The Good Liar

by Catherine McKenzie

  She’d wanted to cry, but instead she’d leaned against his ear and said, “I can’t anymore,” then bolted before he could say anything. When she got inside, she’d left her purse on the floor, resisting the temptation to turn her phone on and wait for the message that was sure to come.

  Kaitlyn passed the high school, turned right, and now she was outside her house. Remembering still how that kiss stayed with her for days. Weeks. The dreams it provoked. What would’ve changed, she wondered, if she’d given in? If they’d done all those things they’d written about? In the end, both their marriages had ended.

  What if, if, if?

  It was after ten. Only a few lights were on in the house. The living room. The den. She could see the flicker of the television through the windows. The lights were all off upstairs. Of course. What was she thinking? That her daughters would come conveniently to the front windows, perfectly lit for secret viewing? Called there by her presence? Those sorts of things didn’t happen in reality. Even in her alternative reality.

  Kaitlyn crossed the street. Her boots were silent on the pavement. She walked up her driveway, then hugged the house the way she’d hugged Cecily’s. She approached the side window to the den. The curtains were pulled back. Joshua never closed the curtains. It was always Kaitlyn who’d closed out the light. Closed out life. She’d had it all in front of her, but she hadn’t wanted it. Or couldn’t reach for it. It amounted to the same thing. She felt like a visitor in her own life, a guest who’d stayed too long.

  Joshua was sitting alone on the couch. An episode of Ray Donovan was playing. They’d started watching it together a few months before Kaitlyn left. Kaitlyn found parts of it too violent. Another casualty of parenthood. Things she used to be able to tolerate easily became hard to watch.

  Kaitlyn leaned in. She caught a few lines of dialogue. It was from the pilot. He was cycling back to the beginning. Was he thinking of her? Wondering if the e-mails she wrote while she sat next to him were the ones he’d read the other day? Matching up the time stamps with events in their life?

  She’d meant to erase all those e-mails. Delete that account. She’d almost made it, too. But she felt like she needed evidence. That it wasn’t all in her head. That what they’d had existed. She wasn’t sure why. So she kept one or two threads. Had kept the account alive. She knew she’d never read them again. And in this last year, to the extent she thought about it at all, she assumed time would do for her what she couldn’t bring herself to do. Erase the traces. Put their messages in the trash where they belonged.

  A shadow shifted in the room, and there was Franny. Or Eileen. She never did find out her real name. She sucked in a cold breath. It was strange to see her in her house. Sitting in her old place. The look of tenderness that crossed Joshua’s face made her question her plan. They’d clearly made up. He deserved to be happy. But the girls. Franny would raise the girls. She was a . . . She wasn’t sure of the diagnosis, but it wasn’t right. She wasn’t right. Kaitlyn had left in part to take her own diseased mind away from her daughters. She couldn’t be replaced by someone far worse.

  Joshua leaned over and kissed Franny. And there it was. The moment she’d also come looking for.

  Her life, through the looking glass.

  INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

  TJ: What did Sherrie tell the police?

  FM: That I killed my parents, of course. Don’t look so shocked. She told you all this already, right?

  TJ: Not exactly.

  FM: Hmm. That’s interesting. Anyway, I didn’t do it.

  TJ: Why would she say you did?

  FM: Because, it’s like I told you. She has it in for me. Always has.

  TJ: But why would the police take that claim seriously, then?

  FM: Because the brakes on my parents’ car failed. So maybe they could’ve been tampered with or something. And I was the bad seed, right? I’d been to that boot camp thing and arrested a few times.

  TJ: How far did the investigation go?

  FM: Far enough. The police questioned me for hours. I was under investigation.

  TJ: Were your parents’ brakes tampered with?

  FM: No! The brake light had been on in my dad’s car for weeks. He was so stingy, he didn’t want to get “taken for a ride” by the mechanic.

  TJ: Just a car accident, then.

  FM: Yeah, but then I’m forever the “suspect,” you know? And Madison’s not that big a town. Everywhere I went, everywhere, people were looking at me funny.

