The Better Liar

by Tanen Jones

  “Stayed in Albuquerque?”

  She nodded.

  “If you had stopped me, you would have been lying to yourself. I like you better when you know what you want. I like you like this.” I cocked my head. “Truthful.”

  “I hated her,” Leslie mumbled. “It felt too big for my body. I pushed it out. I hated her for not wanting us. I hated her when she was there and did nothing, and I hated her when she was gone and I missed her. I was alone with you; I didn’t know how to make you better. And then it was too late.” Her hand rose, and I felt her fingers skimming my hair. “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t want you to be sorry.” My throat felt raw, and I swallowed. “There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

  She receded into her seat. Exhaustion lengthened her features. “Now you know. Everything. Eli. How I’m like her.” She turned her face up at me. “Are you going to kill me?”

  I coughed out a laugh, astounded. “Kill you? What are you talking about?”

  “Like Christine.” She was dull-eyed, exhausted. “I let him cry. When Dave isn’t around, I—I can’t stand it. I used to just go into another part of the house and let him scream. For hours.” She blinked several times. “He’s behind on his language skills, did you know that? Dave is worried about it…It’s because I don’t talk to him when Dave isn’t around. I never told anyone that before. I don’t…I don’t say anything to him. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Leslie, I don’t want to kill you.” I scooted my chair toward hers with a screech. “I want to help you.”

  “Help me?” She searched my face. “How?”

  “You want to leave,” I said. “So let’s go.”

  “I can’t.” The clock ticked on the wall behind her. She shivered. “There’s nothing I can do except stay. That man Frank is in jail. He can’t help me. The whole thing was so stupid. I don’t know why I can’t—” She drew in a breath through her nose. “I mean, everyone does it. Everyone figures out how to be a mother. The whatever-it-is, it kicks in after a while. Maybe when he’s three. I kept thinking that. I kept saying that to myself, but it didn’t work, and I thought if I didn’t do something about it one way or the other I would end up damaging the baby. Eli. That’s how I met Frank…I went to the pawnshop to buy a gun. And he asked me what I wanted it for. And I couldn’t say it was to kill myself, and I didn’t even know if I could kill myself, I just wanted the gun in case…And he saw it on my face. He knew what kind of person I was. He knew I was desperate. I thought…if he can tell, how long until Dave leaves me? And I wished he didn’t have to leave me. I wanted to just disappear for him. But now—now he’ll have to.” Her face creased.

  “He’s not going to leave you.”

  “He will,” Leslie said. “He’ll figure it out. He’ll know that I don’t—don’t feel the right thing.” She looked up. “How could you tell—about Eli?”

  “Only because I know you,” I said. “Leslie, I know you better than anybody.”

  She stared at me, tears drying on her cheeks. “How can you still love me?”

  “Because you know me better than anybody too,” I told her.

  “They’ll put me in a room,” she said. “Like her. They’ll put me under observation.”

  “I mean, those places are better than they used to be. But what’s important is”—I grabbed her hand and squeezed—“I know the truth now. That’s all I wanted. I just wanted to understand what was wrong. You were acting so strange that day in the parking lot when you thought I was dead. I wanted to know why. And now that I do, I can help you.” I caught her eyes. “Say it.”

  “Say what,” she whispered.

  I licked my lips. “ ‘Robin, will you please help me?’ ”

  She looked at our hands. “How?” she said again.

  I smiled and released her. “Not like you were planning, that half-assed attempt. I know a guy. We’ll stage a break-in. That’s so much more believable. No one wants to jack your three-year-old Honda mom-mobile.”

  “At the house?” she said. “No, no—Dave—”

  “Not there,” I said. “Here, silly. Someone’ll break in, take the television and the more valuable records, and knock you out against a wall. Not for real, obviously. But it’ll be a good whack. The neighbors will see you being dragged into a car and driven away. He’ll ditch you on the side of the road, I’ll pick you up, and off we’ll go. Easy as pie. And it won’t cost you forty grand. This is a fifteen-grand job, max. Clery must have known he could rip you off.”

