Two Truths and a Lie(31)
“That’s okay,” said Katie. She stared at the ceiling, back to her self-contained, unflappable self. She was waiting for Sherri to leave so she could continue writing in Morgan Coleman’s cast-off notebook; eventually Sherri did leave. So what if it was a diary? Shouldn’t all young girls be allowed to keep a diary? In fact, wasn’t a diary actually a refreshing change from all of their iScreens, and shouldn’t this behavior be encouraged? What could be the harm in it, really? Katie didn’t know a lot of the specifics—Sherri had been very careful to shield her from the worst of it, and the counselor had declared her remarkably well-adjusted, considering.
And yet. What if Sherri was mistaken about that? What if Katie knew more than she was letting on? What if Katie put secrets in that notebook? Not little-girl secrets like who had a crush on whom but big, bad, grown-up secrets, the kind that nobody could ever, ever, ever read.
What then?
Did Bobby remember the night they met the way Sherri did? She’d never know, now. They were at a bar in Jersey City. She was with two of her girlfriends, the same friends she’d had in high school. The three of them were twenty-one, fresh-faced and innocent. Sherri was alone in the world. Alone! Her mother had died when she was seventeen, and her father started drinking and never stopped. She had no place she belonged. No siblings, not even a cousin nearby.
At the bar that night Bobby smiled at her. He bought her a mudslide. That’s how young she was, she thought mudslides were sophisticated! He tipped the bartender with a twenty and she was agog.
Sherri fell for Bobby Giordano from that first minute. She fell and she fell and she fell.
Typically Bobby conducted his business outside the house, but every now and then the guys came over and they all met in his office. Who, Sherri always wondered, was sitting closest to the register that held all of the secrets? Did the guys know about it? Did each of them have a similar hiding place in their homes, and did the wives know about those hiding places?
The guys coming over was a signal to Katie and Sherri that they should disappear. Sometimes they watched a movie from the comfort of Sherri’s king-size bed. Sherri brought up snacks: big bowls of popcorn, apple juice for Katie, a glass of wine for herself. No more mudslides; she’d learned about good wine. She never minded those nights. If she was being honest with herself she looked forward to them, with Katie and her curled up together like puppies. Katie often fell asleep partway through the movie and Sherri would listen to her rhythmic breathing and feel a tremendous sense of peace. She didn’t think about what was going on downstairs. It wasn’t her business. When Bobby came to bed he never woke them. He climbed in on the other side of Katie and that’s how they slept. Like a tableau of the perfect family.
But one night the guys were over and Katie had a sleepover to go to. A birthday party. It was a Friday. Without Katie there Sherri was at loose ends. She wandered around the kitchen, wiping counters that were already spotless. Then she had the idea to put together a snack for Bobby and the guys. She never did that; he had made it clear that he didn’t want to be bothered. But surely they were all getting hungry in there. They had their rolling bar cart, their glasses and ice, but no food. Sherri put together a plate of cheese and crackers, a little of that nice prosciutto, sliced as thin as a cell slide, that came from the local deli, some dark chocolate caramels dotted with sea salt. She made it look so nice.
She stood outside the office, trying to decide if she should somehow knock with her shoulder or call out for Bobby to open the door, when something stopped her. Maybe it was the word girl that snagged her attention; maybe it was the tone of the conversation, which was low and urgent. Something made her put the tray down on the little table in the alcove outside the office and lean closer to the door until her ear was pressed up against it.
The girl, they kept saying. The girl wasn’t going to keep quiet, the situation with the girl would have to be addressed. It was a shame, she had seen something she shouldn’t have seen, but there was nothing they could do about it, except what had to be done.
“Wrong place at the wrong time.” That was Bobby’s voice.
“We’ll have to get rid of her,” said one of the other guys.
The words were like ice water poured down Sherri’s spine. She froze for a moment. Then she carried the tray back to the kitchen, put the cheese and prosciutto in the refrigerator, the crackers in the pantry. She poured herself a shot of vodka to calm her shaking nerves. Then another, then another. She should do something. She couldn’t do anything. She should warn the girl. But she didn’t know who the girl was. She didn’t know what the girl had seen. She should, she couldn’t, she wouldn’t, she didn’t. Maybe she’d heard wrong. She’d been on the other side of a heavy door. It would have been easy to imagine hearing things that nobody had said.
After a time, she put it out of her mind. What other choice did she have, with no proof of anything? Even if she’d wanted to talk to anybody about what she thought she heard, she had nobody. Bobby and Katie were her family. They were her entire world.
And didn’t she love that world? Didn’t she love the glitz and the glamour of living with money? She didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize that, and she had nowhere to go if she’d wanted to leave: no job, no resources. She had grown up without any money at all. They never had extra for school supplies or nice shampoo or even a gift to go to a birthday party, should she be invited, which she never was. Unless the whole class was invited, and that was always obvious and somehow even worse than not being included at all.