Monday's Lie

by Jamie Mason

  “It’s good news, bad news. Or maybe bad news, good news?”

  “Isn’t it always? I mean, I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “Yep. Because your serpentine belt gave it up. That’s the bad news. But it won’t take long to fix. That’s the good-news part. If you can hang on for just a little bit, we’ll have you under way shortly.”

  “The car was in here just a few days ago for inspection. Wouldn’t you guys have seen that the serpentine thing was about to go?”

  “Nah, those state requirements are mostly checking for lights and gauges and emissions and stuff.”

  “Okay.”

  “So we’re good? You want me to fix it?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  He turned back toward the service bays.

  “Hang on,” I called to him. A faint Klaxon wailed in my head, hitched to nothing specific. A random jolt of acid spiked my blood.

  “Yeah?”

  “How did it break? What happened to the belt?”

  He shrugged. “They all go at some point. Most times it’s just regular wear and tear. They get ragged after about seventy-five thousand miles or so. Lemme see.” He checked the paper on his clipboard. “Yeah, it’s a little early maybe, but not by too much. It happens. It was probably just a little defective from the factory. One little nick and it’ll wear through sooner than later.”

  “Could it have been dangerous?”

  “What, losing the belt?”

  “Yeah. I was just pulling into the parking deck at work, but what if it had snapped while I was going fast on the highway or in a curve or something?”

  “I doubt it would have been a huge deal. I mean, like you saw, you’d lose power steering and then it’s like driving a whale through fudge. You might have caused a little traffic jam trying to get over, and of course you’d be stranded, but you wouldn’t burst into flames or anything.”

  “Okay.”

  “So we’re good to go?”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  What in the ever-loving hell was that about?

  But I knew very well what it was—and what it was, was a far cry from common sense. Just no. I scolded my overtaxed brain for torturing a manufactured if-then scenario to the point that I’d just pictured my husband, odd as he’d been lately, sawing through the guts of my car. I was exhausted. And I was ridiculous. There were ways to sabotage a car into real trouble. What good would it do for him to force an arbitrary breakdown?

  You don’t have to know the end of a story to know it’s a sad one. Thanks, Mother. I’ll take it from here, if you don’t mind.

  I watched the clock and my own wandering thoughts.

  • • •

  “Okay, don’t be mad, Sissy.”

  I was a little early to Carver Street and Simon was a little bit late, but I could tell he wasn’t apologizing for tardiness.

  “Tell me you didn’t just say that. What have you done now?”

  He hadn’t pried into Carlisle Inc. He’d followed the letter of my request, but not the spirit of it. Instead, he had followed Patrick.

  “That crack you made about me blowing up your self-respect really got to me. I don’t want to be able to hurt you like that. I’m your brother and I should be able to tell you things. If I can’t say what’s on my mind and if everything’s gotten out of hand to the point where me just telling the truth as I see it is so painful for you to hear, then something is fundamentally flawed.

  “I’m not telling you what to do. And I love you and stand by you and promise to let you handle it any way you want to handle it—just like you asked me to. But let’s all be talking about the same ‘it’ that needs handling, okay?”

  “What is it? Say it, for God’s sake.” My heart was pounding, every thought and nerve poised to recoil from what I thought he would tell me, to what the longest reach of my imagination had suggested to me earlier in the day when I’d learned of the damage to the belt in my car’s engine. “Simon, what? What did you find?”

  “He’s fooling around again. For real this time.”

  I deflated and rolled my eyes. “Okay.”

  “You are the weirdest woman I ever met. Why doesn’t that make you angry?”

  “I’m angry.”

  “But you’re not, though. It’s like Patrick is just fucking around with your abacus, or your pots and pans or something. It’s like he messed up your Rubik’s Cube, not your heart.”

  “Can I ask you what you know about it, Simon? I mean, here we go again. I’m not trying to be hateful here, but what do you know about it? Have you ever even had a girlfriend for more than six months?”

