The Girl She Used to Be (12 page)

I play with the wrapper of my cupcakes. “You can’t be serious.” My response is so lackluster I don’t even convince myself.

“Because I’ve got to tell you, Michelle, you—”

“Oh, geez, we’re sticking with the Michelle thing?”

He waves a chip at me like a switchblade. “I’m not using your real name outside of a federal facility. It’s against regulations.”
Another handful of Doritos goes in.

“Then call me by some other name. Give me a nickname.”

He looks at my hair, slows his chewing, and says, “Okay… Spike.” He licks his molars. “C’mon, it’s the subsistence checks,
isn’t it?”

“Look, over the years I’ve talked to enough people involved in the program to know it’s possible to rip off the government
left and right, but I’m not about that.”

He studies me for a moment, then nods, apparently believing me. I’m pretty sure I was telling the truth.

Sean takes a big drink. “I had this one guy who’d actually been relocated more than you. Guy was a real piece of work, a lazy
slob, wouldn’t pick his nose if the government didn’t do it for him. Well, he got, just as you have, three months of subsistence
checks while securing a new job in his new location. And every time he got near the eleventh week, he’d receive some mysterious
call or letter—nothing we could ever verify—that sent him into a panic and we’d end up moving the guy again.”

I swallow. “Huh. What a loser.”

“One time he got a bunch of credit cards under his new ID, most of which were furnished by banks working with WITSEC, and
he maxed all of them out at strip clubs and dive bars.”

“Let me guess. He ran out of credit and suddenly asked to be relocated.”

“You got it. The government made him disappear along with all of his debt. He started over from scratch.”

I smirk. “I’m on the flip side of that coin. The government
took
from my parents and me.”

“How?” he asks, looking deeper into his bag of chips.

“Well, for starters, the house my folks had in New Jersey was worth quite a bit. Not to mention the savings and investments
my parents had. All gone.”

“It’s true that you can’t keep profit from the sale of a home if you’re in the program.” He says this like it was an idea
he came up with on his own.

There are so many things you assume you should accept, or are
told
to accept, in the program—and surrendering your assets is one of them. I never understood it, merely allowed it to be a de
facto experience in my wayfaring from alias to alias. I learned the value in not accumulating emotional investments, so the
monetary type acquired the same fate. As a robot built by the government, I was not programmed to ask the obvious question:

“Why?”

Sean mulls it over. “It’s complicated. But to begin with, the person in WITSEC is no longer the person who owned the house.
I mean, names don’t match, Social Security numbers don’t match. It’s a real legal mess. And even if it can be worked out—as
it has in a very few rare cases—it might no—”

“
Very few
and
rare
mean the same thing.”

He speaks louder. “Even if it can be worked out, there is now a tie between your former life and current life. People can
trace checks and legal documents. Even if you have the money turned over to a friend or family member, all you’re really doing
is potentially putting those people in danger.”

Sean has officially become a government dweeb in my mind. He seems to have no grasp on what is at stake—or no longer at stake—when
one enters the program. He has been drained of empathy and filled with indifference. Where is the man who supposedly cared
so heartily for abused and mistreated kids?

I toss my cupcakes aside, open my water, and take a drink. I turn and watch a young man buckle his little girl into her car
seat and give her a kiss. She smiles back and kicks her legs. I am tired of living a vicarious family life through the brief
shopping events of mini-mart patrons.

I so long for the simplicity of those moments everyone takes for granted; how I would cherish a smile from a child of my own.
What do I get? Sean giving me textbook examples of criminals past, dishing out another way-it-is rendition of
Welcome to WITSEC
, points delivered as static and sterile as a course in criminal procedure. All this takes a toll on what remains of the threshold
of my composure. I try to refrain, to shelter my frustration—and to shelter Sean, really. But the cab of this car is awfully
freaking small.

So everything harbored begins to leak and slowly pour out, the first droplets of magma down the volcano’s side.

“The money isn’t even the real issue, Sean; it’s the predetermined hopelessness. I mean, what’s the point in ever wanting
to establish roots, to buy a home and build a family, when it could all be eradicated one afternoon on the walk back from
the Dairy Queen? Who wants that?”

