Authors: Lisa Lutz
“Hi, Mom. Is there an emergency?”
“Not really,” Mom replied, sounding more awake than one should at 3:15
A
.
M
. “I can’t sleep,” she said.
I slipped into the closet, which I’d come to think of as my own personal phone booth, so that I could speak freely.
“I hate to break it to you, Mom, but few people find conversing with me soporific.”
Dead silence.
“Mom?”
“I can’t believe you know that word,” Mom said.
“How insulting,”
7
I replied. “I should just hang up the phone.”
“I’m impressed. That’s all,” Mom said.
“Feeling sleepy yet?” I asked.
“No.”
“Would you like me to sing to you?”
“I’d like you to listen to my confession,” Mom said, and suddenly I was wide awake.
A
t first I had no idea what my mother was talking about. She rambled, not using proper nouns, avoiding full disclosure, but eventually I got the gist.
I gathered that Rae’s PSAT cheating scandal, followed by her throwing-the-test scandal, troubled my mother to an unprecedented depth. For years, my mom’s desperate-mother energy had been focused on me and all my brushes with serious delinquency (and/or jail time). Rae was one of the good kids—a delightful, warm, cheery child who was aggressively self-directed and maybe a bit bullying. However, all of that in the package of a five foot two adolescent who always looked a few years younger than her age came off as adorable. Until recently, that is.
In sixteen months, my sister would be eighteen. At that point, whatever sway my mother had over her would be lost forever. My mom was suddenly flush with the realization that her daughter was out of control. While it was true that there was something to admire about Rae’s uncompromising sense of what she wanted, there was also something ruthless about the way she went about making sure she got it.
As far as my mother was concerned, Rae’s going to college was a nonnegotiable edict. However, you can’t make someone of legal age do any
thing, and since Rae wanted to protect her massive savings and, frankly, had no interest in a college education—I’m assuming this was based on the fact that she felt she could learn whatever she wanted for free—they were in a very uneven standoff. Rae had a gun; my mother had a water gun. And so my mother started doing what any concerned, dedicated, and crafty mother would: She began playing a single-minded game of
Gaslight
1
on her daughter.
This was the game: In order to encourage my sister’s high school work ethic, my mom had her grades doctored during her junior year to make it appear that she was not doing as well as she really was. When my sister actually took to studying and found that her efforts were in vain, she worked even harder. The reasons were twofold: 1) According to the Spellman bylaws,
2
if Rae didn’t maintain a B-plus average (used to be B-minus) she would lose all non-life-sustaining sustenance, and 2) Rae has a healthy sense of her own intelligence and has always believed she wasn’t an A student only because she chose not to be. When she started putting in effort and began receiving scores in the C-minus range, it made her rethink her perception of herself.
Keep in mind, the grades that Rae was receiving on her papers and tests were not the ones that would go down on her high school transcripts. At the end of the year, Rae would be clued in to the deceit and receive her actual grades, which for the first time ever just might surpass a B average, if my mom’s ruse worked according to plan.
How did my mother have Rae’s grades—or at least the appearance of them—doctored? Excellent question. There are two camps of instructors at Rae’s school. Below you will find samplings of quotes from both camps, taken from a variety of parent-teacher conferences throughout the years:
Pro-Rae
Mr. Sputter
(chemistry instructor): “I appreciate that Rae has a distinct preference for lab work vs. lecture classes, but before she starts experimenting willy-nilly in class, it would be prudent if she paid attention when I mentioned which properties are combustible when mixed.”
Ms. Baxter
(AP English): “Her papers are entertaining, insightful, and well written, if a little on the short side. Having her in class for ninety minutes every other day is a complete delight. Yes, ninety minutes is about my limit.”
Mr. Peabody
(see previous document for further details): “Other than that one incident last term with her obsession with my desk drawer, I find her class comments perceptive and unique, and I think she contributes well. An unusual child, but I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that. She’s not working up to her potential—no news there—but she’s still one of my better students.”
Anti-Rae
Mrs. LaFaye
(second-year French): “I don’t care if she speaks in English or French—I refuse to negotiate my lesson plan with your daughter.”
Mr. Blake
(U.S. history): “As far as I can tell, the only part of history that interests Rae is digging up dirt on our founding fathers.”
Mr. Wayne
(calculus): “Every day she goes out of her way to make sure I know that I’m boring her. Constant yawning, nodding off in class. Oh, and tell her to stop counting my ‘uh’s. I know she’s the one doing it and writing the number on the board every afternoon. I will not tolerate that kind of disrespect.”
The next question you’re probably asking yourself is how my mother got both camps on board with her scheme. Another excellent question.
She didn’t. Mom knew after the cheating incident that the anti-Rae
camp would still believe she was a cheater and be naturally biased against her, lowering her marks on any subjective exam. The pro-Rae camp, however, was all for a moderate push in the right direction and willing to play this little game with my sister.
The question my mother posed to me was this: “Am I doing any real damage to Rae? Is this inherently wrong?”
Well, what do you think I said? I had my own
Gaslight
game I was poised to play. I cleared my mother’s conscience with the skill of a priest and returned to bed, finally clocking in a few hours of sleep. Rest was what I needed, since the next night I would hardly sleep at all.
