The Good Liar

by Catherine McKenzie

  TJ: Do you think . . . I know you were eight, but was that when you started thinking about looking for her?

  FM: Oh, absolutely. That’s when I became a little Nancy Drew.

  5

  LOOK AT THIS PHOTOGRAPH

  CECILY

  I suppose there’s a time in everyone’s life where you discover you’re a fool. Sometimes, maybe, it’s a slow revelation. For others, there’s a moment when it becomes obvious. In my case, I can tell you the precise date and time. I even have a text to prove it. It arrived at 2:22 p.m. on my twentieth wedding anniversary.

  I’d been running around frantically all day trying to find the perfect outfit for the trip to New York Tom and I were taking to celebrate. Making sure my mother had the list of all the things Henry couldn’t eat because of his allergies, arranging for carpooling for Cassie’s and Henry’s activities throughout the weekend, and ticking items off the long list I’d been working on for weeks, as if making my family function for a weekend without me required the same level of planning as a minor invasion. It all sounds so stupid now, like that point Teo made about the furniture in our house.

  None of it was necessary, but it felt like it was at the time.

  • • •

  After two hours of questions, I ask Teo if we can take a break.

  “Could we stop for the day, actually? My head is splitting.”

  “Of course.” Teo turns off the camera and starts to efficiently pack it away.

  I like that about him. He’s compact. His equipment fits into a reasonably sized bag and consists of his camera, a tripod, and a boom mic that folds out like the protractor set I had in high school. His body is compact, too, no extra flesh but not any extra muscle, either. Proportional. He seems to take up less space than Tom, who was always the center of attention in any room he occupied.

  “I should’ve noticed the time,” he says. “It’s almost six.”

  I noticed every minute going by, counting down until I could reasonably say “enough” for today. I haven’t felt this anxious in months. I wanted to jump out of my body and land somewhere soft, white—oblivion. But now that the interview’s over, the feeling falls away.

  “It’s fine.” I stand stiffly.

  “You all right?”

  “Just stiff. I’m a casualty of a lifetime of running. I shouldn’t do it anymore.” In fact, I haven’t run in a year, but that hasn’t helped the problem, only exacerbated it.

  “I couldn’t ever do it.”

  “You look like a runner.”

  “Do I?”

  I smile, then lower my eyes. Our interactions are often like this, full of undercurrents. Not flirting, exactly, but not strictly professional, either. Sometimes he looks at me like he’s looking at me now, and it feels like a caress, one I want to prolong.

  It’s been so long, you see, since I’ve been touched.

  “You’re probably one of those men who stays slim no matter what you eat.”

  “That’s possible.”

  He tucks his camera into his bag and zippers it closed. Whatever part of myself I gave up today is safe inside there, too.

  “I’ve noticed, you know,” I say.

  “Noticed what?”

  “You don’t like it when I ask you personal questions. Which is . . . I don’t know . . . ironic?”

  “You’re probably right.”

  Cassie wanders in. She’s changed out of her funeral clothes and into a tight-jeans-and-T-shirt combination I would never have had the confidence to wear at her age. Part of me wants to shield her from the attention dressing that way might bring, and another part is proud that she feels comfortable enough to do so.

  She’s had a crush on Teo ever since she met him a couple of months ago when he started coming to the house for preinterviews. A teacher crush, or perhaps it’s a my-dad-is-gone-forever crush, nothing sexual despite the provocative clothing, but a gap that needs to be filled. Though she’s not as vocal about it as Henry, she misses Tom, misses how he used to watch her soccer games with intensity but never embarrassed her by yelling like some of the other dads. How he went over her essays for English with a special red pen he bought for that purpose, and how proud he was when she brought home an A. The horror movies they used to love to watch together on Saturday nights while they made fun of how I screamed at every squeak of the floorboards.

  “What’s ironic?” Cassie asks.

  “The expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect,” Teo says. “See also: ‘A state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result.’ ”

  “What?”

  “It’s the definition of irony.”

  Cassie hugs herself, her thin arms pale against her dark shirt. “Oh, ha. But that’s not what you were talking about.”

  “You’re right,” I say. “But it’s none of your beeswax.”

  “Jeez, Mom. Where do you get these expressions?”

  “Your grandmother.”

  “My mom said that, too,” Teo says. “So the question is, why aren’t the kids today using it?”

  Cassie laughs and asks him if his mom’s still alive. He says that she is. She starts to poke around his equipment, asking questions. I’m glad to see that whether or not he’s aware of her interest, Teo treats Cassie appropriately, telling her how his camera works and then what the boom mic is for.

  “Are Henry and I going to be in the documentary?”

  “No,” I say quickly.

  “Good. Hey, can Teo stay for dinner? I’m making my special spaghetti.” She lifts up her hair, a slippery, straight length I’ve never been able to get into any hairstyle since she was little, and loops a hair tie from her wrist around it so it stands up straight from the top of her head like a question mark. “Please, Mom?”

  “You’re cooking?”

  “I cook. You taught me enough times.”

  “Well, in that case . . . Will you stay, Teo?”

  “I’d love to.”

