The Unremarkable Heart and Other Stories

  The lungs, kidneys, spleen and pancreas were all as expected. Bones were measured, catalogued. The brain was weighed. All appeared normal. All were as expected. The heart, according to the doctor who performed the autopsy, was unremarkable.

  How could that be, June had wondered. How could a precious fifteen-year-old girl, a baby June had carried in her womb and delivered to the world with such promise, have an unremarkable heart?

  ‘What’s that?’ Richard asked, peering at her over the newspaper. When she shook her head, he said, ‘You’re mumbling a lot lately.’

  She couldn’t tell from his expression whether he was annoyed or concerned. Did he know that today was the day? Was he ready to get it over with?

  Richard had always been an impatient man. Twenty-one years in an eight by ten cell had drilled some of that out of him. He’d learned to still his tapping hands, quiet the constant shuffling of his feet. He could sit in silence for hours, staring at the wall as June slept. She knew he was listening to the pained draw of breath, the in-and-out of her life. Sometimes, she thought maybe he was enjoying it, the audible proof of her suffering. Was that a smile on his lips as he wiped her nose? Was that a flash of teeth as he gently soaped and washed her underarms and nether regions?

  Weeks ago, when she could still sit up and feed herself, when words came without gasping, raspy coughs, she had asked him to end her life. The injectable morphine prescribed by the doctor seemed to be an invitation to an easy way out, but Richard had recoiled at the thought. ‘I may be a lot of things,’ he had said, indignant, ‘but I am not a murderer.’

  There had been a fight of sorts, but not from anything June had said. Richard had read the words in her mind as easily as he could read a book.

  He’d just as good as killed her two decades ago. Why was his conscience stopping him now?

  ‘You can still be such a bitch,’ he’d said, throwing down a towel he’d been folding. She didn’t see him for hours, and when he came upstairs with a tray of soup, they pretended that it hadn’t happened. He folded the rest of the towels with his lips pressed into a thin line, and June, dropping in and out of consciousness, had watched his face change as if through a colored kaleidoscope. Angry red triangles blending into dark black squares.

  He was an old man now, her husband, the man she had never bothered to divorce because the act would be one more reason for her name to appear beside his in the newspaper. Richard was sixty-three years old. He had no pension. No insurance. No chance of gainful employment. June was his only salvation, the only way he could live out the rest of his life in relative comfort.

  And she would not die alone, unattended in a cold hospital room, the beep of a machine the only indication that someone should call the funeral home.

  And so, the man who had robbed her of her good reputation, her lifelong friendships, her comfort in her old age, would be the man who witnessed her painful death. And then he would reap the reward of the last thing, the only thing, they could not take away: the benefits of her tenure with the public school system.

  June chuckled to herself. Two birds with one stone. The Harris County Board of Education would remit a check once a month payable to Richard Connor in the name of June Connor. They would be reminded once a month of what they had done to June, and once a month, Richard would be reminded of what he had done to her.

  Not just to her – to the school. To the community. To Grace. To poor Danielle Parson, who, last June had heard, was prostituting herself out in order to feed her heroin addiction.

  June heard a loud knocking sound, and it took a few seconds for her to realize the noise was conjured from memory, something only she could hear. It was Martha Parson, banging on the front door. She pounded so hard that the side of her hand was bruised. June had later seen it on television. Martha held the same hand to her chest, fist still clenched, as she talked about the monster in their midst.

  Grace had been dead less than a month, and the police were back, but this time, they were there to arrest Richard.

  June’s default position whenever a child made a damning statement against an adult had always been disbelief. She could not be faulted for doing this at the time. This was not so many years removed from the McMartin preschool trials. False allegations of child abuse and satanic sexual rituals were still spreading through schools like water through sand. Kern County. Fells Acres. Escola Base. The Bronx Five. It was a wonder parents didn’t wrap their children in cellophane before sending them into the world.

  More girls stepped up for their moment in the spotlight: Allison Molitar, Denise Rimes, Candy Davidson. With each girl, the charges became more unbelievable. Blowjobs in the faculty lounge. Fingerings in the library. He let them watch adult movies. He gave them alcohol and took suggestive photographs of them.

  June immediately pegged them all as liars, these former friends of Grace. She thought with disgust about the fact that she’d had these girls in her home, had driven them to the mall and the movie theater and shared meals with them around her dinner table. June had searched the house, the car, Richard’s office at home and school. There were no photographs. The only alcohol in the house was a bottle of wine that had sat in the back of the refrigerator since June’s birthday. The cork had been shoved back into the open bottle. When she pried it out, the smell of vinegar had turned her stomach.

  If June Connor knew about anything, it was teenage girls. Half her school day was spent settling ‘she said’ arguments, where rumors and innuendo had been used by one girl to tear down another. She knew the hateful, spiteful things they were capable of. They lied as a way of life. They created drama only to embrace the fall-out. They were suggestible. They were easily influenced. They were spiteful, horrible human beings.

  She said as much to the detectives, to the media, to the woman who stopped her at the grocery store. Anyone who met June Connor during that time would’ve gotten the same story from her: I know these girls, and they are all lying for attention.