I
waited three weeks for my sister to repeat her crime so that I could enact my revenge. Henry and I didn’t plan the kind of sting operation that involved a “gotcha” moment when we’d jump from behind the curtains and reveal our evil identities. No. Our plan, our purpose, was more subtle than that. We wanted Rae to endure a night when Murphy’s Law was illustrated with the heaviest hand nonfiction would allow.
The following evening, the alarm that indicates when my car is moving went off at 12:30 A.M. I got up, threw on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, and exited David’s house, stuffing my laptop in a shoulder bag. I walked four blocks to Van Ness and Broadway and tried to hail a cab. I phoned Henry, waking him from a deep sleep, and said, “Subject’s on the move. I’ll be at your house as soon as I hail a cab.”
“I’ll pick you up,” he said.
“No,” I replied. “It’ll be faster this way.”
Honestly, I hadn’t thought about this glitch in my plan. I should mention that San Francisco isn’t like New York in terms of hailing cabs, but it can be done. Fortunately, that night taxi luck was on my side. I arrived at Henry’s house and we briefly reviewed the variety of plans we could put
into effect, opting for flexibility over careful orchestration. This is how the night went down:
Phase I
Fifteen minutes later, Henry drove as I directed him toward the current location of my vehicle. It was parked on Baker, near McAllister (in the vicinity of the Panhandle, near Golden Gate Park).
Henry slowed his car as we approached the area. I spotted my car blocking a driveway in front of a single-family home.
“If she’s blocking the driveway, they might not be staying too long. What do you think?” I asked.
“I’ll keep watch,” Henry said. “Let the air out of the left back tire. They won’t be able to see you from the house.”
Henry turned his lights off and remained double-parked a few doors down. I exited his vehicle and crouched down as I approached my car. I unscrewed the cap on the tire and stuck a pin in to release the air. A few minutes passed, the tire deflated, and my cell phone buzzed. I looked up to find the front door of the residence open. I quickly put the cap back on the tire, ducked past a few more cars, and sprinted around the corner. I hid behind a tree until Henry picked me up a few minutes later.
Henry made a quick U-turn and raced down the block in the direction we’d come. In a few minutes, we were approximately fifty yards behind my sister’s vehicle as she drove south along Divisadero.
“She’s driving like there’s nothing wrong,” I said.
“Sometimes people don’t notice flat tires,” Henry replied.
“Wait. She’s passing a gas station. Maybe she’ll pull in.”
I’m sure you’re biting your nails with anticipation right now, so I’ll cut to the part where Rae doesn’t even notice that she’s driving on a completely flat tire. Nope. She turned right on Fell Street and continued west, turning onto Lincoln and heading into the Outer Sunset. Then she somehow found a legal parking space right away. She and two other
adolescent females and one adolescent male exited the vehicle, none of whom noticed the flat.
Subjects entered a nearby house from which muted sounds of music and laughter emanated.
Whatever excitement Henry and I felt at the beginning of our caper had washed away. Gloom was starting to set in already, and we were only in phase I.
“What do I do?” I asked. “If she doesn’t put air in the tire, she’ll ruin the wheel and I’ll have to pay for a new one. That result would be in complete conflict with what we’re trying to do here.”
“Let me think,” Henry said, and since it looked like he was thinking really hard, and since I trusted that he wanted revenge as much as I did, I remained silent.
“There’s an air pump in the trunk,” Henry said. “Reinflate the tire while I disconnect the battery.”
“You have an air pump in your trunk?”
“Battery powered,” Henry replied.
“Wow. You think ahead,” I said, feeling a swell of affection.
Henry double-parked again. We jumped out of his car, raced across the street, and completed our assigned tasks. We checked the perimeter as we returned to his car to lie in wait.
Phase II
An hour later, subject exited residence alone, got in my car, and tried to start the engine. Approximately one minute later, subject popped the hood of the car and checked the engine. Subject left the car with the hood open, knocked on the door of the residence subject had previously entered, and a few minutes later returned with an unknown male and a flashlight. Both subjects studied the engine out of view of the investigators. Shortly after that, they entered the vehicle. The engine started and subject pulled the car onto the road.
“They sure figured that out fast,” I said, sounding—I’m sure—defeated.
Henry refused to lose focus on the task in front of him. He was a cop, after all, and his surveillance skills were impeccable. Henry and I maintained a tail on subject, who may have foiled some of our plans but at least remained unaware of the surveillance performed on her. Subject drove to a residence in West Portal and double-parked while Unknown Male #1 exited the vehicle and knocked on the door of a nearby residence. Unknown Male #2 answered the door and both returned to the car.
Ten minutes later, all three subjects returned to the Outer Sunset residence where they were previously seen. Subject parked the car a few blocks away, and all three subjects walked together back to the party.
Henry parked in a driveway a few doors away from my car. From that location we couldn’t view the party, but we agreed that the best way to monitor Rae was to keep an eye on my car.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Phase three,” Henry replied.
Phase III
When I was sixteen, Petra’s cousin Hugo taught me how to siphon gas out of a tank. It’s not that hard, but Henry made it clear from the get-go that he would not partake in this activity.
