Lies of the Heart

by Michelle Boyajian

  “I thought we were in this together and that you actually wanted to help me prosecute the man who killed your husband. But if you’re going to withhold pertinent information”—his voice rises a little with each word—“then I really don’t see the point of meeting with you, because it’s just a huge waste—”

  “Excuse me,” Dana says, rising, but Richard lifts his palm at her, a stop sign. He turns his head slightly in her direction, his eyes addressing the table.

  “No, look, I’m going to say this,” he announces, then turns back to Katie. “I see it, you know, the contempt in your eyes. And that’s okay, that’s fine. But don’t meet with me and my staff and then act like we’re a team, Katie, don’t pretend you’re going to give me the inside scoop on these people so I can keep this very dangerous guy in jail, because it’s pretty clear to me that I’m in this alone.”

  Katie is the first to look away.

  “So if we have that clear—”

  Dana steps around the table toward him, her voice calm and soothing. “Mr. Bellamy,” she says, “I think it might help if we all took a few minutes to relax.”

  He finally looks directly at Dana. “Well, that’s a great idea, actually, because we have all the time we need to relax. We’re done for the day.”

  Katie sucks her breath in surprise, and he turns back to her.

  “That’s right. After an hour of arguing about procedure and viable witnesses, Judge Hwang said she had to call it a day because she felt ill. But she made one thing very clear—another scene like that and she’ll call a mistrial, which means this starts all over again.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know—” Katie doesn’t trust her voice to say more.

  “The judge, jury selection, the whole nine yards, all over again. Only this time we get jurors who’ve read about the circus back there, about the asshole assistant DA who bullied the little retarded girl—”

  “Of course you didn’t bully her,” Katie says, instinctively reaching out to him, but now it’s Richard’s turn to flinch.

  “If these jurors are dismissed and talk to the press? That’s how it’s going to translate, Katie. The truth won’t matter.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Jesus, I didn’t know what to do in there.”

  For once this gesture seems sincere, and Katie wants to tell him that, wants to explain that if only he could act like this in the courtroom, it would be better—it would feel right. But he turns away from her, grabs his briefcase.

  He stops at the door, doesn’t look back. “There’s a mob of reporters down there,” he says. “You might want to wait it out here a little longer.”

  Right after Nick and Katie separated, she realized that just sitting down inside their home was going to be a problem. Sitting down to eat, sitting down to watch TV or to write out a grocery list, because every place in the house looked like someone else should be there already, waiting for her. Now that there’s no chance of Nick’s return, the hardest thing is to stop moving, to find herself suddenly sitting someplace where Nick should already be, waiting for her, or where he will eventually come, with a smile and a funny story about one of his clients who has a combination stuttering/saliva problem. Instead Katie finds herself at the table with a cold plate of spaghetti or under the blankets in bed with her sketch pad resting against her knees, pillows propped behind her back, and she catches herself turning to where he used to be, where he should be. Sometimes she even pauses and tilts her head, because she’s sure that sound is his car pulling in to their rocky driveway, the stray stones rattling against the side of the house, or she’s positive that she’s heard the refrigerator door just close, because of course Nick would be on his way back to the table with more grated cheese—he couldn’t get enough. But he’s never there, he never comes, and she’s not sure how to stop sitting and waiting, to stop sitting and listening for him or hoping that at some point he actually will walk into the room, a big apologetic smile on his handsome face. Sorry, I didn’t mean to take so long.

  So Katie finds new places to eat dinner, to read the paper, or to sketch the storyboards for Arthur and Sarah’s documentary, hoping that this will help her find her own spaces in their house—to reclaim it slowly, piece by piece, until she can finally cuddle up on the soft blue sofa again with a book, look around, and think, Yes, this feels like mine now, too.

