I don’t feel myself leave her office, but I must, because suddenly I am banging down the fire-escape stairs, past Josh, who presses his whole self against the landing rail with a thin smile, past the editor buns and sweat stains, past the weather GIRL who is on camera right now but loses concentration as I blaze by. I am in a daze as they sit me in a chair, strip off my jacket and scarf, brush my hair away from my face, and sweep a puff over my nose and forehead. Someone clips a microphone to the V-neck of my sweater and tucks the attached battery pack under my leg. When I look at the camera I see Josh, who makes a small wave, and a video screen in front of the camera lens mirroring me in my chair.
“Don’t look at the camera. Look at me,” Paula instructs.
Her questions are simple and straightforward. There are ten or maybe fifteen; I lose count. Every so often we stop taping because I slip down in my seat, out of the camera’s frame, and they remind me to sit up. There’s no way Mom would allow this, yet it’s not altogether bad. It’s nice to download my weird evening with Yvonne, minus my revelation regarding the sketches. I don’t mention Alice, either, because it feels wrong to drag her into it. Once I start talking about Yvonne, I find myself warming to her. It seems like people should get to know her. I don’t know why things turn in that direction, but once I start, I can’t stop. Paula doesn’t say much herself. In the interest of getting me home quickly, she will edit in her responses later, she says. They often do it that way.
At the end, I feel cleansed. When the man behind the camera says “And. We’re. Out,” Paula leans forward to push hair from my face.
“You did good,” she says, closing a manila envelope of questions that I hadn’t noticed until now. I remember the real reason I am here.
chat, play, more
And I scramble from my seat. And now I’m running from the studio, the battery pack dragging then falling on the ground, past the man with the gold tooth, and I don’t know Paula’s chasing me until I am standing in the parking lot and I realize I have no car.
“Let me call a car for you,” Paula says, brushing hair from her temples. “If you need help talking to your mother about this, our legal department is always on call.”
I shake my head violently. “No! It has to be me.”
“Listen, whatever you wish. But there is one more thing.” She shoves an envelope into my hand.
I open it slowly, as though the paper is coated with ricin. In my hands are receipts for four tickets, two for a flight departing from Logan Airport in Boston arriving at Viru Viru International Airport in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, dated November 28, 2014, and two from Viru Viru back to Logan, dated December 28, 2014, in the names of Deborah Lapin and Olivia Lapin.
Liv neglected to mention she was traveling to South America, never mind missing school for a whole month.
“How did you get this?” I ask.
“That same whip-smart intern noticed that Deborah Lapin doesn’t clear her browser history. Ever,” Paula says.
“What does it mean?” I whisper.
Paula shrugs. “It means they’re leaving.”
It dawns on me that she no longer cares, because Liv and Deborah are not her story. I am, and I have proven more than enough. Paula turns on her snakeskin shoe and marches across the lobby.
I stare at the hacked ticket receipts incredulously as she turns and calls without looking back, “You did the right thing, Julia.”
*
Doing the right thing was unavoidable, since I pulled up to my front door in a town car.
I came clean immediately. Mom shook her finger, wordless, and then disappeared upstairs, speed-dialing Ricker. I trudged upstairs and collapsed on my bed with my coat and shoes still on. A bedroom away, I stared at the ceiling, counting the seconds until Mom came crashing through my wall like the Kool-Aid Guy, but angry.
She chose the door.
“What did Ricker suggest?” I said. “Am I past the point of being fixed by her traditional cognitive behavioral therapies? Are we moving toward electroshock therapy and a lobotomy?”
Mom’s phone was still clamped in her fist. “Honestly, Julia! What were you thinking? Going to that house was so unsafe! There are ways to find closure besides talking to the mother of the man who—”
“The man I got away from. I was never in any danger from Mrs. Jessup. I even learned some things.” I patted the edge of my bed.
She sat, rigidly, clutching the phone as if it was a lifeline to Ricker. I saw everything on her face. Not just her worry about me that night, or over the last year, or when I was in the woods. Her worry for my whole future, all in the furrow of her brow and the downturn of her nose, and her sad, pretty mouth ridged like a clamshell on top. The black inside me uncoiled, and I remembered this was my mom, and she was warm, and she was that only thing I wanted when I was in the woods counting stars. I told myself it would help her to see that this interview wasn’t about me at all, but about setting a system right. I was incidental, and incidental is safe.
I scooted over in my bed, and she slipped in beside me.