Lies of the Heart

by Michelle Boyajian

  “Thank you, no further questions.”

  Katie doesn’t wait for the Warwick Center people to filter out of the courtroom at the lunch break; she slides toward the middle aisle today and immediately comes face-to-face with Veronica Holden and Jan Evers, who look shocked to see her this close. Katie keeps her glance casual, flicks her eyes away only as she turns up the aisle. Dana rushes behind her into the lobby.

  They wait until the hallway clears, until the last Warwick Center people duck around them and leave. Dana pulls on her coat, checks her watch.

  “I can’t stay for the afternoon session. I have a client at one-thirty I can’t miss,” she says.

  “I’m fine,” Katie says. “I have a handle on it. Go.”

  Dana raises her eyebrows. “Everything okay today?”

  “Of course. Why?”

  “I don’t know, you’re just acting . . . different.”

  “You mean confident?”

  “I guess, but—”

  “Get used to it,” Katie declares.

  “O-kay,” Dana says, drawing out the word and studying Katie’s face. “I just don’t want you to implode or anything, honey. Between this and the film stuff at night—”

  “I’ll call you when I get home tonight.”

  “Oh. All right,” she says. “I just want you to be—just be careful with Richard, okay?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said he was slick, right? That he’s up there playacting all the time? I just don’t want you to get too sucked into it.”

  “With the jurors, Dana. He isn’t acting with me. He trusts me.” Her sister looks away for a moment.

  “What?”

  “Just remember that this is his job, okay? That he’ll do whatever it takes to convict Jerry.”

  “That’s a good thing, right?”

  “Sure, Katie,” Dana says quietly.

  Dana holds her in a hug too long.

  “Richard’s waiting on me,” Katie says, pulling away roughly and ignoring Dana’s soft exclamation of surprise.

  After Dana rounds the corner, Katie steps into the lobby and pulls out her cell phone. She checks to make sure no one is listening—only a lingering court officer and a girl pushing a cart full of cups and water decanters—and pulls a paper out of her purse. She dials, waits.

  “Oceanside Realty, this is Elizabeth, how may I help you?”

  “Paul Minsky please.”

  “May I tell him who’s calling?”

  “Burrelli.”

  “I’m sorry, what was that name?”

  “Burrelli.”

  Katie only has to wait about five seconds.

  “Hey, Nick, I hoped I had the right number,” comes the same feminine-sounding male voice from her machine last night.

  “Actually, this is Nick’s wife.”

  “Oh—”

  “You said last night that the cottage is still available?”

  “Yes,” the man says slowly. “Yes. It is.”

  “I suppose we’ll have to take a look at it again.”

  Katie can hear him flipping papers around. “Right,” he says. “Okay.”

  “This is the one that’s on Topsail Island, I think you said? Nick and I have looked at so many it’s easy to lose track. I’m not even sure I saw that one myself, to be honest.”

  “Yes, Topsail Island. That’s right.” He sounds slightly less ruffled. “Mr. Barber—that’s the owner—he liked Nick and asked me to track him down.”

  “Well I’m glad he did,” Katie says, and writes down the name: Mr. Barber. “Nick might not be able to make the visit, but I’ll certainly plan to see the cottage the long weekend after Thanksgiving, if that’s good for Mr. Barber.”

  She sits in Richard’s office, watching him flip through folders in the tall filing cabinet behind his desk.

  “I don’t think Donna’s recross of Billy did much damage,” Richard says, turning to the desk with a file. “If anything, his insistence that Jerry is a sweet kid, as he put it, will help in the end, especially when we show the footage.” Richard sits back in his chair, thumbs through the file.

  “How do you do it?” Katie asks him.

  “What?” he says without looking up.

  “How do you catch them like that and make them forget themselves?”

  “I don’t know,” Richard says distractedly as he turns the pages. “Practice.” He pulls a piece of paper from the file, rolls over in his chair to a bookshelf, and runs his finger down the row of book spines.

