Crowne of Lies

by Reiss, CD

  There would be no halfway.

  He was already gone.

  “Just one correction to initial.” The lawyer in the lavender suit slid the pages across to my counsel. “Then we’re good to go.”

  “Logan,” I said.

  “Ella?”

  “I just want you to know—”

  “This isn’t the divorce agreement,” my lawyer sniped.

  “I want him to know…” I snarled at him before turning back to my husband. “That it was never you. I think, under different circumstances, with different expectations… we could have been happy.”

  He nodded. No words. No change in his expression. Not even a whiff of agreement.

  Just a nod to recognize that he heard me loud and clear.

  I willed myself not to cry, because fuck him and his control. If he could shut off his emotions like a faucet, I wouldn’t let my tears flow like one.

  “What is this?” my lawyer said, flipping through.

  “My client wants this revised first,” she replied.

  “This?” He held up the pages. “It’s the initial contract.”

  “Yes.” She slid a pen across to me. “Just initial.”

  I leaned over to look at the document. It was our initial deal, with redlines we scratched over terms in Bianca’s office a million years ago. I took the contract from my lawyer, looking for something significantly different.

  I found it.

  Children resulting from this union will be named Crowne.

  Next to the red to be decided he’d written on our wedding day was a new line, in black and initialed, which amended the line to:

  Children resulting from this union will be named Crowne-Papillion

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “Me neither,” his lawyer grumbled.

  “Logan?” His name was confusion and sadness, a cry to his back as he walked away.

  And still, though his fingers stopped tapping, his expression didn’t change.

  “I’m not initialing this until you explain it.” I spun the papers to him. They opened like feathers and flattened,

  A smile played at the edge of his mouth, breaking the stoic control for a moment. He rotated the papers and pushed them back. “It’s pretty self-explanatory.”

  “That you’re mocking me?” I turned the contract over, word-side down, and crossed my arms to protect myself against a final hurt I couldn’t bear to imagine.

  He folded his hands in front of him, leaning forward as if he was ready to launch himself in my direction. “I’ll say it plainly with counsel present.”

  The intensity of his gaze ran right through me like a shot of heat through a frozen system, turning ice into steam.

  “Give me another chance,” he said. “I’ll write your name into every part of my life.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you being in my life isn’t enough. I want more. I want to be part of yours.”

  Did he just offer to meet me halfway?

  “I can’t…” I stood so fast, the chair shot back and hit the wall behind me.

  I wanted him to meet me in the middle, but something about this was wrong, and I couldn’t put into words neither the shock that he’d read my mind nor the disappointment that he’d pulled a stunt that got it all so wrong.

  “Why not?” He stood.

  We were on opposite sides, hands on the table like opposing parties in a heated negotiation, eyes locked in heated combat. Looking away was impossible.

  “Because I don’t want you to change. I want you to be happy. I want you to have everything you want.”

  “I. Want. You.” He pounded the table between each word.

  Out of the corner of my eye, his lawyer closed her folder. “This is now outside my legal purview.”

  “Go,” Logan commanded, eyes still on mine.

  “Yes,” I said to my counsel. “You can go.”

  My lawyer sighed, picked up his bag, and left right behind Logan’s. The door clicked, leaving me alone with my husband.

  We didn’t move.

  “You want me?” My question came out as a challenge.

  “Yes.”

  “You sure?”

  “You think I won’t change? That’s the least I’ll do. I’ll get rid of everything. Every dollar I earned and the billions I inherit. I’d give it all to you if that’s what you want. But you want my name? Take it. You’re the only asset worth a damn.”

  “I don’t want you to change. I don’t want to take who you are.”

  “Then take my time. Take my career. Take it all and throw it away. I don’t care. Just take me. With nothing else. After all the changing is done—all the work, all the decisions—take the part of me that’s always the same. The part that loves you.”

  Unable to stand another second of his intensity, I looked down. My fingers were splayed on the table, pressed so hard the knuckles were white.

  “This is real,” I said.

  “You bet your ass it’s real.” He wasn’t across the table. In the seconds since I’d broken our gaze, he’d come around to my side. “I know you didn’t like being my wife. So don’t be. Be my One Big Thing.”

  My spine straightened, hands off the table, head up in surprise at the contradiction. “You want me and a divorce?”

  “No.” He put his hands inches from my biceps, pausing before he touched them as if waiting for a signal that it was all right. I took half a step closer to him, and he let himself touch me. “I don’t want a wife.” His thumbs drifted upward, caressing my jaw where the skin was sensitive. “I want to be married… to you.”

  I didn’t know how badly I’d needed to hear those words until he said them.

  Not a husband and a wife—two motionless objects on top of a wedding cake—but two people tied to one another, engaged in the living, growing act of being married.

  Like my parents. Like Ted and Doreen. Like every other marriage that seemed perfect from the outside because the inside constantly evolved.

  “I’m trouble, you know.” I gripped his lapels and shook him.

  “You are so much damn trouble.” He kissed my forehead.

  “And you’re no fun.”