  Tonight she’s sitting on the washing machine in the small closet space Nick built in to the wall near the stove, an uneaten chicken salad sandwich forgotten on a plate next to her on the dryer. The white louvered doors are opened, and she dangles her legs, letting her heels bang the front of the machine. Stretched across her knees is Nick’s old ratty gray sweatshirt, the one she was always trying to turn into rags. In the winter he wore it at least once a week, always managing to hide it from her and wash it on his own. This time it was draped across the bumpy metal exhaust hose near the bottom of the dryer, low to the floor and almost out of sight; she spotted it when she hopped onto the washing machine and turned to pick up her sandwich.

  Her eyes scan the stains all over the sweatshirt in her lap, urgently trying to connect specific memories with the small dark splotches near the neckline or with the two long lines on the left sleeve that are a shade lighter than the thinning gray cloth. Her fingers run over them again and again, her mind searching for a memory of them together, until she finally gathers it up and inhales deeply—expecting the salty, musky odor of his skin. But it only smells faintly of Tide, and dust.

  “I miss everything,” Katie says out loud, then waits for a sound, any sound, to answer her in the house they once shared. When she hears Nick’s voice coming from just a few feet away, loud and clear, she almost falls off the washer.

  “Hi, you’ve reached the Burrellis’ residence—”

  She hops off the washing machine and grabs the cordless phone from the counter before the answering machine beeps. Her mother hates it when she turns down the ringer, hates it when Katie picks up the phone mid-message, so she isn’t surprised when her mother doesn’t bother with a greeting.

  “I’m not kidding,” her mother says. “If you don’t change that message, I won’t call anymore. It’s disturbing.”

  “How are you, Mom?”

  “I just got off the phone with your sister—No, don’t interrupt me, I want to know what happened in court with that girl today. She’s the high-strung one from the cookout, right?” her mother asks.

  Despite the battle ahead of her, Katie smiles. She remembers her mother’s face when she was leaving a cookout Katie and Nick had years ago, after the Warwick Center clients had all gathered around, touching and kissing and offering her mother various homemade gifts made out of leaves and rocks (and in one case a small, semihardened piece of dog feces with twigs sticking out of it). Her mother’s wig was on crooked, her clothes creased and stained. “They’re really quite affectionate people, aren’t they?” she’d said, walking away with her gifts, her step a little wobbly. Katie would never forget her mother’s face that night—she had never looked happier.

  “Kate?”

  “Yeah, Mom, Carly’s the one you called the bulldog, remember?”

  “You know, she kicked me that day. All I did was try to wipe some mustard off her face.”

  “Well, I told you when you got there. She only lets a select few touch her.”

  “Right,” her mother says, and Katie realizes that her mother has set her up perfectly, once again. “So what about that?”

  “I didn’t know he was going to do that, I’m not psychic.”

  “Kate.”

  “Look, Mom, it’s not a good time right now. I’m about to begin some work on my documentary—”

  “Katie,” her mother interrupts, “please don’t dismiss me. I’m asking you a question.”

  “I don’t know, okay?” she says. “Nick is everywhere in this house tonight, and—”

  “Hold on a sec, hon.”

  Katie hears the staticky sound of her mother covering the phone with
her hand, then her muffled voice asking her father a question. There’s a deep rumbling from her father and then more static.

  “Katie?” her father bellows into the phone.

  “You don’t have to yell, Dad.”

  “Did you hear about what happened to me and your mother at the Rhode Island Mall yesterday?”

  Her father, retired for five years and quickly bored with the many hobbies he took up right after, had finally turned his attention to the endless supply of people in the world who were capable of doing great harm to him and his wife. The only hobby, apparently, that stuck.

  “You told me about it already, Dad. Twice.”

  “Your mother thinks those men were okay, but I saw the way they were eyeing us. Especially the tall one. I didn’t like the way he was staring at your mother’s purse.”

  Katie hears her mother’s impatient sigh in the background. “Jimmy,” her mother says in her warning voice. There is more static, her father’s muted voice.

  “Okay, Grace, but you weren’t paying attention like I was.”

  “Jimmy.”

