Here We Lie

by Paula Treick DeBoard

  I met Bobby’s goodbye kiss head-on, cringing at my own blend of sleep and coffee breath. Bobby didn’t seem to mind.

  He grabbed his thermos and laptop bag, patted around for his wallet and keys. “Maybe we can leave around seven?”

  “Sounds good.”

  I emptied the rest of the coffee from the pot, swirled it with cream and sugar and reached for the remote. These were my private moments each morning—coffee, the Boston Globe and whatever dishy gossip was happening on the Today show. At work, I would be slammed—first our weekly departmental meeting, with its twenty-bullet-point agenda, then the dozens of students I would see, some in two-minute bursts while I helped them find the right form or directed them to the right staff member, and others for long, tear-streaked discussions that began with a question about registering for fall classes and ended with a general unburdening about the difficulties of balancing work and school, the impossibilities of child care, the unreliableness of their transportation.

  I flipped from NBC to MSNBC to CNN, dodging commercials. Like the rest of America, I was on election overload, but it was an itch I couldn’t resist scratching. What had happened overnight? Who had said what on Twitter? Bobby and I rarely talked politics—not because we weren’t interested in elections or invested in their outcome, but because there were sticking points, touchy subjects that led us from reason to argument in about sixty seconds flat. “I thought people from the Midwest were supposed to be conservative,” Bobby would tease.

  “That’s a stereotype,” I would remind him, and besides, it was a long time since I’d been in the Midwest.

  I heard news of a suicide bombing at a market in Pakistan, then the financial report. The Dow was up, and that was a good thing. Thirty-five years old and I still had only a basic grasp of the stock market, although for the first time in my life, I actually had money there, in the form of a direct transfer from my monthly paycheck. I stretched and stood, making my way back to the sink. Behind me the news had switched back to the national scene, to politics. That’s when I heard the name Mabrey and wheeled around. It was as if I could face him head-on, as if he were in the room with me, that slow grin on his face. My head went fuzzy with the white noise of memory—rushing and pulsing, things that were long buried threatening to rise to the surface.

  The caption on the screen read Senatorial Sex Scandal.

  I didn’t even know that I’d dropped the mug until I heard it shatter, the last inch of lukewarm coffee splattering on the tile and a small shard of ceramic nicking me in the shin.

  And just like that, it all came back.

  FRESHMAN YEAR

  1999–2000

  Megan

  From the window seat on the bus, America was a blur of fields and forests, the brick fronts of small-town buildings, the jutting skylines of cities. Every bit of it was unfamiliar and terrifying. Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe Woodstock, Kansas, was my destiny, and I was only fighting it by heading all the way to the East Coast with my worldly possessions crammed into two army-green duffel bags and my old JanSport backpack. Maybe Woodstock was what I deserved after everything I’d done.

  Enough. I tried to sleep, but besides the occasional jolting was the fear that I might close my eyes and wake up in Canada or Texas, or all alone. Each time the bus stopped, I hooked my backpack over my shoulder and lined up for the exit, then rushed to the bathroom and back, afraid to be left behind. Once a man about my dad’s age tried to chat with me, but outside the bounds of Woodstock and the diner, I seemed to have forgotten how to have a polite conversation. Did I look like a typical college student or an overgrown runaway?

  “I’m not going to kill you, you know,” he huffed, and when I slid back into my seat, my cheeks were flaming.

  We were delayed fifty miles outside of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, with an overheating engine, and it took a few hours for a replacement bus and luggage transfer, then for new tickets to be issued. It didn’t occur to me until we were on the road again that I would be arriving at the bus station in Scofield much later than originally planned. Keale’s shuttle system ran on the half hour, but it stopped each night at nine. Using my wristwatch and the illuminated road signs, I calculated the distance and realized I was officially screwed. The bus wouldn’t be arriving until ten at the earliest. In the beam from the overhead light, I consulted the map supplied by a travel agent at AAA and learned that the Scofield station was five miles from campus—an impossible distance to walk with my bulging duffel bags.

