Authors: Robin Brande
The Ninety-Fifth Percentile
Middle of May. Almost time to
graduate.
I hadn’t seen Angela in months. I
had talked to her on the phone here and there, but this time I wanted to see
her in person. I needed to fill her in. She had read the obit, of course, but
she needed to know the details.
When I finished, she sat back and
inhaled another death twig and shook her head and laughed. “Jeezus.”
Something had been gnawing at me. “You
never sent the letter, right? The one telling him we wanted money?”
Angela confirmed she hadn’t. “I
was waiting to hear what happened with the custody hearing.”
“Good,” I said with heartfelt
relief. It was my one consolation in all of this. I might have contributed to
my father’s heart attack, but I hadn’t then stomped on his chest.
“So what do I do now?”
“What do you want to do?” Angela
asked.
“I don’t know. Go to college, I
guess—same as before.”
“Did your father leave you any
money?”
“I don’t know yet. My mother said
there’s life insurance, but I don’t know how much. She isn’t really speaking
to me right now.”
“Seems to me,” Angela Peligro said,
“your mother got what she wanted. Custody of you kids, and now the house and
everything else. They weren’t divorced, so all of it is hers. Plus, she’s
free of him. Sounds like a smoking deal.”
I didn’t really like her crassness
about it, but in a way she was right.
“And you get what you want too, don’t
you?” she continued. “Your brother’s safe now.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t need for my
father to die.”
Angela considered me for a moment in
silence. Then she said, “Let me ask you something. Suppose you have a case
like the one I do now where a priest has spent the last twenty plus years
humping everything that moved. He’s fucked ninety-two kids that we know of so
far, girls and boys. Some of those kids went on to be drug addicts, five of
them committed suicide, most are in therapy of some sort—generally a wake of
misery behind him.
“So suppose you’re one of those
kids, and now you’re grown up and you have a family of your own and a decent
job, but this guy still torments your dreams. You can’t really enjoy sex
because it still feels dirty. Even if you think you’ve pulled yourself
together, there are still times you wonder, why
me
? What was it about
me
?
You have all these vivid, ugly memories and you can’t really enjoy your life
fully no matter how many good things happen to you because this one guy—this
flagrant, abusive monster of a man—singled you out one day and took your
childhood away. Imagine you’re that person.”
“Okay . . .” I said. It sounded
pretty awful.
“And now today,” Angela said, “you
come into my office to talk about how much we’re going to get from the bastard
and from the church leaders who knew about it and let him get away with it,
because that’s the way they’ve always done it, and Lord knows they don’t want
to have to change hundreds of years of policy about kiddy diddling and secrecy
and all of that shit. Okay? So here you are, and I look across my desk at you
and I say, ‘Lizzie, I have wonderful news. Last night another prisoner in the
jail where the priest is being held jumped the fucker and strangled him with
his bare hands. He’s dead, Lizzie. You’re free.’
“And you know what?” Angela
continued. “I bet you a million bucks you don’t smile, you don’t breathe out a
sigh of relief—none of that. You sit there and look at me in shock and then
you burst into tears. And you know why?”
“Why?” I asked softly.
“Because you’re not free. You didn’t
want him dead. No, that’s not right—you did want him dead. The problem is,
you wanted to feel it with your own bare hands. You wanted to be in a safe
place where he couldn’t do anything to you and you wouldn’t get in trouble, and
then you’d wrap your own precious hands around his vile little neck and squeeze
until you felt the very last pulse of his heart.”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“Yes, you would. Don’t lie. That’s
what they all want, but it’s impolite to say so. You can talk about justice
and ‘I just want to prevent this from happening to some other child,’ and all
that crap, but if you’d just look into your own black heart you’d see that
murderous, vicious impulse in there waiting for you to give it permission to do
its job.”
I think I had stopped breathing.
“It’s basic human nature, Liz. It’s
what makes mothers so dangerous. If I saw some man touch my son the way any of
these guys have, I’d feel no hesitation whatsoever going up to him and beating
the living shit out of him, and I’d feel bad if I didn’t finish the job. Don’t
get me wrong—I want to protect other people’s kids, too, but it’s my kid I’d be
thinking of first, and if I could take just one of these guys out of
circulation by battering his brains in, I would.”
I felt then—right then—exactly what
Posie must have been feeling all those times she read the articles about
Angela. Like a surge of electricity, or like love in a way, or maybe just this
intense admiration that there are no adequate words for without sounding like a
freak or a stalker. But right then I would have given everything I had just to
be as fearless and committed as Angela Peligro was. To feel so sure of
myself. To believe in what I believed with such absolute confidence that it
was the right thing.
