Toby's Lie

by Daniel Vilmure

  “Oh, E-Eye! I’m sorry!” Juice’s face was in his hands. He was rocking back and forth. He’d forgotten I was there. “Oh, E- Eye, I’m sorry! I fucked dat shit up!” He was crying. “Oh E- Eye! Oh, Jesus! Oh, God!”

  One day for a lark, I watched Juice at football practice. Inspired by something on The NFL Today, the coaches had strapped parachutes to all the players’ backs and made them, upwind, run a hundred-yard dash. The sharp resistance offered by the mini-parachutes was supposed to give the players—running backs especially—superhuman speed when the chutes were removed. And though I had to admit that the concept looked ingenious, the players regarded the devices with distress, as if the coaches were purchasing sports equipment from de Sade. One by one the skittish players plowed the field, like scandalized skydivers, looking landlocked and ridiculous. The coaches timed them and called them wussies. They collapsed in the end zone clutching their chests. When it came Juice’s turn, he tightened his chute with casual disdain and glanced archly at me. Juice was fast; he had always been fast; and he’d been snorting tons of coke, so his heart was souped and pounding. I remember abandoning my seat in the bleachers and going to the fence just to watch him make his run. All the other players were sitting up, too. The coaches were tense, in that lazy-tense coach way. Juice stood poised with his arms at his sides, cocked a little at the elbows, like wannabe wings, and the chute drooped behind him in a flaccid flaxen pouch, waiting for the wind to give it force and breath and vigor. When the whistle erupted, I remember getting goosebumps as the chute leapt to life behind Juice’s chugging shoulders; I remember the way Juice’s clumsy cleated feet dug and dug into the gridiron’s hard uncompromising earth; and I remember how, right before the fifty-yard line, only a couple of feet from where I stood stone-still, Juice—whose face had been contorted in pain—broke suddenly into the most shit-eating grin I’d ever seen anyone grin in all my life. He didn’t slow down; if anything, he sprinted faster. But as he overtook the forty, and the thirty, and the twenty—at a speed that seemed impossible and made the chute complain—a laugh, a colorful, rich, delicious laugh escaped Juice’s lips and furled a rainbow in his wake. I was running by then, if a tiny bit behind him, Juice’s music like live firecrackers underneath my feet, and my heart was filling up, like that stupid parachute, with the strength and joy and power of Juice’s crazy jubilee. When at last Juice collapsed in a heap in the end zone, the coaches’ eyebrows hooking at his otherworldly time, it was several minutes before Juice’s laughing fit subsided. The players massed around him, and somebody fed him oxygen, and Juice lay there sucking it and sputtering hysterically, giggles spraying from his nose and lips like guzzled seltzer water. When the players hit the showers, and the coaches followed suit, Juice was left alone in the sunlight in the end zone, winding down like a laughing box whose batteries were dying. He sat there examining the limp chute in his hands, dandling it gently up and down in his lap, tossing it and smiling as it wafted back to earth. He knew I was watching (Juice had always been a poser), and he rose and wiped his face off with the chute and slouched away. At the doorway to the locker room he pitched it in a trashcan. “See ya,” he told it. “Wouldn’t wanna be ya.” But I rescued Juice’s parachute and have it to this day.

  Already I could recognize my mother’s neighborhood. Her place crouched in a cul-de-sac behind a clot of saw- palms, and I spied her in the gutter prodding something with a shotgun. Her hair was bound up in fat rabbit-ear ribbons, the kind Carol Brady wore for epic bouts of spring cleaning. And across the street from me, behind a charred apartment complex, Ian’s car was parked and sparkling, far from my mother’s view, a Mercedes rising up from a tenement of ashes like a diamond from a valley of incinerated coal.

  I took a back way and snuck into Mom’s yard with the idea of stashing Juice’s drugs in the Corvair. By then Mom was washing her hair in the kitchenette. I saw her through the window, her shoulder-blades working, her long arms searching for her head down in the sink. It was after lunch, too, Ian nowhere to be seen, as I crept to Christ’s Chevy through the Calvary weeds. I opened the car door to a spray of cockroaches and muscular black lizards running relays on upholstery and Ian, paint-stippled and snoring up a storm, mouth open to flies and other curious vermin. Without waking him, I shoved the drugs beneath the carseat, brushed an earwig off his lip, and went to see my AWOL mom.

