Liars

by Steven Gillis

  We go into the front room. Cara comes from the kitchen, hand extended to greet me. Changed from her work clothes, her shorts and T-shirt, wearing a cotton sundress, a white and blue print, sleeveless, her hair combed into a frizzy off-red frame around her face, which is treated now to a light touch of blush and eyeliner, she is a handsome figure, not beautiful but something nearly better. I take her hand then lean in and kiss her cheek. I have learned from years of attending events—parties and readings, conferences and banquets—that a kiss establishes the right climate. I’m taken on a tour of the house, shown the library and the room where Matt writes, and brought outside where we stand on the deck and look at the yard Cara has designed with angled beds of perennials: heuchera and butterfly weed, summer wine and bladdernut.

  Drinks are served in the front room. Matt joins me for whiskey while Cara has poured herself some wine. We talk for a time about nothing in particular, about their kids and the warmth of the summer, about my work at Colossal, which they seem now to know about, too. Matt says he’s a fan of Jhene Aiko and Grace Mitchell, both of whom I’ve worked with, while Cara goes back and forth to the kitchen, checks our meal, calls out that she’s a big John Mayer fan and have I ever met him?

  We talk about Matt’s poems and about the Zell, discuss my writing, and what I’m working on now. I say that I am trying to get through a proper draft of a new novel and when Matt asks what it’s about, I answer, “It’s a love story.”

  Soon dinner is ready and we eat in the dining area. The walls and floor and table are composed of dark woods, a brown and black print by Klee on the main wall. Cara and Matt sit beside one another while I am on the opposite side of the table, directly across from them. I ask Cara questions about her work, her influences and most challenging projects. I tell her that I am excited about my garden and praise again the design she’s created for me. We talk a bit more about Matt’s work, discuss for a time the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop, her recurrent theme an examination of childhood and our exile from Eden and our struggle to address external forces, the grief and longing that life throws at us. Matt embraces the subject eagerly; he believes the purpose of poetry is to create a verbal vision of the world as a beautiful jungle, both violent and cruel, generous and forgiving. Cara jokes of Matt’s determination to reduce even the most vile experiences into a thing of wonder, and how his favorite line is from Bishop’s poem “First Death in Nova Scotia.” “Arthur’s coffin was / A little frosted cake. Which for dessert,” Cara laughs, “I won’t be serving.”

  Matt laughs at this as well. Together this way I find nothing different from what I saw at the market, see only an adoring and supportive couple and maybe Gloria was right about keeping my distance and not fucking with them. Here is who they are, I am tempted to concede, though not quite yet, I am reminded of how Cara shrugged at lunch when discussing Matt’s ambitions and think maybe her comment now about Matt’s poetry wasn’t quite as innocent as it seemed, and, calculating still, I ask myself how am I supposed to get beyond the surface shine and down to hidden truths if I don’t rattle cages?

  “Let me ask you something.” Halfway through our meal, as we are discussing again the ability of great poets to explore the world in all its varied shades, I raise my fork and compose one of those open-ended riddles, with implications on either side, as I say to Matt, “If you could have one but not both, if you could write a transcendent poem, something singular and original enough to make the gods weep, or you could have a love affair that would define your heart forever and rally you like Catherine and Grigory beneath the starry, starry nights, which would you choose?”

  Matt answers at once, sure of his reply, and doesn’t have to think as he says, “But it’s not a question. If you insist on an answer there’s only one.”

  “Which is?”

  “Love, of course.”

  “Love and not art?”

  “You asked for one,” Matt confirms.

  “So you would give up your art for love?”

  “Under your scenario. Hypothetically.”

  “That’s interesting,” I say and look at Cara. “That’s revealing.”

  “Love is the ambition of all poets,” Matt nearly blushes as he says this, his cheeks in a spasm of twitches.