“Don’t worry,” Angela continued, “it’s
just you and me here. I’m not going to tell anyone what you say. It’s all
privileged—you don’t even have to tell Posie if you don’t want to. So come on,
tell the truth. Aren’t you glad your father’s dead?”
“No,” I answered immediately.
“Are you sure?”
“I didn’t want him to die.”
“Then he didn’t really abuse you,”
Angela said. “You said maybe you weren’t sure? There’s your answer.”
I sat there stunned. Wordless. Was
it really as simple as that?
“I’m guessing he didn’t have sex
with your brother, either, or you’d have felt the way I said.”
I shook my head in disbelief. This
woman was either a prophet or a fraud.
“But I was sure I did—it’s the only
reason I did any of this.”
“Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t,”
Angela answered. “I’m just telling you what I’ve seen over the years. Maybe
you’re different. Could I be wrong? Certainly. But I don’t think so. I
think you’re no different from anyone else.”
“Maybe I’ve just forgiven him,” I
offered lamely.
“Do you feel like you have?”
“Well, honestly, no.”
“What do you think his true crimes
were, Lizzie? Have you had a chance to really think about it?”
An hour before—fifteen minutes
before—I would have answered easily with my prepared list: he had molested my
brother, maybe molested me. Was that the best I could do? If you took those
away, did I have any complaint left?
He made me feel bad.
So
what?
He gave me the creeps sometimes.
And he should die for that?
I’m
sure he was touching Mikey.
How sure, Lizzie, really?
What about the sperm?
Maybe
that was a lab mix-up—twice.
And the letter?
Read it again—maybe you
read too much into it.
I slumped in the chair. “Angela,
did I make a huge mistake?”
“It depends on what you mean. Was
it wrong to try to save your brother? Absolutely not. Did you get some of
your facts wrong? Maybe. Was your father a saint? I doubt it. Was it your
fault he died? No way.”
I heard it all and wanted to
believe it. Wanted to believe it
hard
. Because the alternative was
just too unthinkable.
“Have you ever been wrong?” I asked
Angela. “Have you sued someone for molestation, and it turned out they didn’t
do it?”
“I don’t know, do I?” she
answered. “I take each case as it comes and I try to decide what’s true and
what isn’t. But I could be wrong sometimes, sure. Maybe I’ve ruined some poor
fuck’s life along the line—I wouldn’t put it past me.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“It can’t,” she said. “I have to
do my best, but sometimes that means I’m going to screw up. I’m not a saint,
either. But if you ask me whether overall I’m doing the right thing, I’d say
absolutely I am. No question. The work needs to be done and I’m glad it’s me
doing it.”
I sat there for a moment, trying to
let that sink in.
“It’s a game of percentages,” she
added with a shrug. “And I like to think I’m hitting at least ninety-five.”
Was that all it was? Just a guess,
a try, an “oh, well” if it turned out you were wrong all along?
“I do know this, Lizzie,” she went
on. “No matter what, you’re not in trouble. Not with me, anyway. You weren’t
some bored teenager trying to stir things up just for the hell of it. Your
heart was in it. You were trying to do the right thing. Were you wrong? Who
knows? But were you bad for trying? Never.”
“You really feel that way?” I asked.
“Please, tell me the truth.”
“I really feel that way,” Angela
said. “I’ll tell you why. Did you see that story in the paper last week?
Fourteen-year-old girl kills herself because she can’t take being raped by her
father anymore. Kept a diary for years, laying out every detail. Named names
of neighbors and friends of the family she was sure knew what was going on.
Kept hoping and wishing one of them would say something. Call the cops, send
in an anonymous tip—something. But no one ever did. Poor kid finally gave up
hoping.”
Angela stubbed out her cigarette
and shook her head. “It breaks your heart.” Her voice broke as she said it,
and she had to wait a moment and clear her throat before she could go on.
“See,” she said, pointing her
lighter at me before firing it up again, “not everyone is as brave as you and
Posie. People are scared. Kids are scared. I get that. They don’t want to
make a mistake. They don’t want to get someone mad at them. They think it
might make things worse.
“But don’t you think at some point
people should just say,
Enough
? This isn’t right and I’m doing
something about it. Even if it’s messy as hell. Even if they don’t get it right
all the time. For God’s sake, do
something
.”
