Judy Blundell - What I Saw and How I Lied

Tom told me I should look them up in New York. Now that I've got old times to talk about with them.

You're not the type of guy to hold a grudge, are you?

What did I do?

If I could add up the clues, would I know the truth? Would I know if Joe had planned to kill Peter? Did everything that added up for Joe—jealousy and fear and spite — make him think, yeah, this was his only answer? Or maybe he hadn't planned it. Maybe out on that pounding ocean he found his answer. Maybe Mom was "downstairs" and didn't see it. Maybe she did. Maybe she was so mad at Peter for double-timing her with me that she helped.

No. If I knew one thing, I knew that Mom didn't do it. She put her hands over her ears during thunderstorms.

The ashtray had flown through the air and shattered. Her face had been so blank.

How could I know what she was capable of? I'd seen what regular ordinary men could do. I'd seen newsreels of what they found after the war.

But I'd never thought about it before. The magazines and movies told me different, that the war was over and we were all okey-dokey, drinking Cokes and smoking Camels and saving up for the new Chevrolet.

Joe was part of that. He came back from the war and hit the ground running. I'd admired that, how the very next day he started making calls. I didn't know then what he was doing, how late at night he'd talk to Gladys, both of them with glasses of whiskey, talking low. And we were all so full of happiness because he was home that nobody thought twice.

"Let them have their time," Mom had said. "There's plenty of Joe to go around now."

He'd wanted success so badly that he'd stolen and he'd lied. How bad did he want to keep it?

If I lined up the reasons for Joe to be guilty, I could see them clear as morning. But if he was telling the truth, it just meant he looked guilty, not that he was. Sure, he'd asked Wally about the hurricane hole. But Joe was the type of guy who was interested in whatever he didn't know. He was always asking the mailman about what were the most comfortable shoes, or the milkman about how he got up so early.

Would Mom stay with him if she knew he was a murderer? She didn't seem scared of him. She seemed scared of him going away.

Could it really happen like this? That a girl like you can make me feel...

Make you feel what?

Make me feel.

What did I owe you, Peter?

Truth and justice? If judges would judge, if lawyers wouldn't trick, if reporters would tell what really hap­pened instead of what sold papers.

Fat chance.

Truth, justice ... I always thought they were abso­lutes, like God. And Mom. And apple pie.

But you could make apple pie from Ritz crackers. You could make cakes without sugar. We learned how to fake things, during the war.

What did loyalty mean? Loyalty to the family, to the church, to the neighborhood, to the Brooklyn Dodgers. Why did loyalty stop there? Why didn't it keep on going? It didn't seem to take a spin around the whole world, that was for sure.

I wished I could get one clean breath from this humid air. I wanted the snap of autumn, blue sky clear and deep, the familiar cracks of the sidewalks, my feet jumping so surely over them, never missing. I wanted to go home so badly.

I touched the place on my temple that her lips always found, ever since I was a baby. Did everything funnel down to that one delicate place, the place where love was?

Mom had bought four new dresses, all of them dark colors. I picked out a navy dress she hadn't worn yet, with a narrow belt and a little matching jacket. I took out white and navy high-heeled spectator pumps from a brand-new box. I slipped them on. They hurt.

I brushed my hair with hard strokes and drew it back off my forehead. I twisted it and put in the pins like an expert. I rolled up the tube of Fatal Apple lipstick and painted my mouth.

I looked like a doll, a dish. The image in the mirror — it wasn't me.

If I had the clothes and the walk, I could make up a whole new person. I wasn't who I used to be, anyway. A different me would do the thing I had to do today. The dish would do it.

"Evie?" Mom was awake now, groping for her first cigarette. She got a good look at me, and she sat straight up. "What are you doing?"

Her panicked voice woke up Joe.

I looked at them, in separate beds, the sheets tangled and twisting onto the floor. I saw a purplish bruise on Mom's arm, right where Joe had grabbed her.

Wobbling a little bit in the too-tight shoes, I walked out.

I couldn't explain, you see. I couldn't tell her that I understood just a little better what Peter was talking about when he talked about war. I found out that what you think is necessary, what you have to do — well, all of a sudden, that can cover plenty of new ground.

It's just a matter of what you're willing to do.

Noise and heat slamming against my ears. Camera shut­ters clicking. People yelling. Sun hitting my eyes, glinting off metal like shards of glass flying.

They thought Joe was guilty now, so the sidewalk in front of the courthouse was filled. So were the stairs and the hallways. Reporters and photographers lunged for­ward, flashbulbs popping like gunshots.

The instructions were clear. The three of us were to link arms and walk up the stairs to the courtroom.

"Don't stop, whatever you do," Mr. Markel had ordered us in the car. "Don't stop to look at anyone — just keep walking."

We all looked at his narrow back in his brown suit as he used his shoulders and his walk to clear the way. Our pipsqueak attorney had turned into a pretty decent linebacker.

We didn't look at each other. I had showed up at the last minute with Mr. Markel, and there was no time to talk to Mom and Joe. Their fear was in the car with us. I wouldn't meet Mom's scared eyes.

We walked hard and fast, our sides pressed together. My navy straw hat was pulled over my eyes, shadowing my face.

Didja do it, Joe?

Did she help you do it?

Didja love him, Bev?

Repent, sinners! There is one almighty judge and his name is Jesus!

They called us Joe and Bev and Evelyn. The photog­raphers said, Evelyn, turn this way and Aw, come on, Bev, give us a look over here. Like we were pals.

Not even my teachers called me Evelyn. I would give them Evelyn. Someone with cool hands and a confi­dent walk.

I tried to make the noise into one blur of sound. I thought about the Third Avenue El. We hardly ever took it because Mom was afraid of it. She didn't like subways either — she closed her eyes almost the whole time. After all, her parents had died in a train crash. It was me who had to watch out for the stops.

I always wanted to take the El. The train raced above the avenue, and you could see right into apartment win­dows, especially if it was getting dark and lights were on. Just a quick look, like a snapshot someone snatches away from your hand. A man in his undershirt eating at a table. A woman putting on her hat. Someone sleeping in a chair. Down below you, noise had a shadow. Under the tracks there was the roar of the train, and then the echo of the roar, and then the bounce of it against the build­ings. But you were in the middle of it, way above. You weren't part of the city; you were cutting right through the heart of it.

We turned into the courtroom.

It was so humid inside that the windows had steamed over. People stood in back and down the side aisles. They all craned their necks as we walked toward our seats. We sat in the first row, right in back of the counsel table. Mr. Markel left us there and nodded at the other attorney. He opened his briefcase.

I had called him from the phone in the lobby that morning. He'd met me at his office. Early, before Miss Geiger came to work. I'd told him what I was going to say and he didn't interrupt, just took notes on a yellow pad. When I'd finished, he'd closed it and looked up.