Would I Lie to You

by Mary Lou Dickinson

  As she started to look again for the bottle, she could not find it. It must have sunk. Where was it? Sue woke up in a panic. What about the baby? What am I to do with the baby? It was as if she were still sixteen. But the nurse had not let her see her daughter.

  “We’ve taken care of her.” The white uniform had towered over her, the voice disembodied. No warmth, no touch.

  “But she’s my baby,” Sue had cried. “I want to see her once. I want to see her.”

  “It’s better that you don’t, my dear.”

  *

  Martin put a glass of orange juice on the small table on Emily’s side of the bed. He always liked greeting the city as it started to awaken. He had already been up for an hour and left coffee brewing. Emily could only be roused at the very last minute and now she murmured and rolled over.

  “Bye,” she said in a muffled voice.

  He saw the soft sag of her shoulders as she drifted off again.

  “Bye,” he said.

  Long before anyone else would have come in, Martin would be at his office. He would study the case he was taking to court later. When he did get there and settled in, it took over an hour to go through everything he had left on his desk. Then he walked to the outer office to get the blood in his legs circulating again. At the water cooler, he was surprised to see someone sitting on a chair next to it.

  “Here to see someone?” he asked.

  As the young man looked up, Martin was startled. Jerry! he thought. This man could be Jerry.

  “Martin Drew?” the young man asked.

  “Yes,” Martin said. “Did you call to make an appointment?”

  “I guess I should have.”

  Martin sighed. Then it struck him. “You must be Thomas,” he said.

  The young man looked relieved. “Yes,” he said. “Thomas Crossar.”

  Martin thought quickly of his calendar for the morning. He had to go to court, but that was not until the afternoon. And while he had some preparation still to do, he did not have any clients for another hour.

  “Come on into my office,” he said.

  Thomas followed him down the hall and into the large space where a tree just outside the window cast long shadows into the room. Heavy legal binders and books lined the shelves. Leaves dangled down one side from a hanging earthenware pot.

  Thomas looked at a photograph of Emily on a swing.

  “My wife,” Martin said

  “My mom said you went steady in high school.”

  “That’s so.” Martin gestured to a comfortable brown leather armchair across from his desk and pulled one out for himself on the same side.

  “What happened?” Thomas asked.

  “Well, we were young,” Martin said. “She broke it off after a year or so.”

  Thomas frowned. “But she told me you came back.”

  “I did from time to time. My parents lived in Stratford until they died. But I never saw her on any of those visits.”

  Thomas pulled out an envelope. “This was with her papers in a safety deposit box.”

  Martin could see his name on the outside and that the back was sealed with tape. It seemed odd that Joanna would have left anything for him. He had left Stratford for university and only returned occasionally with Emily. Often, he had run into someone he knew on the main street and he might have been told that Joanna had a son, but he had not remembered that. He put the envelope on his desk, not planning to open it until after the young man left.

  “She said you did.”

  “Well, I don’t remember. Why would she say that?”

  “She only told me a year ago that Jerry Reid was my father.”

  “You didn’t know until then? Good grief. What did she tell you?’

  Thomas’s face turned bright red. Martin got up and went to the window. The quiet stretched unbroken. “She told me you were my father,” Thomas finally said in a low voice.

  Martin whirled around. “What?” He could not believe it. What he recalled about Joanna was her unwavering honesty. Even when she had told him they should not go steady anymore, it had been as clear a statement as he had ever heard.

  “I don’t get it,” he said.

  “Don’t ask me,” Thomas said.

  “Well, she told you the truth at some point. And there’s no doubt about that. You look so much like Jerry that were I to see you on the street, I would likely stop you to find out if you were related.” He paused. “But if you thought I was your father, why didn’t you look for me?”

  “I wanted to, but Mom told me you wouldn’t want to see me.”

  Martin sat down again, this time in his chair behind the desk. What was he supposed to say? “I tell you what,” he said. “I have clients this morning and I have to go to court this afternoon.” He held up the envelope. “I’ll try to read what’s in here some time today and perhaps we could meet later.”

  “All right,” Thomas said.

  They decided on a pub Martin knew.

  “Six o’clock?”

  Thomas nodded.

  Martin’s court appearance was on a divorce case with the wife as his client. The husband was still fighting custody. It was not settled that afternoon and the woman was disappointed. He did not blame her; not only was she left in limbo still, the legal bills kept climbing.

  Afterwards, he stopped in a small restaurant nearby where he could sit in a corner undisturbed. Even though he had had enough coffee for one day, he ordered another cup, dubious about opening the envelope Thomas had handed him that morning. Sweat began to form on his upper lip. His heart pounded. Whatever was inside likely was not going to make his life any easier. He slit the envelope open with a jackknife he carried, one he had used since he was a teenager. The single page was plain with only a brief typed message on it and Joanna’s signature at the bottom.

  Dear Martin, he read.