  Three hours later, I pressed my forehead to the glass when I saw signs for Scofield. You live here now, I told myself—something that seemed both impossible and incredibly surreal, as if I were trying to convince myself that I’d grown a third foot. Two miles south of town, the bus rumbled past a good-sized lake, the surface shimmering with boats and Jet Skis docked for the night. Everything felt sleepy, winding down from too much summer. I squinted out the window at the license plates on the Audis and Peugeots, trying to determine if they belonged to locals or vacationers.

  Either way, I thought, wealth lives here. Privilege. People different from me.

  The main drag was settling down for the night—lights off at most of the stores. Everything had a cutesy name—To Dye For and Slice of Heaven and Scoops & Swirls, which had a giant ice cream cone protruding from its striped awning. A few families were still clustered around sidewalk tables, wearing flip-flops and suntans, catching the drips on their ice cream cones.

  There were four passengers left aboard the bus, and only two of us—myself and a man with a pronounced limp—stood to disembark at the Scofield station. The porter handed down our luggage, and the other man left immediately with his pull-along bag, dragging his bad leg behind him, aiming for the lone car in the parking lot.

  I stood with the duffel bags that contained everything I owned in the world, my gaze following the porter’s gesture to the pay phone at the end of the platform.

  “Maybe you can call a taxi, if you don’t have someone meeting you,” he said, although his voice was hesitant, rising in a question. We hadn’t passed any taxis in town.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said, not wanting to concede helplessness already. As the bus pulled away, I hauled my bags one at a time up to the platform, plopping them beneath the closed ticket window. Fishing a few quarters from my wallet, I set out to investigate the payphone. If there was no taxi service in Scofield, I’d try the college. And if no one answered there, what would I do? I could call Mom back in Kansas, where she and Gerry Tallant were probably sitting down to dinner, thrilled that I was out of the picture and that they had the place to themselves. It was a horrible idea, one that belonged to my life as a teenager, not an independent college student. How could my mom help from fifteen hundred miles away?

  Twenty yards out, I saw that the payphone was broken, its coiled metal cord dangling without a receiver.

  Well, shit.

  The night had quickly descended into late-summer darkness, the air humid and thick with insects that dive-bombed my face. I circled the station, weighing my options. In Woodstock, I would have hailed a passing car, because I was likely to know the person who stopped—someone whose kids I’d gone to school with, someone who had worked with Dad or managed a booth at the fair with Mom.

  The phrase You’re not in Kansas anymore burned in my brain. Hah, a bad joke.

  An older-model Honda passed on the road, tailpipe rattling. I wondered if the driver had seen me, or if I should have tried to flag down the car. Too late now.

  Suddenly, the urge to pee, which I’d been battling since we crossed into Connecticut, became insistent. With the bus station closed, my only option appeared to be a secluded space behind a commercial-sized trash container. I heard the Honda’s clunky tailpipe again while I was zipping up and cursed myself. Someone could be rooting through my bags right now, making off with my clothes and books and my beloved afghan with the red, wh
ite and blue Chevron stripes, not to mention my wallet and driver’s license and the painting I’d taken off the refrigerator, the oversize stick figures of Dad and Mom and me. I zipped and broke into a run.

  A man in jeans and a black T-shirt was leaning against the Honda, smoking a cigarette and not looking in my direction, as if he’d been there forever and his being there was in no way connected with me. I stopped next to the platform, catching my breath. It startled me when he spoke, as if he might be addressing a third, unseen person.

  “You know, any one of the local creeps could have come by and made off with your stuff.”

  “Are you one of the local creeps?” I asked.

  He dropped his cigarette, grinding it beneath the toe of a scuffed Doc Marten. “I am the local creep.”

  I laughed despite myself.

  “Actually, the city of Scofield has hired me to enforce its public urination laws, which is a common problem with our—” he hesitated, looking at me pointedly “—vagrant population.”

  Conscious of my unwashed hands, I jammed them into the pockets of my jeans. “Guilty,” I confessed, blushing bright red.

  He grinned. “So. Not from around here?”

  I shook my head. “Kansas.”

