There Will Be Lies (31 page)

I’m so sorry, Child, I think. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’ll find a way to come back and I’ll get you out of there, I promise.

Then I do the only thing I can think of.

I concentrate very hard, and I step back –

through the air –

into my other nightmare.

The whole of the next morning, over breakfast and everything, Jennifer keeps touching Michael, as if he faded into nothingness once, briefly, and so she wants to check now that he is still substantial.

Me, I feel ghostlike too, only half there. One half of me is still seeing the Child in its palace of glass, reaching out to me across the chasm, wanting me to comfort it.

The thought makes me shiver. I have to save the Child from the Crone, I think. It’s totally crazy but I know that I have to do it.

Then I see Jennifer look at me with concern bruising her eyes and I try to shunt back into the room, like a train changing tracks, to cancel the image of the crying Child from my mind.

I smile at Jennifer, and she smiles back, then does that touching-Michael thing again.

I think I know what’s going on with the two of them. He was the one who was broken; she had her hope, her faith, her god, and he didn’t. Now she thinks she can see him mending, and she is feeling him out, like prodding a cup that you have fixed with superglue, to see if it is holding.

It’s true too, he seems better. There’s more colour in his cheeks, he looks less like some kind of addict. He has switched, quite suddenly, into a more positive mode, like a negative number being squared.

−1
²
= 1

And the thing doing the squaring, the factor of multiplication, would appear to be baseball. Ever since it came up, he’s been – well, not happy, but a whole different person. Me too, I have to admit. Because it always seemed odd, you know? That I loved it so much – me, with my overweight mom who never did any exercise in her life. Now I think: I got it from him. It’s something concrete he gave me, even if I look at his face and I can’t for the life of me see any physical resemblance. It’s something in my blood, passed down.

In my DNA.

And that makes me think of the eagle, or Eagle, whatever, and him saying how there was one unbreakable line of DNA between me and …

Between me and my dad.

My real dad.

I think of Mark saying that there are a billion years of ancestors inside me.

James can see it too, the unbroken-line stuff though obviously not the eagle stuff or the Mark stuff and he looks pleased, but also a tiny bit jealous. He doesn’t like baseball, I know, and I wonder if this is making him feel left out. Maybe. He definitely seems closer to his mom than to his dad.

Anyway, I don’t want to get into the politics of it. The fault lines of the family. I’m just glad to have a plan for the day.

So when we’ve finished our bagels, Michael grabs his wallet and his shoes and hugs Jennifer.
We’ll be back in an hour
, he says.
We’ll keep it short
.

It’s OK
, says Jennifer.
I waited fifteen years for her. I can manage without her for an hour
. She is looking at him with such love, this man who she must have come close to losing too.

Well, then
, says Michael. He opens the door for me, and I go through. James waves from the couch, where he’s reading about French painters.

In the hallway, we bump into Summer from the CPS. She does a small double take.
You’re going out?
she says.

To the park
, says Michael.

I don’t know if that’s advisable. There’s [        ] and [        ]. You don’t want to be recognised
.

I turn to Michael.
No one knows what she looks like
, he says.

For now
, says Summer.

Well, precisely
.

I would still
–

What do you want? I mean, what about when we get home? You want us to keep her inside for the rest of her life?

No, we just
–

Michael is fully a positive integer now; all that defeat has left him. It’s as if he inhaled a ghost and it spread out to fill his whole body, puffing him up like a balloon, taut.
I’m taking my daughter to the park
, he says.

Summer sighs.
Fine. In that case, do you mind if I come with you?

Yes
, says Michael.
Yes, I mind
.

Summer does NOT know what to do in this situation and it is all kinds of awesome. It is fifty-four flavours of awesome.

Uh, right
, she says.
I’ll [        ] then. Jennifer and I can discuss some of the arrangements for
–

Do what you want
, says Michael. Then he walks past her.

And I follow.

After we’ve stopped at a store where Michael buys a bat, a ball and a glove – I could tell him that my DeMarini was in the cabin, so the Feds must have it, but it seems a lot to say out loud – we walk to a small park a couple of blocks from the apartment. It takes a while because of my foot. Though having said that, the pain is already a lot better. Sometimes I’m even forgetting to take the codeine, which is good since (Mom) ground up half my supply and dumped it in Luke’s wine.

What bat do – did you have?
he asks.

DeMarini
, I say.

He nods approvingly. I like that.

Then, suddenly, when we are standing waiting for a pedestrian light, it hits me that this is the first time I’ve been alone with a man, ever. I mean apart from Mark, and he doesn’t count, he’s Coyote. I stop.

Everything OK?

I nod, just. My blood is pounding a danger signal. I know what men are like. I know what they can do.

Then I think: But do I know? Or did Shaylene tell me, and I believed her? I close my eyes for a second. I think: Anyway, he’s my dad. He’s my dad.

He’s not going to hurt me.

Slowly, I open my eyes again and give him a faint smile. He is looking at me, concerned.
Come on
, I say.

And we cross.

We walk to a wide patch of grass where no one is sitting or playing, and Michael hands me the bat.
Here you go
, he says.
I’ll pitch
.

Good
, I say slowly.
I can’t pitch for shit
.

He stares at me for a second and then laughs, and it’s like someone up above has just lassoed us both with the same ribbon.

Don’t curse like that in front of your – in front of Jennifer
, he says.

I snap a salute off my forehead.

Wise-ass
, he says.

I do like a low bow thing, my hand giving a flourish, like a courtier in a costume drama. Then I fall, because of my leg, and wind up on my butt.

Alarm widens Michael’s eyes and he helps me to my feet – his arms are strong, I notice. It’s weird – it gives me what I can only describe as a DAD feeling. I mean, I never had a dad growing up. But something about him picking me up … it is an action, but in the action is the word ‘dad’. I don’t know, I can’t describe it.