  By now you’ll have met my son. I apologize for having told Thomas for many years that you were his father. I don’t know what I was thinking of. You would have known immediately that wasn’t so. He’s the image of Jerry. And Jerry knew about him, but I didn’t want him to see him. I’m really sorry now Jerry didn’t know him earlier.

  So, Martin thought, he was not going to find out any more than he already knew. What was her point in writing to him?

  Often, I wished I’d listened when you begged me to stay with you. I was too young, I guess. I hope you’ll consider my request to be involved in my son’s life. I hear that you and Jerry have remained friends so likely you would be anyway. But I want you to know that’s also my wish.

  Joanna Crossar

  Martin stared at the letter. It was like a knife in his heart. After all, when they were all in high school, Joanna had been Martin’s girlfriend. Even though it would have been years after that, it was odd to think of Jerry sleeping with her. Why had Jerry never told him? Instead, he was left to pick up the pieces and he did not know how. Glancing at his watch, he saw he would be late for the pub if he did not leave now. All there really was for him to do was to get there and tell Thomas about the memorial.

  A cold wind blew across the streetcar tracks as Martin loped to the stop. Emily would be at home by now. Before he reached the pub, he would call her. The revelations of the day were ones he thought he ought to share with Sue, though he was unsure how to deal with her. Her recent conduct had made him more uncomfortable with her than he had realized.

  After calling Emily and alerting her he might be quite late, Martin joined Thomas at the pub. They each drank a couple of beers and talked about Stratford. Thomas asked some legal questions and it was not long before a stranger would have guessed they had known each other for a long time.

  The waiter stopped by their table and took the empty bottles.

  “Another?” he asked.

  “Thanks, no,” Martin said. “
A hamburger and fries.”

  Thomas ordered also.

  Later, on the street outside the pub, where by then darkness had wrapped itself around the city, Thomas became suddenly awkward.

  “Keep in touch, will you?” Martin said. “You can call any time.”

  “Thanks,” Thomas said, his face relaxing. He shook Martin’s hand and turned to go.

  As he moved out of earshot, Martin took out his cell and dialled Sue’s number. He would say he wanted to drop by, hoping he would be able to deal with however she reacted. At the same time, he continued to bask a bit at the thought of the young man who had sat across the table from him in the pub. While it had been almost too warm near the fireplace, it had been a comfortable spot to chat in private.

  Stopping momentarily, he called Emily again.

  “Just out of the pub,” he said. “And off to Jerry’s house now. I mean, Sue’s.”

  Must be almost a full moon, Martin thought as he stood on Sue’s porch. It was late, but also still very bright.

  When Sue answered his knock, he followed her into the living room.

  “Those are new, aren’t they?” he asked, pointing at photographs of Thomas on the mantel.

  She nodded.

  “I met Thomas,” he said.

  “Really?” She sat down on the sofa.

  “Yes, he came by the office. You gave him my number, didn’t you?” He turned around to look at her, frowning slightly.

  “Yes, of course,” she said. “But I’m surprised he went ahead and called you.”

  Martin walked across the room to the window. He leaned against the sill, staring out.

  “I don’t get it,” he said, without turning around. “Why wouldn’t he? And why would you be surprised?”

  “Well, his initial reaction was disinterest.”

  Martin twisted around to look at her. “He seemed glad to chat,” he said. “I think his mother might have told him about me.”

  Sue reached toward a bowl on the glass table in front of her and took a handful of almonds.

  “Want some?” she asked.

  Martin shook his head. “Did I tell you I dated her in high school?” he asked, continuing without waiting for an answer. “I was heartbroken when she broke it off, but that was years before she and Jerry saw each other again. It might explain why Jerry never told me about his interlude in Stratford or about Thomas.”

  Sue tried to imagine the anger Martin might have felt if he had known about Jerry’s fling and about the pregnancy. She could not, but suspected he would have been concerned about the child and insisted Jerry be involved. Maybe that was why Jerry had never told him.

  “I was stunned by the resemblance,” Martin said. “Even though you’d told me.”

  “You have to see him, don’t you?”

  She recalled her first glimpse outside the church at Jerry’s funeral, the sense that Thomas was someone she knew.

  “Mannerisms as well. The way his head moves to one side when he’s listening,” Martin said, moving his own head in a way Jerry had. “Yet they never saw each other. It’s like being thrown back to my childhood.”

  Sue wondered if Thomas had also gone swimming at the quarry. Probably all the local teenagers had.

  “What did his mother tell him?” she asked.

  Martin drew in his breath and turned toward the window again. His head was lit up by a streetlight that shone through into the room. There were shadows of the plants on the sill and on the rug. Before he spoke again, he moved to lean against the wall where he could look directly at her. “It’s amazing and I can’t even imagine why. But for a long time, she told him I was his father.”

  Sue gasped. “What?” She gathered her wits. “Why on earth would she do that? It must have been obvious to her if he ever found you that you would recognize the resemblance to Jerry immediately.”