  TJ: So you left?

  FM: Yeah, that’s right. I was sick of being that person. Living in that narrative.

  TJ: Which narrative?

  FM: Me as the bad guy. The antagonist. That’s what I am, right? You know those “learn to write screenplays” ads you always see on Facebook or whatever, with famous writers? I took one of those classes once. Anyway, it talked about how every piece has to have a villain, an antagonist, and I saw your board, the one you have up in the other room, and it’s obvious that’s who I am in this story.

  TJ: Maybe we make our own place in stories.

  FM: In your own story, sure. I agree with that. But I’m not in my story. I’m in yours.

  35

  NIGHT MUSIC

  CECILY

  The last thing I want to do is go to a church and watch a kids’ Irish dancing show, but I’d promised Sara weeks ago that I’d attend her son Ben’s recital with her, and she’s done so much for me this year I don’t feel like I can back out. Besides, if anyone’s looking, I should stick to my routine and show up where I’m expected. These are new thoughts. Before, I never ascribed any real credit to those who might look into my background. But after this afternoon, I can’t feel that way anymore. I know better now.

  A half inch of snow fell this afternoon when I was meeting with Teo. The driving’s dicey, and the entranceway to the church basement is scattered with boots. I add mine to the collection, hang my black coat on a wire hanger next to six others, and pay for my ticket. I pay another ten dollars to enter the wine raffle because: wine. Then I take a program and search the room. Sara’s sitting midway up, glaring across the aisle at her ex-mother-in-law.

  Sara and Bill’s divorce a couple years ago was awful, an example that gave me pause even as my own marriage was collapsing around me. I understood her acrimony, but his family’s wholehearted decision to blame her and turn their backs on her was a puzzle. My own mother might hate Tom, but she’d never have spoken badly about him to the children even if he’d lived. Bill’s mother, on the other hand, regularly denigrated Sara, saying such charming things as, “Your mother should be a personal shopper; she’s so good at spending other people’s money,” and actively encouraged Bill’s paranoia that Sara might take the kids and run away.

  “What’s the witch done now?” I ask as I sit next to her. She’s wearing her hair in a ballet bun, which suits the clean lines of her face.

  “She tried to keep me from coming tonight. Said it was Bill’s night with the kids, and I wasn’t welcome. As if I’m somehow a bad mother for wanting to come to my son’s dance recital in a public venue. What the fuck?”

  “She’s evil.”

  “And to think I used to like her.”

  “I always thought she was batshit crazy myself.”

  She laughs. “Thank God for you.”

  I open the program. “What’s on the bill tonight? Lord of the Dance?”

  “Probably.”

  “And the alcohol is where, exactly?”

  Sara looks sheepish. “Did I say there’d be alcohol?”

  “Pretty sure you did.”

  “Do super-fattening cookies count?”

  I sigh. I could use a drink. “They’re at least going to be wearing cute costumes, aren’t they?”

  “I can guarantee that.”

  “Phew.”

  We lean back in our chairs, those wooden hard-backed kind I don’t think they even make anymore.

  “Where
have you been for the last couple days?” Sara asks. “Feels like forever since we talked.”

  “It’s been busy with the new job and . . . everything.” I wish I could tell Sara what’s going on. I need someone to talk through all this with like a girlfriend, not just a therapist like Linda, and the only person I have is the person who screwed it all up in the first place.

  “That Franny news is crazy. Have you spoken to her? Or Joshua?”

  “Franny, no. Joshua, briefly.” I hesitate, then fill her in quickly on what Joshua found, the e-mails between Kaitlyn and Tom. Surely this much is safe to share.

  “Oh my God,” Sara says several times while I’m speaking and one more time when I’m finished.

  “I think I used some more colorful words.”

  “That is . . . I don’t even know what that is.”

  I look down at my program. There is, in fact, going to be a Lord of the Dance starring her son.

  “I’m having trouble processing this,” Sara says.

  “Join the club.”

