thought of what it might actually feel like to have to
do this.  To talk about what I didn’t want to talk about.  To hear him say what
I couldn’t bear to hear.  It was something to put aside for as long as
possible, like a nightmare test you know you have to take at the end of the
semester, but you promise yourself not to think about it until then.

“How are you going to start?” Posie
quizzed me.  “Pretend I’m him.”

And we went over it twenty
different ways, Posie speaking in baritone, throwing me every curve she could
think of to prepare me for the actual interview.

“I never did that,” she claimed.

“Yes, you did,” I answered.

“No, I didn’t.”  Posie changed back
to her regular voice.  “That’s going nowhere.  Let’s try again.”  And we did,
and I think I got better at it over time, but it was still just a game and
nothing close to the real thing.

“Do I really have to do this?” I
pleaded.

“Yes,” Posie said firmly, “you do. 
Come on, it’s just one hour, maybe a little more.  Then it’s over.  You never
have to talk to him again.”

“But it’s going to be awful.”

“I know.”

“I’m too afraid.”

“Pray,” she said.

“I’ll still be afraid.”

“I’ll be watching nearby.”

Was I really going to do this?

May God bless the liar.

The Christian Real Estate King Makes His Pitch

I wore jeans and one of Posie’s
jackets and my warrior boots and an oversized shirt buttoned almost to the top
to hide the digital recorder in my bra.  I adjusted the big floppy hat I had
borrowed from Posie, tilting the brim lower over my eyes as if that could hide
me somehow.  Like a little kid thinking he’s invisible if he covers his face
with his hands.

The wind would not stop blowing. 
It had been carrying on like that for the last five days.  It was getting on my
nerves.

I wasn’t the only one.  The
newspaper said some guy couldn’t take it anymore, so he pulled out his pistol
and shot his refrigerator six times.  The paper didn’t say how he thought that
would help.

I nervously scanned the park.  It
was the same one where Jason and I had made out.  Boy, were those different
times.  I couldn’t think about that right now.

My father wasn’t there yet.  We had
planned it that way.  Posie took up her station on the grass beneath a tree
while I took a spot on the bench.  It was late Sunday morning, and the park was
filled with the usual secular slackers—kids in sweatsuits practicing soccer, a
tai chi class, a few guys clonking croquet balls.

I slouched on the bench and hid
beneath my hat.  I figured my father would expect me to be shy, and it was no
act.  I dreaded every word out of my mouth and every syllable out of his.  If I
could have magically skipped over this hour and arrived at the next with it
already behind me and done, I’d be a happy girl.  But that’s never how it
works.  You have to push through the ugly parts, feel them slime over your skin
and screech into your ear, and you try to stay aloof about it and look forward
to that moment when you can breathe again and say, “Whew!  That’s over!”

Posie jerked her chin up to let me
know she had spotted him.   I slouched lower on the bench.

“Hi, Lizzie.”  He looked bad—greasy
gray hair, food-stained shirt, pants that probably hadn’t been washed since the
last time I did laundry.  I wondered when he would give in and do a load
himself.  I wasn’t sure he knew how.  He smelled like B.O.

For a second he looked like he
might try to hug me, but thank heavens he didn’t.  He sat on the end of the
bench a foot away from me and draped his arm over the wooden slats and looked
at me with a tight face and creased forehead.  “How are you?”

“Fine.”  My tongue felt caked in
mud.  I couldn’t swallow.  Help me, God, this was it.  “I wanted to thank you
for your letter.”

“You’re welcome.”

“That really meant a lot to me.”

“I’m glad.”  Did he relax just
then?  Seemed to.  Angela was right.

Anyone watching would have thought,
“How nice, father and daughter sitting together on a sunny fall morning, and
look how appropriate he is!  Respecting her space like that.  All fathers
should be that way.”

I cleared my throat.  It felt like
clods of dirt washing down.  “I’ve been to see a counselor—”

“You have?”

I focused on my hands in my lap.  “Yes. 
I needed someone to talk to, you know, someone . . . other than Mom.”

“I see.”

I rushed to finish my speech.  “So
the counselor said I should probably talk to you next, and get some things off
my chest—”  I flashed on the recorder between my breasts.  “—and tell you how I
feel so we can, you know, repair the relationship.”

“Okay,” he answered cautiously, “I’d
like that.”