  • • •

  At dinner, my kids ask Teo all the questions I’ve wanted to without any prompting.

  “How did you get into filmmaking?” Cassie says.

  “I wanted to be an actor when I was a kid. I got a few small roles and realized sitting around, waiting for the action to start, was boring. It’s better to be in charge.”

  “Why documentaries?” Henry says.

  “The first job I got out of film school was on a documentary, and there was something about it, the stories I could uncover, how life was more complicated and surprising than anything you could make up. It grabbed hold of me.”

  “Why are you making a documentary about my mom?”

  “It’s not about her, exactly. Not only, anyway.”

  “It’s about Triple Ten, right?” Cassie says. “Like, one year later and how everything’s changed but kind of stayed the same?”

  “That’s a great way of putting it. I like to think of it as my love letter to Chicago and everything we went through that day. And your mom, and a few others, have been nice enough to agree to help me tell that story.”

  “That’s cool.”

  “Thank you. This dinner’s cool, too.”

  Cassie flushes. She’s done an admirable job. She defrosted several portions of the lasagna I swore I’d never eat again, chopped them up, and heated them in a skillet, simmering it all in a can of crushed tomatoes and fresh basil she made into a chiffonade, wielding the knife expertly. She even created a passable Caesar salad and got Henry to make garlic toast, the one thing he knows how to reliably cook, despite the years of lessons I’ve given to both of them.

  “Where did you grow up?” Henry asks.

  “Chicago. My mother still lives in the same apartment in the Loop. But the Loop wasn’t the Loop back then. We were comfortable but not rich.”

  “We’re rich,” Henry says.

  “Henry! That is s
o embarrassing.” Cassie lifts the hem of the apron she’d found hanging in the pantry and covers her face. She always does that when she watches a TV show or a movie if a character does something that makes her uncomfortable. She lifts her shirt and shields her eyes, as if she could cover up their awkward behavior with a bit of cloth.

  “Why?” Henry says. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? Look at this house.”

  Henry waves his hand around. We’re in the formal dining room, with its white wainscoting that goes up a third of the wall and the robin’s-egg-blue paint above it. The table’s a shiny mahogany, not an heirloom but made to look like one. The chairs are mahogany, too, and their seats match the paint and the rug on the floor with its variations on an oriental pattern it took us months to find.

  The rest of the house is to the same standard; Tom and I spent enough of our lives making sure that was the case. We both contributed our time and money to the project. Neither of us had much when we started out other than our degrees, which were paid for by scholarships and odd jobs. We both worked hard to make something of ourselves, to have nice things. Tom building up his software company, me managing Knife & Fork, one of the more successful restaurants in the city, where I worked for fifteen years before it closed.

  “It’s a nice house,” Teo says.

  “We’re lucky to live here,” I say.

  “Have you asked everything you wanted to, kids?”

  Cassie giggles.

  “This is so interesting to me,” I say.

  “Oh?”

  “Normally, I can’t get so much as a detail. He must like you guys.”

  I’d tried to find out everything I could about Teo before agreeing to the documentary. His take, his intentions, the research he was doing. Teo was polite but evasive. “Trust me,” he’d said, and I decided to do so, which meant there were important things about Teo I didn’t know.

  Was he a storyteller or a man looking for a story?

  I was betting on the first, but I was preparing myself for the second.

  6

  RUNAROUND

  KATE

  Kate forced herself awake at six thirty as her alarm switched on to Mix 96. Today was the day. One more day, and she’d be past the worst of it. She had a plan for how to do that, even. Written down on a scrap of paper and then burned in the backyard in the outdoor fireplace. Get up. Act like everything’s normal. Avoid screens. How hard could that be?

  Her morning routine was quick. She had no one to dress up for. The twins would mar anything nice she wore in minutes. She preferred these new, easy clothes anyway. The casualness she had toward her appearance. Before, she’d looked at the stay-at-home mothers in their perpetual yoga outfits and thought uncharitable thoughts. Now she understood the practicality of it. Spending the day with children required flexibility. Fabric that would stretch with you.

  Upstairs in the kitchen, Kate made sure the espresso maker was brewing Andrea’s and Rick’s separate coffee orders. If—when—she left this job, Kate could easily get a job as a barista. She pulled ingredients from the freezer for the breakfast smoothies they all drank so she’d be ready to pop them into the blender the moment the first of the Millers appeared. Then she set about making sandwiches for the boys. Part of her plan for the day was to take them to Westmount Park. Out of the house and away from the temptation of the TV on the wall.

  The sun shone through the wide windows that looked out over the backyard. It was a bit barren now that the leaves had tumbled from the trees. The wind tossed a forgotten balloon around. The large rubber swing on the play set was swaying back and forth as if a child’s legs were propelling it.

  She glanced at the clock on the microwave, wondering if she had time to divert Rick’s latte order for one of her own. It wasn’t even seven yet, and Kate was already tired.