  For his part, Richard was outraged. Teaching was his life. His reputation was sterling, one of those teachers students loved because he challenged them on every level every single day. He had devoted himself to education, to helping kids achieve something in their lives other than mediocrity. The previous year, four of his kids had gone on to full scholarships at Ivy League schools. Twice he had been voted teacher of the year for the district. Every summer, former students would drop by his classroom to thank him for making them work harder than they had ever worked in their lives. Doctors, lawyers, politicians – they had all at some point been in one of Richard’s English classes, and he had done nothing but help them prepare for their exemplary lives.

  That first week was a blur; talking to lawyers, going to a bail bondsman in a part of town June had never even known existed. There was an entirely different language to this type of life, a Latin that defied their various English degrees: ex officio, locus delicti, cui bono. They stayed awake all night reading law books, studying cases, finding precedent that, when presented to the lawyer, was dispelled within seconds of their meeting. And still, they would go back every night, studying, preparing, defending.

  There is no bond tighter than a bond of mutual persecution. It was June and Richard against everyone else. It was June and Richard who knew the truth. It was June and Richard who would fight this insanity together. Who were these girls? How dare these girls? To hell with these girls.

  June had often lectured Grace about responsibility. Like most children, Grace was a great subverter. Her stories always managed to shift blame, however subtly, onto the other person. If there was a fight, then Grace was only defending herself. If she was late with an assignment, it was always because the teacher’s instructions had not been clear. If she got caught sneaking out in the middle of the night, it was only because her friends had threatened her, cajoled her, to be part of the group.

  ‘Which is more possible,’ June had asked. ‘That every single person in the world is conspiring to make you see
m a fool, or that you are only fooling yourself?’

  But, this was different. June was vindicated. One by one, the girls dropped away, their charges dismissed for lack of evidence. The parents made excuses. The girls were not lying, but the public scrutiny was too much. The limelight not what they had expected. All of them refused to testify – all but one. Danielle Parson, Grace’s best friend. Richard’s original accuser.

  The prosecutor, having lost tremendous face when the bulk of his case fell apart, would have sought the death penalty if possible. Instead, he threw every charge at Richard that had even the most remote possibility of sticking. Sodomy, sexual assault, statutory rape, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, providing alcohol to a minor, and, because the debate team had traveled to a neighboring state for a regional tournament, child abduction and transporting a minor for the purposes of sexual concourse. This last one was a federal charge. At the judge’s discretion, Richard could be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

  ‘It’s come to Jesus time,’ their lawyer had said, a phrase June had never heard in her life until that moment. ‘You can fight this, and still go to jail, or you can take a deal, serve your time, and get on with your life.’

  There were other factors. Money from a second mortgage they had taken on the house would only get them through jury selection. Obviously, Richard wasn’t allowed back at work or within three hundred yards of any of the girls. The board had told June they were thinking of ‘transferring her valuable skills’ to a school that routinely ended up in the news for campus shootings and stabbings. Then, there were the signs left in their front yard, the burning bag of shit on their front porch. Nasty phone calls. Deep scratches in the paint of their cars.

  ‘It’s like Salem,’ June had muttered, and Richard agreed, making a comment that burning at the stake was preferable to being slowly drawn and quartered in front of a crowd of hysterical parents.

  June decided then and there to dig in her heels. They would fight this. They would live in a homeless shelter if that’s what it took to clear Richard’s name. She would not let them win. She would not let this lying, cheating whore who had been her daughter’s best friend take another life.

  She was certain then that Danielle had had something to do with Grace’s death. Had she taunted her? Had Danielle hounded Grace until picking up that straight razor, opening up her skin, seemed the only way to redeem herself?

  Leading up to the trial, June was consumed with such hatred for Danielle Parson that she could not look at a blonde-haired, slight, simpering teenager without wanting to slap her. Danielle had always been mouthy, always the one who wanted to push the limits. Her mother let her dress like a hooker. She skipped class. She wore too much mascara. She was a hateful, hateful child.

  More obscure Latin. Deposition, from depositio cornuum, ‘taking off the horns.’

  The twenty-one years since Richard’s conviction had given June plenty of time to reflect on what happened next. They were sitting at the conference table in the prosecutor’s office. Richard and June were on one side of the table – he because he was the accused and June because she would have it no other way – while Danielle, Martha and Stan Parson sat opposite. The lawyers were in between, stacked up like dominos ready to fall over each other with objections and motions to strike.

  June relished the prospect of confronting the girl face-to-face. She’d prepared herself in the mirror that morning, using her best teacher gaze, the one that caused students to stop in their tracks and immediately apologize, even if they weren’t quite sure why.

  ‘Cut the bullshit,’ June wanted to say. ‘Tell the truth.’

  There was no such confrontation. Danielle would not look anyone in the eye. She kept her hands folded in her lap, shoulders drawn into a narrow V. She had that fragility some girls never lose as they cross into womanhood. She was the type who would never have to take out the trash or change a tire or worry about paying her bills because one flutter of her eyelashes would send men running to her aid.