  Her father clears his throat, booms back into the phone. “So, sweetie, you know we have snow coming tonight, right?”

  “Actually, I didn’t.”

  “You have antifreeze in your car? And a good, dependable scraper?” he demands.

  “Yes, Dad, you came by last—”

  “And what about lunch meat? And bread? Do you have bread?”

  “I’ll buy some.”

  “Because you need bread,” he says, “It’s a staple.” And then there is more static and a short, muffled struggle, and her mother is back.

  “Okay, okay, Jimmy, she heard you—yes, bread,” she says. “It’s me again, hon. So you’ve been to the market, then?”

  Katie knows that she should let it go, but she can’t. “Why do you do that, Mom?” she asks quietly.

  “Do what? Your father wanted you to know that it’s going to snow.”

  “You do it every time now. Every time I say Nick’s name. You put Dad on, or you change the subject.”

  There is a brief, surprised pause before her mother answers. “Well, it certainly isn’t intentional, Katie, and if you want to talk about him, you know I’ll listen. I want to listen, you know that.” Her mother’s voice suddenly eager.

  “I don’t want to talk about him, Mom. I just want to be able to say his name.”

  “You can, Katie, you can say whatever you want. But I do think the focus should be on you now—”

  “Oh, okay,” Katie says, the anger growing. “You want me to sit through Nick’s trial but never mention his name. Got it.”

  There is another pause, an astonished snort. “Oh, no, I’m certainly not doing this tonight, Katie, really. I called—we called because we wanted you to know that we’re thinking of you. And we love you.” A third pause. “And they’re calling for snow, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Katie clicks the phone off without saying good-bye.

  She moves toward the slider doors and looks into the dark sky, at the oak trees that are silent and unmoving tonight, like they’re waiting for something to happen. She’s suddenly exhausted, so she turns to pull out a chair from the table—catches herself just in time.

  In the living room, she lets her eyes drift around the corners and curves and spaces in this room—the small place between the end table and the wall, the white ledge of the bay window that looks out onto the quiet street, the narrow walking space between the entertainment center and the plant stand with the fern cascading from it. She gathers up all these places that she must eventually conquer by herself, little by little, and takes a deep, labored breath.

  “Everything, Nick,” she says loudly, impatiently.

  She turns back to the kitchen, to the closet near the sliding doors where she stored her equipment the night before.

  Arthur and Sarah are back on the white shed, their small bodies and spider-lined faces so big and clear that Katie feels that same pang for them tonight—that same spasm of intense loss when their son, Ben, called to tell her how he had found them: both dressed exquisitely—Arthur in his best black suit and tasseled loafers, Sarah in her favorite blue satin dress and expensive stockings, not a hair out of place—lying side by side in their bed, their hands crossed peacefully on their stomachs. The two empty bottles of Percocet on the nightstand, like paper-weights, holding in place the letter to their son. They must have been saving it up for months, Ben had said, his voice finally breaking.

  “You see,” Arthur is saying to Katie from the shed, his bony frame leaning forward, big oval glasses in place, “most people, they believed it all began much later. When the Germans crossed into Poland in ’39. For us it happened much, much sooner.”

  Sarah nods into the camera with pressed lips. She shifts slightly to the right to get a better look at Arthur, who is staring intensely into the camera, but this motion of Sarah’s lengthens the chasm between their bodies even more. Katie stares at the space between her friends, shakes her head; she hops off the deck railing to push some buttons. There is a quick squeak of the film as it jumps, then the comforting buzz of it moving forward.