  “I’m too boring for you.” His breath caressed my ear as he ran his lips along my neck. I ran my fingers through his hair with a sigh and a groan. “We’re a perfect mess, my star. Say yes anyway. I love you. I love you more than this life can contain. Finish the year with me. Then the next and the next. Let’s break shit and glue it back together for the rest of our lives.”

  We were perfect, and we were a mess, and that was all it was.

  I pushed him away to hold his face still, up against mine so I could feel our separateness and intimacy. Both existed at the same time, in the same space.

  It was him. I wanted his mess. Our mess.

  “Logan Crowne,” I said, “I take you to be my husband. To love and to honor. To break shit and put it back together ‘til death do us part.”

  “Do I kiss the bride now?”

  “You’d better.”

  He kissed me, and of all the times our lips had met, that kiss buckled my knees the most. When he held me up, his arms were stronger because his promises were real, and so were we.

  Happiness didn’t come neatly packaged. It found you in the moments between tears and laughter, in the fights and brokenness, in the support and in the bond with someone who loved you as broken as you were and as whole as you’d become.

  Epilogue One

  LOGAN

  “Do I look okay?” Ella asked as I put the car into park.

  The valet opened her door first, the dome light making her eyes glint like stars twinkling with jitters.

  “You look gorgeous.”

  “I’m supposed to look approachable.”

  I took her chin and kissed her, getting out without another word. I met her on the passenger side and helped her out of the car and into the Crownehome garage, where I’d first taken her on the hood of a Ferrari.r />
  She wiped her palms on her jeans.

  “It’s just dinner.” I offered her my arm and we entered the elevator.

  It had been a few weeks since I’d asked my father for my One Big Thing, and though he’d laid the burden of forgiveness at my mother’s feet, he was the one who needed to be reassured that the marriage that had started out as a game had turned very real. Colton, who was allergic to getting the hell out of my house, had intervened with eyewitness accounts of how we’d become so disgustingly in love, he made his own coffee in the morning rather than interrupt us.

  “I don’t know why I’m so nervous,” she said, tilting her chin up and closing her eyes to calm herself.

  I took her hand. “I’m here.”

  “If they still hate me, I’ll know.”

  “They don’t, and you will.” I pulled her into my arms. “My parents fell in love with you before I did. And now that you’re mine, you’re one of us.”

  The elevator car stopped, and the doors opened. I barely had a moment to register that my parents were standing there before my mother rushed into the elevator with her arms wide.

  “Ella!” Mom hugged my wife so hard, Ella got pushed into the elevator’s back wall. They rocked back and forth, laughing as if they shared the funniest, most delightful joke ever told.

  Dad stood in the entrance, hands in his pockets, watching them.

  “Doreen, thank—”

  “No, no,” Mom interrupted Ella, pulling away just a little. “You call me Mom.”

  Dad held the doors open to let them out, and I followed into the house.

  “Thank you, and…” She looked at my father, making eye contact, which I knew was hard for her. The possibility that Dad was delivering on his One Big Thing to me, but without really forgiving us for all the lies, was her biggest fear, and she took it head-on, first thing, like a boss. “I’m so sorry about everything. I understand if you aren’t ready to say it’s all okay. But I’m going to earn your forgiveness.”

  “Before you take another step into my house, know this,” Dad said sternly enough to make my body react.

  The only thing that kept me from getting physically between him and my wife was Ella’s hand, gently keeping me still.

  My father saw the split-second interaction and smirked. “Know this,” he said more softly. “My son should be mad at me. I tried to enforce happiness, and he did what was necessary to protect himself. I brought the lies on myself, on the one hand. On the other hand, if I hadn’t? He wouldn’t have found you, and he wouldn’t be as happy as he is, so…” He shrugged. “It worked.”

  “It did,” I said, putting my arm around Ella.

  “That’s not a cue to do it again,” my mother said to Dad, her voice heavy with consequences. She turned to Ella. “Just tell me you’re happy too.”

  “So, so happy.” Ella pulled me closer.

  I believed her, at least. Three weeks into the real beginning of our real marriage, after an unplanned honeymoon in Palm Springs where we did nothing but fuck and laugh, I believed she was happy. We had years to go, and some of them would be harder than others, but I couldn’t imagine any of them without her by my side.

  “Dinner’s on the east patio,” Dad said, leading us.

  “Which one’s that?” Mom asked, taking his hand to slow him down.

  “The one on the east side of the house.”

  “There are two to the east. The one over the pool or the one over the cliff?”

  “Well, now I’m not sure.”

  The four of us strode at an easy pace, joking about the size of the house, the number of pools and patios, until we found dinner for four. I held the chair out for my wife and kissed her cheek. When I sat and put my hand on hers, I knew I had what my parents had and no less. Ella and I were perfect partners and perfectly in love.

  Marriage was a deep and abiding partnership where two people took on separate roles to build a more complete life together.

  My wife would pull when I pushed, go left when I went right. I wasn’t looking for control, just a unique life with her and for us. That was my choice.

  My first goal was making her happy, and with that in the bag, Crowne Industries would take care of itself.

