"We're going to play a NICE game, with him, we're going to put on a NICE show for him."

Just to cut right in— before we get back to the Beverly Hills Tennis Club where my undercover investigation will continue. Next, we’re going to zoom in on who this woman was: Dr. J. My mother. It begins here, if you’d like to read the first scene.

In the most intimate tone, the light streaming through her window, “I could never see my father again,” Angélica said.

Her head hung low, her hair like feathers in a holy glow.

I was four, seated in a chair before her in her bedroom.

“Why?”

Because I would never see my mother again.

I wasn’t seeing her though. I didn’t say that.

“And you’d never see us again, do you want that,” she asked sweetly?

“No,” what else was I supposed to say?

She shushed me, her finger to her lips.

We weren’t going to tell him what we know. We were going to play a nice game with this, she spat on his name, as if to say lowlife, huh? “A nice game,” she assured me like a girlfriend. We weren’t going to do anything, here. We were just going to sit tight, the two of us, on Miracle Mile. Shush.

Angélica had just stopped by my house one day, randomly, less than one month before. I had alerted her, so she had taken me home to play with her youngest daughter one day, which became four years. My mother told her that my father was abusive, so now I was in her custody for my own protection.

When the phone rang, the backyard was framed in the white windowpane like a Jasper Johns, a work of art, an American classic. She picked up. The sprinklers spit, set the beat.

“Oh…” she smiled. Just as she had predicted. She looked down at me. He called. “Look who it is…” she was delighted. “Nick.” He wanted to play nice, just as she had predicted, you see. He didn’t even know her. Two can play that game, she thought.

She paced the kitchen with legs shaped by the Gods seeking his balls. “How nice,” she said. We’re pretending that we don’t know why your daughter is living with me now. That was the subtext. “New Jersey and Italy? How nice…” She didn’t help him, she didn’t mention me, and neither did he.

I never forgot this phone call. Her performance was “out of this world,” my mother’s phrase, but the memory hovered there like a bubble in float across the backyard. It never lost its clear shape, as it was singular, unique. The colors were red, green, yellow, impossible. I began to wake up to that as an adult. What am I looking at? He called her house and acted nice? He didn’t know, though, shush. Why is he acting like this? In his divorce file, he wrote, I came home and Maria was living in another family, but all he had to do was pick me up. He didn’t because “I” hated him and didn’t know why.

She wasn’t in a rush. She had all the time in the world. He really went on and on. Pacing the kitchen, she was loving this, really. She dropped the mask and squatted real low. She stuck her finger in her mouth at me: yuck.

Popping back up to standing, she was the mother hen, her chest puffed out. “How nice…” Suddenly, desperately, she stomped, actually confused. “What?” She needed to hear him, the warmest woman. “I did not hear you…” She needed to, “please, what?!” She was so sorry, just so sorry Nick.

“Maria?!” A revelation. “Is she around?!” I was right here! She was so sorry! She blamed herself; she hadn’t brought me up, right? She laughed, she really did. She skipped over her words as if she were in a fairytale. She always keeps the babies, she said, drawing the line of sight from them to her, right where she can see them. “She’s right here,” as it were, wondrous, obvious.

I fiddled with my fingers.

Her mask dropped a little bit, “Never been safer.” She meant it, you know. She reassured him with her whole heart and soul: “Don’t worry, please Nick, don’t worry…”

Gazing across the grass glistening in the sun, freshly watered, she spoke of wonderful times, “so many children, a dream.”

She was delighted at the invisible babes playing at her feet. “They love me,” she said, “…as a safe person.” Nothing but laughter these years.

“Nah,” she dropped mask, she didn’t think I wanted to go.

“Can you what? So many kids around,” none were, “I’m sorry I didn’t hear you?” She meant it, she really wanted to, hear him, that is, she was so sorry. “What did you ask? Talk to her?” She pitched high, the good witch. “Of course!”