  I hide my pleasure at his use of the word “ambition” and reply that artists forever, and poets in particular, have written about unrequited love, about lost love, about the want and desire of love without having love. Matt agrees with me but says, “That isn’t what you asked. You wanted to know which I would choose.”

  “And you would choose love over your art?”

  “Of course. If there’s only one choice,” Matt repeats, “for purposes of discussion, if you’re after only one then I would choose love.” He stares at me, does not look at Cara as he speaks, assumes she already knows this would be his answer. I check Cara again for her reaction but so far she resists showing me anything. I consider drawing her directly into the debate then decide this would be a mistake. Better to be patient and let things unfold. I continue and say with brash dispatch, “Not me. If faced with the question of which comes first, an artist must understand art is the only answer.”

  “I don’t agree.” Matt explains, “Art is a pursuit, an attempt to expose the world in its every permutation, while love is the actuality of living the fullest sort of life. Why would an artist surrender the greatest gift life has to offer in order to write about the very thing they’ve rejected?”

  “Because they’re an artist,” I answer at once. “Because that’s what it means to have real ambition.”

  Matt laughs as if I have said something amusing. “That’s artist-speak,” he tells me. “That’s egoistic indulgence. Being happy is the purpose of life,” he says exactly as Gloria.

  I argue the point, insisting, “Happiness is a complicated ambition, Matt, especially for an artist. Love is not the sole form of happiness. Producing great art is, for the real artist, the highest form of being. In order to create great art one must be completely selfish and sacrificing and can’t be distracted by love.”

  “Distracted by…?” Matt repeats the phrase as if he is startled and can’t quite believe I have said this. “Love is not a distraction.” He seems almost hurt. “An artist can’t push his heart aside in order to write a better sonnet or novel about the very thing they’ve just discarded.”

  “Of course they can. Without question they can. That’s exactly what great artists do.” I maintain my conviction.

  Matt counters, “I don’t believe that. It may appear that way to some, to those artists spurned by love, or failing at love, but if an artist actually no longer believed in love, if they felt that the prospect of love was forever out of reach, or were willing to displace love for their own ambition, they would be lost and unable to create a single piece of art. Without love there is nothing. To not believe in love, to lose faith, or diminish love’s value, an artist would have nothing to say, his work would just be hollow. In that I’m certain.”

  I stare across the table and say, “Spoken like a poet.” I mean this in jest but my tone suggests otherwise. Matt stiffens his shoulders while Cara looks at me from across the table. She has given us our moment but the topic seems to have made her uncomfortable. I think at first that she’s inclined to agree with Matt but there is something in the way she glances between us that causes me to wonder if she hasn’t found my argument more convincing. I’m curious to know what she’s thinking, if she remembers our lunch and how we discussed the process of our own work. When I spoke of writing, my voice filled with a rare intensity, and she seemed to like that.

  Perhaps she’s thinking of this now as she drinks her wine and is considering the complications and how I’ve addressed them, how I fight the temptation to treat love like a religious calling, my passions antithetical to Matt’s whose reverence toward love is more like a capitulation than a living breathing thing. Maybe this explains what happens next: as Matt continues to look at Cara, he is staring a
t her as I finish defending my view and the requirement of controlling the heart and not the other way around, while Matt replies with the sort of sentimentality that appears to embarrass Cara, as he says again that love is the endgame, selfless and singularly sustaining. He continues to stare at his wife, so tender and convinced that she can’t help herself, she doesn’t mean to, but she frowns mournfully, if only for a second, and, straining to recover, turns away.

  Chapter Six

  Lidia lives downtown. She has rented a condo in the new Baywood Towers, fourteen stories above Seline Avenue with a panoramic view of the river. I leave Matt and Cara’s on good terms, our conversation transitioning toward more neutral subjects; we talk about the need for rain, compare our sports allegiances, share local gossip, agree to disagree on the matter of love and art though express respect for the other’s opinion. Driving home, I review again the way Matt reacted to my question, and how Cara looked in turn. I wonder what it all means and what I might have accomplished. Despite my firm denial, I can’t help but envy Matt’s defense of love, and, troubled by this, I text Lidia, tell her I’m stopping by.

