We sit in the front room, on opposite sides, Cara on the couch and me in the chair. She is dressed for work, in bibbed shorts and a T-shirt beneath. I want to ask about Matt but decide not to. Cara tells me just the same. I think to apologize as well, to say I’m sorry for everything, but the sentiment seems unfair now, the decisions made not mine to appropriate from Cara and Matt. I recall how in the middle of our sex last night, as Cara stood naked and stripped me down, as Matt and Gloria moved to the couch leaving Cara and me to fend for ourselves on the rug, as we entertained and took ourselves exactly as the evening offered, I marveled at the way Cara and Matt seemed to freely embrace the experience while I continued to suffer, the emancipated soul turned to flesh and soft tissue.
As we switched off then, husband with wife and old lovers together, the reality of what we were doing took yet another measured slice from my heart as I clung to Gloria in a way I had not before wanted Cara. The emotion seized at me, the degree of its intensity. I looked over at Cara and Matt and there again I was surprised as I found them entirely fine, fucking in the way the situation was meant, turned on by the bang-sweat stimulation of enabling one another to be first with someone else. This is the sensual ideal, the erotic lift which came from the adventure, and what was I to do then when my head would not clear and all I wanted was to run with Gloria out to her car, drive to my house, and not let her go again? What sort of confusion had this sick love caused me, and why could I no longer dispose of it?
•
Gloria comes over later that night. I am working still, adding Cara’s visit to my book, writing of her and Matt as they were when Gloria and I left, cuddling and cooing, and how curious it struck me, how it was them together and not us. Gloria knocks and Fred barks as I let her in. She has her blue duffel with her; she wants me to think she’s coming back or why else bring the bag inside? “Why bring it in?” I ask after she tells me no, that she’s going to New York, that Daniel called her directly and she is meeting with him tomorrow.
“Are you staying here now?” I ask again about the bag.
She answers, “Only tonight.”
We go into the kitchen and search the fridge for beer. During our drive back to Colossal from Cara and Matt’s, we didn’t talk much about what just happened, giving ourselves time to sort things out. I tell Gloria that Cara came by and she’s good. I don’t ask Gloria if she’s spoken with Matt, though I do say that I’ve been thinking maybe I will take a moratorium on partying for a while, that I’ve had enough of the drama and would prefer to concentrate on us. Gloria does not so much address my statement as she says, “Matt’s coming to New York with me.” She tells me Dan wants to meet him, that “In The Mooring” is tracking well and Dan would like to discuss a deal where Glassnote invests in republishing Matt’s poems.
I lie and say that I am glad for everyone. It appears my intent to forgo any further flings and only be with Gloria has run into a conflict. I ask Gloria if this is where she is now with Matt and all the rest, and she looks at me in that way she has which breaks me every time and she knows it as she says, “When wasn’t I where I am now?”
We open our beers and stand at the counter as Gloria leans against the stove. I’m not sure that I can do this and tell her, “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
“That was different,” I mean about how I was before. “With you I’m just not into it. I don’t want to share you.”
Gloria corrects, “You’re not sharing me, McCanus. It’s not up to you.”
“But that’s just it. It’s not up to me. It’s how I feel. If it were up to me I’d chop silly mischief sticks and pass them out to you ten times a day, but it isn’t where my head is now and I no longer want this. There’s no epiphany here. I’m not a convert to the staid and traditional, this isn’t a moral pronouncement, but rather I no longer get a rise having the woman I love be with someone else. I don’t find the experience liberating with you. Maybe it’s an age thing,” I say. “Maybe I have reached a point where things slow down. This wouldn’t invalidate what I’m saying. We all live in stages and episodes and this is mine now, where I am and completely valid. Only a fool fails to embrace what is right for them and what is right for me here is different than before, and this is because of you, because of my wanting to be with you, not yesterday or last year, but today. This is what I want and what is good for me.”
I ramble like this without a breath while Gloria sips beer. She has on a sort of sun dress, a light mix of lime greens, sleeveless, which is belted in the middle by a thick sash. She doesn’t seem pleased or annoyed with what I’ve said, she does not react in any visible way and is quiet for a moment before saying, as she has before only with a different sort of finality here, “You’re so full of shit, McCanus.”
Am I? I don’t know. I say again, “Let’s have a baby.” This is the way things are done now, I say. I will put a picket fence around the front yard, will paint the planks white, will tend to all, mother and hearth, will conform my happiness to where it wants me now, and how content we will be. I tell Gloria that I love her and here at last she answers the same, and then after a moment she laughs, harder than last night when our guffaws were nervously extorted but more honestly. I join her, the liars that we are, we laugh until I say again I love you and this time I am all too serious and Gloria knows. She puts her beer down on the stove, walks back into the front room, collects her blue bag, and heads out the door.