Angela shook her head again and
took a deep drag. Then she glanced up at the clock. “Look, I’ve got to throw
you out. Got another one coming in this afternoon. Tell Posie I need her to
come get me organized. I’m fucking buried here—papers everywhere.” I looked
around her office, but it didn’t look any worse than the other times I’d seen
it. “Georgia gave up a long time ago.”
Reluctantly I rose from the chair.
I wasn’t finished. We’d gotten sidetracked, and I still needed to talk about
my father. About what Angela had said about him. And me.
But maybe that was her point, I
thought as she ushered me back to the front room. Maybe everything she did had
a point.
She shook my hand. “It was nice
knowing you, Lizzie. Maybe I’ll still see you around.”
“I hope so,” I answered.
Angela smiled. “Now beat it. I
have work to do.”
She shut the door behind me and I
could hear her bark out new orders to Georgia. Life went on.
Posie waited for me in the parking
lot.
“You should have come in,” I said.
“It’s too hot out here.”
“It was fine in the shade. I
wanted to sit out here and think for a while.”
“Feel like a milkshake?” I asked.
“Poetry to my ears.”
Posie rolled down the windows and
blasted the air conditioning and soon chased out all the hot air.
“Good meeting?” Posie asked.
“I don’t know. I suppose so.
She’s ready for you to finish school and come work for her.”
Posie nodded absent-mindedly. She
drove in silence for a while. When she stopped for the light she draped her
wrist over the steering wheel and turned to me. “I think what she does is
great.”
“Me, too.”
“No, I mean really great. I think
she’s doing the right thing.”
“I do, too.”
“I think I should do that, too.”
The light turned green and I stared
at Posie’s profile and I felt glad for what she had just said.
“You mean be a lawyer?” I asked.
“Uh-huh. I’ve been thinking a lot
about it.”
I let this soak in for the rest of
the way until we parked in front of IHOP. My nerves jangled with excitement as
I gripped Posie’s arm to keep her inside the car.
“Posie, I think that’s right. I
think that’s exactly what we should do—me, too.”
She smiled. “You don’t think that’s
stupid?”
“Not at all. I think it’s exactly
right.”
The Withered Vine
Most people don’t see a connection
between the stories of Esther and Jonah, but I do.
Esther was a beautiful young virgin
brought to the king’s court to be tested for the job of queen. She joined a
hundred other virgins in the king’s harem and waited for her turn in his bed.
She was clever and modest and
lovely, and skilled, they say, in the art of love, so the king chose her for
his queen. Esther was a Jew, but her uncle Mordecai warned her not to reveal
that.
Then the time came when one of the
king’s noblemen hatched a plot to slaughter all the Jews. Uncle Mordecai came
to Esther at the palace and told her she must speak out.
“The king hasn’t called for me in
thirty days,” Esther replied. “You know how he is. If I come to him without
being summoned he could have me put to death.”
Mordecai was disgusted. “Do not
think that because you are queen you alone of the Jews will escape. For if you
remain silent, relief will come to us from some other place, and then you alone
will perish.”
And here’s the part to remember:
“And
who knows,”
Mordecai said,
“but that you have come to royal position for
such a time as this?”
That slays me. That says it all.
You have to look at the things you have—whether it’s beauty or brains or some
supernatural talent with the accordion—and realize you have that for a reason
and you’d better figure out how to use it for something beside your own selfish
satisfaction.
And we need to look at Jonah, too.
His story’s been cheapened somewhat into a fish tale, and most people only care
about it right up until the point where the fish spits Jonah out.
But the real heart of the story
comes after that. The reason God sent the fish to swallow Jonah in the first
place was that Jonah was disobeying God and God wanted to teach him a lesson.
Jonah was supposed to travel to Ninevah to warn the people there to turn from
their evil ways or else God would destroy them the way he had Sodom and
Gomorrah. Jonah didn’t want that job. He was afraid.
And so he ran. But you don’t run
from God. It’s like a hamster trying to escape by scurrying faster on its
wheel. It’s like the fortune teller in my play and the girl in my story trying
to outrun their unrunnable fates.
Jonah realized this, too, while he
sat there in the fish’s belly pondering his future. He promised God that if He
gave Jonah another chance, this time Jonah would do whatever God asked.
Spit.
Back on land, Jonah
fulfilled his promise and took God’s message to Ninevah, but he still believed
in his heart that it wouldn’t make any difference in the end.