  “She always seemed so innocent.”

  “Did she?”

  “I thought she was a prude. Remember that time when I was telling the story about”—she lowers her voice—“my one-night stand with that guy from yoga?”

  “You guys never got along, though.”

  “And now I know why.”

  “You think you saw something in her I didn’t?”

  “You don’t?”

  The Irish-dancing teacher takes the stage. She’s in her seventies but still has the upright carriage of a dancer. She’s wearing a floaty hippie dress, and she thanks us all for being here through a tinny microphone. This is their most important fund-raiser of the year, and they have lots of dancers to send to the Irish-dancing competition in Dublin. Please eat a lot of cookies. Ha-ha-ha. She leaves the stage, and the curtains part. Four tiny girls and Sara’s son Ben are standing in the middle of the barren stage in glittering green costumes. They’re adorable.

  “I haven’t even told you the best part,” I hear myself say.

  “What did you say?”

  “I haven’t . . .” The music blares, and the kids start to clomp their feet on the floor. They’re off the beat but impressive nonetheless for six-year-olds.

  “I’ve got to record this,” Sara says, getting up with her phone.

  She walks to the stage. I watch her ex, Bill, who I used to be friends with. When things turned nasty, Tom and I ended up taking sides. But when they’d first broken up, Bill had moved into the mother-in-law’s suite they’d installed above their garage. He’d slip into the house every morning to be there for the kids at breakfast. It was that act that kept me from hating him. I’ve told Bill this, too, but that doesn’t keep him from glaring at me as he walks past my seat. Hate is such a weird emotion, and contagious, apparently.

  The music ends as the kids clack their final clack. Ben raises his hands above his head in victory as the girls crouch around him looking up in adoration, and I shudder at the stereotypes that are being inbred so young.

  Sara returns to her seat. Only twelve more numbers to go.

  “Ben looks like Bill,” I say.

  “He does.”

  “Is that hard?”

  “Is it hard for you when the kids look like Tom?”

  “Sometimes.” A tear slips out, and Sara pats my hand gently.

  “I feel like this conversation might need more alcohol than this church basement can provide,” she says.

  “You have no idea.”

  “What were you saying before? What’s the part I don’t know?”

  “I’m not sure you’d even believe me if I told you.”

  “Try me.”

  The music starts again as some older girls with their hair in ringlets take the stage. Their costumes are stiff with embroidery. Sara’s told me how much those costumes cost, and she’d thanked her lucky stars she had only sons.

  “Not here,” I say.

  “Come by later? I think there are still some good bottles in the wine fridge above the garage. I think Bill was hiding them from me when he was living up there.”

  A light bulb goes off. Maybe Sara can solve two problems at once.

  “I’ll try but . . . This might sound crazy, but can I borrow that room above your garage?”

  “Why?”

  “I need to hide something there.”

  • • •

  Several hours later, I’m up in my room, going through my nightly routine. As I lather my face in the same cream I’ve used for twenty years, I eye Tom’s toothpaste lying on the counter. His toothbrush is still in its holder, charged up for its next use. His comb and brush and razor are all here, too, keeping me company like they do every night. Why am I holding on to these things? I always told myself it was for the children, so they wouldn’t know or guess how things were between us. But maybe I was the one who couldn’t accept it.

  I pull the garbage can from under the sink and sweep my arm across the counter, collecting toothpaste, toothbrush, etc., all the things Tom left behind. It makes a satisfying clang as it hits the sides of the metal container. I open the medicine cabinet and empty that, too, of the expired medications and the special dental floss he used. I should dispose of this properly, in a safe manner, but right now putting it in the trash is what I need to do.

  I finish up the bathroom—dandruff shampoo, be gone!—and walk to our closet. I open the doors, and my energy dissipates. A lifetime of Tom’s clothes stares back at me. This is hours of work. I should let the kids participate, deciding what they want to keep, if anything, and make a thing of it, a ceremony. Or maybe I’ll tell them to pick one thing to remember him by and then call a charity to come and pick it all up. Some of these suits might be worth something to a charity shop.