  “You get them to talk when they don’t want to,” Katie says.

  “It doesn’t happen every time,” Richard says, his back to her, “but there are techniques.” His finger stops on a thick blue binder. He pulls out the book, rolls his chair over to the desk again. Starts to thumb through it, his attention riveted to the pages. As if Katie isn’t in the room, sitting right across from him, waiting for more.

  After a moment he looks up at her, sees her staring. He smiles apologetically. “Sorry, you were saying?” He puts the book on his desk. Gives Katie his full attention now.

  “The witnesses. How you make them talk.”

  He nods. “Right. Well, sometimes they find themselves saying the exact thing they wanted to keep hidden, because you’ve led them up to it slowly,” he says. “But I’m sure you’ve experienced this before with your documentaries. You must have your own techniques with the people you interview. Ways to help them relax and open up?”

  “Yes, sure. But most of them . . . well, they want to talk,” Katie says slowly. “But when Nick was alive,” she says, “well, I guess I—or I wish I just knew . . . ”

  Richard watches her struggle, waits patiently, like he knows what she’s going to say next.

  “I guess—I just wish I knew how to do that,” she says.

  “What?”

  “Make people talk about the hidden things.”

  2

  —Look, Katie said to Nick, pointing.—Do you see it? The projector hummed beside her on the floor, the dense blackness in their living room broken only by the cone of light leading to the wall. Nick stood with his arms crossed, peering at the footage playing on the wall: a young couple arguing in the George’s parking lot in Galilee, one of Katie and Nick’s favorite restaurants on the Rhode Island coast. When Katie had first spotted them yesterday afternoon, she’d found herself instantly scrambling for her camera, wishing the small microphone on it could pick up their voices; now, on the wall, their mouths moved silently, simultaneously, their faces full of stored-up resentments.

  Nick studied them for a few seconds, and then his eyes strayed to the chair and couch cramped together against the opposite wall, at the photographs and paintings scattered all over the carpet. With the side of his foot, Nick pushed away a framed Ansel Adams that Dana and Michael had given them for their third wedding anniversary.

  —What am I looking for? Nick said, crouching down close beside her, his hand coming up to rest lightly on her thigh. But his tone asked other questions. When will the lights come up? When can I rehang the pictures and move the furniture back? When will we talk about my day?

  It wasn’t completely his fault. Every night Katie sat at the kitchen table with Nick, listening to stories about his workday, to the progress he was making with his clients at a local high school. It fascinated her how Nick could transform simple problems like a leftover stutter from childhood or a pronounced lisp into complex speech issues that spilled over into every facet of his clients’ lives. She loved when he narrated his sessions with a fifteen-year-old boy whose father bullied him about college, or a flirtatious but troubled eleventh-grader who was pregnant and fighting to stay in school, but most of all she loved her part in this nightly routine; for once her normally reticent husband spoke freely and passionately, always taking care to gauge Katie’s reactions. She waited for his expected pauses, eagerly filling in the spaces with her praise.

  —You help them express themselves, not only in speech but in li
fe, she would tell him.—They confide in you, Nick, because you are such an important presence for them. You change their lives, their futures.

  And Nick would nod, and listen closely to her, and eventually smile—his eyes finally filling with these exalted visions of himself. And then he’d pour out more of these kids’ lives to Katie, a long, sweet elixir—complicated stories about the pressures of fitting in and teenage love triangles and experimenting with drugs that sometimes left her breathless with wonder.