  Her parents are right, the dark sky looks almost green from holding back snow. Katie gazes at the clumped, dead leaves in the backyard, knows she should have walked across the street to the Legares’ to see if their grandson would rake the lawn this year. She could have gone over a dozen times, but each time something held her back, something she couldn’t quite name about her interactions with all the neighbors, actually. Not that they were rude, she couldn’t even imagine that on this quiet, dignified street. But something about them was just . . . uninviting. Like Mrs. Grima from next door—how long has it been since she teetered over on her silver cane with a plate of pumpkin bread, or raisin bread, or zucchini bread, depending on the season? And gossipy but gorgeous Sandy, three houses down on the left and loaded with those small kids—always giving Katie that broad, wide wave now, rather than scooping her arm in her favorite “get over here and have some coffee” gesture like before. And even the Legares, who fussed over Katie whenever Nick was away at a conference (“Come for a small meal, we could all use the company,” Mr. Legare would say, Mrs. Legare nodding and beaming beside him), even they only nod and wave now, faces square and unsmiling—as though Katie’s misfortune will somehow contaminate them if she stands too close. Everyone deals with uncomfortable situations in their own way, Dana has said more than once. Maybe they think you want to be left alone. What was left unsaid: Maybe they know by now that you won’t confide in them anyway. Maybe, but Katie still has the urge to sprint over to Sandy as her kids and their little terrier pile out of that bulky SUV, as Sandy grabs the endless shopping bags and swings her baby daughter onto her hip. She wants to stand too close to this woman with the perfect face and body, with the beautiful children and the biggest house on the block and the handsome cardiologist husband, and shout, You won’t lose your husband, too. If we have coffee and gossip about the neighbors again, it won’t all go away, too!

  Katie wears Nick’s tattered sweatshirt over her own shirt, wraps the blue plaid blanket around her shoulders. She looks up at the sky, wonders how much snow is expected. Probably not much, she thinks, or someone would have mentioned it today. Still, she wishes she had asked her mother before she hung up on her, because she knows better than to turn on the news these days. Not just because she doesn’t want to see herself rushing from the courthouse, pale and clumsy, or Richard’s earnest face in a circle of cameras and microphones, but because she can’t stand to hear her husband’s name issued so casually from the mouths of the nightly newscasters anymore—newscasters who once seemed so familiar and comforting as they joked about the weather, or reported the local news, or tallied the death toll in Iraq with solemn faces, but who now just seem like impertinent strangers. The first time she heard the six-o’clock anchorwoman say it—Nicholas Burrelli, the speech pathologist shot to death two days ago in W
arwick—she had to lean against the wall to keep from falling down.

  She can’t watch the news with the volume off, either, because she never knows when the screen will suddenly fill with Nick’s smiling face, from that small black-and-white photograph the press has, one of her favorites. The first time she saw it on the news, all she could do was squint and wonder, Is that dark streak in the left-hand corner the sleeve of my red T-shirt? The photograph was taken on their trip to New Hampshire, and she remembered exactly where they were: reclining on the huge sand-colored rocks in the river that wound side by side with the Kancamagus Highway, where that lone male hiker snapped their picture. I just had to, he told them without smiling. You looked so happy. Why don’t you give me your address? He didn’t introduce himself, just pulled out a pen and paper from his weathered canvas backpack and handed them to her. The man had frizzy dreadlocks, pockmarked and scarred skin, and the clearest green eyes Katie had ever seen. And yet there was something unnerving about all that mess and his crystal stare, about the frowning look he gave her when she passed the slip of paper back to him. Katie was surprised when she received the photo in the mail almost a year later, without a note and bent at the corners, as if it had been handled too much. “Oh, cool,” Nick had said, but something about it creeped her out. It creeped her out even more that that was the picture her mother had picked out from all the albums Katie had hurled onto their bed the day after Nick had been shot, because the TV stations and a reporter from the Providence Journal had asked for a photograph.

  She stops the film, gazes at the shed. Arthur and Sarah sit closer now, and Katie is amazed once again at how familiar she is with this footage; it’s almost exactly where she wants it.

  “. . . we saw each other only once in a while, you know, because our barracks were so far apart. But there were times, yes,” Arthur says, smiling, and Katie’s eyes well up at the delicate way he takes Sarah’s hand, at the way his other hand comes up to cradle it. Like he is holding a tiny, frail bird between them.