  I hear a car door slam. I look out the window. It’s Cassie, running up the front walk as a car drives away. I check the clock. It’s after ten, way past curfew even if she’d asked me if she could go out. I listen to her shuffle up the stairs.

  “Cass,” I say, “come in here.”

  She walks into my bedroom looking sheepish. “Sorry, Mom.”

  “Did you sneak out?”

  “Just to right outside. So technically, I didn’t even leave the property.”

  “Technically?”

  “Okay, I totally did. But Kevin wanted to talk.”

  Her eyes are bright, and she’s wearing lip gloss that’s partially faded away. I know that look, the look of a girl who’s been kissed.

  “Oh, honey.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom. It wasn’t a big deal, and I would’ve asked you, but I thought you might say no and . . .” She sits down on the edge of the bed. She touches her lips with her fingertips. “He kissed me.”

  I stifle the urge to call this boy’s mother and tell her to keep her son away from my child. Tom. These are the times I need Tom. This is why I let him move back in, because doing this without him, watching them grow up and change and experience all the firsts they still have to experience is too much for me to do alone.

  “Was it nice?” I ask, trying to keep my voice even.

  “You’re not freaked out?”

  “Of course I’m freaked out. I want to strangle this kid. I’m trying to be the cool mom. How’m I doing?”

  She stands up and trips into my arms. “You’re doing great.”

  She buries her head in my shoulder. We’re the same height now, and sometimes when I look at her it’s like flipping through one of the photograph albums my mother curated so lovingly. My first kiss was from a boy named David. He stole it at a school dance.

  “I miss Dad.”

  “Me, too, honey. Me, too.”

  “You do?”

  “Of course.”

  “Even though—” She stops herself. She doesn’t have the right words yet to express what was going on with her father and me, even the little she knows, and I’m not about to tell her what happened between him and Kaitlyn.

  C
an what Kaitlyn said be true? That they had a digital relationship that never went beyond one stolen kiss? And even if it is, is it better that Tom let me think the worst of him? Or did he know that even if he’d told me the truth, it was too much to forgive? That the fact that he’d participated in it at all, had sought it out, showed him something in us that was broken that he didn’t want to take the time to fix? Though he did try to tell me. He did, and I didn’t want to hear it. He could’ve tried harder, he could’ve persisted, but he let it go when I asked him to. Whose fault is that?

  “Even though, nothing,” I say. “I’ll always love your father. No matter what happened between us. I spent more of my life with him than without him. And he gave me you and your brother. I can’t imagine what my life would’ve been like without him.”

  “But then you had to learn.”

  “We all did. But we’re doing okay, aren’t we? You got kissed today. Things can’t be so bad.”

  She smiles. “Do you think that means he likes me?”

  “I sure hope so.”

  She pulls away, confused. I watch the insecurity of a dating girl flit across her face. This little twerp has already hurt her, and there’s nothing I can do about it but stand back and watch.

  “What about Teo?” Cassie asks.

  “What about him?”

  “I heard you and Aunt Kaitlyn talking about him. Is he going to help you?”

  “You shouldn’t be listening in on conversations.”

  “How would I ever learn anything, then?”

  “You could ask.”

  “And you’ll tell me?”

  “Yes. I told you before, if I can answer, I will.”

  “So tell me.”

  I pat the bed, and she sits down with me. “Teo’s going to help us figure out who Franny is. She’s been lying and tricking people, and we want to put a stop to that.”

  “To get money? Is that why she did it?”

  Was that what this was all about? A payday for Franny? But if so, why would she marry Joshua? She could just file her claim and be done with it. Take her money and run back to wherever it was she came from. Sticking around didn’t seem like Franny. But then again, I clearly don’t know Franny at all. I know someone she invented to get access. She’d felt familiar because she’d told me what I wanted to hear. Like all good confidence men, she knew how to extract the information she wanted, then turn it back on the source so it felt like they knew things they didn’t.