You OK?
he asks, making sure I can see his mouth, see him mouthing the words.

Fine
, I say. I smile.

You did kind of deserve that
, he says.

Yep
, I say.

You really want to bat?
he asks.

I nod.

He shrugs, like, OK then. He walks a few paces away from me. I roll my eyes and gesture at him, my hand flapping – further, further. He backs away, raises his eyebrows.

No, say my hands. Further.

He adjusts his shoulders fractionally, but goes back. Then he tosses the ball up and catches it a couple of times before nodding to me. I nod back, and he pulls his arm back, then curls himself around the ball as he pushes it through the air towards me.

He throws fast – the ball comes flat and low, right in the sweet spot, and I swing, feel the bat connect and the ball soar over his head, bouncing behind him. I wince – you can’t hit without turning, and the torsion has twisted pins against bone and flesh in my foot.

You OK?
shouts Michael, or at least I assume he shouts.

I nod.

He gives me a thumbs-up, turns, and jogs for the ball. He may drink a lot but he moves easily. When he has snagged the ball he sends it at me again, a little tighter to the body this time. I hit it true, send it up and into the sky to my right.

Michael goes and gets the ball again, throws it to me.

I think of Shaylene, that time when I was young, that time I have always remembered, taking me to the park and pitching me ball after ball, despite hating exercise, despite the sweat pouring off her. I think: Was that real? I mean, was that love real? Or do her other lies make everything untrue?

But no, it must have been real – her desire to make me happy, to do the thing I wanted to do.

But if she could do that for me, could think about my feelings like that, how could she turn a blind eye to the feelings of my parents? How could she take me from them?

It makes me feel dizzy and I try to put it out of my mind, shut it out, like a muddy dog on the other side of a door.

Michael throws, and I swing with the bat.

Again.

Again.

And every time I knock it far and high, even though I can tell he’s mixing it up to test me, throwing in the odd curve ball now.

It’s a bright day, just a few low clouds overhead, sometimes catching on the peaks of the mountains in the distance, disintegrating, like this sentence, into suspension dots …

Me, I’m just standing still, keeping the weight off my bad leg as much as I can. But Michael is running to get the ball, quicker each time, and I see the sweat coming off him.

Another throw – this one I batter down at the ground so it bounces back to him.

Another, clearly meant to trick me – he hides his hands before he throws it, and it curves misleadingly in the air. But I swipe it up and into the blue sky; it’s as if it flies over the mountains, before clattering down through the branches of a tree behind Michael.

He frowns.

He returns to his imaginary mound and crouches, then sends a ball in a flat line, very fast, right at my body. I watch it come – so much slower than the batting cage, and I sort of jump the weight off my bad leg so I can get myself around it, and then I send it back to him on the same trajectory, hard.

He sees it coming just in time to twist away from it, watches it bounce away over the grass.

For a second, he looks at me. And I know he meant to bodyline me like that, and he knows that I meant to return the favour. He smiles and runs for the ball.

The next one works. He hides his hands again, but this time they do something very clever, because the ball seems to be coming to one place, and at the last moment, it dives, like something living, and slams into my waist. I double up, winded, and this makes me lose my balance, so I fall and land on my hip.

I look up at the sky, furious.

Then I see Michael’s face, filling my vision, that first person POV shot you always see in movies when the protagonist has been knocked out.

Are you hurt?
he asks.

No
, I say. Which is not precisely true. In either sense of the word.

He lifts me to my feet again. As he does so he has to kind of hold me, and when he does I breathe in and a memory shoots through me like a blazing star lighting up the night; him hugging me, as a child, the scent of pine trees, which I can still smell. I may not remember his face, my mind may not have kept any pictures of him, but before I was two I must have breathed him into my bloodstream, that northern forest smell of his.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe memory does live more powerfully in smell, more deeply.

I’m so sorry
, he says.
I don’t know what happened
.

But I see the lie in his eyes. I think he knows exactly what happened. It’s written there, like closed captions. He didn’t like that I was getting to every ball, that he couldn’t make me miss, that I had no strikes.

It’s the same thing I noticed last night, with the Boggle, though there it was Jennifer. The same competitiveness. The same urge to fight. Suddenly I am starting to understand why there’s some tension between Michael and James. Super! I think. I have joined a family where the dad will take out a cripple, to show that he’s the man.

You want to keep going?
he asks. He is expecting me to say no, but hoping I’ll say yes, I can see it in his eyes. The hunger. To play, but also to beat me.

I remember Shaylene again, going to get the ball over and over. Throwing it to me. Not, oh I don’t know, throwing it AT me.

No
, I say.

You want to go home? To the apartment?

Yes, please
.

He nods, and then his eyes get a kind of pleading quality.
Listen
… he says. He shakes his head.
Sorry, that’s a stupid word to use. Um … just, if you mention to Jennifer, about the [        ], she might get worried. Maybe, you know, don’t
–

Don’t mention that you hit me with the ball?

He swallows.
No
.

I look up. It’s still morning, but there’s a thin sliver of moon in the sky, glowing pale and very, very far away.

I shrug.
Whatever
, I say.

Awesome, I think. This is the whole teenage experience in one morning. I’m lying to one of my parents, and I just said whatever to the other one. Plus I’m smoking. I mean, I’ve established that, with Jennifer and Michael.

So it’s all good.

My plan.

I’m golden.

And after that stuff Michael just pulled with the ball? I’m pretty much decided.

When we get back to the apartment, Jennifer is making some kind of tacos for lunch.

You two have fun?
she asks. I notice that, as hard as all this must be for her, she has still had time to do her make-up immaculately.

I try to smile.
Yes
, I say.