She sizzled as she dug her fingers into her eyelids and shook her head — for a while. Her face rose, open, generous. “So sorry.” She was really sorry, she laughed, she was really a bull. “So many kids…” The subtext was: why wouldn’t you be able to talk to her? Not like you did anything, right????? Innocent man???? Laughing, right? She laughed for a while. “She’s right here, one moment.” She couldn’t wait.

She bent down and called me over with her finger.

I was pinned under her beak — her eyes fell out of her face. She couldn’t even believe it, mouth agape, brows raised. He invited me to go on vacation with him. She couldn’t move, couldn’t wipe the shock off her face.

No, she just shook her head no.

“No,” I said — easy. I was four, five.

“I love you Maria…” He reached for me. I didn’t know what to do, her face practically cartoon.

I just started saying it back. “I…”

She grabbed that phone — right there. She brought it to her ear.

“Thank you so much for calling, really,” she said, “thank you so much, for calling…” all the way to the receiver. She hung up on him, nicely, and cursed his existence in Portuguese like a bull.

“And what are you,” she pointed down at me, brightly now, “going to say to the lawyers?”

“I want to live with my mom because…”

I had a script, we rehearsed it, often.

“High five!” I slapped her hand. She clapped; it was time to dance! A spin on the living room dance floor. She had six kids, grandkids, so whether it was a birthday, Wednesday, soccer game, excuse, there was always a party. We switched like that.

Then, he requested to visit.

Now, that. She told me later. She wanted his dick! A chainsaw ripped open the neighborhood. She moved her finger up and down as if that’s what it did, “a dick wow,” she even said it. A landscaper trimmed the hedges out there. She assured me with fire in her eyes. She wanted his dick! And she said it as if it were a REAL idea. This, a child rapist, molester, abuser, struck a match within her, and she danced the lambada regardless. He requested to visit.

“Sure,” she smiled, by the pitcher of Kool-Aid, even, “why not 6:30?”

Nicole and I looked up at the treehouse in the backyard, plastered against the sky side by side. “We’re not supposed to go up there.” She reminded me. Bees had taken over, but me? I saw no bees. The backyard was a picture-perfect, saturated in color, but illness lurked here, possession, invasion, in the real American dream that it was, and you wouldn’t even know it. People lied, this I knew. I snapped at her to follow me, or I would never be her friend again.

In our sparkly slippers, we climbed up the ladder until we reached the top. I could see everything from up here! A map of America in plots, yards, and picket fences disappeared over the horizon under a sky like a blue eraser. My gold slippers sparkled wildly from a hyperreal land.

At the wooden door, kid-sized, we were scared at a portal to a new, unknown world. You do it, no, you do it. Let’s do it together. A nightmarish creak hurt my ears as if it hadn’t been opened in years; we faced the black, the subconscious from which anything could emerge, and from the pit of despair, two bees emerged as if the guardians of the colony and hovered before our faces—

When night fell, the house became the treehouse, child’s play, but the darkest vortex, so it was real and universal though not of this world, and it could lurk inside some house so small in the grand scheme of things that you wouldn’t even believe it possible like the armoire that leads to Narnia where a white witch lures children with sweets. Dr. J was the sweetest, you see, which Angélica reflected back on my father.

Down dark corridors with Dorothy (Nicole), I sought to understand Joy, a woman who put mirror mirror mirrors on her tax law office walls as if she came from a fairytale inspired by Jean Baudrillard. A woman who, ran into the church “every Sunday,” according to an eye-witness I secured, and “accosted” the priest with her rapes right before his performance as a lawsuit was building behind the scenes in the Catholic Church: a billion dollars. Angélica dimmed the lights.

She diffused the play like a stage director meets a sports coach with a vision. “We’re going to put on a nice show, a big big show,” her arm scanned the kingdom. “The house was ours…” We had to act happier than happy, never been happier (without you). We had to be loud, very loud, laughing, screaming, and playing like crazy when she gave us the signal.