  Back in Chicago, being a mother had been part of Kate’s identity. There wasn’t a day that went by that wasn’t shaped by her children. Their needs and wants elevated above her own. But now she wasn’t a mother; she was a mother’s helper. A nanny. The babysitter, as Andrea called her because she thought it sounded less pretentious. Less like she was dependent on Kate for attending to the basic needs of her children. A babysitter was someone more temporary. Someone you called in when you had somewhere else to be. Not the help. Only, Kate wasn’t someone who was called on in an emergency. She was always there. She was upstairs every day by seven—earlier if she heard the twins clattering around the kitchen. She crawled under her expensive sheets some twelve to fourteen hours later—later still if Andrea and Rick, a lawyer who wasn’t home much, had an evening event.

  Kate wasn’t complaining. This was what she’d signed up for. She’d seen enough from some of the more affluent mothers in her old neighborhood to know what it would be like. She had no illusions that the two hours she was supposed to have off every day would be respected. And she was fine with that. Scrambling after the twins kept her from having time to think. When she fell into bed at night, she was so exhausted she usually went right to sleep.

  It was ideal in a lot of ways. The job came with a comfortable bed and food. She never had time to spend the money she was making. It was accumulating nicely in the box she kept tucked away behind one of the ceiling tiles. But the thing she hadn’t counted on, the thing she’d known on some level but had never accounted for, was how being with the twins would enhance her memory of her children rather than help it fade.

  “Aunt Kwait,” Willie said, skipping into the kitchen in his cow-covered footie pajamas. This was what he called her, a vestige of the babysitter thing or perhaps the white thing. She didn’t look like the other nannies, so she’d been passed off as an aunt of sorts. “I am so happy to see you.”

  “I am so happy to see you, too, Willie. Did you have a good sleep?”

  “Good, I think.”

  They had the same conversation every morning.

  Willie climbed up onto one of the bar stools, being careful to reach up and place his favorite stuffed bear on the counter first. Kate watched him closely, ready to spring into action if needed. A few weeks ago, when Willie had added this independent move to his morning routine, he’d lost his grip and hit the hardwood floor with a sickening thunk. “I okay,” he’d said before Kate could get the words out. “I not mean to do that.”

  Willie made it up safely this morning. Kate tucked his chair in as he recovered his bear and held it to his chest.

  “What would you like for breakfast?”

  “Pancakes?” he asked hopefully.

  “Sorry, muffin. It’s not the weekend.”

  He looked momentarily defeated, then said with more resignation than Kate thought a three-year-old should, “Green smoothie.”

  “Correct!”

  Willie giggled. He knew Kate would put as little of the “nasty” green parts into the smoothie as she could get away with and add an extra splash or two of organic apple juice.

  “You know what, Aunt Kwait?”

  “What’s that?”

  Willie beckoned her closer. She bent over his silken head.

  “You are my bestest friend.”

  “What about Steven?” Kate asked, referring to his twin. “I think he’s your bestest friend.”

  “No, uh-uh. He not share his LEGO.” Willie’s water-blue eyes turned dark and serious. “Don’t you want to be?”

  Kate wrapped her arms around him. She was assaulted by his little-kid smell—organic children’s shampoo and warm blankets. That was all it took to kick her back. Flash after flash, like a sped-up montage in a movie of her life. Playing in leaves in the fall. Bath time. Pulling sweaters over their heads and pretending they were stuck. The way their little hands curled around hers.

  “Are you crywing, Aunt Kwait?”

  INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

  TJ: What do you mean by “a little Nancy Drew” exactly?

  FM: I was always looking for evidence. Curious. Like her. I read all those books. I bet you read the Hardy Boys or something.r />
  TJ: Nope.

  FM: Well, my parents got all these old Nancy Drew books at a garage sale when we were small. I think we had a hundred of them.

  TJ: So you started looking for your mother when you were eight?

  FM: Basically. There wasn’t much I could do then, but yeah, that’s when I started looking. I had this book, like a journal? I hid it under my bed so my parents couldn’t find it. I called it my book of clues.

  TJ: What kind of clues did you put in there?

  FM: Hints my mother would drop sometimes. Like what the hospital had been like where they went to pick me up, though she wouldn’t tell me where it was. And she had a picture of me that was taken in the hospital, before, you know. Before my mother gave me up. I stared and stared at that picture. I even went over it with a magnifying glass.

  TJ: So you didn’t have any other information about your mother? Only that you were born in Chicago?

  FM: No. The adoption system . . . Well, I know there’s been some changes over the years because of all the advocacy groups, but when she gave me up? It was closed adoption all the way. I mean, I guess those records are somewhere, right, they’d have to be. But sure as shit they weren’t going to let me look at them. And once my parents died, I couldn’t even count on them to help me.

  TJ: How old were you when they passed away?

  FM: Eighteen. A stupid accident. My dad fell asleep at the wheel.

  TJ: I’m so sorry.

  FM: Thank you. It was . . . a blow. I was an orphan, but yet not, you know? It felt very . . . strange.

  TJ: But you did end up finding your mother? Despite the closed adoption?

  FM: Yeah, through one of the advocacy groups I belonged to. I can’t say much more than that . . . I want to protect their anonymity.

  TJ: Is that because the way you found her was illegal?