Here goes.
  I turned to him
and lifted my eyes to meet his, and I swear it was like lifting a Mack truck
and holding it above my head.  God, I didn’t want to look at him.  But Posie
and I practiced, and I knew I had to do this.

“It really hurts me,” I began, and
I surprised myself by crying right away.  In rehearsal Posie and I thought that
might be good toward the end, to emphasize how sorry I was things had gone so
badly lately, but here the tears were and I understood they were how my body
was dealing with the fear.  I couldn’t flee, so why not cry?  A little safety
valve, that’s all.

He reached for me.

I batted his hand away and that
felt tremendous.  “Don’t.”  I sputtered on.  “It hurts me that you could do
that to me, Dad.  I don’t understand.  I thought you loved me.”  There.  It was
out.  Now the rest was up to him.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

That isn’t your line.
  “What
do mean, what do I mean?  Which part?”

“All of it,” he said, keeping a
straight face.  “Tell me, Lizzie, what exactly did I do?”

The wind lifted my hat.  I plunked
my hand on top of my head and silently cried,
 Mayday!  Mayday!
  I
glanced over at Posie, who knew nothing about what was happening.  I jerked my
eyes away.  I couldn’t blow her cover.

“You said in your letter—”

“I was upset,” he said.  “Your mother
had just told me—”

“Right.  And that’s what I’m
talking about.”

“Okay, so what do want to know?” 
His forehead creased another inch deeper.

Now I was getting annoyed.  He knew
very well what I was talking about, but he was so calm, so rational, and he was
making me look foolish.  Where was Posie?  Start over.

“Look,” I said strongly now, no
tears, “I want to know why you molested me when I was little.  Stop playing
games.”

He paused, pretended to collect
himself.  “I don’t think I did, Lizzie.  That’s the truth.”

“But you said in your letter you
couldn’t remember.”

“That’s right, I don’t.  I was
trying to be honest.”

“But you said it wasn’t impossible.”

“I suppose nothing is.”

Screw your philosophy.
  “What
about Mikey?”

His face changed then, and I was glad. 
A direct hit.  His jaw tightened.  His eyes widened at first, then narrowed.  I
had his attention.  “What about Mikey?”

“I’ve seen you with him.”

“What have you seen?” he tried to
ask calmly, but his face gave him away—he was afraid of me.

“I’ve seen you humping him and—”

“Humping?  What do you—when?”

“—and taking showers with him, and—”

“What are you talking about?”

“—and I know you go into his
bedroom at night and molest him.  He told me.”  There.  There was all of it.

“He told you?  Lizzie, Lizzie . . .
oh, my Lord . . .”  He slumped forward.  He rested his elbows on his knees, his
head in his hands.  He shook his head back and forth.  “God, dear God . . .” 
It was quite a performance.  He gripped a handful of flesh near his heart and
pressed his other arm against his gut as if he were going to throw up.

I leaned back and watched the
couple doing tai chi.  They were so graceful.  The croquet players smacked
another ball.  My father carried on, moaning like he was sick, and I couldn’t
care less.  I was tired of his lies.

“Are you done?” I asked.  The wind
fluttered the brim of the hat.  I tugged it lower on my head.  My eyes were
nice and hidden now.  I could watch him like I was hiding behind a screen.

He tried to sound like he was
crying.  “Lizzie, I don’t understand!  How can you say these things?”

“Because they’re true.”

“None of them are true.  You’ve
imagined all of it—
all
of it.  Dear God—”

“Don’t take the Lord’s name in
vain.”

“You hush up!”

Whoops, broke character, didn’t
you?  I took pleasure in knowing the tape recorder was capturing all of this. 
Posie and Angela would love every minute.

“You’re wrong.  You’re confused.” 
He gripped my shoulder.

“Don’t touch me.”  I wriggled out
from under his hand.

My father clasped his hands
together between his knees and closed his eyes.  He mumbled something under his
breath.  His lips continued moving for some time, the words too whispery for me
to make out.  Then I caught it:  “ . . . Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want
. . .”  The whole Psalms 23 over and over at rapid speed, as if that might help
him convince me of his lies.

“I have to go.”  I stood up.  I
wasn’t sure if I’d gotten everything Angela Peligro needed, but I couldn’t take
another minute of this performance—his or mine.  I needed to take a shower.

“Wait.”

I stood where I was, blocking the
sun from his sallow face.

“Wait.  I have to tell you
something.  Sit down.”

I glanced over at Posie.  I wished
I were wearing an earpiece so she could tell me what to do.  I sat.

