Pretty Amy (19 page)

“Was it a transvestite?” my mother asked.

Dick turned red and got that look on his face that a little boy gets when someone says the word
penis.

She huffed and went back to stirring; it smelled like she was burning whatever food we were eating. My mother can even mess up food that’s been cooked for her.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a transvestite as long as it’s a law-abiding transvestite,” my father said.

“I guess anyone would be better,” my mother said.

I picked up the fork from the left side of the plate and ran the tines along my lips, trying to keep in what I wanted to say about Lila and Cassie.

“Amy, your teeth,” my father said, grabbing the fork from my hand.

“Dick, you saw those girls in court. You didn’t even have to hear them speak to know they were bad news.”

“Nope,” he said. “I could spot them from a mile away.”

“Not a care in the world for the rules they’re breaking,” she said, shaking her head. “I think I saw that Cassie girl spit on the floor in the courtroom.”

“We’ve all been arrested. We’ll all be punished,” I said.

I was just like they were. Why couldn’t everyone understand that?

“We’ll see,” my mother said. It was her way of saying that someone would get back at Cassie and Lila for what they had done to me. Or at least, what she thought they had done to me.

I guess I couldn’t blame my mother for blaming them for what happened. I mean, I blamed her for a lot of the things that had happened to me. Did that mean that, according to her logic, she would get what was coming to her? Was
I
what was coming to her?

“Smells great,” my father said, which was code for saying he was hungry.

I waved at the air in front of my face. It did not smell great. It smelled like burning paper, which is probably what it was, considering it’s not beyond my mother to forget to take something out of its container before she reheats it.

I was tired of waiting for someone to explain why Dick Simon was there, so I asked.

“This is just a thank-you for all the hard work he’s doing for you,” my mother said.

I wondered why my full paychecks from Gas-N-Go weren’t enough.

“Yes, indeed,” Dick Simon said like some Southern gentleman. “Your mother is one gracious hostess.”

I just about puked in my salad bowl. I found it interesting that they were thanking him when he hadn’t really done anything yet—other than torture me—as far as I could tell.

Finally, dinner was served. Luckily, Dick was the kind of guy who didn’t speak once food landed in front of him. He ate until his plate was clean, so this eliminated any chance of him asking me how I thought things were going, how my job was, whether I felt I was making progress in therapy, or whether I was ready to rip my hair out.

My father was one of these men as well. This left my mother and me to make conversation, so we didn’t speak.

My mother got up from the table to get dessert and came back with a white-frosted cake that read
Thank You Dick
in blue icing.

I heard angry words in my head, cursing me for not making it home in time to find the cake in the fridge so I could have added
For Being A
in between the words that were already there.

“Why don’t you two take a walk,” my mother said, after Dick Simon and my father had inhaled the cake I refused to eat with after-dinner coffee.

Dick Simon got up and stood behind my chair, attempting to pull it out for me. I sat there for as long as I could, ignoring him while my mother glared at me.

“Amy, Dick is waiting,” my father said.

“Fine,” I said. As I walked out of the kitchen with him, I realized he hadn’t told one joke during all of dinner. I should have known something serious was about to happen.

We went out the sliding glass patio door and into my backyard. Since we lived on one of those streets where everyone has a perfectly rectangular patch of backyard grass, we walked around the perimeter.

“Jail isn’t pretty,” he said.

I nodded. I didn’t need to be told that. I could guess. And what I couldn’t guess, I knew about from movies. It was inhabited by men and women who had one very noticeable defect or characterization. The woman with the scar that ran from the outside corner of her eye all the way down the corner of her mouth like the trail of a tear. A big fat guy who grunted and punched instead of speaking. The skinny little meth head with a face like a snake who helped people get things from some unknown source.

“You don’t seem as scared as you should be,” Dick said.

I stared at him. Of course I was scared, but I was also emotionally spent. If I had learned anything from my experience violating the law, it was that feelings are not a bottomless pit. You can run out of them, and I guess I had.

“Sit down,” he said.

I looked around, but there were no chairs waiting for us in the yard. I sat down in front of a wild rose bush. He followed a minute later, falling to the ground in a way that made me wonder if he would ever get up again.

He went on to tell me horror stories, but most of what he said sounded like those tall tales your grandparents tell about how they would have to walk ten miles to school every day, uphill, in the snow. It was hard to take someone seriously who made you afraid that you might find a whoopee cushion every time you sat on a chair in his office.

“I know what I’m talking about,” he went on, catching his breath. “I’ve had clients who’ve gone inside.” And when he said this he squeezed his thigh, or at least the portion he was able to squeeze in his very-small-by-contrast hand. “Maybe you think you know what it’s like in a general way, but you don’t really know anything about it until you’ve been there day in, day out, folding laundry and cleaning toilets and praying while you’re in the shower that you don’t get jumped.”

I looked at the swing set my parents had bought me when I was nine. It was rusty and the swings moved slightly in the wind. When I was little, I would sit on the swing in the center and pump my legs until they ached. Flying so high, being just like AJ, feeling nothing but pure, simple joy. I wished I were swinging now.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked. I knew jail would suck. Like that was news? Knowing it didn’t change anything. Maybe he should spend less time telling me about jail and more time working to keep me out of jail.

“I’m just doing my job,” he said, closing his eyes and breathing. “My job is all about the truth. Sometimes it’s a hard truth and sometimes it’s a bend of the truth and sometimes it’s a slight shading of the truth. You should know what can happen.”