  Epilogue Two

  ELLA

  Frogtown was a sliver of land on the west side of the Los Angeles River—a dry rift in the city three out of four seasons, with trees and wildlife in the center, and an unruly, fast-moving waterway in winter. Every year—well, into the 1970s—thousands of red-legged toads would leap into the streets, hopping on lawns and shitting on windshields. Toads were miscategorized as frogs, and the name Frogtown stuck even after the riverbed was paved in concrete and the toads stopped coming.

  Things changed. People changed. Sometimes the idea of yourself that you’d nurtured your whole life was shattered, and the pieces glittered in the moonlight.

  “They’re late,” Logan said.

  The GAC’s LA River piece had been slated for sunset, but the sky had been dark for half an hour already. Twitter didn’t have an update for the hundreds of people crowded along the River’s path.

  “That’s what happens when you get the city involved.”

  The GAC was more than half an hour late. They were actually months late. The frogs would have been out and gone already, but the delay was unavoidable. Irma and Amilcar had been caught setting up, and Tasha—who was too savvy by a mile—got the principal of her school to contact the mayor’s office. He pitched it as a free speech project. The city issued permits but demanded changes, and a deposit for cleanup.

  Amilcar wouldn’t come to me for money, but Tasha did, and I demanded to pay for it. I was folded back into the GAC with my friends—one of the many places I belonged.

  Logan pulled me close and kissed my temple.

  I belonged with him too.

  “They better hurry up,” he whispered. “I have a hard-on with your name on it.”

  I turned to him, rubbing the scruff on his chin. “The whole thing, Mr. Crowne?”

  “Every letter’s going to be inside you, Mrs. Papillion.”

  Things had changed. I still set out his slippers, and he still wore them. I saw him in the morning, but also next to me, in our bed. He came home most nights, and when he had a late-night overseas call, he still kept the camera covered.

  Things changed all the time. Sometimes I was the one who didn’t make it home for dinner. Getting Papillion back on its feet wasn’t a small job. But when I worked late, Logan brought takeout to the office for us, and we ate together in the same room where my father had made me set in a sleeve again and again until it was perfect.

  We were separate people, but one and the same, locking our lives together over and over until we were perfect too.

  “New tweet!” Mandy said from beside Logan. “It’s going now!”

  In the darkness of the ravine, a line of green dots lit up.

  “I see it!” I cried.

  The crowd bustled and hummed. Fathers put children on their shoulders, and the green lanterns lifted over the treeline all at once, like little frogs floating into the air, tightly at first, then drifting apart into the sky. Then the paper lanterns fell downward onto the street and the children lifted their arms to catch them.

  A little boy next to us grasped for one, but it bounced off his fingers, over the railing and out of reach. He screamed in disappointment, and his mother had to grab him to keep him from falling over the rail.

  “I have it,” Logan said, catching it in one swift motion. He handed it to the boy.

  “Thank you,” his mother said, then whispered in her son’s ear. “What do you say?”

  “Thank you!” The boy hugged the lantern, crinkling it.

  It was over in five minutes, but like all great art, it lived as an experience to be remembered and shared.

  “That was a good one,” Mandy said, scrolling through her phone. “You guys in for dinner or—” She stared at the screen. “No.”

  �
��Yes,” Logan said, taking my hand. “Amelia’s.”

  “No, no, no, no.”

  “Olivia’s meeting us there,” Logan replied as if Mandy’s denial was directed at the restaurant.

  “What?” I asked, peering at her screen.

  Instagram.

  I recognized Renaldo immediately, then the woman he was kissing as the actress Gertrude Evans. America’s Next Sweetheart. There was no mistaking that picture for a friendly peck on the lips.

  “Mandy…” I laid my hand on her arm to push the phone down, but she pulled away to study the picture like an X-ray as we were jostled by the crowd of people leaving the river path.

  “Well—” Logan started, but I kicked him before he could say he told her so.

  “How could he?” She moved to the DMZ app, where Renaldo and Evans were top of the news, picture after picture. “We just went public last week. Everyone knows. He said he loved me. He promised…” She let her arm drop. Her face contorted into a flinch against an oncoming blow. “This is humiliating.”

  Her chest heaved and she spit out a sob, dropping her phone before emitting a wail.

  I picked up the phone. The glass was cracked.

  Logan put his arm around her, practically holding her up.

  “Oh, look,” one in a cluster of half a dozen girls said, holding up her cell phone, “the homewrecker herself! Say cheese, cunt.” She took a picture.

  Her friends looked up from their phones.

  “Bitch can steal a man,” one of them said, displaying the Instagram photo, a frog lantern looped over her thumb. “But bitch can’t keep him.”

  “Better watch yours, lady,” a tall girl said, pointing at me, then my husband.

  “Watch yourself, you dumb twat, before I—”

  Logan grabbed my arm with the one that wasn’t holding up Mandy. “Let’s get out of here.”

  * * *

  Logan and I had framed our divorce papers and hung them in the kitchen, where we’d met every morning in those first months. I’d started taking them for granted, until Mandy sat at the center island in her yellow T-shirt, pouring white wine as if it was soda.