•
In bed, I think he must be, too, how he will listen for her, listen as I do now; listening for what isn’t there. How softly she breathes. It’s late and they have again talked well past the hour when the moon is full overhead and all the sounds outside have gone silent. He is thinking in the lateness that everything is fine, thinks, too, that everything is too much for him despite all they have said to one another, the promises and solidarity, the willingness to be together wherever that takes them as the journey is what matters and how excited they are by all now. Renewed, he knows that everything has changed and remains a wonder.
In the morning, he runs at the high school, pictures himself later that day meeting Gloria at the airport and flying together to New York. He will sleep with her if she lets him, he is sure he will though he already knows this time will be different. He wishes he were more like McCanus, free of concern and open to the moment. As soon as he thinks this, though, he understands it’s not true. He rolls toward her, tries to embrace, wants her to embrace him as well, but she groans in her sleep. Not her fault, he thinks and rolls back over.
He comes home from his run and showers. The house is empty. He packs his bag for New York and heads downstairs. In motion, he doesn’t want to stop, but on his way to the door he turns back. There is this then in the things that change. Ten minutes later, he’s put two more bags in the trunk of his car and is driving east to the airport.
•
My lover is amused when I tell her what has happened. It’s like her to find the humor in stories such as this. We are again at our motel, at what she calls our motel though it isn’t ours, wasn’t ours before, and won’t be ours after. I do not tell her so, I do not say anything after I finish with my story and have no answer when she asks, “So what happens next?”
During my silence she watches me the way I imagine a Zander fish tracks a worm. When she starts to laugh and throws back her hair, I don’t know whether to feel relieved or angry. I settle on the former as she starts to undress me.
We are as always for the moment, warm on the blanket, warm in the sheets, warm in the warm spooned cradle. I lie again in the days that come, lie as does she. Prone, yes, I am prone here, prone in every way. I turn flatbacked and reach for her to cling. “Manuke,” she calls me playfully and brushes me off.
•
Lidia comes by and we sit on the deck and share a drink. I have started to dismantle the garden. After everything, I find it’s not for me. Over the next few days I remove the gazebo and fountain and do away with the steps
so that the hill I’ve created has to be climbed and descended on the slant. I cover the path and return to the lawn, I remove the extra flowerbeds but leave the trees, which are doing well and look almost natural in their setting.
Lidia is good company and we do not talk of why I leveled the garden. We do not talk of love or longing or any of the things that get in the way of enjoying one another’s company. We avoid topics of real significance, though there is significance in sharing simple moments like this.
I have told her the story of Matt and Cara, much of it if not all, not the parts I don’t yet know how to tell, but about Cara designing the garden and Matt turning down the Zell, how they wound up being a much different couple from when we met, and how was I to know? “These things,” I say, “are hard to predict.”
After a time, after Lidia has come back again and we are used to one another sitting together in what was the garden, with Fred running and digging through the remains, I do talk to Lidia about her baby. I feel this much is important and needs to be said. “About that,” I start, and she pretends not to know what I’m referring to, she pretends in this way in order to get me to say it all myself, and so I do. I say to her then for purposes of clarity, in order to be as honest as I can, “I am happy for you, but I do wish it could have been us.” I see as I say this that Lidia is okay with hearing as much now, and, feeling there’s more to explain, I talk on, rambling as I do when I’m agitated or nervous. I say that I know it’s greedy of me to want anything from her at this late date, but I do wish in hindsight I’d had a better sense of what we were doing, that I might have realized then how freedom was hard, and I do hope she knows I loved her, do love her, in my own way, which was never enough but remains all that I have.
“Anyway,” I give a shrug. I can only be earnest for so long before the sentiment begins to bind too tight, and to this I chuckle a bit, the sound a silly bird’s cackle as Fred runs between the trees and barks at the branches while I say to Lidia, as Gloria said earlier, “At least all of this has given me something to write about.” I tell Lidia then about the progress I’ve made on my new book, so many years into the drafting, and how I think possibly I have a handle on the story, at least in part, though I confess I still can’t be sure how the thing is to end.
Lidia in the sunlight, in the glow of all that comes at this time of day, how well she knows me and I appreciate that differently than before when love confused everything, when want and urgency and ambition were mixed and set to boil in the kettle, how Lidia knows and wants for me, wishes for me to be free and happy and nothing more, that there is no more, she knows, and says of my book, of the story I am writing and can’t seem to finish because of all the confusion that remains, the wonder I have for what’s to come and what to do next, she says of it all, of the pace and pulse and push I am still unsure how to handle, she smiles and touches my hand and tells me, “Then you’ll just have to stop.”
Acknowledgments
Much thanks and appreciation to the inimitable Tyson Cornell and his staff at Rare Bird. Julia, Gregory, Jake, Hailie, and Alice are the sort of folks who make publishing a smooth sail. As always, to my family, Mary and Anna and Zach, without whom nothing is possible. To all others, friends and partners in crime and business, thanks for the continued patience and tolerance with me while I pursue the madness that is my life as an author in search of something meaningful to say. Appreciate everyone and to everyone—onward.
Liars Page 16