  Leslie scrambled off her seat. “You’re not serious.”

  “Of course I am.” I sat back. “How do you think I keep from getting booked for shit? I know people. Good people.”

  “Where would we go?” She was pacing. The blanket slipped off her shoulders and fell to the floor.

  “To LA,” I said patiently. “After that you can skip for Canada or whatever if you want.”

  “You can get me a fake ID?”

  “Leslie, please listen to yourself. I’ve had fake IDs since I was twelve. It’s not hard.”

  She reached for my arm, just as she had that first night in the hotel room. The same wild look was in her eyes. “How soon?”

  I matched her expression. “Tomorrow. Be here at ten A.M. Tell Dave I went back home to Vegas and say you’re going to finish packing up my room.”

  She sucked in a breath. Tears sprang to her eyes. “I don’t want Eli to grow up like we did.”

  “It’ll be different,” I told her. “Dave is a great dad, and he has about eleven million relatives. He’ll be sad, but he’ll be fine. And we’ll be together.”

  Her voice was high and thready. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. Robin, I…”

  I stood up, almost knocking over my chair, and reached for her. This time she put her head on my shoulder. I felt her face dampen my T-shirt. “You and me,” I said. “All you had to do was ask for my help. And everything is going to be okay.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” she murmured.

  I held her close.

  54

  Leslie

  I asked Robin if she needed a ride, but she said she had one—the rental, maybe, although when I went outside my car was still alone in the driveway. A dozen or so cars lined the street on either side. It was impossible to tell which might be hers.

  It was a Friday, and I should have gone to work, but instead I called in sick again. I drove home on autopilot, the fifty thousand in the envelope beside me in my purse, next to the burner.

  I tried to remember the face of the girl on the bed in Henderson. She’d been thin—so thin. Her open mouth, chin sharp as a knife. People who grew that thin no longer resembled themselves; their skulls peered through their faces. That was what I expected of Robin. The last time I’d seen her in person, she’d been a child. After that, she had deteriorated into missed calls, creditors, drunken messages, like a long, ugly, boring haunting. I’d wished she was dead. I’d wished it.

  When I walked into the house in Henderson, I had expected someone like the girl on the bed, someone who was mostly gone already, bones and memory.

  I hadn’t imagined her the way Mary was—friendly, earthy. The kind of person who would hold your hand in the dark.

  I’d been sitting in my own driveway for several minutes. Belatedly, I shut the car off and went inside, upstairs, my feet carrying me to the guest bedroom where Mary had been staying.

  It was still a mess, just as it had been last night—just as Robin’s room was, I remembered, in the house on Riviera. The yellow dress she’d worn was in a puddle on the floor, the elastic top puckered. Her sheets were wadded at the end of the mattress, streaks of mascara on her pillow. The stub of a thin cigarette lay on the bedside table.

  I’d never touched Robin’s room, but suddenly I was furious with her for leaving it that wa
y—for always expecting somebody else to clean up after her, just as Daddy had expected me to—

  I yanked the sheets from the bed and piled them into the hamper outside Eli’s bedroom. Then the stained pillowcase, the cigarette butt for the trash. I went around gathering up each discarded item of clothing, folding them carefully, even the ruined yellow dress. Every time I picked something up, more cigarette butts were revealed, even in odd places like the floor of the coat closet and under the bed. I swept all of them out with my hands and dropped them into the wastebasket. I hung each damp towel in the bathroom neatly from the rack. Her makeup was strewn across the countertop. I organized her brushes and pencils into one of the travel cases underneath the sink, and wrapped the cord neatly around the curling iron, tucking it back into its drawer. All my bath bombs were gone, and when I looked, I found them piled into her duffel. I left those where they were and picked through the rest of the bag, looking for—something. Evidence.

  How had I missed it? Why hadn’t I wanted to believe it?

