I shook my head as slowly as if I had something balanced on top.
I kept looking at her, until her gaze fell to the table.
She mouthed, Oh.
I said, “Do you think anyone else would remember that, his popping out at you all, his showing up late?”
She shrugged. “You asked if he ever hit her. You know what’s funny, she told us he slapped her across the face, but then Puja was talking about reporting it to the counselor and Thalia said we didn’t understand, she hit him, too. She’d slap him and he’d slap her back or something. It seemed like one more adult secret. Someone’s abortion, someone messing around with a teacher, someone’s drinking problem. You remember that show Thirtysomething? It was so na?ve of me, but those were my markers of adulthood, like you’re not an adult till you have prime-time drama problems. You know what’s sad, it was one of the things we fought about after she died; Puja wanted to tell the police about it, but, like, we’d all agreed—” I waited for her to continue, but she was lost in some fog.
“And you haven’t mentioned that to the lawyers. You didn’t say that in your statement or in your testimony?”
“They only wanted to know about the flask, and they wanted me to rehash everything about why I’d brought Omar up to the police. But there was no one else it could be. I mean, Mr. Bloch would never do that. Can you imagine? He was a perv but he was so, like, bookish and weepy. He cried in front of me once. Not that a person who cries can’t kill someone, but it just never seemed likely.”
I nodded a vague agreement.
She said, “If Omar—you really don’t think he did this?”
“I don’t blame you for bringing up his name. None of this is your fault. But I genuinely believe Omar had nothing to do with it.”
“I don’t like to think of myself as racist. And then what if I—” She put her head in her hands.
I wasn’t going to contradict her, but I said—carefully, appeasingly—“You were a kid.”
She didn’t move.
I said, “If you’re willing to talk to the defense team about Robbie—about his hitting Thalia, about his maybe getting to the mattresses late—we have some other stuff, too. You’d only be telling the truth. It was so unfair, that teenagers had to deal with this. But we can fix it now.”
“I have a life. I don’t want this to be the first thing that comes up when someone googles my name. Or my kids’ names. Christ. I don’t want to deal with any of this. I want to go home.”
“I know,” I said.
She said, “Bodie, can you leave me alone? Just—listen, you can leave me your number or whatever. I just need to be home with my kids.”
30
It was the one where she used her umbrella as a shield.
You remember, right? Nancy Grace covered the trial.
Think hard, Mr. Bloch, because I’m sure you remember.
It was the one where after she threw hot water at him and escaped, no one believed her. She was probably looking for attention. She had psychological problems, after all. Those panic attacks she kept having: evidence she was unwell.
What you likely saw on TV was the part about how her own brother invited the guy over, told her to apologize for dragging his name through the mud. And she did. She apologized.
The next night, he came back and he stabbed her.
This was the one where people had a hard time taking her seriously because her name was a stripper name. Jay Leno made jokes about her, about her name.
This was the same year Lorena Bobbitt cut off her husband’s penis. It was right after sophomore year at Granby. Leno made a joke about both this woman and Lorena Bobbitt: something about their names, something about knives.
She survived the stabbing. She was the one who went on Oprah with scars on her neck, scars on her face. She was the one who sat down with Barbara Walters. Barbara leaned in close and asked if she had it in her to forgive her attacker. He’d just been released from his two-year prison sentence.
Here’s what I remember: This woman, still so young, looked back at Barbara Walters and said, “Am I supposed to? I guess that’s what you’re supposed to do. That’s how you move on.”
It didn’t stand out to me at the time. This seemed the kind of thing people said. But ten years later, I woke in the middle of the night suddenly remembering that interview, wanting to scream.
I googled the woman to see if she’d changed her mind, if she’d spoken out again.
She’d died six years earlier, shot by a different man. One she’d forgiven again and again, just like she was supposed to.
#9: ROBBIE SERENHO
There are things I’ll likely never know: If it was planned, if he was drunk, if he told anyone, if he knew what he was doing or only understood once it was done. If he had that bike waiting, or found it—a sign from above that he was meant to survive this, to ride away unscathed. If he was shaking, terrified, the rest of that night, or pleased with himself. If a friend helped him scrub up the equipment shed the next morning, while Thalia still floated, unnoticed, unmissed, in the pool.
The way he treated his wife all these years—maybe holding things in, maybe never hitting her—but still the man capable of that violence. Or maybe hitting her. Maybe worse. Maybe—it’s not impossible—living a model life, as if doing so would pay a cosmic debt. Maybe running forever from that teenage boy and his sins.
There are things I can assume: That he drank his way through college, trying to forget. That he justified it to himself—not that Thalia deserved to die, but that Omar’s life was more expendable than his own. Maybe he told himself how far he’d come in the world already. Maybe he told himself it would kill his parents if they knew, and wouldn’t two more deaths be worse? Maybe he convinced himself that Omar, surely selling drugs, was bound for prison anyway. Maybe he managed to forget Omar entirely.
There are things I can’t stop imagining: Robbie’s face turning red with rage. His pupils, dilated huge in the dark. The sound of a cracking skull. The look of horror and desperation on her face. The weight of a body, even one that thin. Her regaining a moment of consciousness when he dropped her in the water. Her knowing this was it, this was the whole world leaving her.
The few things I know: She was facing him when he slammed her head back, more than once; they were eye to eye. （I can see it, clearer than I could ever imagine Omar snapping, clearer than I could ever see your hands on her neck.） She didn’t have time to defend herself. There was a moment when she understood this time was different. She took several breaths in the water. Conscious or unconscious, it took her a long time to die.
I know that Robbie showed up for brunch the next morning. He skied at the Granby Invitational the next weekend. Everyone said how strong he was to hold it all together. By May, he was spending time with Rachel Popa. He received the Senior Spirit award. He graduated with a 3.5 GPA.
31
Back at the Calvin Inn, in the empty solarium, I jumped into the pool, sat as long as I could on the bottom. It was bracingly cold.
On the drive back, I’d texted Yahav asking him to call. I wanted his legal advice, and I also wanted to unload everything Beth had said. If nothing else, he was still a good friend. And, there was nothing else. I had to accept that people fundamentally slide past each other in this world. I couldn’t make him stay, couldn’t shake him by the shoulders, couldn’t let myself be overtaken by any atom of the possessive force that made Robbie grab on so hard to Thalia.