Here We Lie

by Paula Treick DeBoard

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I was just thinking that I felt the same way about going home,” she said.

  * * *

  Half of Scofield had crowded into the tiny upstairs gallery on Fifth Street for opening night, the overflow spilling into the reception space downstairs. My entire dorm was there, it seemed, along with the staff of the Courier, Phil Guerini and his family, and Dr. Mittel and the rest of the art department. Megan was there, of course, wearing a dress she’d borrowed from one of the Sisters for the occasion, black and tight with a back that dipped almost to her waist.

  “Too much?” she’d asked, modeling it for me in our dorm room, twisting her hair into a knot on top of her head to give me the full effect. “I’ve never been to an art show.”

  “No,” I’d promised. But seeing the rest of the crowd in their V-neck sweaters and boots, I thought, Yes.

  We’d spent a full week on the installation and the final effect was stunning: faces starkly black-and-white, their eyes boring into spectators from everywhere in the room. Megan had used an old typewriter in Phil’s office to write the labels—names, locations and dates. Katie, Battery Park, September 15, 2001. Jezzie, 47 Broadway, September 15, 2001. Armando, Wall Street, September 16, 2001.

  Along the back wall of the gallery was our masterpiece, a ten-by-ten-foot three-dimensional collage, picture upon picture, edges overlapping. From anywhere in the room it was stunning. Individually, they were stories I remembered, people I’d stopped on the street in the midst of searching for family members, people who wanted to talk about their brushes with death, about windows blown out and inches of dust burying their furniture. Together, they told a story of resilience and survival.

  It was warm in the gallery, and I was unused to being the center of attention with no other Mabreys to take the limelight. As I chatted, I could feel the flush on my cheeks, the sweat gathering in a long drip down my spine.

  The compliments kept coming: beautiful work and important and compelling. Toward the end of the night, Dr. Mittel took me by the elbow and led me to a quiet corner, where he told me that he’d arranged for the three-dimensional collage to be housed in the upstairs hallway in the art department for the rest of the semester.

  “Really?” I squeaked, looking around for Megan so I could share the news.

  “You deserve this,” he said, his hand heavy and warm on my arm. “Don’t ever doubt that.”

  The crowd in the gallery had thinned, but there were still voices echoing from the stairwell although the show had officially closed half an hour ago. From the landing, I spotted Megan at the bottom of the steps, the pale skin of her bare back, a glass of wine in her hand. She was talking with someone in dark jeans, the collar of his leather jacket up to shield his neck from the cold.

  I recognized him from the gallery, where he’d stood in front of one portrait in particular for a long time, until I’d come over and told him the story of Marco, the vendor who had given away hundreds of free hot dogs in the days following the attack. “That’s amazing,” he had said, shaking his head. “Incredible.”

  I’d thanked him for coming, and we’d shaken hands. Mine were sweaty, an extension of my overheated body, and I was grateful when he didn’t wipe his hands against his jeans.

  Now other voices echoed through the reception area, and I couldn’t hear what Megan was saying, although I caught the general tension between them. I stepped onto the stairs, feet aching in my heels, hoping Megan would spot me and both of them would turn and one or the other would say something to include me in their conversation. Instead, he reached out a hand to touch Megan’s face, and she slapped it away. “All right, all right,” he conceded, hands raised in defeated. A moment later he had exited out onto the street.

  Megan’s jaw was set, her cheeks flushed. She spotted me at the top of the stairs and said, “Oh, hey. Are we about done here?”

  “Yeah. Everything okay?”

  She nodded, her expression unreadable. “Can I help with anything?”

  “Everything stays for tomorrow, except a bag or two...”

  Megan shrugged on her flannel jacket and helped me carry a few things to the Saab, which was waiting in the lot behind the gallery. Under the lamplight, snow fell in damp, fat flakes. We shivered in the dark interior while I blasted the heater. Megan wound a scarf around her neck and angled a heating vent to blow toward her nylons.