  “Oh, yes. And I keep mulling it over, wishing she was still here so we could talk. But she’s not, so we’ll never know,” Martin said. “For one thing, I don’t suppose she thought he’d ever meet me. Or Jerry either, for that matter.” He looked at the photo of Thomas on the mantel again and one of Jerry on the other side of it.

  He hesitated before he spoke again. “Probably when she knew she was dying, she thought it wise to tell him the truth.”

  “Would that Jerry had done the same.” Her voice was low, as if she wanted to speak aloud but at the same time hoped Martin would not hear her.

  He sat down on the sofa. “He didn’t, Sue,” he sighed. “You can be upset. You can be sad. And it won’t matter. He didn’t.”

  “Well, you ought to be upset, even angry. Imagine telling Thomas you were his father.”

  “He’s a neat kid,” Martin said. “I almost wish I was.”

  “Oh God!” She turned and walked to a pair of glass doors that looked out over the small concrete area at the back that was just big enough for a few pots and her bicycle. A squirrel darted through a beam of light across a wire that stretched from the porch to a pole at the end of the yard. Martin followed and stood beside the long oak table in the dining room, bright red place mats on either end.

  “You know what,” he said. “I can’t change anything. If I could, I might try.”

  Sue turned to look at him with tears streaming down her face. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He moved to put an arm around her shoulders until her sobbing lessened. She stood back. “Maybe we can start to plan the memorial now,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “You were going to make a list?”

  He reached into his trousers and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper. “I did get started,” he said. “Have a look at it.”

  3.

  HANS LEFT THE OFFICE EARLY, anxious to get on the road before the heavy traffic. It always took longer in winter to drive back and forth between the farm and the city. Although by March, there was usually less snow and ice. When he had picked Heather up after her flight from London just two days earlier, she was nursing a slight cold picked up on the plane. She had stayed home that day and while he supposed some of it might still be jet lag, he hoped she felt better.

  “I’m glad I went,” she had said. “I think we sorted some things out when I was there.” She had chattered on about her mother’s prescriptions and her father’s painful knee, but he had sensed there was something she did not want to talk about. It was not any prescient knowledge, just intuition derived from his awareness that she had started sleeping closer to the edge of their bed since her return.

  Pulling over to the right lane to exit onto the road north that would take him to the farm, he wondered why he thought it would make a difference to how she felt if he arrived home earlier than usual. Whether it did or not, he felt compelled to have whatever conversation was lurking in the background sooner rather than later.

  As he parked his car over by the fence across from the side door, his dog, Rusty, ran to greet him. The moment he stepped out, the dog jumped up against his trousers.

  “Hey, pal,” Hans chuckled. “Good to see ya.”

  Opening the door, he saw Heather on the telephone. Turning toward him, her frown startled him. He had not thought it had reached a point where she was not only surprised to see him, but not particularly pleased. He saw that being interrupted had put her on the spot somehow.

  “I’ll speak with you another time, Dad.” She hung up then as if she did not want Hans to overhear her speaking with her father.

  It did not make sense to him. Poppa, as he called the older man, always wanted a word with him, too. He could not recall any occasion when she had not handed over the receiver before ending her conversation.

  “How is Poppa?” he asked.

  “Fine.” Without looking at him, she went to the stove and started to stir something in a large pot.

  He had visualized fi
nding her in bed, damp and hot from the bug. Instead, she looked as if she had stayed home for what she would call a “mental health day.” She sometimes did that, using the time to cook or go riding across the fields and down a trail in the backwoods. Now, he smelled the scent of garlic and onions wafting through the air.

  “Then why didn’t you let me say hello?” he asked.

  “Well, we’d already been talking for a while.”

  “Is that a reason?”

  She sighed, turned to put a lid on the pot and walked out of the kitchen up the stairs to their bedroom. If that was the way it was, he would leave her alone. He put his boots on again and went out to the barn. As soon as he opened the door, he was met with the scent of hay and horses. Breathing deeply, he moved to the stalls and patted the mare.

  “Don’t know what’s goin’ on, gal,” he whispered. Heather’s curious behaviour baffled him, but, after all, she was not feeling well. It was likely no more complicated than that.

  A few days later, life having fallen back into the more or less regular pattern of work on the farm and in the city, he had almost forgotten his initial suspicions. It was then that he found a letter on the table in the den.

  Dearest Heather.

  How could he not read it? Open right there as if left for him to do so. He frowned as he read that the writer was sorry not to be able to travel to Canada for a few months. But hoped she would still be there for him.

  Still there for him? Lights exploded in Hans’s head like fireworks. So that was it. There was a man in England. But she had rushed off in the middle of winter as if there were a crisis with her parents. He was mystified.

  The letter ended, All my love, David.

  “David,” he muttered. Who the hell was David? Where had she met this man? Why had he not heard about him? He was so angry by then that he was almost glad he would have time to calm down before Heather arrived. It was much later, after he had showered and had a coffee, when he saw her car turn into the driveway and heard the engine as she drove toward the house.

  She burst in the door, arms full of plastic bags from the supermarket.