But Jonah was wrong. The people of
Ninevah humbled themselves and fasted and prayed. And God saw it and was
pleased. He turned from his wrath.
Jonah was irate. “See?” he
complained to God. “I told you it didn’t matter if I came here. You were never
going to destroy them anyway!” He stomped off into the wilderness to pout.
And here’s the last little twist.
While Jonah sat in the dirt cursing and whining, God caused a vine to grow up
over Jonah’s head to shade him from the sun. Jonah liked that. He felt almost
happy again. But the next morning God caused the vine to wither and die, and
Jonah became enraged.
“Do you have a right to be angry
about the vine?” God asked.
“I do. It isn’t fair.”
“You care so much about this vine
that you neither planted nor tended,” God answered. “It sprang up overnight and
died overnight, and you grieve for it. But Ninevah has a hundred twenty
thousand people in it who cannot tell their left hand from their right. And
you think I shouldn’t care about them?”
The story ends there, so we never
get to know Jonah’s sorry answer. But you hope he was ashamed. Because it
wasn’t his job to decide whether God would show mercy to those people or not.
It wasn’t his job to decide what the fair outcome might be. His job was simply
to deliver a message. Jonah only had to decide whether to accept the job or
run from it. Maybe if Jonah had done his work without balking, God would have
rewarded him with shade for the rest of his life. That vine over his head
would never have withered.
I have been given certain gifts. I’m
fairly smart, I think, good in school (last week I graduated with honors),
industrious, able to work hard toward a goal. I can write fairly well and
organize my thoughts onto paper. And I’ve got a little money now from the
insurance—not a fortune, but if I’m careful it’s enough to send me through
college and law school besides. I figured it out. I looked at the numbers.
Posie’s plan is feasible.
I have also been given certain
experiences, as you can see. I think you have a choice with your life to
either blow through each experience and race on to the next one, or to hover
above it somehow, and try to see it in a broader context. You try to view
yourself as a character in a play. When it’s not so personal—just a story you’re
observing—you can sometimes see what you should do next as the only logical
step.
I try to look at my father’s story
that way, like he was just a character in a play I wrote. I said in the
beginning that I thought you could learn things from re-reading a story. That
maybe this time you’d see something you hadn’t before.
Maybe my father was just a regular
guy—a family man. And his wife left him one day for no good reason or for
reasons we may never understand having to do with sex and love and self-respect
and a thousand little details that all came together at just the right moment
and convinced her to flee. And maybe my father reached out to his kids for
comfort—normal, innocent comfort—but he was clumsy at it and didn’t understand
how we might take it. He masturbated to
Cosmo
—okay, that’s true
.
He wrestled with his son and took showers with him, but maybe that was innocent
after all, like jocks knocking each other around on the field then hitting the
locker room together to wash off the sweat of the game. Maybe he went to my
brother’s room at night to say he loved him and hoped he had a good day at
school and that he’d have an even better day tomorrow. My father was lonely,
and Mikey was the only person in that house left to talk to.
The lab report—let’s say it was a
mix-up. Twice. The letter—perhaps a genuine, though undoubtedly bizarre,
attempt to tell the truth after shining a light into every dark cranny of his soul
to find out what he could.
Could I have been wrong? As Angela
Peligro said, “Certainly.” Posie doesn’t think so. She thinks I was right
about my father—about everything. She says she doesn’t doubt it for a second.
And sometimes when I look at the
evidence again, I agree with her. Whole-heartedly.
And then other times I’m not so
sure.
So for now I’ve decided to stop
thinking about it. I’m purposely not thinking about it. Because there’s
nothing I can change anyway. It’s done and I can’t take any of it back. And
I’m not at all sure that I should.
So that’s where I am.
It’s foolish, I think, to run. And
you’d have to be blind not to know what you’re supposed to do with your life.
Maybe if I do this—maybe take some of the load off Angela Peligro’s shoulders,
or figure out some other way, my own way, to cripple some of the marchers in
that endless parade of atrocities out there, then I’ll have done the right
thing with my life. I might be wrong about all of this—Lord knows I might—but
I don’t see how else to play it. I’m back on dry land now, out of the fish’s
mouth, and I see where I want it to end:
Under a vine in the wilderness,
with the leaves still shading my head.
~~~~
~~~~
Special thanks to
attorneys
Lynne Cadigan
Annette Everlove
Michael McNamara
~~~~
Look for more books
by Robin Brande:
EVOLUTION, ME
& OTHER FREAKS OF NATURE
PARALLELOGRAM
series