The Truth Commission

by Susan Juby

  “So we’re supposed to notice but not ask?” said Dusk.

  By this time Aimee had begun a series of attention-getting stretches. She looked as though she’d been gardening or bricklaying for eight hard hours and had a crick in her spine.

  A lot of her posturing seemed directed at us. Which made sense, because we were the only people around. We had arrived thirty minutes early because we came in my truck, which has a tendency to flood and stall, so we build extra time into every trip.

  “We should say something,” Dusk whispered.

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Tell her she looks nice. She’s probably nervous. She’s made all these changes and we’re the first ones on-site for inspection.”

  “It’s not an inspection,” I said. “It’s school.”

  “Same thing,” said Dusk.

  “We need to be more specific,” said Neil, ignoring me. “We should tell her we think the work is excellent. Top-notch and first-rate. Madonna-caliber work.”

  “People don’t want their fakery exposed,” I said.

  “I think a lot of the time, they do,” said Neil.

  “We live in an age of unparalleled falseness,” said Dusk. Her voice had taken on that rebar quality it gets when she’s about to take a stand on some issue. “And I for one have had enough. I’m going to say something.” She stood, and her rotted shoes made a squelching sound.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” I said.

  Dusk repositioned the candy cigarette in the corner of her mouth.

  “Dusk, you’re the wrong person for the job,” I whispered. “You’re too perfect.” My gaze slid over to Neil.

  “Are you suggesting that I’m less than a total Adonis?” said Neil. Then he laughed softly to himself. Neil has longish hair that he slicks back with just a hint too much product. He’d unbuttoned his dress shirt, and the T-shirt was cut low so it showed just a touch too much chest. There are days when Neil wears a silk scarf. Neil kills me, but in a good way. He acts like he has Teflon self-esteem, even though he’s one of the most sensitive people I know. His father is a local developer with a shady reputation and a relaxed approach to everything, including parenting his only child.

  The first time Dusk and I went over to his house, right after he moved to town last September, Neil greeted us at the front door in a white terry après-swim robe. He’d laid out a tray of pickled onions and pimento-stuffed olives skewered with toothpicks. He asked if we’d like gin and tonics. We said we were driving our bikes, so he gave us cucumber water instead. Neil, Dusk, and I have been inseparable ever since. It’s only been a year, but it feels comfortingly like forever. Anyway, back to that first truth telling.

  “There are dynamics to consider here,” I said.

  That was my role in our little threesome. Dynamics considerer. Consequence worrier. Diplomat. Dusk was in charge of our moral compass, passing snap judgments, peer pressuring, and making bold pronouncements. Neil dealt in unconditional acceptance and appreciation of everyone, as well as unpredictable areas of expertise and jokes, mostly aimed at himself.

  “Fine,” said Neil, completely unflustered. “I’ll do it.”

  By this point, I was no longer certain what we were doing or why, but Aimee was preening so hard that I was concerned she’d damage the vest that a unicorn baby had probably died for.

  “Go!” whispered Dusk.

  And so Neil got up, adjusted the enormous collar of his dress shirt, and shoved his entire candy cigarette into his mouth. We watched him stride over to Aimee. When he spoke, he was too far away for us to hear what he said.

  Aimee’s head reared back. Her posture stiffened.

  More words from Neil, whose hands were shoved deep in the pockets of his polyester pants. His tan was terrific, because this summer, in addition to painting a series of pictures featuring Dusk, he’d decided to revive what he called the “lost art of sunbathing.” He’s also working on what he calls a “disturbing hint of a mustache.” Disturbing on anyone else. Endearing on him.

  As we watched, Aimee’s shoulders relaxed. She leaned toward Neil. Touched his shoulder. She laughed and started to talk. Words, indistinguishable words, poured out of her. At the end of the conversation, she put her hand on his shoulder again and she kissed him. I swear it’s true. Neil had confronted a girl about her new rhinoplasty and freshly installed breast implants and in return he received a kiss on the cheek.