1
He simply purchased the supplies.
“The hose and the gas can are in the trunk,” he said, popping the lid. “Use the end of the hose that’s marked with masking tape.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I washed it in dish soap.”
“Thanks. That was sweet.”
I tried to look inconspicuous carrying a six-foot garden hose and a gas canister through this relatively quiet residential neighborhood. I had to duck in the bushes for a few minutes while some revelers seeped from the
house and disappeared into the distance. Then I ran as fast as I could to my car, unlocked the door, opened the gas tank, swirled the hose in a single loop, inserted one end into the tank, and began sucking on the other end until I could hear, smell, and almost taste the gasoline bubbling through the hose. Then I lowered the hose below the level of the gas tank and inserted it into the canister.
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I knew there wasn’t much gas in the tank earlier that day. We had simply hoped that we could siphon enough to make Rae either A) run out of gas, or B) at least have to pay for some.
Ten minutes later, I returned to Henry’s car with the fuel and the hose. I returned the supplies to his trunk and sat down in his vehicle, where we waited for fifteen minutes in silence.
“Are we just going to sit here in the cold?” I asked.
“It’s a little pathetic, isn’t it?” he replied.
“Yes.”
Long pause.
“I have something to tell you,” Henry said.
I felt my heart jump for a second—just once. I thought that maybe the only thing that would make this night less of a disaster was if Henry confessed his undying love or something like that. Don’t get too excited. His follow-up sentence was a letdown on all fronts.
“There’s a good chance,” Henry said, “that the car won’t run out of gas.”
“I know,” I replied, once I’d scanned his words and accepted there was no hidden meaning in them.
This could go down as one of the worst nights in my history as a PI. Worse than that night three years ago when my dad slept through his alarm clock and failed to relieve me from my post outside a North Bay residence. At 2:15
A
.
M
., when the subject decided to move, I was relieving myself behind
his shrubbery. The only worse night I can think of was when I was forced to team up with Joey Carmichael (ex-cop, acquaintance of Dad’s) and he kept asking me to pull his finger all night long. My point is I had to do something to alleviate the pain.
“There’s a diner around the corner,” I said. “Let’s wait there. I can have my phone beep when the car moves again.”
Five minutes later I was eating cherry pie à la mode, minding my own business, when Henry said, “Do you have any idea how much high-fructose corn syrup is in that pie?”
“Do you want a bite?” I asked.
“Yes,” Henry replied, stealing my fork.
The bright neon lights of the diner did nothing to boost our spirits. The night had been an epic disaster.
“Is she always going to win?” I asked.
For a moment Henry looked defeated, but then he wouldn’t allow that emotion to take over.
“No. You can’t think like that,” he said, like a soccer coach in a Disney movie trying to rally the team’s spirits. “We’ll never win if we don’t improve our attitude.”
“I should remind you that so far, all of our plans have been foiled. What happens when she drives straight home and the car doesn’t run out of gas? What’s phase four?”
Henry thought for a moment: “The silent treatment.”
It was as if Henry and I were suddenly watching ourselves on a giant movie screen. Two full-grown adults, professional sleuths, trying to take down a teenage girl by the most amateurish means.
“If you think about it really hard,” I said, “this is kind of insane.”
It didn’t take Henry all that long to agree. “It’s not my finest hour,” he replied.
It could have been the massive jolt of caffeine in the early hours of the morning, or the exhaustion that had set in, or the sense of failure about this entire charade, but when we started laughing, we couldn’t stop. And
when I say we couldn’t stop, we
really
couldn’t. It was convulsive, uncomfortable laughter, tears dripping down our faces. The embarrassing, I-hope-nobody’s-watching-me laughter. And people
were
watching. Especially our waitress, who dropped off the bill and suggested herbal tea might be in order. The laughing didn’t stop until my phone buzzed.
Henry left $20 on the table and we raced out of the diner and hopped into his car. Within minutes we were in hot pursuit of my Buick, filled with the subject and at least four unknown subjects. One in particular had his head out the window.
“That one better not vomit in my car,” I said.
“She better not be drunk herself,” Henry commented, suddenly finding the situation far more serious. “Maybe I should have a squad car give her a sobriety test?”
“Yes!” I said enthusiastically. “That would be great!”
Henry phoned the precinct and made his request, providing the license plate number and the vehicle’s current coordinates. Within ten minutes a squad car closed in on the Buick and signaled with its loud buzz for the car to pull over.
From a distance, I watched through binoculars as the officer gave my sister a sobriety test.
“Let me see,” Henry said, taking the binoculars from my hand.
“She’s sober,” I replied soberly.
Don’t get me wrong, I was happy my sister wasn’t drinking and driving. Best as I could tell, she was using my car primarily to drive drunk people home from a party. However, it was
my
car and she never asked
my
permission!
It was late. It had been late for hours. Henry and I were tired. Maybe our minds weren’t as sharp as they ought to have been, because suddenly Henry stated the obvious.
“I have another idea for phase four,” he said.
“What?” I replied, not too hopeful.
“You could report a stolen vehicle.”