He looks at me for a second and shrugs.

His vague apathy begs me to give him some more, but now my tenor has progressed and my voice is a little stronger—the inevitable
eruption, you see. “It’s ridiculous. These people, especially the
innocent
people, risk their lives for the feds. They give up their careers, their families, their
dreams
—all so the feds can
try
and make a case. Meanwhile, if Justice comes up short on evidence or something gets thrown out of court on a technicality,
the criminals are free, if they’re not out on parole anyway, while the people in Witness Protection are running for the rest
of their lives. Seriously, who’s really being sentenced here?”

Sean stops looking at me and his chewing is accelerating and he starts tapping his foot.

I nudge his knee to get his attention. “What kind of deal is this?”

“It’s better than death.”

Boom.

I smack the bag out of his hands and chips fly all the way to the dashboard. “You callous dick! The Department of Justice
did not give my folks all the information. My parents would never have done this if they knew how things really worked. You
played us and threw us into the wind!”

“Don’t yell at
me
. I had nothing to do with your parents!”

“Who did, Sean?
Who
is responsible? No one wants to take responsibility!”

Sean turns his body to me, faces me square, and unleashes. “You want to know, huh? You want to know who is responsible?”

“Damn straight!”

“
You
are! You caused all the misery you’ve had these past years! You think we don’t know what happened back when you were in high
school? It’s all in your file, every bit of it. You had a bitter argument with your parents about a boy you wanted to date.
Your folks thought it was a bad idea and they kept you from seeing him, didn’t they?”

I sit back. Tears fill my eyes and all I can do is watch as the pendulum slowly swings back in my direction.

“And what did you do, huh?” he asks.

I wipe my eyes. “Don’t do this.”

“You figured you’d get even, didn’t you.”

“Stop.”

“You were going to fix your parents’ wagon once and for all. You were so smart. Who were they to tell you what you could do
with your life?”

I look up at him and a few tears drop from my eyes to my lap. “Please, stop.”

“You figured you’d teach them a lesson they’d never forget, yeah?”

“Sean…” I start to sob.

“Well, you succeeded. Storming out of your house and calling the local paper and telling them how there was a family of Bovaro
witnesses living in a neighboring community? Sheer brilliance.”

Reliving this moment—an action I rarely allow myself to conduct—along with Sean’s jarring critique of my decisions, sends
an upward heat through my head and chest. Like driving through a bad neighborhood, I want to speed through it, hit all the
green lights, arrive safely in a reposeful future. But the outcome is inevitable: I’m destined to break down on the bleakest,
most dangerous block.

“I bet your folks were willing to let you date whomever you wanted after that, right?” He pauses and scratches his chin. “Hmmm,
wait. I guess you never got the chance to find out. Refresh my memory. How long after the paper ran that story were your parents
murdered?”

My face is covered in saliva and mucus and tears. I look up at Sean, but he is a blur—a cruel, indomitable blur. “I have no
doubt… that you are a tough marshal, Sean. If that’s what you’re trying to pro—”

“How long?”

I shrivel. Everything about who I am, whoever I am, is fading to black, and Sean is delivering the darkness. I answer, “Twenty-nine
hours.”

Sean finally gets around to brushing the crumbs from his clothes and he seems to be taking his time. I am staring at the floor
but I can see in my peripheral vision that he keeps grabbing short glances of me. He hands me a handkerchief, which I accept,
and I can’t help wondering how many weepy women and children have dried their faces with this cloth. It must be part of the
U.S. Deputy Marshal’s official uniform.

I wipe my face, my eyes, my nose—and the thing is saturated. I do not hand it back.

After catching my breath I say, “You… are a bastard.”

“I’m sorry,” he says immediately. “I was out of line.”