  I get no answer, but when I arrive and park at her building, the doorman ushers me in as Lidia instructed. I take the elevator to the fourteenth floor. Since our divorce I’ve been to Lidia’s a handful of times. We are this, a divorced couple still in the process of figuring things out, learning how to engage and disengage like cats crossing a wire. Lidia is barefoot when she lets me in and the cool marble tiles catch her arch and occasionally squeak as she walks. She brings me into the front room where she sits on her couch. The couch is a Braxton, all the furniture modern. I head to the bar first, in want of a drink. Lidia tells me she is cutting back, trying not to drink late, but that I should have what I want. Words to live by. I find a bottle of Knob Creek, pour myself a shot, ask for news on her sous chef and Lidia says, “That meal is over.” When I tell her I’m sorry, she calls me a liar and asks about Gloria.

  I come to the couch. Lidia has changed from whatever dress she wore at Caber Hills tonight into shorts and a blue cotton shirt. I’m close enough to reach over and touch her leg but don’t do this. Instead I update her on the garden, let her know I’ve hired Cara and that the conversion of the yard will be done this summer. “I just had dinner at Cara’s house, in fact,” I say, and mention that Cara’s husband Matt is a poet I’ve been reading.

  “Since when do you read poetry?”

  Lidia knows my predilections better than anyone, and as I answer, “Lately. More since you left,” she rolls her eyes, stretches her legs, and moves my shot glass with her foot. I tell her then about the conversation at dinner, how Matt’s opinion of love clashed with mine, and eventually Cara’s, and that this came as a relief.

  “Why?”

  “Because up until then they presented themselves as the perfect couple.”

  Lidia warns me not to start one of my half-drunken soliloquies but I pay no attention, remind her that she asked and go on to explain, “This marriage thing is juddering. I’m curious to understand how folks like Matt and Cara manage to stay together while you and I fell apart.”

  Lidia says, “We did not just fall apart, Eric. We took a leap and then we crashed.”

  I reply, “That’s true, in part,” but that the crash could have been avoided, did not need to be fatal.

  Lidia disagrees, gets up and walks across the floor. Her condo has an open design and I can see her as she goes to her wet bar and fills a second glass with a shot of Knob Creek. She is a handsome woman, even more so I think than when we first met. Age agrees with her. At nearly forty, she embodies a confidence that is earned, her features set in fine detail, her body fuller now, her curves inviting, more so than the slender spunk of younger women. She stands behind the bar, gives thought to what she wants to say, and then begins. “I’m not blaming you,” she makes reference to our marriage crashing.

  The statement feels foreboding, implies forgiveness for a transgression she’s already found me guilty of. Rather than ask what it is exactly I’m being absolved of, I say, “That’s good. And I don’t blame you.”

  “We’re both responsible.”

  “In our own way, though you left me.”

  “I left you, Eric, because there was no reason to stay.”

  I listen from across the room, know I need to be careful as Lidia is sharper than I am and if I don’t respect this, if I resort to banter and fail to pay attention to what is being said, she will eat me like toast. Lidia comes back to the couch and sits down. “Let’s not fight,” she says, and even before I can agree she goes on. “When we first met you were in a state. The publishing of Kilwater was too much for you and you were smart enough to know if you didn’t find a way to ground yourself that you’d fall apart like Radiguet and Fournier before you turned thirty.”

  “Where is this going?”

  “I needed you, too,” she continues. “We used each other to confirm ourselves and that’s okay. I liked it. I liked what we were doing,” she says. “All of it. Having a partner who allowed me to be totally free was perfect for me. We let each other do our thing. We had our work, we partied together, gave each other permission to live as we pleased. It took me a long time to realize what we were doing wasn’t the same thing.”