  “That’s what I thought. Well, not Kansas, specifically, but I knew you were from somewhere in the Midwest.”

  “I have that Midwest look about me, do I?”

  He gave me an appreciative up-and-down glance, taking in the greasy blond hair I’d pulled into a ponytail, the teeth I hadn’t brushed since that morning, somewhere in Ohio. I was wearing a baggy T-shirt—I always wore baggy T-shirts—but I felt his gaze linger for a moment on my chest. “Yep. Corn-fed goodness,” he said.

  I looked past him, out toward the road, trying to figure out what came next.

  He cleared his throat. “Isn’t there anything you want to ask me?”

  “Like what? Your name?”

  He dipped at the waist in a mock bow. “Joseph P. Natolo, at your service. Actually—I thought you might need a ride.”

  “Well, yeah. I’m a—”

  “A student at Keale,” he finished. “That’s not exactly rocket science. Come on, let me load you up.” He grabbed one of my duffel bags, mock wincing at its weight. “What did you do, pack your library?”

  I hesitated, watching him cram the bag into his trunk, already cluttered with loose shoes and clothes and fast food bags spotty with grease. “Do you work at the college?”

  He took the other bag from my grasp, his hand brushing mine. “Would you believe I teach cultural anthropology?”

  “No,” I said.

  He laughed. “Good for you, Midwest. Being gullible is never a good thing. No, I’m just Scofield’s one-man welcoming committee.”

  The trunk was so full, he had to lean his weight against it before we heard the telltale click. He looked at me. “Well? Come on.”

  * * *

  Joe’s car smelled faintly of pot, although an evergreen air freshener dangled from the rearview mirror. I belted myself in, heart hammering beneath my rib cage to warn me this was not my brightest idea. Outside my window, the scenery was a dark blur of open meadows divided by wooded areas, dense with trees. I rested my fingers on the door handle, planning an emergency exit—stop, drop and roll.

  Joe glanced at my hand. “Seriously, I’m not a psycho. I was driving by and I spotted you there, and I figured you needed some help.”

  I gave him a weak smile. “Thanks.”

  He pointed at a rectangular green sign that appeared in front of us and receded in the side mirror: Keale College, 3 Miles. “See? We’re heading in the right direction.”

  “I wasn’t worried.”

  The corners of his eyes crinkled as he laughed. “Could have fooled me. So let me ask you this. What’s so horrible about men, anyway?”

  I half turned in my seat. “When did I say men were horrible?”

  Joe rolled his eyes. “Please. You come all the way from Timbuktu or wherever just to go to a school where there are no men, except the odd janitor or history professor. What’s that all about?”

  “It’s not about hating men,” I said, my mind searching for one of the phrases from Keale’s brochures. “It’s about empowering women.”

  Joe shook his head. “Why would anyone want to deprive themselves of this?” He raised a hand from the steering wheel and made a circle in the air, meant to encompass the two of us.

  I snuck a sideways glance, trying to determine Joe’s age. At least as old as me, maybe a few years older. Still, there was a confidence to him—the way he’d tossed my bags into his trunk without getting my explicit permission, his easy, flirtatious jokes. He seemed decades more sophisticated than the boys (men, really, although they didn’t seem to have earned the title) I’d known in Woodstock. I cleared my throat. “So, do you go to school around here, too?”

  He shrugged. “It’s been a few years now.”

  It wasn’t clear if he was referring to high school or college. “Here in Scofield?” I pressed.

  “Sure. You’re looking at a proud graduate of Scofield-Winton High School, class of 1995. Well, I was proud to graduate. I’m not sure the powers that be at SWHS are thrilled to claim me. But beyond that—no. I’m not what you’d call scholar material.”

  He didn’t seem embarrassed to tell me this, but I was embarrassed that I’d asked. Without taking a single college class, I was already a snob. Joe’s car slowed, and I spotted twin brick walls, formed like parentheses around either side of a wide entryway. Giant steel letters spelling Keale College rose out of a manicured lawn. “The school was established in 1880,” Joe boomed suddenly, adopting the inflections of a tour guide. “If you look straight ahead, you’ll see the place that has been home for more than a hundred years to privileged girls from Connecticut, the larger New England area and, apparently—” this was said pointedly to me, with a raised eyebrow “—regions beyond.”