  When I was a kid and had done something wrong and Mom asked me if I had, knowing fucking well I had, and I lied and said, “No, Mom, I have not done this thing,” she would seat me on a barstool, place her right hand on my forehead, and slowly lift my bangs and read across my traitor’s skin: “L-I-E,” as if I’d blushed my own betrayal. “L-I-E! Toby Sligh is telling stories!”

  “Randall!” my mother shouted. “Hand me that towel!” Her head was underneath the faucet and her soapy arms were flailing. “It’s baby shampoo, but it stings!” she complained. “Hurry, please, Randall!”

  “Okey-dokey,” I replied.

  I went to the counter and scooped up the towel that lay beside a basket of my father’s folded laundry. I handed it to Mom, and she said, “Thank you, Randall.”

  “Who’s Randall?” I asked.

  Mom turned around and screamed.

  “Tobias!”

  “Mother!”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I asked you the same question three days ago. Who’s Randall?”

  “Who’s Randall?”

  “That’s right. Who is Randall? He the guy that you left me and Pop for?”

  “Tobias!”

  “Well, is he? I think I’m entitled to an answer. If I’m lying for someone, I’m entitled to the—”

  “Shhhh!”

  Ian came sleepwalking into the kitchen.

  “Some’in’ wrong, Mrs. S.?”

  “Nothing’s wrong, Randall.”

  My mother plucked a tear from her eye and went to Ian. She took him by the shoulders and steered him toward me.

  “Toby, this is Randall. He’s sort of my helper. Randall Webster, this is Toby.”

  “Hullo, Toby.”

  “Uh, hullo.”

  Well, there was certainly egg on my face. I’d picked the wrong time to call someone on a lover. But my mother, though rattled, was as oblivious as ever. Her son was just a bastard; he hadn’t been found out. And I felt really guilty: Mom had lost her giddy glory; her face had that look of a drained toddler pool. I had taken Mom’s peace with herself and destroyed it, and her nervous hands were working: I had done that to her, too. In the midst of a catastrophe my mother had a habit of going ballistic, as if cossacks were approaching. At home she would rearrange the spices on her spice rack, or index all her paperbacks, or baseball-bat the rugs. Now, because her Spartan pad was absolutely spotless, she had nothing to do but glance helplessly about her. And I didn’t like that idle-looking shotgun in the corner. It said, “Pick me up!” It said, “Fiddle with me!”

  “Toby just scared me. He didn’t mean to, Randy. I was washing my hair, and I thought he was—”

  “You.”

  “But I’m not,” Ian told me, with a smile. “I’m me.”

  “That’s right,” my mom answered. “You’re you.”

  I was dizzy.

  “God, Ma, I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean to—”

  My mother rushed forward, and her hair dripped about me. “It’s hard for you, Toby! I know! All this lying!”

  Ian shuffled his feet, like a houseboy.

  “Mrs. S.?”

  “What is it now, Randall?”

  “Can I go for the day?”

  “Stay and talk to Toby! Randall’s new here, just like I am!”

  ‘‘I’m painting the house for your mother,” Ian muttered.

  “Just the outside,” Mom added. “I’ve already done the inside.”

  “Where are you from?” I asked Ian, feeling seasick.

  “New Orl’uns,” he drawled.

  I had the most terrific headache.

&nbs
p; “Randall graduated from Sacred Heart of New Orleans,” Mom offered, nodding. “His girlfriend lives round here.”

  “I can’t find work, so I’m doing odd jobs.”

  “His rates are very reasonable.”

  “I’m poor.

  “He needs money.”

  “I want a new truck.”

  I thought of his Mercedes.

  “Mom, have you got any Advil or something? I’m feeling kind of funny.”

  A chair screeched beneath me.

  “He looks faint,” said Randall. Ian said, “I think he’s fainting.” My mother’s face was spinning.

  “Toby Sligh, are you all ri … ?”

