The Forgotten Hours(57)



“. . . one must consider the age difference. The victim was only fourteen years old, three years younger than the age of consent in the state of New York. There is an age gap of over thirty years. The defendant groomed this child over a period of time, seducing her into . . .”

But the words are not adding up. For one, Lulu wasn’t fourteen years old, was she? Katie tries to remember: her birthday is sometime in September. Is it possible—is it actually possible that all along Lulu let her believe they were the same age, when really she is a whole year younger? But this isn’t so surprising, really, considering how much Lulu talked and how little she ever really revealed.

“. . . the request for a stay of the sentence, pending appeal, is denied. Given the severity of the crime, I sentence John G. Gregory to six years in state prison, with five years’ probation.”

The DA, with her wrenched-back hair, jumps to her feet. Her eyes dance as people pat her on the back. Everyone at her table stands. Everyone everywhere stands. People are moving, talking, crying. Security guards in white shirts and black pants surround her father. Tears run down Grumpy’s cheeks. The crowd begins jostling around them. Charlie’s glasses slip down her nose, and she does not push them back up. She nudges forward through the crowd with one shoulder and heads over to her husband.

Raising both her hands, she holds onto the sides of John’s face. They look at each other. They kiss on the lips. The red lights on the cameras pulse.

Herb whispers into her father’s ear. John empties his pockets out, depositing his wallet and keys and some coins into his lawyer’s cupped hands. Through the murmurs, the breathing, the shuffling of heels on the floor comes the unambiguous, elemental thrum of the air conditioner finally turning on.

Her father places his hands behind his back, and one of the guards reaches over and clicks a pair of handcuffs onto his wrists and leads him away.

She will never again see him in the kitchen of their home, preparing breakfast. He will not lean over her for a quick peck on the cheek or smooth her ponytail with his fingers or tell her to put away her shoes. There will be no vacations together, no movie nights or family dinners, ever again. The future lies ahead of her, the years when she will become a woman, and this man will be absent from it all. The hole this will leave is as gigantic as a crater, the shocking emptiness of which rings in her ears as though she has been struck across the face.





26

The last days of high school. A cluster of parents lingering by the secretary’s office clamp their mouths shut—snap! snap! snap! snap!—as Katie walks through the front doors. She stares at them, daring them to say something, and they cast their eyes downward. Good! Fuck you too, she thinks. The boys just return her cold looks, and while a few snicker or make crude gestures, they aren’t as embarrassed by their contempt for her as the girls are.

Girls avoid her, their eyes filled with pious false pity. She senses a curiosity so intense it borders on erotic. Their faces flush as they lean in toward each other at lunch, talking breathlessly. “Was she, like, pretty?” Katie can just imagine them asking. “Are her parents getting divorced?” “Do you guys think it ever happened before?” “Did she hear them doing it?” “Wonder if she’ll go to jail, to, like, you know—visit him?” They’ve read the articles, seen the local news. This is by far the most exciting thing that has ever happened to them.

The family’s life is suddenly smaller, trapping them in a tightening mesh. There are all these new rules, this pretense they are supposed to keep up. The new certainty they live with is that they can’t count on anyone or anything except themselves. Katie’s father believes that together, they can be strong against the screwed-up world—but the truth is that they are all on their own, and it is lonely, like being the only human being left alive on a ravaged earth.

She’s in a suspended state of being until the day she visits her father in prison, some weeks later. There are only a few other visitors. In the waiting room, the chairs are the same type of molded plastic used in school lunchrooms and are bolted to the floor. A thin girl sits hunched over, playing with the cuffs of her sweatshirt. At first glance she doesn’t seem much older than Katie, but there are streaks of gray in her dirty-blonde hair.

Waiting to see her father is like taking a test for which Katie doesn’t know the rules. It is a medium security prison north of Blackbrooke, in Deloitte County. From the outside, the concrete building seems to go on forever, surrounded by barbed wire fences and spotlights as big as the ones used to light football stadiums. There is overcrowding, her mother explains, and that’s why Daddy is here; as soon as things are sorted out, he’ll be moved to a minimum security prison. But that will never happen.

At home, Charlie is mostly expressionless and quiet, reading obsessively, but in the prison waiting room her skin assumes some color again, and her movements become brisk and efficient. She pushes ahead with a sense of purpose, whereas Katie feels more and more lethargic, incapable of agency. The lockers require tokens, which Charlie produces from the bottom of her handbag. She folds up her long cashmere sweater and places it in the locker and tells David and Katie to do the same with their jackets. David is operating at half speed, which Katie finds infuriating.

At the yellowing pass-through window in the front of the room, Charlie gives her name and hands over her driver’s license to a female guard. Her mother’s face is gaunt, the freckles almost entirely gone. Sometimes, when David or Katie ask her something, she appears not to hear them at all. Maybe she is taking pills or is depressed. But in the middle of the night when Katie crawls into her bed, Charlie doesn’t kick her out. In her own bed, Katie feels as though darkness is pressing in on her like a thousand heavy palms, and when that happens, she can’t understand which way is up and which way is down. In her parents’ bed, her body is heavy against the sheets, weighed down and substantial again. In the mornings, when she opens her eyes, she buries her head in her dad’s pillow and breathes in his scent. In just a few weeks she’ll be in college—gone. She’s too old to be in her parents’ bed.

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