Seven Days in June(70)

“Oh, fine.” Lizette propped herself up on her silk pillows. With an indulgent yawn, she sank into a feline, full-body stretch, her kimono fluttering and rippling around her killer legs. Then she crossed her feet at the ankles and lit up her eleventh cigarette of the day.

“Think. How…”

Lizette heard her daughter’s voice crack a little.

“How what, Genevieve?”

“How did you get to the house?” she asked, in a flimsy, hesitant voice. And Lizette wasn’t positive, but judging from the way she asked the question, it seemed that she already knew the answer. How she knew, Lizette had no idea. But her hunches were rarely wrong.

A chill knifed through her. Lizette knew she was on trial. But she had no idea where this interrogation was coming from.

“I don’t want to talk about this,” she whined petulantly.

“I really don’t care.”

What did she have to lose? Her daughter already hated her. And if God was judging her for her crimes, lying to her daughter to protect her would be the least of her sins.

“I’ll try to remember,” sighed Lizette. “I’d been calling you all week, and you never answered. Imagine if Audre ran away like that?”

“She wouldn’t,” said Genevieve, with devastating finality.

Lizette cleared her throat. “Um, finally, on Sunday morning, my phone rang. But it wasn’t you.”

“Who was it?”

“It was that boy.”

“Shane?”

Shane. Lizette rolled her eyes to the ceiling at the mention of his name—and then realized that she could no longer hear Mahckenzee tapping upstairs. Unacceptable. She slipped off her violet stiletto and threw it at the ceiling, where it hit with a thud and then landed on an accent table, in a tray of pink-and-yellow macarons.

She eyed this pastel tableau from the couch. It looked like the cover of a ’90s chick-lit novel.

“Mom, are you there? Shane called you?”

“Yes! How many times I gotta say it?” Lizette held a pillow to her chest. “He was all distressed. Said you were in trouble, and gave me the address. I drove there so fast I got a ticket. Got there, and you…you weren’t breathing. He was crying, saying it was all his fault. Which it was. Because there were drugs everywhere. Pills, liquor, just depravity. A razor. And you had terrible cuts! I knew he’d done it all; you were my innocent little baby.”

“Oh, Mom,” she moaned. “Jesus, you got it so wrong.”

“I called the paramedics,” she said proudly. “And then I called the police. And then they called the Oriental girl whose daddy lived there.”

“You can’t say ‘Oriental,’” she said flatly. “So you called the police. It was you.”

“If I knew the cops would send you to the loony bin, I wouldn’t have. But yes, I called the police! That boy kidnapped you. Hurt you. You were bleeding. Any mother would’ve done the same. Imagine if it were Audre. Besides, he knew he was guilty. You can’t imagine…He…he wouldn’t let you go. He was holding both of your hands in his and just wouldn’t let go. And then he crawled in bed and held you. Right in front of me. So disrespectful. Imagine if it was your baby? He refused to move. When the cops got there, it took all three of them to drag him away from you.”

Lizette hadn’t thought about this in years, but the memory still infuriated her. How dare that boy, who was clearly to blame, be so upset? She was the mother. She got to be upset. Lizette’s world was falling apart, her boyfriend had just dumped her, and here was this kid, so consumed by love for her daughter that he had to be physically dragged away.

Genevieve was a child. She hadn’t even lived yet. Why did she get that kind of adoration, when Lizette had never experienced it? It wasn’t the order of things. It wasn’t fair.

“What happened then?” Genevieve asked, in a broken whisper.

“I had him arrested and put away. Good fucking riddance. I believe he went to juvenile detention. They told me it was his third time. Serial predator.”

Silence.

“You’re welcome,” said Lizette, nervousness creeping through her.

Nothing.

“Hello?”

“All these years.” Genevieve’s voice sounded reedy. “All these years, I thought he was a coward. A liar. I hated him.”

“Well, who’s to hate if it ain’t him?”

Her daughter had no response to this, apparently. Her silence was so complete, so lengthy, that for a moment, Lizette thought she’d hung up.

“You never noticed that I cut myself?” she asked hesitantly. “You must’ve known.”

“What? You were so secretive. How would I know that?”

“I know when Audre gets a papercut.”

“Well.” Lizette took a deep drag. “You need to get you a life, bé.”

“I cut myself. He didn’t do it. And I’d been taking drugs—your drugs, or getting them from your boyfriends—my whole life. I wasn’t your innocent little baby.”

“How’d you get them from my boyfriends?” Lizette’s voice went cold, sharp. She hated being reminded of her failed loves. And how hard her life had been. And that she was never able to fix what hurt her daughter. But Genevieve had always felt so unreachable. Her pain took her to a place where no one could follow.