  Ten minutes later I was at the kitchen table with my mother and my boyfriend sitting straight across from me. Mom and Ian looked like lovers, but really they were strangers. Me and Ian looked like strangers, but really we were lovers. And this was what we’d wanted. This was what we had arranged. Ian’d help me with my mom; I’d help him out with Scarcross. Already all I wanted was to call the whole thing off. But we were in this thing too deep, like doomed lovers say in movies. We were lying on margin and were waiting for the crash.

  An Alka-Seltzer sizzled in a jelly jar before me, and I guzzled it, and belched, and felt like a million bucks. Ian Lamb was

  looking at me with a “Hold on, Toby’’ look. Things were back in focus, but they weren’t any less distorted.

  “I’ve got to get to Sacred Heart,” I said, and stood to go. “You’re pale! You should rest!”

  “I can take him in my truck.”

  “We need to talk, Toby!”

  “I’ll get in trouble, Mom! I’m late from senior lunch and McDuffy’ll suspend me!”

  “You’re sick! You just fainted!”

  “I’m not! I’m exhausted!”

  “Why are you exhausted?”

  “Dad keeps me up all night! He drinks! He’s pathetic! He contacted a detective! He’s scared to death, Ma!”

  “He is?”

  “Yes, he is!”

  “How sweet,” Mom said.

  “This is bullshit! I’m leaving!”

  I took a step, swayed, and sat quickly down again.

  She said, “You’re still poorly!”

  “Of course I’m still poorly! This whole thing’s a nightmare! Why the hell are you here!”

  “Should I leave, Mrs. S.?”

  “Yes, Randall.” Mom nodded. “And take that dead snake from the gutter.”

  “Dead snake! What snake?”

  Ian/Randall left us, and my mother squeezed my hand. I was looking hard at her. I was looking hard for answers.

  “Randy’s doing odd jobs. He’s not doing me.”

  “I know.”

  “Oh, you do!”

  She looked a tiny bit offended.

  “Do you want him to?”

  “Now you’re insulting me, Toby!”

  “Mom, this is crazy! This whole thing’s to the curb!”

  “I did your father’s laundry.”

  “Hooray! You did Dad’s laundry! What’s that shotgun doing in the corner there, Ma?”

  “I shot a snake with it. A rattlesnake, Toby.”

  “Ask a silly question …”

  “Don’t take that tone with me! Yesterday I was sunbathing, and I left the door open, but when I came in, it was locked. Someone came inside and locked it. I was worried. So I asked the landlord for a gun.”

  “Did he show you how to shoot it?”

  “She did: the landlady. So just now I found a snake. It was coiled up in the closet, and I chased it to the gutter, and I shot its stupid head off! When I came back inside I found Randall in the garden, asleep in that infested matchbox cluttering my yard. He watched me shoot the snake, then he left, and fell asleep! Must be something in the water, all you young strong kids exhausted. And I think you’ve got a fever—Toby Sligh, you’re just a mess.”

  “Of course I’m a mess! I’m everybody’s punchline! You’re torturing the only two men that you love!”

  “You didn’t see me sunbathing yesterday, did you?”

  I looked at her. “What?”

  “Did you see me sunbathing?”

  “No, Ma.”

  “No?” She shoved my bangs up off my forehead. “All right. I believe you.”

  I was learning how to lie.

  “In a way I wish you had,” Mom went on, and smoothed my forehead. “Then I’d really know for sure some pervert hadn’t been in here.”

  “If the perverts don’t get you, the rattlesnakes will. And who’s this Randall fella? He could be anybody!”

  “Are you jealous, Toby?”

  “What?”

  She was smiling. “Are you jealous?”

  “Am I jealous of what?”

  “Oh, you know . .

  “No, I don’t!”

  Across the table Mom was staring mischievously at me. Her eyebrows were arching. She pressed her nose against mine.

  “Are you jealous, Toby Sligh?” she was singing. “Are you jealous?”

  “Am I jealous of what? Stop talking in riddles.”

  “That I have my own place?”

  “That you ‘have your own place’! Is that what this is all about? You having an apartment?”

  “Are you and Dad jealous that I’m living on my own?”

  “Is that why you’re here?”