  “That’s not the point—”

  “No, except that it is kind of part of the point. Even though you don’t want it to be. You keep judging me and you’ve never even been in a long-term relationship. Ever. Are you too cool for school, Simon? What’s your deal?”

  “This isn’t about me.”

  “Right. Because that would be uncomfortable.”

  “You’re twisting this around.”

  “I know I am. It’s not an accident. It’s because this is too easy for you. And it’s pissing me off. You’re looking down from some sort of ivory tower, but it doesn’t make any sense. Why are you so far above it all? Why won’t you let anybody in, huh? Maybe afraid you won’t get it right either? At least I tried, pitiful as it may have turned out.”

  “My job makes it difficult.”

  “You’re a cop, Simon, not a priest.”

  “So, because I don’t have a girlfriend, I’m not allowed to have an opinion?”

  “Way to miss the point.”

  “I didn’t miss it, though,” Simon countered. “I got it. I know you’re upset. And I know it has to hurt. I just want to help.”

  “Do you think that maybe I might be able to stay upright in my seat because you didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know? I told you, remember? You only went looking because I said that he was probably messing around. So I’m sorry I didn’t fall apart like you were looking forward to.”

  “Okay, now that’s just stupid.”

  “Look, I don’t mind you following Patrick. I really don’t. I know you were just looking out for me. And I don’t mind you telling me about it either. I know it’s awkward, and I know it isn’t fun. Okay, maybe it’s a little bit fun for you, because you never liked him in the first place, but I don’t resent you for that either. Not for any of it. Just don’t script out how I’m supposed to react, all right?”

  “Fair enough. But let me just ask—do you love him? Do you really love him? Because I can shut up and deal with it if you do. I don’t have to understand it. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’d be different if there was true love in my history. Maybe—”

  “You’re not allowed to ask me that question.”

  “What?”

  I had hurt him with that one. No matter everything I’d said on the subject and no matter how well I’d swiveled the gotcha-gun around in his hand tonight, I hadn’t shut the door on him like that before. Not that he’d known anyway. I put my hand on his arm. “And what can you tell about the situation if I answer you with that?”

  He read my face until he understood. “Hot damn. You’re all done.”

  “I still don’t know what I’m going to do yet. You have to give me some space on this.”

  “I’ll let it alone. I promise. But will you look at the video I shot? Maybe it will help you decide how to play it.”

  “Oh, God. I don’t think I can.”

  “No, it’s not like that.” Simon took out his phone.

  She was a real estate agent, Simon had discovered. I remembered seeing her once, from across the room, at a Chamber of Commerce function I’d attended with Patrick. Simon told me she worked mostly in furnished rentals, which, I could well imagine, had afforded them plenty of rendezvous points in these last few weeks that were somehow slightly less seedy than the rank motels at the edge of town, and a convenient way around generating any receipts as
well.

  Tracking them wasn’t difficult for Simon. The video images were more or less tame, except in their warmth and natural grace. I wasn’t jealous of the usual thing. She wasn’t taking my toys. He wasn’t out playing the stud. I just didn’t know that Patrick and I had ever looked like that.

  Despite my mangled opinion of Patrick, I had to clamp down on a frantic place in my mind, an unwieldy switch that needed to be thrown to keep me in my seat when I saw the tiny, but clear, image of their heads bent together over the center armrest, nuzzling at the stoplights.

  This was my replacement, or more like the new and improved model, if I was honest. What he’d always wanted. Hell, what I always wanted, too. I imagined her as every good thing that I was not, and it wasn’t difficult at all to picture him there beside her, biding his time until it was legal. What I couldn’t see was what route he’d take to get to happily ever after: the rocky, open road or the shortcut through the darker, more treacherous woods.

  • • •

  I was amazed that Patrick could sleep with the riot blaring in my head. That none of the clanging rang out of my skull into the dead quiet of our bedroom was hard to believe. I’d managed all through the next day, getting Thursday morning done on two cups of coffee and the last vitamin C tablet in the bottle and took the evening on two vodka tonics and an aspirin, somehow speaking when spoken to and not drilling holes straight through him as I stared at his face, searching his expression for some hint as to how he pictured the end of us. I needed a sign that what he had planned for me on Saturday morning would or would not make any plans for Sunday completely moot.

