What I Saw and How I Lied

Chapter 29

Headlines. Words that once you read upside down, that popped out at you at a newsstand as you roller-skated by, or from the kitchen table as you went by to grab an apple from a yellow bowl on the kitchen counter. Body and Blonde and Murder. Now they were about us.

Grandma Glad went into action. It was like she'd been drafted and had blown through basic in a week. She started telling Joe what to do. The first thing she did, she hired a lawyer. She said we needed a local guy on our side. This guy, Mr. Markel, was a tall, pale man with a stretched-out face and rimless glasses covering colorless eyes. I couldn't exactly see him facing down the enemy. The most he did, from what I could see, was tell Joe and Mom what to wear at the inquest. When Mom told him that she didn't have any navy or gray outfits, he'd said, "Buy some."

They wouldn't let me go to the inquest the first day. Mom wore a gray dress with a white collar and a black straw hat. Joe wore a suit and tie. Grandma Glad wore her diamond pin.

"The good news is that the coroner's report says Coleridge did die by drowning," Markel said. He'd stopped over for coffee before the inquest.

I saw Mom swallow. "Why is that good news?"

"Because if he'd died from a blow to the head, for example, they would have had more of a case that he was dead when he hit the water."

Mom turned her face away. "You certainly don't mince words, do you."

He looked over at her. "No."

They were gone almost all day. I went downtown for the afternoon edition. I took it to the bandshell and held it in my lap for a minute. The park had been cleaned up and the branches carted away. The lake was gray, steal­ing color from the sky.

I could see the headline, and I didn't want to read the story.

I read it fast, trying to just make sense of the jumping words.

The witness was Iris Wright, owner of Iris's Eye, a gift shop on South Dixie Highway. A couple had come in, in high spirits, said Iris, and browsed. She remem­bered them because they were both "so attractive." The woman was dressed all in white. They bought a pine­apple vase. They laughed together as the man paid for it. She recognized the man in the picture in the paper. And then the state's attorney, Raymond Toomer, asked her if the woman was in the courtroom.

She'd come back to the hotel with the pineapple vase the day we'd all gone to the movies. Peter had said good­bye and she'd walked off, her scarf trailing behind her. She was going to see if the shops on Worth Avenue were open, she said.

So Peter had followed her in his car. He'd prob­ably leaned out, his elbow on the door and said, There's nothing open on the island. Let me take you shopping.

I'd thought that day was my first date with Peter. It wasn't. It was Mom's.

All that time it had been him and her, not him and me.

The world went white for just an instant. Then pain roared in. With all the lies around me, this was the worst. This was the one I couldn't stomach.

I had to sit down. I had to think. I had to breathe.

When I'd heard Joe and Grandma Glad talking about it, I'd been ready to agree with Joe, to say it was just flirtation, that I was the one Peter had wanted.

But now I wasn't so blind. Not anymore. It had been between them from the very first.

What makes you think you know what ails me?

I can only guess.

Two blond heads together in a dark movie theater, close together, whispering.

Flirting. They'd been flirting the whole time, only I hadn't seen it.

Mom, running down the beach. Peter, picking her up, swinging her around. Her hands on his chest like she already knew how it felt.

She already knew how it felt.

Mom, riding in Peter's car, her lips curving in a soft smile as he drove. A secret smile, a cat over a dish of cream.

Peter putting his finger on her lips to stop her words. Letting his finger linger there longer than it should.

All that time, I'd thought Mom was in the way. I'd been the one in the way. I'd been their cover.

The knowing was so huge I couldn't bear it. I sprang off the bench and ran toward the water, ran as fast as I'd ever run in my life, ran until my lungs burned. But I couldn't run away from it. The facts slapping down like cards on a table.

The orange petals on the car. Mom had tipped Wally every day to wash them off.

She'd known how to find me at Peter's because she went there every day. She went there to be with him. And when I'd first walked up to him that night, he'd thought it was her. I was wearing her perfume, I was wearing heels.

They'd been ... something together. Something I didn't want to know about. I thought of Peter's kiss, thought of how he must have kissed her that way.

More than that. It was sex. That was what had been between them.

I stared at the gray water. It hurt so much I could barely breathe.

The newspaper was still bunched in my hand. I smoothed it out and sat on the grass to read it.

Mr. Markel got to ask the woman from the store a few questions. He asked if she knew for sure they were a couple. Did they hold hands? Did they kiss? Iris said no, but she could tell they were in love because of the way they were smiling. Judge Friend said her opinion on smiles wasn't testimony.

Smiles. I'd seen their smiles, too. But I was a little slower on the uptake than Iris Wright.