“But you have to ignore him,” she said. “Pay attention,” she pointed, the good, snappy witch. Me especially. “Not one look, okay? Not one. He does not exist,” she meant it.

Her arms flew at the front door — go. Nicole and I jumped, laughed, and shrieked in glee. Hand at her ear, she couldn’t hear us, already, you see. “More,” a conductor. We unleashed our voices with nightmarish yet funny faces — ahhh!!! Her hand marked it: level one. She pointed up, we had the stars to reach.

Trick or treattttt, she cracked open the door to our voices laughing and yelping in a forced jubilation. Her bird-like face appeared. She peeked over the threshold — is that you, really you? Opening the door all the way to the wall, there’s nothing to hide here, you see, I dare you even to “visit.” Like she was going to let a child molester into her house…

“Here she is Nick!”

Nicole and I flew by as if we were the roller coaster ride. AHHHHHHHH. Nicole screamed, “IMMA GET YOU!!!” AHHHHHHH. AHHHHHHH. Angélica stood guard in a tennis skirt with her arms crossed. Titling her pelvis, rocking herself on her feet, she relished the sight of babes running crazy, wild, free, but most importantly, “safe.” A little bounce off her heels, oh! She popped down low and waved to us as we ran past on a thrill ride across the house. She requested that we raise our voices with her hand like a conductor and cupped her ear like a master of ceremonies. He didn’t even try to step a foot into her house. He had to watch the happiest show on Earth, an ecstatic nightmare. “YEAH!” Throwing fists.

And in the end, just like a show, she closed the door from the wall — in no rush. She thanked him so much for coming… what a time we had, she thanked him for “the memories we made.” It was heartfelt, even. He got the door slammed in his face more than once, nicely. Giving us her hand, we leapt to slap her palm, hard. High five!

“And what are you,” pop quiz, “going to say to the lawyers?”

“I want to live with my moder…” I blurted with fists. Another high five for me — yeah! She clapped, kicked her feet back, did a little sensual move to advance, time to dance! Legs leading the way, we were really going to get that, beeeeeeep, in Portuguese.

I came to on the stairs one night as these “Spectacular Spectacular” performances from the film Moulin Rouge had a good run, something more like years, as this show lasted four. It was the pitch of her scream as I crawled over her legs. I had to do that. Keep touching these moments, like her leg. I was crawling up her legs that night, it happened. I sat up, what am I doing? I walked downstairs and stood there to take in this snapshot: a broken man at the door, that was the message he communicated, encased in the shadows of the porch, and this woman standing guard. Horror.

At the time, all I could do was wonder: was it really like this, Joy? In a way? Would no one do anything even if it were real, was it that unreal? Later, I learned that families typically pretend like it didn’t happen, and that I might not have known that it was happening, so.

She didn’t call the cops, she said, because she didn’t want to send me to foster care, where a child is at a higher risk of being abused, even again, so was this story unbelievable? The spectacle of it? I heard that many times.

“Very very likely,” Margaret Atwood said in the NYTIMES, “Alice Munro was molested if only because it is so common.”

Is everyone being molested in the USA? Is that a genuine excuse for Alice Munro’s response to her daughter’s trauma?

Why not do it to Enya, then, “Sounds of Africa?”

I learned long ago that some things are so true, you have the license to push it over a real edge in a world where nothing is real, but everything is spiritual.

Her voice swells, the door opens, and the Catholic Church sends up the white smoke. Jose Lieberman hits the lights: blue. Nicole and I take off through the fog as gazelles leap in the score, charging through the fog. And male ballet dancers take slow and considered steps in tights. Jose Lieberman passes out the oars so we can row to a new world.

It’s not just about the man at the door; it’s our response.

It’s the PG response bothers me.

I’ll get into that next time.

We’re only at the beginning of this poignant nightmare.