“I thought you said you could get me probation.”

“I can,” he said, unfolding a piece of paper from his pocket and handing it to me. It was typed on his letterhead—Richard Simon, Esquire—and had a bunch of
Sorry, so, so sorry
s and
I was in with the wrong crowd
and
I was making the wrong decisions
and
I am all different now.
It also detailed how everything that had happened the night of my arrest was the fault of Lila and Cassie.

“What the hell is this?” I shook the paper. I couldn’t help it.

“Your get-out-of-jail-free card,” he said, handing me a pen.

“No,” I said, even though what I really wanted to tell him was where he could stick that pen. There was no way I was turning on Lila and Cassie.

“This is the deal my buddy is presenting. Sign it and you get probation. I would suggest you take it.”

“What does he want with Lila and Cassie?”

“It’s not about them,” Dick said, waving away my comment. “It’s about scaring them enough to testify against other, more connected people, and on and on up the line.”

I wondered how even the Assistant DA knew that Lila and Cassie were more popular than I was. I shook my head.

“Perhaps the real owner of the evidence you were found with, perhaps his or her compatriots,” he said.

Brian
, I thought. Lila would kill me.

“You could get a year inside if you don’t sign it.”

“Then what am I paying you for?”

“For this,” he said, still trying to hand me the pen. “I’d take the chance while I still had it.”

“What will happen to Cassie and Lila?”

“Do you think they would ask that about you?”

I didn’t have to answer. They were my best friends—that had to mean something. I had to be able to count on someone other than AJ.

“You’ll change your mind. Everyone does,” he said, struggling to stand.

“Well, maybe everyone does,” I said, standing before he could, “but I’m not everyone.”

“Sure you are,” he said. “Everyone is someone until they’re faced with a traumatic situation, and then they become everyone. You’re not special, you know.”

I stood above him. What was with everyone needing to tell me how ordinary I was? Other people were allowed to go on being ignorant and boring and regular and plain, without it being shoved in their faces every five minutes.

“I’m having a little trouble getting up,” he said, reaching for my hand. The back pocket of his pants had gotten caught on one of the thorny rose branches and I could hear the seam tearing as he struggled.

I grabbed his hand and helped him up. Then, I ripped the paper he’d given me into little pieces and threw it across the yard. He stayed behind, picking them up.

I found my mother sitting at the kitchen table looking anxious. Like the decision I was supposed to make was a baby she was waiting for. “You’d better go get Dick,” I said.

“What have you done now?” she asked, running toward the door, not even giving me the chance to respond.

Considering how that question had been answered lately, I couldn’t blame her.

I went down to my basement hovel to call Lila. I doubted that my mother had gone after Dick because she cared about his well-being—I knew it had to be because if anyone saw him scavenging around on the lawn with his pants falling off, the Collinsville rumor mill would have been up and running for new business.

AJ chirped from his cage as I opened the basement door. Maybe Mrs. Mortar thought having a bird was lame, but at least I knew AJ would never rat me out. Well,
could
never rat me out.

As I picked up the phone, I wondered what I would say. If I called Lila and told her what Dick had said, would it give her ideas? Would telling her what my lawyer wanted me to do help her to see a way out that she may not have had before?

I dialed her number. Maybe she wouldn’t answer. I could feel satisfied that I had at least tried to call her to tell her what was going on. And then spend the rest of the night smoking and trying to forget.

“How’s the job?” she asked, without even saying hello. It was obvious that her caller ID was working, and that she was screening her calls. It seemed odd that it was the first thing she would ask me about, too. Like a family member who doesn’t know you well, asking about something so basic and universal.

“How do you think?”

“I’ve seen you in there when I walk by,” she said, as I heard her light a cigarette.

She’d walked by and hadn’t stopped. I felt my stomach turn. Where was she going? Why hadn’t she taken me?

I heard her inhale, waiting for me to talk. Was she mad at me?

“What have you been doing?” I asked.
Other than walking by and not stopping?

“Nothing. I’m so bored,” Lila said, sucking in hard on her cigarette.

“Yeah,” I said, though I was hoping for an excuse. I was the one with forty-seven appointments every day, but even I found the time to pick up a phone. But it’s not like she could have called me. I didn’t have a cell anymore. And maybe she wanted to stop when she walked by Gas-N-Go, but her lawyer had also told her to separate herself from me.

“Brian and I got back together.”

“Seriously?” Only Lila could resnare a guy she’d essentially just stolen a thousand dollars from.

“I blamed it on Cassie.” She exhaled. “He’s been so sweet to me. He feels really bad. It’s so nice to have someone to talk to about everything.”

I had tons of people to talk to about everything, but none of them understood. Well, Aaron understood. I considered telling Lila about him, but I knew I couldn’t risk it. If Lila knew I was hanging out with Aaron, she would do her Lila thing and take him away.

“Brian calls me every morning to wake me up and then every night before I fall asleep,” she said with an actress’s sigh.

“You won’t believe what my lawyer just said to me.” I couldn’t believe I’d actually said it, but I would have said anything to make her shut up about Brian.

“Your lawyer,” she said, exhaling sharply, waiting.

“He wants me to testify against you guys.” I whispered the last part; I don’t know why. It just seemed like the sort of thing you would whisper to someone.