  But then there was this: looking at Nick now, who stared obstinately at the wall, sighing and waiting for this chore to end. With his gaze turned away, his hand was suddenly heavy on Katie’s thigh, and she felt a familiar weight descend, so that every part of her body felt pushed down, held in place by the light touch of Nick’s fingers. Her work, hers, and he couldn’t even summon the patience to pretend it was something real to him, something important in their lives, too. Katie had felt this pressure before in Nick’s presence—sometimes, even, during those long talks at the table where she filled him with his own glory—and was able, like now, to thrust it aside quickly. understanding the dangers of probing too deeply, the terrifying reality if her vague fears were confirmed: simply not enough room in this marriage for both of them at times, not enough room for Katie. But in those ephemeral moments before she pushed this away, she at least recognized the dazzling incongruity—this leaden feeling with Nick so close, wanting him closer still. Waiting for him to remember that with each other, at least, they could share everything.

  Katie placed her hand on top of Nick’s.—See the woman on the left? There in the background, if you looked closely enough, was a witness to the couple’s fight. A middle-aged woman in a long, flowing white dress, waiting at the takeout window. Oblivious to her presence, the young couple stared each other down, their mouths contorting with anger.

  —I wish we could hear what they’re saying, Nick said.

  —Yes, but focus on the woman.

  —What about her?

  —What do you think is going on with her? Katie asked him.

  —I have no idea.

  —Try, okay?

  —Sorry, he said, his fingers squeezing her thigh.

  The couple, in their late twenties and with preppy sweaters knotted across their chests, took up most of the frame. The man turned to watch a white pickup truck snake around them as the woman gestured angrily with both hands, the arms of her sweater slipping back until the knot was at her throat; she jerked it down, kept a tight fist around it. In the background to the right, a tugboat slowly cruised into the Point Judith-Block Island channel.

  —Well, she’s pretty pissed about something, Nick said.—Her husband or boyfriend there—

  —No, not her.

  The woman Katie wanted Nick to see wasn’t the woman arguing (now turning away, then taking an aggressive step toward the man, who pushed his chest up, refusing to step back), but the other one, barely in the frame. The witness. Katie stood and threaded her way carefully to the wall, placed her finger on the middle-aged woman in the white dress.

  —Her.

  The older woman’s long, peppered hair flew into her eyes, and she lashed it away, her mouth clenched as she watched the young couple fight. Her focus on the two lovers was startling in its intensity: eyes slit and trained on them, body rigid except for an angry, robotic swiping at her hair. Her other hand held a bill flat on the counter under the window, and after a few seconds she pushed it forward and backward repeatedly—mechanical movements that made the violent emotion in her eyes seem even more disconnected from her body.

  —God, Nick said, letting out a low, shocked whistle.—She looks like she’s going to explode.

  —Yes, but why?

  —I don’t know. I mean, you know how slow they are at that takeout. Remember a couple of weeks ago when we waited forever for our chowder?

  —No, Katie said.—See where her attention is? And see—

  Katie pointed at the woman again, watched a tanned arm poke out from the window, pushing a cardboard box of clam cakes onto the counter. The woman didn’t notice. She leaned forward as the couple squared off, their faces hard and unbending.

  —See how she’s watching them, Nick? That couple is having a horrible fight, right? It looks like they want to hit each other, but this woman is completely racked with jealousy. She’s lonely, and she wants to be with someone, even if it means causing a scene in the middle of the day in a parking lot. I mean, she might have someone in her life, who knows, but that’s how alone she feels.

  Nick screwed his eyes up, and Katie held her breath.

  —Did these people know you were filming them? he asked.

  —That’s not the point.

  —I don’t get it, then, he said.—How is this part of your Save the Bay project?

  —It isn’t.

  —So what is the point?

  Almost as if the couple could hear Katie and Nick arguing now, they turned in the direction of the camera. The man looked confused and then annoyed, took a step forward. The woman, their fight immediately forgotten, placed her hand on his back, ready to follow. In the background, the older woman zeroed in on where Katie sat on the hood of her car, her face filling with guilty shame.

  Katie clicked the projector off.

  —You can learn so much from watching people, she said quietly.

  The excitement gone from her voice, she watched Nick, the way he stubbornly kept his eyes away from her.

  —Sometimes, Katie said,—if you’re lucky and you pay attention, people reveal themselves without knowing it.

