and do nothing! If it’s a matter of money, I’ll write a check tomorrow. I…”
“Abigail,” the first voice says wearily, “it’s not just about the money. You know that. It’s a question of space. We simply don’t have it…”
My heart sinks. It’s the same old story; no room at the inn. I should have expected this. Every shelter has more requests than it can handle, but everyone has been so pleasant since we walked in the door that I dared to hope there might be room for us right away. Maybe if we wait a few days. I dread the thought of sleeping in the car again, but what else can I do? Besides, this is such a nice place, so clean and quiet. If we could stay here, even for a week or two, maybe I’d be able to clear my head long enough to figure out a plan to exit the revolving door that leads from one shelter to the next and get the kids into a real home—at least for a while. I’m so tired of sleeping in a different spot every night. I’m so tired of being so tired, but from the sound of things, there is no place for us here. I should have known better than to get my hopes up.
As we round the corner, I see the counselor consciously straighten her shoulders and smooth her hair. The women halt their conversation as we approach. The counselor’s voice lifts to a slightly higher register as she introduces us. The first woman, I am told, the one with a genuine smile and dark brown eyes that match her short cropped hair, is Donna Walsh, the shelter director. The second woman, who doesn’t wait for the counselor to do the honors, informs me that she is Abigail Burgess Wynne and she is on the shelter board. They are both attractive, but Abigail Burgess Wynne is beautiful, strikingly so. Tall, well-dressed, and imposing, with platinum white hair drawn into a blunt-edged ponytail at the base of her neck, high cheekbones, arched eyebrows, and a smooth complexion, she might be any age from fifty to seventy.
Donna Walsh puts out her hand and, when I take it, she lays a second hand on top of mine. The gesture surprises me and I have to stop myself from drawing back. It has been so long since I was touched with affection. I don’t quite know how to respond. “Hi, Ivy. Welcome. It’s so nice to meet you.”
“Thank you. It’s nice to meet you, too.” I haven’t had much call for company manners recently, but I still remember how it works.
“Leslie’s going to be conducting your intake interview?” she asks, looking at the young counselor, who nods. “Well, then you’ll be in good hands. I hope we’ll be able to help you.”
Abigail Burgess Wynne raises her eyebrows to their highest point as she interrupts the director. “Oh, don’t worry about that,” she says pointedly. “I’m certain we will.”
Once we get to Leslie’s office, I take a seat in a firm but comfortable armchair on the opposite side of the desk. I watch Leslie as she repeatedly presses the top of her ballpoint pen with her thumb while she fills in the forms—name, children’s names, dates of birth, and the rest—tapping the pen top several times after she writes down each of my answers.
The clicking sound reminds me of those cheap, plastic castanets Bethany had. She used to put the Nutcracker Suite on the stereo, grab her castanets, put her arms over her head, and clack them together, twirling in a circle to the “Spanish Dance.” She loved those things. I wish I’d thought to bring them, but there wasn’t time. So much had to be left behind.
She notices me noticing the clicking pen, laughs, and admits what I’d already suspected. She is new on the job, just finished with her training. In fact, I’m her first client, well, the first one she’s handling completely on her own.
“Must be exciting to start a new job.”
“It is, but it would be more exciting if jobs like mine weren’t necessary.” She shrugs. “But, anyway, let’s get back to you. You’re from Pennsylvania? That’s a long way. How did you end up in New Bern?”
I take a breath, deep but not too deep, and keep my eyes focused evenly on hers, pausing now and again as if to collect my thoughts, not wanting to sound rehearsed. I tell her the story I have prepared in advance, the details I’ve worked out carefully in my mind, the revised history I quizzed Bethany on before we arrived, reminding her that if she got confused or nervous, she should say nothing. After all she’s been through, silence is a perfectly understandable response for a child. No one will question it.
Leslie bobs her pretty blond head sympathetically, bent over her clipboard, taking notes. She believes me. And I am struck by how easy it is. The lies just slip from my lips like thread from a spool and she believes every word I am saying.
I wish it didn’t have to be like this, but I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do. With its white clapboard houses and trim green lawns, New Bern, Connecticut, looks like a town lifted straight from a Norman Rockwell painting, safe and secure as can be. But after last night, I don’t want the kids to spend one more night sleeping in the car than they absolutely have to while we wait for an opening in the shelter. If it were just for myself, I wouldn’t do it, but if lying to this woman is what it takes to protect my children, then that’s what I’ll do. I have no choice. Still, it bothers me to think how good I have become at getting people to see only what I want them to see.
But why wouldn’t I be good at it? I’ve had so much practice. And it isn’t like my life is a complete fabrication. It’s close to the truth, just not close enough.
I married at eighteen. I have two children I love. Bethany is six. Bobby is eighteen months. All this is true and the rest of it is almost true.
We were almost a happy family.
But that word is an abyss that separates happy families from everybody else. Almost.
I wonder if she understands that, this newly minted intake counselor, fresh from training on the care and feeding of women in crisis? She wants to understand, I can see that, genuinely wants to help, but something about her, something about the smooth shape of her forehead and the crisp ironed creases of her trouser legs make me know she is merely an observer, standing on the edge of the abyss and peering into it. She has not been in the valley herself and probably never will. I hope not, for her sake.
That, too, makes it easier for her to take my story at face value. She won’t investigate it and I have all the paperwork, or enough of it, to prove my claim. I am who I say I am—Ivy Peterman. But what I don’t tell her is that I never changed the name on my driver’s license and Social Security card after I married. Maybe I forgot to. Or maybe, deep down, I knew it would come to this one day. Whatever the reason, I have the documents to prove that I am me.
The rest of the story—the true parts, that my husband abused me for years and that my children and I have been bouncing from emergency shelter to emergency shelter for months now; the almost-true part, that we’ve got nowhere else to go; and the lie, that my husband was killed in a construction accident—she accepts without question. Even with her training, training that surely included admonitions not to buy into the stereotypes of victims of domestic violence as being poor, powerless, and poorly educated—in other words, not like people this woman lives next door to, not people from nice suburban neighborhoods, or even wealthy ones, with trimmed hedges and late-model SUVs in the driveway—part of her still finds it easier to accept my story precisely because it feeds into the stereotype: poor, teenage girl marries boozing, battering, blue-collar boy she thought would be her salvation, not realizing what she was getting into until it was too late. She finds it easy to believe because it’s almost true and because she wants to believe it. The whole truth would hit too close to home, send her to the phones and files to verify my background, but this? It doesn’t even cross her mind to check my facts. I can tell.
She smiles and gets up from her desk, excuses herself for a moment, and promises to be right back.