  She moves from the couch and sits on the coffee table directly in front of me. Her summary of our relationship is making me uneasy and I am in the process of disputing her claims when she asks, “Do you remember Gayle Hein?”

  “Shit.”

  “Not shit.”

  “Why would you bring that up?”

  “Because it’s relevant.”

  “In what possible way?”

  “You want to know why I left you.”

  “Because of Gayle? But that was years ago. And you were there.”

  “I was there, right. And you didn’t want me there.”

  “I was uncomfortable with you watching,” I tell her. “That’s all.”

  Lidia says, “That’s what I thought at first. But that’s not it. It wasn’t that you were uncomfortable with me watching, it was that you couldn’t understand how I was happy for you. I wanted you to be happy. I loved you and as long as you were open with me, I was fine with almost anything. But your sense of freedom and mine were always two different things. You liked the idea of me being with someone else not because you wanted me to be happy the way I wanted you to be happy, but because you liked torturing yourself. Being troubled by love is what makes you feel alive.”

  “Christ.”

  “If you don’t want to talk about this then don’t ask me to explain why I left.”

  “Fine, okay,” I say, though I can’t resist adding, “I’ve always wanted you to be happy.”

  “That’s rhetoric, Eric,” Lidia dismisses. “That’s comfort-speak. The truth is your sense of freedom is never as open as you claim.”

  “This is crazy.” I get up once more, move past where Lidia is sitting on the table, grab my shot glass, and pour myself another drink. I begin to say all this analysis is useless, that I know perfectly well who I am and that I was always open with her and our relationship and was happy when she was happy and she should know that. “I was there for you,” I say, that actions mean something and that the freedom and faith I extended validated us.

  “But that’s just it.” She gives me the face I don’t want to see, the one that is already sad for me and difficult to please. “Nothing we did validated us, it only confirmed how little you believed in us. Your sense of freedom and openness wasn’t offered to make me happy, it was used to absolve yourself of responsibility. You used freedom not to be closer but to hold me off. You never wanted us to have an open relationship because you actually believed this was the truest way to love someone, you did it because you were too lazy to try and hold onto me. Loving someone is too hard for you, Eric. Too frightening and demanding.”

  “That’s ridiculous. That’s just not true. Lid, listen.” From my vantage there appears
to be three ways to play what is unfolding. I can lash out angrily in my defense and drive Lidia further away; I can laugh off her suggestion, make light of our situation, and hope that my ability to take none of this too seriously puts her enough at ease to maybe sleep with me; or I can attempt to get out in front of what she’s saying and show her I understand. I weigh each option, choose the third and dive in with, “You’re right, you’re right.”

  “What am I right about, Eric?”

  “I know what you’re saying. It doesn’t matter how a couple chooses to live as long as they live well together. I let you down, I know that. I should have been more open with my openness,” I try and be clever with this. “I should have been okay and trusted that you wanted me to be happy. I should have enjoyed watching you. You would have known then that everything was okay. It’s why I came by tonight,” I try now to spin, to make sense of it all myself, the way Matt had championed love, and what would happen if I did so now with Lidia?

  When Lidia says my name again, says Eric as if the word is a stone she is pushing from her tongue, I know that I haven’t quite found the mark. She tells me, “It isn’t about my watching or you watching, it’s about believing absolutely in the things we do.”

  This is exactly what Gloria said, and once more I insist, “I do believe.”

  “But you don’t, Eric. You can write down the words, create books and songs, but you don’t believe any of it. I wouldn’t have minded that either,” she says, “if I thought all of this was coming from a point of strength. But you’re not strong enough for that, Eric. You’re really quite weak.”

  Lidia can be wicked when she wants. I feel my anger pushing past all manageable points and lash back, “Oh, so now we’re resorting to insult. Now you’re saying you’re stronger than me.”

  “I am, Eric. And that’s why I left.”