  “I can’t believe how many people were there. At least a hundred, but I think probably more,” I said, holding my hands up to the vents.

  “Yeah, easily,” Megan said.

  “A lot of people were asking about buying the pictures. I mean, Dr. Mittel had mentioned the possibility, but I didn’t think it through seriously. I’m not sure it seems right. And what would I charge?”

  Megan shook her head, partially unwrapping the scarf from her face as the temperature rose.

  “But the best part is the collage—the art department wants to display it after the show. Isn’t that amazing?”

  Megan smiled. “Amazing.”

  “Seriously, thanks for all your help. I would never have finished in time without you.”

  “No problem.”

  The windshield wipers had cut through the sludge, creating a small, circular field of vision. I backed out of the parking space and we navigated our way through the quiet streets. It was like driving through the scene in a snow globe, the flakes coming down heavily on the windshield, reducing visibility until they could be whisked away.

  I glanced over at Megan, who was uncharacteristically quiet and was clearly not going to volunteer any information. “So. What was going on with that guy?”

  “What guy?”

  “Come on. The guy you were arguing with in the foyer.”

  She shook her head. “He’s someone I know well enough to avoid.”

  I racked my brain, trying to remember if anyone fitting that description had appeared in any of Megan’s escapades. He seemed like a detail she’d conveniently forgotten to include. We reached campus, and I began the process of circling the lot outside our building, trying to get close to the entrance. “Did you two go out or something?”

  Megan snorted. “Or something.”

  I pulled into an empty spot in the fourth row and slid the gear into Park. “What happened?”

  Her seat belt zipped back to the holder and she was out of the car, the door closing emphatically behind her. My heels struggled for purchase in the snow.

  “Hey, wait. I’m just curious,” I called.

  She turned around, half her face buried behind the scarf. “If you want him, he’s all yours. Just consider yourself warned.”

  * * *

  He came back on the second night of the show and again on the third, each time with questions about specific portraits. He was waiting for me on the fourth night with a bouquet of flowers still wrapped in florist’s plastic. The envelope said “Lauren,” and the note inside said simply “Joe.” On the fifth night we kissed in the alley behind the gallery; on the sixth night I followed his black Honda through Scofield’s residential neighborhoods to his apartment above a detached garage.

  I waited in the parked car, lights off, long enough to ask myself what I was doing, but not long enough to give a proper answer. I hardly knew anything about him, only that he’d been in Michigan for the last year, he was Scofield born and bred, an employee of a machine shop owned by his uncle. And of course, that he wasn’t Mabrey material.

  When Joe flicked on the light in his apartment, I felt like his whole life was laid out for me—a full-size mattress on the floor, sheets tangled, a table with two chairs, a couch that must have been as old as both of us combined. He reached to kiss me again, one hand on the back of my neck, and I said, “Wait.”

  He pulled back.

  “I have to tell you something first,” I said.

 
He held up a hand, his fingers gently touching my lips. “I have to tell you something, too. I know who you are.”

  My heart seized. “You do?”

  “Yeah. You’re Megan’s roommate. We went on a couple of dates. It was nothing serious.”

  My heart released, like a fist opening.

  “And,” he added, “I know your dad is a senator, which means you should probably not be here.” He gestured around, pointing to the carpet stains, the molding ceiling tile, the mattress.

  I stepped back.

  “It doesn’t matter to me who you are. If you want to know, I didn’t vote for your dad. Nothing personal. I just don’t see the point in voting.” He stepped closer, cupping my chin in his thumb and forefinger.

  “That’s okay,” I said, feeling weak, like I might crumple to the floor if he didn’t kiss me, fast. “I guess you know everything about me, then.”

  His other hand was on my back, finding the bare skin beneath my sweater. “Not even close to everything.”

  * * *

  Joe and I saw each other several nights a week through that spring, sometimes starting out at the Denny’s in Litchfield, usually ending up at his apartment, the dusty plaid curtains drawn. After our first time, I planned to tell Megan, to lay out all my cards on the table.