  He sauntered back, reverentially holding a hand to the cheek Aimee had kissed.

  “She had the procedures done in July because it’s her dream to become a broadcast journalist on a major network. She’s always wanted a nose job, even though her mother told her that a nose job ruined someone named Jennifer Grey’s career. It took some doing for her parents to agree to the implants because there was concern her chest was still growing but she talked them into it and she feels terrific and is glad we live in a time when God’s mistakes can be fixed.”

  “You’re a one-man truth commission,” said Dusk, admiring.

  “The truth shall set us free,” said Neil.

  “Will it?” I asked. But no one was listening.

  “My refreshing directness startled her at first. But it also allowed her to talk about the most important news in her life right now. We’re going for coffee later and she’s going to give me more details.” Neil was immensely pleased with himself. “Aimee and I are now on a different plane, relationship-wise.”

  “You have no secrets between you,” I said, ignoring the twinge of jealousy I felt; Aimee would probably end up being his next muse. Not that I’m keen to be featured in anyone’s art. I’ve had more than enough of that.

  “I want to ask someone the truth,” said Dusk. “I think truth is what has been missing in my life. Well, it’s one of the things that has been missing, along with a sense of purpose and positive self-esteem.”

  Neil faced us.

  “I believe this could be our new spiritual practice,” he said. “Each week, each of us will ask someone else the truth.”

  “It is our destiny to bring some much-needed truth into this world of lies,” said Dusk.

  And so the Truth Commission was born.

  A Word About My Sister

  15I’m not that keen to get into it, but this story would be incomplete without one major piece of background. As many people already know, I have a sister. She’s a famous graphic novelist and, to make a long story extremely short, she made me and my parents famous without our permission. The end.

  Ha. Just kidding.

  My sister, Keira Pale, is one of those people who seems to exist on a different plane. Maybe it’s an artistic genius thing. G. P. Academy is full of people like Keira. People who go so deep inside themselves, especially when they’re working, that they seem like sleepwalkers when they emerge. Traces of unconsciousness seem to cling to them, lending them an otherworldly sheen.

  I can’t tell you how many times I was sent to find Keira when it was time to eat/go to bed/graduate from high school only to find her deep in conversation with the neighborhood can collector, or out in the backyard staring intently at the moon at 3:30 in the morning, or watching some drama unfold between warring ants in the school parking lot twenty minutes after the bell rang. I believe the technical term is “space cadet.”

  But she is the kind of space cadet many people aspire to be. My sister is fully alive to each moment and each observation.

  When I was younger, living with Keira was like living with a fairy. It was never her intention to be hurtful or destructive. She was just doing what came naturally to her. Telling stories and turning the lives around her into fantastical creations. It wasn’t personal. Or so I kept telling myself, even after my sister started publishing her books.

  Backstory Alert!16

  My sister’s complicated, so I think the only way to help you unders
tand her is through what we learned in class is called an infodump. Dear Reader: steel yourself for a taste of death by exposition.17

  My sister was part of the first group of kids who went through the Green Pastures Academy of Art and Applied Design. As a tenth grader, she’d already begun to write, illustrate, and self-publish installments of her graphic novel series, the Diana Chronicles.

  The first volume is called Diana: Queen of Two Worlds. Diana, the protagonist, is a suburban girl who lives with her “painfully average” family, which includes her high-strung, easily overwhelmed mother, her ineffectual father, and her dull-witted, staring lump of a sister. Diana, who looks a lot like my sister, also happens to be the queen of Vermeer, a more beautiful or at least more melodramatic alternate universe named after my sister’s favorite painter. Vermeer can only be accessed through a closet.18

  In Vermeer, everything is the same as on Earth but amplified a hundredfold. In Vermeer, Diana’s mother is politically and emotionally manipulative and Game of Thrones all over the place to keep the family in power. Diana’s father is still unaccomplished, but he’s also unscrupulous and has a passion for exotic foodstuffs and inappropriate relationships with half the household staff (male and female), as well as several of his first cousins. In Vermeer, as on Earth, Diana is burdened with a flaccid and enormous blob of a sister who is the target of every villain who passes through town. The sister (Flanders) is the especial favorite of cads and rakes who want to align themselves with the House of Vermeer.