“I’m worried about you,” he said.  “God
spoke to me in prayer, and . . .”

Here it was.  The slimeball.  Here
was the sales pitch.

He was good.  It was how our family
lived, after all.  He sold more houses than anyone we knew.  “I prayed about
you this morning,” he’d tell whatever customer he was meeting with that day, “and
I know you wanted to look at three bedrooms, but I saw a vision of something
else.  Will you let me show you?”  And soon he was talking some young couple
into paying $50,000 more than they planned, or taking the bigger house because “the
Lord is good” and surely there would be more children some day, or maybe
convincing a widow she needed a ranch house instead of a condo because one day
she would be reconciled with her children, and they would want to visit her often. 
“Where will you put all the grandchildren?” he’d ask with a friendly, wise
chuckle.  “The Lord is good.”

Once he told us all over dinner
that he’d promised a man if he and his wife bought this particular house this
particular day, God would grant the man a job that paid twice what he made now,
so they could afford it.

“And they believed you?” I scoffed.

My father looked at me with hurt
innocence.  “Believed?  Of course—it was the word of God.”

That was his schtick—that if you
came to him, the Lord had sent you, and this deal was meant to happen, on terms
my father would dictate because he heard it straight from above.

So now it was my turn.  The Lord’s
own agent was about to speak.

“. . . and He warned me what will
happen if you go on this way.”

I gathered Posie’s jacket around me
as some added bit of protection from everything he was.  Then I remembered the
recorder and opened the jacket again to leave my cleavage clear. 
It’s for
Angela
, I reminded myself. 
You have to get the proof.
  All I wanted
to do was run.

“Listen to me, Lizzie.  Are you
listening?”

“Yes.” 
Father, dear.

“These lies you’re telling—they’re
dangerous.  Not just to me, but to you.  Do you understand?”

A passion overtook me.  “Don’t,” I
hissed.  “I mean it.  Don’t even try.  I know what you’re doing to Mikey—I’ve
seen
you, all right?  I know.  Don’t pretend you aren’t molesting him.  I know
everything.”

He glared at me with revulsion.  “How
can you say that?”

I leaned in closer until my mouth
was an inch from his face.  “I know everything, Dad, and if you don’t start
explaining yourself right now and swear that you’ll stop, I’m going straight to
the police.  I don’t care what happens to you.  All I care about is Mikey.”

“If you cared so much about him,”
he said, his voice suddenly reedy and precise, “then you’d be careful what you
say.  You’re not a very smart girl, Lizzie—face it.  You haven’t thought this
through.”

Sweat pooled on my lower back.  I
hated the look in his eyes.  He wasn’t afraid of me—not in the slightest.  I
was nothing but a child.

“Think about it,” he said.  “Let’s
say you really do go to the police.  Then what?  See, the problem you have
there is that they’ll take a report and then you’ll have to go to court and
swear to it.  And you’re lying, Lizzie—we both know that.  The judge will find
that out.  That’s perjury, and it’s a crime.  You’ll go to jail for that.  And
then you know what?  It’ll be just me and your brother in the house.  If I was
really doing all the bad things you say, I can’t imagine you’d want that, hm?”

My spine iced over.  “Mom wouldn’t
let that happen.”

“Mom has nothing to do with this. 
This is just you and me and Mikey.”  He poked me in the chest and I shriveled
at his touch.  “Think about it.”

He smiled grimly and anyone
watching from far away would have seen only the smile and thought how sweet—a
father-daughter moment.  He patted my arm harder than he needed to, then
stood.  “Really, Lizzie, you should think things through before you start
running off your mouth.  That’s always how you get yourself in trouble.”  He
turned to leave, then added, “I’ll pray for you.  I really will.”  And then he
walked on without looking back.

My clothes were wet from the inside
out.  I had sweated from underwear to pants, bra to digital recorder.  I
fumbled to turn it off discreetly, but how could that look normal?  I didn’t
want the recorder to capture my heavy breathing or what I was going to say to
Posie as soon as we met at our rendezvous point a few blocks from the park.  I
headed in that direction with legs leaden and soupy inside my jeans.  I knew
Posie would go to her car first, then drive around and pick me up.

The sun was so cheerful I felt like
screaming.  I kept my hat low over my eyes and watched my feet scrunching
through the brown grass, and I didn’t dare lift my head to face a world that no
longer felt real.