  June hadn’t seen Danielle since Grace’s funeral, when the girl had sobbed so uncontrollably that her father had physically carried her out of the church. Recalling this scene, the revelation had come to June that Danielle was acting out of grief. Grace had been her best friend for almost a decade, and now she was gone. Danielle wasn’t hurt, at least not in the physical sense. She was mad that Grace was gone, furious at the parents who couldn’t prevent her death. There was no telling what reasons had clogged her mind. She obviously blamed Richard for Grace’s death. She was lost and confused. Children needed to know that the world was a place where things made sense. Danielle was still a child, after all. She was a scared little girl who didn’t know that the only way to get out of a hole was to stop digging.

  In that crowded conference room, a tiny bit of June’s heart had opened up. She understood fury and confusion. She understood lashing out. She also finally understood that Grace’s loss had left a gaping hole in the girl’s chest.

  ‘Listen to me,’ June had said, her voice more moderate than it had been in weeks. ‘It’s all right. Just tell the truth, and everything will be fine.’

  Danielle had finally looked up, and June saw in her red-rimmed eyes that she was not angry. She was not vindictive. She was not cruel. She was afraid. She was trapped. The slumped shoulders were not from self-pity, but from self-loathing.

  ‘It’s my fault Grace died.’ Danielle’s words were a whisper, almost too soft to be heard. The court reporter asked her to repeat herself as the lawyers clamored to ignore the declaration altogether.

  ‘She saw us,’ Danielle said. Not to the room. Not to the lawyers, but to June.

  And then, with no prodding from the prosecutor, she went on to describe how Richard had seduced her. The longing glances in the rear-view mirror as he drove the girls to and from school. The stolen kisses on her cheek, and sometimes her lips. The flattery. The compliments. The accidental touches – brushing his hand across her breast, pressing his leg against hers.

  The first time it happened, they were at school. He had taken her into the faculty lounge, deserted after the last bell, and told her to sit down on the couch. As Danielle described the scene, June moved around the familiar lounge; the humming refrigerator, the scarred laminate tables, the uncomfortable plastic chairs, the green vinyl couch that hissed out a stream of air every time you moved.

  Danielle had never been alone with Richard. Not like this. Not with the air so thick she couldn’t breathe. Not with every muscle in her body telling her to run away. June did not hear the girl’s words so much as experience them. The hand on the back of her neck. The hissing of the couch as she was shoved face down into the vinyl. The agonizing rip as he forced himself from behind. The shredding of his callused hand as he reached around to touch her.

  Why hadn’t she told anyone?

  The lawyer asked this question, but June did not need to hear the girl’s answer.

  If June Connor knew about anything, it was teenage girls. She knew how they thought, what they did to punish themselves when something bad happened, even if that bad thing was beyond their control. Danielle was afraid. Mr Connor was her teacher. He was Grace’s father. He was friends with her dad. Danielle didn’t want to lose her best friend. She didn’t want to upset June. She just wanted to pretend it didn’t happen, to hope it never happened again.

  But, she couldn’t forget about it. She turned it over again and again in her mind and started blaming herself, because wasn’t it her fault for being alone with him? Wasn’t it her fault for not pulling away when he brushed up against her? Wasn’t it her fault for letting their legs touch or laughing at his jokes or being quiet when he told her to be?

  Slowly, in her little girl voice, Danielle catalogued out the subsequent encounters, each time shifting the blame.

  ‘I was late with an assignment.’

  ‘I was going to miss my curfew.’

  ‘He said it would be the last time.
’

  And on and on and on until it really was the very last time, when Grace had walked into Richard’s office at home. She wanted to know if her dad wanted some popcorn. She found instead her dad raping her best friend.

  ‘That’s why …’ Danielle gasped, looking up at June. ‘That’s the night …’

  June didn’t have to be told. Even if she wanted to, there was no way she could clear that night from her mind. June had been working in her sewing room. Danielle and Grace were upstairs eating popcorn, lamenting their lost chance at the regional championship. Richard was in his office. Martha Parson called, looking for her daughter. Richard offered to drive her home but the girl chose to walk. Why hadn’t June thought it strange that a fifteen-year-old girl would rather walk six blocks in the cold than take a lift from her best friend’s father?

  ‘It’s my fault,’ Danielle managed between sobs. ‘Grace saw us, and …’ Her eyes were nearly swollen shut from crying. Her shoulders folded in so tightly that she looked as if she was being sucked backward down a tube.

  There was a long row of windows behind Danielle and her parents. The sun was at June’s back, and she could see Richard’s reflection in the glass. His face was passive. There was a glint of white from his glasses. She glanced down and saw that his hands were in his lap.

  She glanced down and saw that he was enjoying the story.

  By the time the deposition was over, June’s jaw was so tight that she could not open her mouth to speak. Her spine straightened hard as steel. Her hands clenched into fists.

  And yet, she did not say a word. Not when the girl had described a birthmark on Richard’s back, a scar just below his knee, a mole at the base of his penis. Not when she talked about the obsessive way he’d stroked his hands through her hair. The way he had held her from behind and used his hand on her. The way he had seduced this fifteen-year-old child the same way he had seduced June.