  Her battered high heels were in there, the ones she’d worn last night, and a long string of fake pearls, tangled in one of the mesh pockets. At the bottom of the bag lolled one of her pink crystals and a prayer candle, which had rolls of five- and ten-dollar bills inside it instead of wax. I pulled them out and counted them. She had two hundred forty dollars. I rolled the bills back up just as she’d had them before and put the candle back into the corner of the bag.

  The side of the duffel crinkled under my hand. It took me a moment to work my fingers into the lining and pull out the piece of paper without tearing it, my heart pounding. Something she’d hidden. A secret.

  I smoothed out the piece of paper on my lap. It was a receipt—a gas-station receipt, I saw, looking closer, for two packs of Spirits cigarettes. She’d paid with cash at the one just outside my neighborhood.

  I stared at it for a minute. Then I curled into myself, my head on my knees, the receipt crumpling again in my lap. It was so ordinary—such a person thing to do—to stuff a receipt in her bag and forget about it. To take all my bath bombs, like she was stealing the complimentary shampoo at a hotel. To leave her wet towel on the floor, like she’d always done.

  I went over that afternoon in my memory again. We’d been outside on the patio.

  I don’t understand why she can’t do it.

  Do you remember when it snowed?

  When had I gone inside? When had I discovered what she’d done?

  Whatever had been there was rubbed out. For years now, when I reached for my mother’s face, I could only call up images from the photographs I’d seen. I had forgotten it, maybe on purpose, the way I’d forgotten what Robin was like, how it felt to be her double.

  I inhaled and sat up. Then I went over to the bed and retrieved Robin’s folded clothes and the travel bag of makeup, tucking them carefully into the bag, beside her shoes and her necklace. I zipped the duffel and looked over my shoulder.

  It was as if she had never been here.

  * * *

  —

  I had one last night with my new family, before I left with the old. I cleaned the house methodically, with my yellow gloves on, and went to the grocery store, where I bought an entire chicken, several carrots, a bag of pearl onions, a package of cremini mushrooms, and a bottle of wine to replace the one that was currently sitting at the bottom of Mrs. Alderete’s swimming pool. When Dave came home, lugging Eli’s car seat, I was at the stove. “That smells so good,” he said. “I’m starving. Can I have some?”

  “No,” I said, pushing the onions and garlic around the pan. “I’ve barely started.”

  He set Eli’s car seat down with a slightly unceremonious thunk and came over to kiss me. I smiled against his mouth.

  “You look good,” he said, pushing my hair behind my ear. “Happy.”

  “I am happy,” I said. “You brought my baby back.” It was something a better version of me might say. I knelt down next to the car seat. “It’s Eli!” I whispered.

  Eli kicked his legs and screeched at approximately fourteen times the volume I’d used.

  “Yeah, that’s you.” I held his feet and bicycled them in the air. “So strong.”

  Dave wrapped his arms around me from behind. “Pilates so early,” he said, biting my shoulder delicately. “I love you.”

  I leaned back into him, breathing him in.

  “Your garlic is starting to smell weird,” he said after a while. Eli yelled a string of unintelligible syllables. “That’s right,” Dave agreed. “He smells it too.”

  I straightened up. “If you’re hungry, there’s a baguette on the counter. You could slice that early. I left the butter out.”

  “You’ve saved my life,” Dave said. “Can I help make salad?”

  “You’re required to make salad.”

  “Oh, well, then,” he said. “See if I ever do you a favor again.” He went to the drawer and pulled out the bread knife.

  “Tell me what’s on your mind,” I said as he took the bread out of its paper sleeve.

  “Well, I talked to Elaine today,” he said, breaking off the end of the baguette and stuffing it plain into his mouth. Eli babbled to himself in the corner and Dave hustled over to unstrap him from the car seat. “You hungry too, my small auctioneer?”

  Eli squeaked.

  “Well, I don’t think you can have what Mom’s making, because I’m pretty sure that at least half that bottle of wine goes into the stew.”

