I carefully close the magazine and tuck it back into the neat arc of reading material on the coffee table. “I’m the kid,” I say.
The woman’s face twists in confusion.
The girl who must be Lily pops out of the closed door, wearing a dizzying array of crayon-esque colors. The right side of her head is attached to a giant sparkly bow. Even with all the effort at distraction, I am drawn to the plain brown innocent eyes.
And the smile. I know that smile because I’ve worn it, the one that pulls at thirteen muscles and strikes a match for all the other smiles in the room and makes you appear perfectly normal and happy. Except I know Lily’s terrified.
Dr. Giles isn’t far behind Lily and, to her credit, does not act the slightest bit surprised to see me.
“Give me just a second, Tessa, OK? I’ll have about twenty minutes before my next appointment.”
“Yes. Certainly.” I feel the flush of heat in my face. This isn’t like me, to burst in on people, busy people, without warning. I remind myself that I have not yet paid her a cent.
Dr. Giles reaches out a hand to Lily’s mother. “Mrs. Tanger, we had an especially good morning. And, Lily, you’re going to draw me a picture for next time?” The little girl nods solemnly, and the doctor’s eyes meet her mother’s in a silent exchange. It’s like watching my father’s face all over again. Hope, worry, hope, worry, hope, worry.
Dr. Giles ushers me into the warm jungle of her office. I drop into one of her cushy chairs. I haven’t rehearsed what I’m going to say. I think that seeing Lily has sucked the selfish, hot anger out of me, but I’m wrong. My hands are suddenly shaking.
“I want closure.” Each word, staccato. A demand, as if Dr. Giles is somehow to blame.
“Closure doesn’t exist,” she responds smoothly. “Just… awareness. That you can’t ever go back. That you know a truth about life’s randomness that most other people don’t.”
She leans forward in her chair. “Maybe you still need to forgive him. I’m sure you’ve heard this before. Forgiveness is not for him. It is for you.” She might as well be raking her nails on the chalkboard behind her. It’s bugging me, the faint ghost of a stick figure still lingering there, half-erased. The happy sun. The flower with a center eye.
“I can’t ever imagine forgiving him.” My eyes are still glued to the flower on the chalkboard. I want to take the eraser and scrub away until everything is black. Make it clean.
“Then let’s say that there is a way for you to get closure. How do you see that happening? What if he… what do you call him?”
“My monster.” My voice is so low, ashamed, that I wonder if she can hear me. What grown-up, not-crazy woman still talks about monsters?
“OK. What if your monster opened the door right now and walked right in? Sat down. Confessed everything. You could see his face. Know his name, where he grew up, if his mother loved him, if his dad beat him, whether he was popular in high school, whether he loved his dog or killed his dog. Imagine he sat in that chair right over there, three feet away, and answered every single one of your questions. Would it really make any difference? Is there any answer that could satisfy you? Make you feel better?”
I stare at the chair.
The gun feels like a steel cookie cutter against my skin. I itch to fire it dead center into the fabric. Watch the white stuffing explode.
I don’t want to have a conversation with my monster. I just want him dead.
Tessie, 1995
“I’m nervous.” Benita’s voice is vibrating.
This is an emergency session. They’ve sent Benita in alone to do the dirty work. It’s been less than twenty-four hours since I announced that I would not be testifying.
She’s wearing no eye makeup, which is a sure sign something is very wrong. She’s just as pretty, but now she looks like the hot girl in middle school instead of the hot girl in high school. All I know is, I don’t want to be the thing that makes Benita scared. She’s been nothing but sweet and kind to me. Like, even her name means blessed.
Benita halts abruptly by the window. “I’m supposed to convince you to testify. Mr. Vega and your doctor think we have some sort of young female bond. To be honest, I’m not sure what you should do. I’m thinking about going into my uncle’s cabinet-making business.”
Wow. What a backfire.
“They want me to ask you what your worst fear is.” She plops in the doctor’s chair and meets my eyes for the first time. “They told me to sit here. Then I’m supposed to convince you that you will never live to regret testifying no matter how hard it is. So if you can tell me what you are most afraid of by going to court, that would be great. So they at least think I tried.”
Tears are brimming in her soft eyes. I’m thinking it’s not the first time she’s cried this morning. I want to get up and hug her but that might break another ethical code and she’s already smashed a few in this room.
“I hear that this defense attorney rips into people until there is nothing left but scraps.” I speak slowly. “That’s a quote my friend Lydia read about Richard Lincoln in the paper. And she overheard her dad tell her mom that everybody calls him Dick the Dick. He might get the jury to think I deserved this. Or that I’m making stuff up.”
“The defense attorney is an asshole,” Benita agrees. She is holding a finger horizontally under each eye, so the tears don’t spill.
Without looking at the box, I grab a Kleenex and hand it over. The box is always waiting for me on the little table by my elbow, never an inch out of place. “And I don’t want to be in the room with… the guy who did this,” I continue. “With him staring at me the whole time. I can’t imagine anything worse. I don’t want him to feel any power over me ever again.”
She dabs at her eyes. “Neither would I. It seems terrifying.”
“My dad will be there. I don’t want to lay out all the details, you know? Thinking about it, talking about it, makes me want to throw up. Like, I can see myself throwing up in the witness chair.”
She takes a deep breath. “I worked on this terrible case during an internship last year. A twelve-year-old girl had been molested by a sixty-five-year-old aunt who couldn’t get out of a wheelchair. It was a mess. Her own family was divided about believing the girl.”
She reluctantly shifts her eyes back to me. “See, you are already wondering yourself. Mr. Vega was the prosecutor. He’s brilliant. He had her talk about the details of maneuvering around the wheelchair during… the acts. No one doubted her when she got out of that witness chair.”
“So the jury convicted her aunt?”
“Yes. Texas is vicious with child molesters. She’ll die in prison.”
“Was the girl glad she testified?”
“I don’t know. She was pretty ripped up afterward.” Benita offers me a weak smile. “I’m thinking selling cabinets would be a lot simpler, you know? They open. They close.”
“Yeah,” I say. “But you’re good at this.”
Tessa, present day
“Why does Obama need to know my damn waistline?”
Effie, in Texas Rangers pajama pants and a pale pink silk blouse with ruffles, is trotting across the lawn, shouting, waving a piece of paper. Charlie and I have just arrived home after an early after-school dinner at the Ol’ South Pancake House. Some days, I wonder how long Effie stares out her window before we show up in our driveway, and if that time has any meaning for her. I’m really hoping it doesn’t.
I’m sure it’s been a long day of trying to remember for both of us. I’m not sure I’m up for Effie. My head hurts despite a confectioners’-sugar fix. She meets us on the porch, breathless, while her finger punches away at the typewritten letter. “It says right here that he wants me to tell him my weight, waistline, and whether I like to drink and smoke. It’s not like we’re courting. Although I do like a whiskey on the rocks and a smoke with a handsome black man every good now and then.” A skim of green eye shadow, two rosy circles of blush, and the large fake pearl clips in her ears are dead giveaways that Effie has made it out of the house today. The pearl clips pop out of the drawer for church every Sunday, but the glittering eyelids mean she’s been jousting with the ladies of the historical society. Effie regularly declares them “way too fix-y.”