  When had I lost faith in the simplest conclusion, the comforting resignation to the most normal outcome? It was still likely only divorce papers. Hell, maybe the bald guy in the blue sedan had snapped pictures of my meetings with Brian. Maybe from a certain angle, with me constantly blushing at the tabletop the way I had, it looked less innocent than it was. Could be that I was about to find myself tipped over with adultery allegations. That would be rich, to be sure, but it would make nonviolent, noncriminal, nonpermanent sense. If Patrick had pictures and he thought I didn’t, maybe he had a plan to beat me to the jump, which should include half my mother’s inheritance. Or would it?

  Round and round I chased my tail, at turns veering off to thoughts of my mother’s taped interview and how I wasn’t living up to her opinion of me. She had thought I was capable. She had thought I was freer than her. But I couldn’t even manage to conclude whether my own husband might be plotting to have me killed. I was vaguely wary of my car, and I’d all but burgled my own house, but I had only got as far as finalizing my mistrust of Patrick’s extraspecial tidiness and his newfound respect for insurance.

  After back-to-back sleepless nights, following weeks of iffy rest to begin with, my edge was bound to be dull. My worship of clean, simple reasoning wasn’t the only toppling god. I felt unreliably paranoid, and terribly rusty in the instinct. I wasn’t going to be getting any smarter, that was for sure.

  As Thursday night rolled into Friday’s dawn, I had to concede the inevitability of the next step. If I was going to do anything to spoil the surprise, today was all that stood between us and Saturday morning, whatever that would bring.

  There was still one thing he couldn’t sanitize, and that was his mistress’s face.

  26

  After all that had happened, I knew now that the hook that lashes the mind to the heart is flimsier than I would have guessed back at the beginning when I was plotting and planning my life to the fine details. My decision to stay with Patrick had not been nearly the same as an imperative to do so. The attachment I’d felt to this illusion of obligation was voluntary. It could be unhitched in an instant, with only the will to make it happen.

  Just having faith that it’s so easy; simply believing that all it takes is a small adjustment of mind-set, nothing but a quick trick of resolution to let it all go—that’s the only thing that keeps the majority of us on the far side of this freedom.

  Once faith becomes knowledge, all it takes is a little practice. I’d had plenty.

  I’d only ever seen Christine Ames from a distance. She was much prettier up close. Beautiful even. Wide-eyed terror only made her more so.

  I stood in her office doorway, dressed in my best suit and matching poker face. “Hello, Ms. Ames. May I speak with you?”

  In less than two minutes she was shuddering her shame into her cupped hands, streams of mascara raking black tracks down her flushed face. Annoyingly, she was still lovely. She would have told me everything, in lurid detail, if I hadn’t stopped her from pelting through a heartfelt confession. Once I realized she was desperately and genuinely in love with Patrick, I wasn’t sure I could sit through the broken play-by-play of her remorse. She wasn’t a terrible person. If there was any sort of plot against me, she was completely ignorant of it. In fact, it seemed Patrick had represented me quite kindly to her.

  A tickling fear of having been wrong about everything (or right about everything in the times I’d felt stupid for it) crept up my spine again. My head ached with the noise of frantically retallying my “facts” to the point I nearly missed out on the only key she had to my mystery.

  “I’m sorry, what did you just say?”

  She was hiccuping now, and her nose had finally puffed up. “When?”

  “You just said that you only call him now on his other cell phone since he told you to. He has two phones?”

  She nodded her guilt-heavy head, unable to meet my eyes.

  “How long has this been going on? When did he ask you to use the other number?”

  “Maybe almost two months ago. Something like that. I’m so-o-o so-or-ry.” Fresh, bouncing sobs gave the last words too many syllables. I forced my eyes not to roll. I held my tongue between my teeth to keep from telling her that I didn’t care nearly as much as she thought I should.

  Instead, I was the Goddess of Patience, the Pardon Fairy, somehow someone who was comfortable patting her husband’s mistress on her pitiful, shaking shoulders.