  “I don’t know why I’m here!”

  She was crying.

  I shouted, “I’m sick of people crying!”

  Mom wiped her eyes. “Sorry …” She sat up. “No, I’m not! This is my place! I’ll cry!” So Mom wailed even louder.

  Ian stuck his nose in.

  “You okay, Mrs. S.?”

  He was holding a snake with no head.

  “Mind your business!” My mother stopped crying. “Toby’s color’s better, Randall. You can take him back to school now.”

  “Oh, Christ, Ma, I’m sorry!”

  “Go, Toby!”

  “Look at me!”

  “Next time you’ll be invited!”

  “Mother, please!”

  “See you, Randall.”

  “C’mon, Toby,” Ian said.

  Things had gone from weird to weirder, and they’d only just begun, and I didn’t foresee any letup in the future. All the way to St. Osyth’s, in Ian/Randall’s Mercedes/truck, I was lectured/harangued about keeping my cool—a headless rattlesnake in a garbage bag between us. “You have to learn to be a better liar, Toby Sligh. I’ve only known your mother for one afternoon, and already I know more about her than you do.”

  “What’s that s’posed to mean?”

  “I’ll tell you what it means … after you and Fr. Scarcross have had your first talk.”

  “This is like a hostage deal!”

  “What’s wrong with you, Toby?”

  “This whole thing upsets me!”

  “You think I enjoy it?”

  “Yes.” I looked at him. “Yes, I think you do!”

  Ian’s right eye—the good one, the real one, the living one— was brilliantly, ebulliently, bloomingly blue, like a violet in a time-lapse Botany movie. And Ian seemed happier than I had ever seen him: he was fresh and rested-looking and slap-happy with good health, he gleamed like a porpoise in a pool fat with mackerel, his once sloppy posture was Mary Poppins perfect, and there were dimples in his cheeks I had never seen till then.

  “Dimples don’t lie.”

  Ian said, “What does that mean?”

  “It means that I hope that you know what you’re doing.’’

  “I do.”

  “Because I don’t.”

  “I love you,” Ian told me.

  “Do you really?”

  Ian nodded.

  “Then prove it.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  The Mercedes swerved off into a Spanish-mossy alley, and Ian switched the engine off, and kissed me on the mouth. It was the slowest, sweetest, deliciousest kiss I had ever tasted in all my kissing life.
I felt like a body wafting backwards into water, soft water, with a softer body buoying me up. Then Ian unzipped me and slurped me like a sno-cone, and he tucked me back in, and his lips nibbled mine.

  “I love you,’’ Ian whispered. “Now do you believe me?”

  “How can I believe you?”

  “Because it’s just the truth. Do you love me?”

  “I do.”

  We kissed.

  “I believe you.”

  “How?” he said, and shuddered.

  “Because dimples do not lie.”

  I’d never known what sex was until I met Ian.

  Let me rephrase that: I’d never known what making love was until I met Ian.

  No. Hold on a second. That’s not right either. Let me take a deep breath and try one last time… .

  Before I met Ian, I had known what sex was, I had known what making love was, I had known what these things were, but I hadn’t really known what they were, if you get me. When Ian Lamb kissed me, I knew what mouths were for. I knew what lips were for. I knew what tongues were for. It was nice to know that mouths, lips, tongues—when put together—could do things other than gossip, curse, and lie. They could say, “You’re my angel.” They could say, “My darling boy.” They could say, “Never leave me.” They could say, “I love you so.” They could say these things, and more than that, they could mean them. They could mean them just like mysteries denied you all your life. Ian’s kisses were better than a sea of Alka-Seltzer. They cleared my head, and my heart, and my soul, and my stomach. They became like Juice’s mother: they were all of my devotion. And so many of those things I had thought were just corny before I knew what love was became wonderful to me—pop songs, roses, couples kissing in a corner, going places together, just missing someone. Even the thought of my parents making love made a smile of complicity curl across my lips. Ian was my boyfriend. Ian Lamb was my lover. He loved me. Ian loved me! Ian’s love was all my truth.

  The Mercedes was idling outside of St. Osyth’s. We sat in air-conditioned splendor staring at each other.