A. Homes - May We Be Forgiven

I nod.

“I’m asking because when you’re a kid it’s really hard to know anything. Maybe I don’t even know what I’m talking about — I feel so weird …” She trails off.

“Do you need to see the doctor while you’re home — maybe we should just make an appointment with the pediatrician?”

“This is so beyond Dr. Faustus.”

“You know, it’s normal to have feelings for other girls.”

“It was so gross,” she says, catching me off guard.

I worry what will come next. … I am imagining Miss Renee making Ash go down on her. I am thinking of how terrifying I personally find putting my head down there and can only imagine what it’s like to a kid — a kid who only likes plain pasta.

“She would just lie there playing with my hair, and then she’d kiss me and ask me to lie on top of her.”

“And did you?”

“Yes,” Ashley says, as though it’s obvious and she shouldn’t have to come out and say it.

“Did you kiss anywhere besides on the mouth?”

“Yes,” she says, like, again, I am so dumb.

“Where?”

“On the arm to the elbow — we played that game, except that instead of tickling her I’d kiss her.”

I shake my head; I have no idea what she’s talking about.

Ashley takes my arm and I’m terrified she’s going to kiss it, fearing that this is exactly how trauma begets trauma begets trauma, how the seduced becomes the seductress. I yank my arm away. Overreactive?

“Arm,” Ashley says, firmly.

I return my arm to the table and lay it out.

“Close your eyes.”

“Don’t kiss me,” I say.

“I’m not going to kiss you. Why would I kiss you? That’s creepy.”

Thank God.

She tickles my arm with her fingers. “Tell me when I get to your elbow,” she says. Her fingers dance up and down my arm, teasing; the thin hairs stand on edge, my skin turns to gooseflesh — it’s tickly and weird, and quickly I have no idea where my elbow is, but after a few minutes, just wanting to put it to an end, I call out “ELBOW” and open my eyes.

“We call it ‘spider,’” she says. “Didn’t you ever play that game with anyone?”

“No,” I say.

The phone rings, splitting the air, terrifying me. The machine picks up; the caller waits and hangs up only after the beep. I am sure it’s her, Ms. A&P.

Ashley looks at me suspiciously.

“Who?” she asks.

I shrug.

“I think you have a friend,” she says. “The person you keep texting is trying to call you.”

“What makes you think it’s the same person?”

She says nothing, then offers, “It’s okay to have a friend — it’s not like you have to hide her.”

“Thanks,” I say.

We play Monopoly. The phone rings again and again, no message.

“Just so you know: The person I text is a friend. The person who keeps calling I’m not so sure about.”

On Sunday afternoon I take Ashley back to school. We bring Tessie along for the ride — Ashley wants to bring the kitten too, but I tell her it would be hard on the kitten’s mama. I give her a new watch that I found in the “gift” section of George and Jane’s closet. We talk about cutting back on watching television and reading more; I make some suggestions of books that might replace her television habit — Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontës.

“All men,” Ashley says.

I shake my head no. “George Eliot was a woman, as was Austen, and the Brontës.” I promise to send her some. “I think you’ll like them; they’re classics, and a lot like soap operas — in fact, that’s where the soap-opera writers get their ideas from.”

“Don’t push it,” she says. “Look at Shakespeare, look at Romeo and Juliet , it’s all right there …” I tell her.

She takes her bag and gets out of the car, planting a foggy kiss on the closed window. I beep and wave.

Two days later, the missing girl is found in a garbage bag.

Dead.

I vomit.

The newscaster pronounces “a tragic end to this story.”

I know it is not about me, but I feel guilty; perhaps it is my feelings about Jane, about Claire, my Internet escapades, and the woman from the A&P, who may or may not be the dead girl. It may not be logical, but the depth to which I see myself as criminal, despite my recent best efforts to rehabilitate myself, is real. It is only a matter of time before the cops are at my door. Hours pass. Days. If I had no other responsibilities, I would consider suicide. This may strike you as an overreaction, but what I am trying to say is that I feel guilt, shame, and responsibility on a profound level. Clearly it’s not just about the dead girl. I am aware of the damage to everyone — it’s as though this girl and Nate and Ashley weren’t real, as though nothing was real — except the stirrings below — until all this — until I got to know them. Before this I was detached. The depth to which I now feel everything, when it is not paralyzing, is terrifying. Again, I vomit.

That evening, just before dusk, the doorbell rings. She is standing impatiently on the flagstone step. “I thought you were dead,” I say.

“May I come in?” she asks.

I am alternately angry and relieved. My tolerance for not knowing, for obliviousness, is gone.

“Who are you?” I ask.

She says nothing.

“Your ID belongs to a dead girl.”

“I found it,” she says.

“Where?”

“In a trash can.”

“You have to call the police.”

“I can’t do that.”

“I am not going to continue this conversation until you give me your real name and address.” I hand her a Post-it and a pen. She writes down the information and hands the paper back to me: Amanda Johnson. “I’m Googling you,” I say, walking away — leaving the front door open.

“You might also use my father’s name — Cyrus or Cy.”

“I will,” I say, yelling from deep within the house. According to the Internet, her father, Cyrus, now in his late seventies, was the top dog of a large insurance agency and was forced out following a corporate scandal.

“He stole money,” she yells a moment later.

“Apparently,” I say. “And you were the maid of honor at your younger sister Samantha’s wedding and played the flute at the reception, ‘a once-promising flautist.’ … Are you still playing the flute?”

“Fuck you,” she says, coming into the house and finding me at George’s desk. “I told you I played the flute.”

“So how does it happen that you’ve got a dead girl’s ID?” I ask.

“Like I said, I found it.”

“Like I asked — where?”

“In a trash can in the parking lot of a church.”

“And you didn’t tell the police.”

She shakes her head no.

“Why not?”

“It was a while before I put it all together, and because I go there and I don’t want to have to stop going there.”

“To the church?”

She nods.

“On Sundays?”

“During the week.” She pauses. “I have a problem.”

“You drink?”

She shakes her head no.

“Drugs?”

“No.”

“Sex?” I ask, somewhat guiltily.

Again, she shakes her head no.

“Then what?”

She begins to cry.

“Is it so bad?”

She nods.

“Tell me,” I say. “Really, Amanda, you can tell me.”

“I can’t,” she says. “If I tell, you’ll never trust me.”

“It’s not like I trust you now,” I say.

She laughs and starts crying again.

“Shoplifting? Eating issues?”

“Quilting,” she blurts. “I’m a quilter, okay?”

“We all feel like quitting sometimes. You mean you quit a lot?”

“QUILT,” she shouts. “I MAKE FUCKING QUILTS. And if I tell the police, they won’t believe me, and then the whole wretched story will come out, and it will all be an enormous mess, and I’ll be more alone than I already am.”