  In Vermeer, Diana has to keep her family from imploding due to their own stupidity, avarice, and laziness. It’s a matter of multiverse importance. If the House of Vermeer falls, Vermeer will descend into war (always likely). Vermeer is Earth’s twin, which means that as Vermeer goes, so does the Earth. Or something. I’ve always gotten a little tripped up on that part of the story.

  The Diana Chronicles are funny and complicated and ironic. Diana’s a bit of a bitch in both universes. She’s rude to her family and half checked out, partly because she’s so exhausted by the demands placed on her in Vermeer, where she spends half her time. She needs to be left alone to recuperate when she’s in the Earth realm, but her mundane Earth family keeps interrupting. They sense her specialness and want a part of it.

  The first chapters of the Diana Chronicles were photocopied and sold online and stocked in a few specialty stores. It gained an instant and devoted following. The combination of extremely personal stuff about Diana’s life on Earth and the over-the-top violence and politicking in Vermeer made it hugely compelling to a lot of people. Her agent, Sylvia Kalfas, discovered her and got her a book deal with Viceroy, who put the chapters together into Volume 1. The money from that first book deal, which was serious, went into a trust administered by Sylvia and my parents until Keira turned twenty. The Los Angeles Times called the first Chronicle “groundbreaking and hilarious.” The Globe and Mail said the “combination of autobiography and fantasy make it an intoxicating entertainment.” The Guardian said it was “wildly inventive.” Readers couldn’t get enough. People mentioned Maus, which is what people always talk about when they talk about massively popular graphic novels. (The Chronicles have less than nothing to do with Maus. Just to be clear.)

  Keira had published three Chronicles by the time she left for college, which was the same year I entered Green Pastures. Each new Chronicle was more popular than the last.

  This is probably the time to bring up the fact that Diana’s family members look a lot like me and my mother and father. They are exaggerated versions, but identifiable. Of all of us, I’m the most deformed. The sister character is called Flanders (in a not-so-subtle reference to the fact that I was named after a famous World War battleground), and nicknamed the Flounder because she looks sort of like an obese, blank-faced flounder fish. I was a chubby kid, but I’ve lost most of my baby fat. I am not enormous and I am not dull-witted, not unless I’m really tired. In other words, we are ordinary people who have been made to look extraordinary, and not in a good way.

  You cannot imagine how embarrassing it is to be in those books, especially when all the Earth plotlines are taken from minor and usually un-excellent incidents in our real life. The plots hit Vermeer and go so over the top, it’s almost impossible to remember where they started.

  Man, this chapter is getting long. And exhausting. Possibly also boring. But I’m not quite done.

  Further background fact: I have never before spoken to anyone outside my family about how I feel about our depiction in my sister’s books. To be honest, we’ve never really discussed it inside my family, either. Breaking that long-standing silence is really taking it out of me.

  My parents have always treated Keira like a rare and delicate houseplant they aren’t quite sure how to care for. There’s a good reason for that. She’s like a rare and delicate houseplant they aren’t sure how to care for.

  End of backstory! Finally!

  xxxxx

  At the time I’m writing about, things had gotten strange at home. Strange is the wrong word. Bad. That’s better.

  After she graduated from Green Pastures, Keira took a year and a half off to write and draw the third Chronicle and bask in her ever-growing success. Then she went off to the most prestigious art and animation school in North America, CIAD—the California Institute of Art and Design.

  Meanwhile, I, Keira’s younger sister, Normandy Pale, started grade ten at G. P. on a partial scholarship. Keira had said she wanted to help out our parents by paying off the mortgage and covering some of my tuition, but things hadn’t worked out on that front so far.