  “Christine, please. I know this is horrible for you, but believe me when I tell you—I don’t hate you. These things happen. I know you didn’t do this to hurt me.”

  She looked up; the hope for absolution, and maybe even the fear of it, pulled a trembly smile on her lips.

  “I only need two things from you. I have to sort out a few issues, a couple of important things with Patrick. If you can do these two favors for me, and once I’ve talked to him, I won’t stand in your way. I promise. I’m okay. Or I will be. Really. It’s going to be all right. It’s plain you love him. If he feels the same way about you . . .” I finished with a sympathetic shrug.

  Her nose ran and her chin quivered. “What do you want me to do?”

  • • •

  She would have agreed to whatever I asked, but the ghost of any vengeful feelings of mine had faded away in the face of her sorrow. I almost regretted that I was likely only to make it worse in the days to come if what I suspected proved true. Of course he would have said nice things about me. Her eyes dazzled pure sunshine on blue water when Patrick was the hero. He’d never risk her sweetness. In her company, he wouldn’t say shit if he had mouthful of it.

  In the end, she gave me Patrick’s alternate cell phone number and promised to play ill, avoiding him and not taking his calls until I contacted her again.

  I caught my reflection in a gilt-framed mirror on my way out of the building. I hadn’t felt the look of purpose rearrange my features, and I’d missed the moment when my eyebrow had cocked a gleam into my eye. The calm I felt now fit the new look too well. The sting of surprise was what seemed out of place. I should have known this creature in the mirror. I should have felt her coming all along.

  By my own invitation, perpetual déjà vu had slowed time and sharpened my senses. This clarity and detachment made me feel like someone else, but sure as lies in church, it was someone jarringly familiar.

  I t
urned away from my mother’s daughter in the mirror. But I took her with me.

  • • •

  It was hardly a surprise that a quick Internet query showed that Patrick’s second phone number traced back to Carlisle Inc. The listing saved me further typing by providing the address and a handy map link as well.

  27

  My mother had a prescribed method for doing almost anything. There was a right way to research a science project and a right way to make a bed. She schooled us in the order of operations to best compose a photograph, and she showed us the proper technique to prune a rosebush. She was less dedicated to securing our undying loyalty to her way of doing things than she was interested in our mastery of her techniques—for just at least one go-around. She taught us her model of everything.

  Just once, do it her way, and she’d rarely mention it again.

  Except for the problem of mull, which included its cousins: sulk and fret. If we had got into trouble or fell broody over anything—be it unrequited love, or how much we wanted a car, or how worried we were over an upcoming exam, or how annoyed a brother might be at a sister (or vice versa)—there was always only one way to handle it. Even when we were little, the process was ever the same, except it would be with her alongside, hand in hand, for the routine.

  “To the dock with you,” she’d say, rain or shine.

  Our neighborhood bordered a small, muddy-banked lake that was too cold for swimming and too tight for growing fish big enough for people to eat. The dock was more for show than anything else, a long, silvery arm into the water that made a nice focal point against the backdrop of fall foliage or winter freezes. In spring and summer it was a pleasant halfway point for a stroll. Sometimes herons decorated the end posts, motionless until a bird-size dinner swam by.

  The command would actually be “To the dock with you. ‘Feliz Navidad.’ ”

  “Mama, it’s August.”

  “Sing it anyway.”

  The remedy consisted of a walk to the dock, thinking only of the problem at hand. We had been trained to take this walk in a strict meditation on whatever troubled us. No woolgathering allowed. Eyes on the path, mind on the worry. Nothing else, all the way to the end of the dock. Then the song, which was almost always something ridiculous and never had anything, by design, to do with the problem. It was to be sung to the lake. I tended to only hum the songs, as if I were somehow getting one over on my mother if I didn’t belt it out with jazz hands. I never skipped the step, though. I lived in superstition of ruining the spell. I didn’t step on cracks or walk under ladders either, even though my mother-stoked store of You know better told me it was all nonsense.