“Well,” I say after a moment, “it was all true. I might as well have pulled the trigger myself.” I play with the stitching
on the handkerchief. “My folks were at the A&P buying a few things for our imminent trip to yet another town.” I sigh. “We
almost made it.” I gaze out the window and focus on nothing. “Worst of all, my parents are buried in a town far from their
family, with some names no one would ever recognize on their gravestones. They weren’t buried on the plot reserved for them
by generations of McCartneys dating back to the Civil War. I would have to fly hours to put flowers on my parents’ grave—and
we both know I won’t be flying anywhere anyway.”

“It’s a bad story. Sorry I brought it up.”

And so it ends. If divorce could possess a specific sound, its fading resonance would be lingering in the cab of our vehicle.
This unrecoverable moment is like the first bullet added to a magazine, waiting for that future argument when no other thing
can be said to trump or wound a loved one, and the gun is drawn and the bullet is fired and resentment and anger and distrust
emerge as the only available emotions, and they stick in the air like sulfur, with everyone gasping.

We stare ahead, entranced by the backs of the headrests, listening to each other swallow. And as the minutes pass, the margin
of whatever acceptable silence remained has vanished.

I finally look at him and he tries to smile a little, but the effort is obvious. “You know,” I say, “you really need to work
on your bedside manner. Don’t they have classes for that?”

He sighs with relief. “It’s, uh… harder than you think. The Marshals Service is a rare group of individuals. I mean,
the motto
is Justice, Integrity, Service
. They didn’t even think to put
protect
in there. You’ve got to understand that most of us are folks sent out to bring in criminals who have escaped from prison
or jumped bail, so we already despise the people we’re pursuing. Then, if you become a WITSEC inspector, well… then the
odds are you’re protecting some dirtbag terrorist or mafioso, which doesn’t exactly instill compassion among folks in the
Service, you know what I mean?”

I nod, though this is hardly my problem.

“These criminals,” he adds, “they’re just horrible. And such a bunch of whiners, always complaining. But we have to keep them
happy, and that rubs the marshals the wrong way.”

“No one ever kept me happy.”

“According to your file, we tried. Kept moving you to places we thought you’d like, got you jobs we thought you’d thrive in.”

I sniffle a little. “What were the mob guys getting?”

“You don’t want to know.”

He looks at me and can tell I’m serious. What he probably doesn’t know is that I’m going to use all of this for future negotiations.

“Uh,” he says, looking around the vehicle.

“What, you think I’m with Internal Affairs? For the love of Pete.”

He lowers his voice anyway. “For starters, they get a lot of money. I mean, we draw the line, but we’ll give them lump sums
for setting up businesses or… even just spending cash.”

I open my eyes a bit. “How big?”

“Like, five or six figures big.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“We’ve done worse. We actually put one guy’s wife
and
his girlfriend into the program—and his wife had no idea what was going on.” My response is a slack jaw. “You can see why
the marshals have no room for compassion.”

I shake off my shock and pick up where I left off. “That’s my point, really. I am not a terrorist or mafioso. I’m just an
innocent girl.”

Sean shrugs.

“That’s all you have to say?”

He reaches for the door handle. “It’s not up to me, Spike.” He gets out, walks around the car, opens the driver’s door, and
brushes the Doritos off the seat. “My job is to get you from point A to point B in one piece.” He sits down but turns around
to face me. “The Justice Department really isn’t supposed to support you your whole life, you know. WITSEC is here to get
you started, get you situated in a new town with a new job. After that, you’re supposed to be on your own—unless there’s trouble.”

I’ve heard this before. He’s
definitely
taken the class on tripe.

“Yes,” I say, rubbing my sore eyes, “but there’s nobody in those new places to bring security and reassurance all those times
I hear a noise in the middle of the night, or to help me explain my past to questioning neighbors, or to help calm my fears
when I’m reluctant to turn the ignition of my car.”

“It’s an imperfect system, but it’s all there is.”

I look out the window as a car pulls in next to us and a young couple gets out, holds hands, and walks into the convenience
store.

The worst part, the piece the feds can never correct, is the unbelievable loneliness. I consider asking Sean if he was ever
ignored when he attended elementary school, but I can tell by his swagger that the bastard probably had a hundred friends
his entire life, king of his freaking fraternity and whatnot.