  When I first got to school, I was semi-famous thanks to my sister’s books. Everyone assumed that I was the staring blob from the Chronicles, the hapless target of pervs and leeches, even though I wasn’t particularly big and didn’t stare much more than anyone else.

  Soon people realized I was deadly average, and I settled in and met my two friends—who just happened to be my first friends, really. With Keira away, life at home got simpler. She had always required a lot of quiet when she was working, so my parents and I had to tiptoe around. Strangers threw her off, so we didn’t invite anyone over. Now we could do potentially embarrassing things and not have them end up in a book. It was pretty much a halcyon time.

  Then, without warning, Keira came home at the beginning of April, not long after she turned twenty. She arrived in her white 1987 Crown Victoria, which looks disconcertingly like an unmarked police car.

  She wouldn’t tell us what happened, and when my parents asked if everything was okay, Keira got mad and said she’d leave if they asked again. So they dropped it. We’re not really discussers in my family. After all, who wants to rip open a bunch of scar tissue to expose the abscess beneath? Not that I mean to compare my sister to an abscess. She is more like an inheritance.

  Imagine someone gives you an incredibly valuable and famous gem. You can’t sell it. Your only job is to look after it. Now imagine your behavior can ruin the value of that gem. If you talk too loud or watch TV, you can tarnish it or crack it. Finally, take the next step and imagine that the gem you inherited likes to tell stories about what happens in the house where you are already trying to be extra careful so you won’t wreck the gem. Okay. That’s enough. The gem analogy has officially fallen apart.

  Anyway, in September, at the time our story begins, my sister was even less right than usual. She rarely left her room or our closet. When she did leave, she stayed out for days and we had no idea where she went. My mother turned nearly catatonic with concern, and my dad fussed around trying to distract himself. I concentrated on not making things worse. In other words, I made myself an extra unobtrusive presence. Caused no waves. Went to school. Did my work. When Keira was home, we tried not to upset her.

  We were all just waiting for her to tell us what was wrong and what had happened at school.

  The afternoon of the first truth telling
, I went home and found Keira in our closet. For those who follow her career, it’s true: she actually does work in a closet that we share. We each have a door to it, but she’s the only one who uses the space.

  You probably want a visual of her, to help you digest all this dry, dusty exposition. So here goes:

  Keira has wild, two-toned hair (dark brown and silvery blonde) and dark circles under her eyes. There are photos of her as a toddler that show that, even then, she had dark circles under her eyes. She is a wisp of a person, and after she started making money and visiting New York on publishing business, she started buying all of her clothes from a store in SoHo called 45 RPM. They specialize in handwoven fabrics cut into simple shapes that make anyone over a hundred pounds look frumpy and anyone under a hundred pounds look like she stepped out of a clamshell on an enchanted beach. Keira owns about fifteen garments in total. Her look is based on white cotton smocks and eleven-hundred-dollar jeans made from Zimbabwean cotton and hand-dyed by Japanese artisans. Her feet are almost always bare or encased in delicate ballet slippers.

  These clothes are not very warm, so I often open my closet to find her wearing one of my sweaters. Sometimes two. It’s funny that she sometimes borrows my clothes, since I’m not noted for the excellence of my wardrobe.

  In another story, this closet dwelling would be a heavy-handed sign that my sister has repressed sexual urges. She does not.19 She says she likes to situate herself at the “portal.” She’s turned that portal, AKA our shared closet, into a beautifully appointed art studio. She had excellent lighting installed, and she sits cross-legged on a special meditation seat, at a custom drafting lap desk she designed and built.

  When she first started working in our closet, I asked if she wanted me to keep the door on my side locked, so she could have it all to herself. She said no. She said she found it comforting to have me close-by. I was ten, and my hero worship of my sister was at an all-time high. Now I’m stuck with no closet, which means that I have to keep my clothes in a cupboard in my room.