  “Ha ha,” I said.

  We passed acres of gently rolling lawn before coming to the buildings themselves—towering brick structures bathed in golden lights. Footpaths crisscrossed the campus, cutting around and between buildings. Joe stopped to let a girl pass with her rolling suitcase and then cleared his throat, preparing to launch into the next stage of our tour. “Keale was founded by prominent members of the Episcopalian Church, presumably as a way to keep young ladies away from the horrors of intermingling with the opposite sex. I hear that the school isn’t particularly religious today, although they have maintained a fine tradition of refusing young eligible bachelors entry into the sacred dormitories of said young women.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” Joe said, dropping the tour-guide impression. “And believe me, I’ve tried. Men aren’t allowed to step foot in the dorms unless they’re family. So up here we have the Commons—that’s the dining hall. Classroom buildings, the science center, fine arts auditorium, a gym complete with indoor track and racquetball courts...”

  I followed his gestures, trying to take it all in. Keale looked like its own small town, separate and distinct from Scofield, operating on its own purpose and pace. I knew from the brochures that there were just under two thousand students at Keale, but only a few were visible that night, including a girl lying on a blanket, looking up at the stars, and a trio running past in gym shorts and tennis shoes, ponytails swinging, their steps perfectly synchronized.

  “What’s your dorm?” Joe asked.

  “Stanton.” I’d read the housing form so many times that I’d memorized the details by heart. Stanton Hall, room 323 South. Roommate, Ariana Kramer.

  Joe circled a row of buildings and pulled into a parking lot that was mostly empty. He nodded his head in the direction of a brick monolith, patches of ivy creeping up its sides. “That’s it, then.”

  I unbuckled my seat belt and i
t zipped back to its holster. “Thanks for the ride. I really appreciate it.”

  “Hold on,” he said, shifting the car into Park. He popped the trunk and met me there, hoisting both of my bags over his shoulders with an exaggerated groan.

  “I can at least carry one,” I protested.

  “You ordered the deluxe service, right? This is the deluxe service.” He staggered next to me like a pack mule. At the door to Stanton, he set the bags on the ground and held out a hand, palm up. “So. Five dollars.”

  “Oh.” I blinked and felt around in my pocket.

  He laughed, shaking his head. “Just kidding. The first ride is free. Maybe someday we’ll run into each other in town and you’ll buy me a cup of coffee or something.”

  “Absolutely.”

  He turned, waving over his shoulder.

  “Hey,” I called. “You ended up not being a creep after all.”

  He put a hand to his heart. “I’m flattered, Midwest. A bit disappointed in myself, but flattered.”

  I’d only managed to drag one bag inside the dorm when I heard his car start, followed by the rattle of his tailpipe, which grew fainter and fainter until it became part of the night.

  * * *

  Five minutes later, I’d retrieved a key from the resident advisor on duty and wrestled my bags into the elevator and down a long hall, past dozens of closed doors. My roommate hadn’t checked in yet, and two neatly arranged sets of furniture greeted me—beds, dressers and desks, industrial and plain. I was too exhausted to change clothes or find my bedding, so I collapsed onto one of the bare mattresses still wearing my tennis shoes.

  You did it, I thought, grinning in the dark. You made it. You’re here.

  For the first time in hours, I thought about my dad. I didn’t know if I believed in angels that could look down from heaven or karma or anything beyond this very moment. But right then, I thought he would be happy for me.

  Lauren

  The summer after I graduated from Reardon, I spent ten lazy weeks on The Island, our five acres in the Atlantic, not far from Yarmouth. The land had been in the Holmes family for generations, passed down to Mom as the last standard-bearer of the name. With nothing expected of me, I slept in until eleven, dozed in the hammock in the afternoons, avoided my mother except at mealtimes, and took late-night smoke breaks with MK in the old gazebo, perched on the east cliff of The Island.