  —How is any of this important to your documentary?

  —It’s important in life, Katie said. What she left unsaid: Sometimes you can know the most important things about people, about your own life, if you watch them closely enough. If that’s all you have.

  But Nick was done, was flicking on the lights and eyeing the mess on the carpet with a frown. Katie watched him, her shoulders bending under the weight.

  Three years. Sometimes Katie said it out loud when she was alone, a way to make it feel more real. Nick and I have been married for three years, she’d say to herself while grocery shopping or driving to the bank or cleaning their apartment, and then allow the days and weeks and months to unwind inside her head, a running montage of their life together. Always beginning with the same scene, though—a darkened beach, flames reaching into the sky, the shadows stretching across her husband’s bare back. And then a quick fast-forward, a blur of snapshots until she slowed down the scenes at will again, the luxurious moments when they came together—bodies moving against each other so effortlessly, so perfectly. Nick’s face and his breath and the way he felt above her, beneath her. The way he touched her.

  When darker scenes asserted themselves, demanding recognition, the film inside Katie’s head would shoot forward, stubbornly hunting down the years for happier moments. Love isn’t supposed to be perfect, her mother had said soon after Katie and Nick were married, then went on to describe the hills and dips of marriage, how the best anyone could do was get a firm grip and hang on. Dana had smiled, said, Keep your arms inside the car at all times, and Katie nodded at both of them—not comprehending for a single second how difficult it would be to navigate the disappointments, the unwritten, ever-changing sets of laws for sharing life with another person. The bewildering, splinter-thin lines between loving and fighting.

  The minor fights they dismissed easily. Nick’s refusal, for no apparent reason, to wash two forks for dinner one night, and Katie’s unexpected, lightning-quick response: reeling back and hurling a raw meatball at him. How it slapped onto the wall right beside Nick’s head, flat as a pancake, then plopped onto the floor at his feet; Nick’s eyes growing as round as the flattened meat. The few shocked, solemn seconds—the eventual eye contact—and then the release: laughing until their eyes watered and they had to lean into each other to keep from falling down. So many of these little fights, the kind Katie would take to Da
na as they shopped, or ate lunch together, or chatted on the phone. Amazing, how they were almost good, these disagreements. Not only for Katie and Nick to laugh at later, but for Katie and Dana as well—the knowing looks and language and touches that passed between two women who understood the sweet, messy implications of loving—the difference in their ages no longer defining their relationship or feeling so enormous.

  But then.

  The kinds of fights she would never include in her running tableau of their life together, would never share with Dana or Jill or anyone over a cup of coffee. The kind you kept to yourself. Starting soon after they married, impossible to predict because their beginnings were so pedestrian, too.

  —Have you seen my keys, Katie?

  Katie, from the bedroom, under the covers.—In the candy dish?

  —Nope.

  —On the bathroom sink?

  —Are you going to keep naming places or get up and help me look?

  —They’re around somewhere, Nick, we don’t live in a mansion. And then Nick, thundering into the bedroom, fists bunched at his sides.—Then get out of bed and look for a real job, and we’ll have enough money to live in a place where there are plenty of fucking places to lose my keys.

  —Whoa . . .

  —I have an early appointment, so get up and look, he said, ripping the covers off her. His face doing that thing, what Katie distractedly referred to in her own head as “gearing up.”

  —Maybe you left them in the door again?

  —Unbelievable. You’re really that fucking lazy?

  —Nice, Nick. Pulling the covers back over her, despite the growing dread.—They’re your keys, so you find them.

  —You can’t help me look, you can’t get out of bed before ten, you can’t shoot on certain days because of lighting, or you’re not inspired, or you have cramps, or some other excuse to lie around all day—

  —I get up every single morning about a half hour from now—

  —and you can’t cook or clean or do anything around here, really, except this, so why am I even shocked that you can’t get up for five minutes and help the person who actually works.