My eyes stung with the sudden rush of wanting him. I needed Peter here to explain. The funny thing was, I still thought he'd tell me the truth. Had he loved Mom, really loved her?

Checking up on me? How considerate.

He'd been angry at her that night. Did that mean he'd regretted what they'd done? Was that why he'd turned to me that night instead of her?

I felt dizzy and sick. I couldn't bear it if I'd meant nothing to Peter. I couldn't bear being a sap.

The surf caster who found Peter testified. I skipped that part. I didn't think I could get through this if I had to think about it. I had to close it like a book, the image of him dead. I had to think of him alive. I had to think of this as happening to someone else.

The policeman who had driven Mom and Joe back to me at the hotel was next. The officer testified that for two people who had seen a man drown, they seemed more concerned about what they'd been through them­selves. I smelled liquor on them, he said.

The state's attorney asked him what Mom had said when she saw me and realized I was okay.

He made it sound like she didn't care. But she had been relieved. I knew her best, and I knew that. I knew she was dirty and scared from what she'd been through. But I knew that when we saw each other, something frantic in her lifted. Because that's the way she was. If she was upset about something, first she got mad at the mashed potatoes.

The final witness was Officer Deary.

He testified that Joe was packing the car when he drove up to tell him that the body had been found.

I blew out a breath. Now I knew the paper was bunk. First Joe and Mom were from Brooklyn, and now Mom was holding hands with Gladys. She'd sooner hold hands with a black widow spider.

Among the witnesses at tomorrow's hearing would be Joseph Spooner and Beverly Spooner.

I dug the heels of my palms into my eyes and doubled over. I could smell the newspaper, inky and damp. There were facts I was reading, and then those facts were twisted so hard they boomeranged in the wrong direc­tion. What was the truth?

I knew that Mom and Peter had been together. But what did it mean?

If everyone else believed that Joe and Mom had killed

Peter, would I be able to hold on to believing that they didn't, even with my eyes wide open?

Later that day Joe drove me to Mr. Markel's office. I could barely look at him, and if Mom had been there, I probably would have had to jump out of the car. As soon as we got to the office, I put my hand on the door handle to get out. The clouds were low and the sky was completely black. I knew we had about two seconds to get inside before the rain started.

"Hold on a sec, Evie. Before we go up, I want to talk to you."

In the time it took for Joe to start talking, the sky opened up and dumped the rain. We had to roll up the windows. Within minutes the windows steamed up and we couldn't see outside.

Joe looked ahead, his hands quiet on the steering wheel. "So maybe I didn't get a chance to be much of a dad for you. I married your mother, I went right off into the service. I got back, I started my business. But I tried. And not just because I wanted to make your mother happy, either. I tried because you're a good kid and I want to be your dad."

"I know you tried, Joe." Was tried a good word when it came to loving someone?

"I miss you calling me Dad. You haven't been, lately."

Joe waited a moment or two. "Okay, okay. The thing is, the lawyer is going to talk to you about Peter, and even though he's our lawyer, I just want you to know this... you don't have to tell him everything. He's going to say, 'You can tell me everything, Evie,' but you don't have to. Some things are private. You had your first love with Peter, am I right? Nobody has to know about that but you. You can keep it close. You look right in his eyes when you answer. Don't smile, don't look away. The thing is, Evie .. ."Joe cleared his throat, stretched his fingers out, then grabbed the wheel again. "It's better they don't think that I knew about Peter chasing Mom. That I won­dered. Like, that day at the golf course — they shouldn't know she said she was taking lessons when she wasn't. She just needed to get off by herself sometimes, she said. You see, the less we're tied to this guy, the better. Because if they start digging for stuff, they are going to find out things that wouldn't be good for the family."

"Things like what?"

"Just things."

I jerked my head and stared out the side window, even though I couldn't see anything. It was like seeing through tears in your eyes.

"Maybe I'm not your hero anymore. I can see that. Evie, look at me. Please."

I looked at him, like he asked. He looked me right in the eye.

"I didn't kill him.”

“Okay."

"What I had to do during the hard times, and then during the war — that was different. I had to make my own breaks, and I did. But I didn't just do it for me."

The rain stopped. I could just make out a girl walk­ing down the street. She had her shoes in her hands and she was walking barefoot. She walked right through a puddle, laughing. She was part of something that was so far away from me now.

"Do you remember right after I got back?" Joe asked. "We went to the city and saw a show and had dinner and came home and fell asleep, the three of us, on the couch, because we didn't want to go to bed?"

I remembered. I had felt part of them, of their love.

"That's the way it can be again. If we all stick together here. Okay? If we can just be smart now. If we can stick."