  “I cooked some of the carrots and chicken before and chopped it up with a little bit of stock. It’s in the fridge,” I put in.

  Dave raised his eyebrows. “Thinking ahead.” He settled Eli in his chair at the table and went to the fridge.

  “You were talking about Elaine,” I prompted him.

  “Oh, right.” Dave nudged me aside so he could put the baby portion in the microwave. “She’s thinking about dating again.” He watched the microwave count down, then opened the door to test the temperature and grabbed the orange plastic baby spoon from the drawer. Eli’s eyes followed it like a beacon as Dave stirred the makeshift stew. “She’s been,” Dave continued, sitting down at the table, “blow on it, Eli, that’s it—no yelling at the table—she’s been in touch with her ex again recently.”

  “Is she going to date him?” I pulled the cork out of the wine bottle, careful not to break it.

  “I think she was considering it. He’s Brody and Tanner’s dad, so she didn’t want to give up the dream.”

  “I thought he left her when she was pregnant.”

  “He did, for some other chick who’s not half as cute. Anyway, he said if they were talking again they should share passwords, and then he went through all her accounts immediately and decided that I’m what the Scientologists would call a suppressive person and I need to be excommunicated—”

  “He’s not a Scientologist, is he?”

  Eli puffed his cheeks out and let a little bit of superhydrated carrot dribble onto his chin. Dave laughed and wiped it away. “Do you see me or your mom dribbling food on our chins for fun? No? That’s because it’s not polite.”

  “Bah gah,” Eli said.

  “You question the system,” Dave replied, pursing his lips. “I can see you were raised by a suppressive person. No, he’s not a Scientologist, just shitty. Whoops. Don’t listen to that, Eli. What I mean is that he is an insecure weasel who thinks having control is the same as having character. So he told her not to talk to me anymore, because I told her to ignore him. Well, that’s not what he said to Elaine. To Elaine, he said I’m obviously secretly in love with her and trying to steal her away.”

  “Could you ever be with Elaine?” I asked from the stove.

  Dave frowned in the middle of sticking the spoon into Eli’s mouth. “Well, we’ll never know, will we?” he said, quirking an eyebrow at me. “Anywa
y, she told him about, uh, a fun activity he could try, and I think that was the last round of him. She’s moving on, finally.”

  “I love you,” I said.

  He glanced up and smiled. “Thanks, baby. Eli loves you too. Look.”

  Eli grinned at him, his face mostly orange.

  “We should take a picture,” I said. “For when he’s older.”

  Dave’s face lit up. “Yes!” He dug out his phone. “Wait, come over here and sit next to him.”

  I left the spoon in the pot and went to the table to crouch next to Eli’s chair. Eli glanced at me and slapped one orange hand onto my face. I yelped.

  “Yeeees,” Dave said, looking at the screen. “I’m so glad we caught that moment. Come here.” He leaned in as if to kiss me, and then licked the carrot off my cheek.

  “Ew,” I said.

  He kissed me on the mouth and I gave in, tasting carrot.

  “What else happened today?” I asked, going back to the stove. The sauce was reducing. Time to put the lid on. I checked the oven temperature.

  Dave thought. “We finished our risk analysis project…I gave a little speech…Oh, Sarah got in trouble.”

  “What for?”

  “What do you mean what for? For dress code. Joanna’s had it out for basically all the women in the department for months. Today Sarah wore jeans with holes in them because it was Friday, but the holes were too far up on her thighs, so now she’s been formally reprimanded for the third time and her case is going to HR. Do you think I’d get formally reprimanded if I wore jeans with holes that high?”

  “I mean, all they’d be seeing is your boxers. Maybe if you wore tighty-whities.”

  Dave laughed. “Would you still love me if I wore tighty-whities?”

  “I’d still love you if anything,” I said.

  “Okay, kiddo, you’re through,” Dave said, wiping Eli’s mouth and hands. “Come say good night to your mommy and we’ll go get a bath. Is there enough time for a bath before dinner?”