John Hart - The King Of Lies

W e were at the top of the stairs, on the broad landing. I looked at my watch because I had to look away from Jean and from my father. She was defying him, and the explosion was building. It was four minutes after nine, dark out, and I barely recognized my sister. She was not the broken-down wreck that the psychiatric hospital had sent back to us. Not even close.

Mother stood, stunned, hand to her mouth. Ezra was shouting, Jean shouting back, jabbing a finger into his chest. It could not end well, and I stared as if at a train wreck; and I watched my mother reach out, as if she could stop the train with her ten small fingers.

And I did nothing.

“That is enough!” my father yelled. “That is how it’s going to be.”

“No,” Jean said. “Not this time. It’s my life!”

Father stepped closer, towered over her. I expected Jean to melt away, but she did not.

“It stopped being your life when you tried to kill yourself,” he said. “Then it became mine again. You’re barely out of the hospital. You can’t possibly think right about anything. We’ve been patient, we’ve been nice, but now it’s time for her to go.”

“Alex is none of your business. You have no right to ask that.”

“Let’s get one thing clear right now, young lady. I’m not asking. That woman is trouble and I’ll not have her messing up your head. She’s just using you.”

“For what? I’m not rich. I’m not famous.”

“You know what.”

“You can’t even say it, can you? For sex, Dad. Yeah. For sex. We’re fucking all the time. What’re you going to do about it?”

Father went suddenly still. “You’re an embarrassment to this family. It’s disgraceful the way you two carry on.”

“So there it is,” Jean said. “It’s got nothing to do with me. It’s all about you! It’s always been about you! Well, I’ve had it.”

Jean turned to walk away. She didn’t look at me, didn’t look at Mother; she just turned and took a single step. Then Ezra grabbed her. He jerked her so hard that she fell to her knees.

“Don’t you walk away from me! Not ever!”

Jean pulled herself to her feet and twisted her arm free. “That’s the last time you’ll ever put your hands on me,” she told him.

The moment seemed to freeze, Jean’s words hanging between them. I saw my mother’s face, pure despair, and again her eyes beseeched me. Yet the shadow of my father held me, and Mother must have sensed this.

“Ezra,” she said.

“You stay out of this,” he commanded, eyes on Jean like a promise of violence.

“Ezra,” she repeated, taking a monumental step toward him. “Just let her be. She’s grown now, and she’s right.”

“And I told you to shut it!” His eyes never left Jean, and when she tried again to turn away, he snatched her up and shook her, an angry boy with a boneless doll; but Jean had bones, and I feared they might break. “I said don’t you ever walk away from me!” Then he was grunting, incoherent, and Jean’s head was loose on her neck. I watched as my mother took hell into her hands.

“Leave her alone, Ezra.” She pulled at his massive arm. Jean had gone completely limp, but he continued to shake her. “Damn it, Ezra,” she shouted. “Leave my daughter alone!” She began to beat on his shoulders with her narrow fists, and tears shone in the seams of her face. I tried to move, to speak, but I was paralyzed. Then he struck out, a backhand that traveled forever; and then she was falling. Time seemed to stand still but didn’t; then she was crumpled at the foot of the stairs, another boneless doll in the house my father made.

Jean collapsed when my father released her. He stared at his hand and then at me.

“It was an accident, boy. You see that, don’t you, son?”

I looked into his eyes, saw for the first time that he needed me, and felt myself nod; it was an irrevocable step.

“Good boy,” he said. Then the ground fell away and I tumbled into the deep well of self-loathing.

I have yet to find its bottom.

If they’d found Ezra with only one bullet in his head, I’d have called it suicide. How else to deal with the truth of his actions? And yet the greatest sin can be one of omission; such was my burden, the cost of which was my mother’s life and my immortal soul. Protecting Jean was my responsibility. I knew my mother’s weakness as I knew my father’s rage. Without words, she’d begged me to intervene, pleaded as only the weak can plead. I don’t know why I didn’t act, but I fear that my soul is flawed by some tragic weakness born under my father. For it was not love for him that stayed my hand, never love. Then what? I’ve never known, and that question haunts me still. So I’ve lived with my failure, and slept with the memory of a cartwheel dance down ruby-covered stairs.

Jean was barely conscious when it happened; she never knew for certain, but she guessed, and in my eyes she saw the lie that had become Ezra’s truth. When asked, I said that Mother had slipped. She had tried to intervene in an argument and she’d slipped. It was just one of those things.

Why did I cover for my father? Because he asked me to, I guess. Because, for the first time, he needed me. Because her death was an accident, and because I believed him when he said that nothing good could come of the truth. Because he was my father and because I was his son. Maybe because I blamed myself. Who the hell knows?

So the police asked their questions and I spoke the horrible words; thus Ezra’s truth became my own. But the rift between Jean and me was irreparable; it grew into a chasm and she retreated into her life on the other side. I saw her at the funeral, where the last shovel of dirt went onto our relationship as much as it did onto mother’s casket. She had Alex, and for her that was enough.

By midnight on the night of my mother’s death, the police had gone. We followed the darkened ambulance because we didn’t know what else to do. At the back door of the hospital, she left us, carried by strangers into that pale, still building, taken to some cold room where the dead wait in silence. We stood in a light November rain, we three, speechless under a streetlamp and the weight of our own private thoughts. The truth of her death lay upon us, and our eyes refused to meet. But I studied my father when I could, caught the play of water down his face, the clench of muscles under whiskers that gleamed white under the light. And when the words finally came, they came from Ezra, as I knew they must. “Let’s go home,” he said, and we understood. There was nothing else to say.

At the house, the lights were on, and we sat in the living room while Ezra poured drinks. Jean refused to touch hers, but mine disappeared like magic and Ezra poured another. Jean’s hands clenched and unclenched, wrestled on her lap, and I saw bright half-moons where nails bit into her palms. She rocked minutely, wound tight, and at times I heard her keen. I reached for her, but she jerked away. I wanted to tell her that I was not Ezra, not that it would have mattered. I see that now.

No one spoke and the minutes drew out, the only sound that of ice on glass and the heavy tread of Ezra’s pacing.

We all jumped when the phone rang. Ezra answered it; he listened, hung up, and looked at us, his children. Then he left the house without a word. We were stunned, floored, and Jean left right behind him, a look on her face that I’ve never forgotten. At the door, she turned, her words like razors in my soul. “I know he killed her. And damn you for protecting him.”