  It’s nothing.

  He’s cute.

  We’re just having fun.

  Joe insisted there had only been a flirtation between them. “Unrequited,” he said.

  “Doesn’t that mean you’re still pining for her, or that she’s still pining for you?”

  “Nah,” he said. “Wrong word, then. I just mean, unconsummated.”

  I could, without too much imagination, picture the two of them together. Megan and Joe were more alike than Joe and I were. And that was partly why I didn’t say anything, not at first, when I wasn’t sure where it was going or how long it would last. Also, I wanted to avoid the judgment that would inevitably come, the charge that I was only slumming with Joe, that it would never be serious. For the moment, I was enjoying myself too much to admit this was true.

  It was funny, when I thought about it. Mom had sent me to Keale to avoid the exact sort of man that Joe was, that Marcus might have been. For two-and-a-half years, her strategy had worked. Keale had been a safe haven for most of us girls, a refuge from the boys we’d known before and the men we would know later, the ones we would marry and have kids with, the ones who were part of our futures as surely as mortgages and carpools and summers on the Cape. Joe wasn’t part of the Lauren Mabrey I had been before, and we never talked about the future, not let’s get married or we’ll live here or we’ll buy that. He existed only in the present, and the present was wonderful.

  Each time I drove away from Joe’s apartment, blasting the air-conditioning to dry my sweaty hair, I told myself that there might not be a next time. Impermanence, I thought, proud as if I’d invented a new philosophy. Happiness in the moment. And then two days later, I’d be back on his street, climbing the rickety stairs to the apartment over the garage.

  By the time I realized how permanent Joe’s presence was in my life, it was too late to tell Megan. Joe and I had been together for weeks by that time, and to manage that, I’d had to invent a number of lies, claiming that I was working in the darkroom at the Sentinel or heading out to shoot pictures of a school board meeting. One Saturday morning, I told her I had to drive back to Holmes House for a family thing, and instead I met Joe at a roller rink two towns over. He was a horrible skater, as I suspected he would be—reckless and rough, taking lunges and leaps and crashing to the floor, then shaking himself off, mostly unscathed. Afterward, we went to a mall forty-five minutes away, since he needed a new pair of work boots. It felt funny at first to hold hands with him, like we were fully domesticated, just another couple at the mall. That night I paid cash for a cheap motel in Litchfield and we spent the entire night together, laughing every time someone used the ice machine outside our door.

  There were all sorts of words to describe sex, some which you could find in a thesaurus or learn at summer camp, others mentioned slyly at Keale parties by girls I suspected were virgins. And then there was sex with Joe, the kind that went beyond language to invented vocabularies, that answered questions I had never asked.

  Joe said into my ear, “I bet they can hear us in the next room.”

  “There’s no next room,” I told him. “There are no other people.”

  Later, I settled into the crook of his arm.

  This is what it could be, I thought. This is what I could have if life was different, if I wasn’t Lauren Mabrey, if Joe was someone else.

  When I returned to Keale the next day, Megan was on her bed, propped up on an elbow, a textbook open in front of her.

  “How did it go with the family?” she asked.

  “Oh, it was fine,” I answered, flopping onto my bed. I could still feel Joe’s lips on my neck, his tongue tattooing circles on my skin. “Typical Mabrey melodrama.”

  * * *

  I wished that winter could have lasted forever, but spring came in a sudden warm rush, the days hurtling closer toward summer. Joe and I spent lazy evenings with the windows open, so we could hear the sound of lawnmowers and weed whackers. When I wasn’t with him, I was with Megan and the Sisters, watching the free movies projected onto the side of the Fine Arts Auditorium. Joe was my secret life, one that felt more and more like my real life.

  At the beginning of April, Kat left a garbled, tearful message on our machine, and Megan and I played it a dozen times, trying to make sense of her words. The upshot of it was that my mother had a tumor in her breast. Kat had sobbed through the words biopsy, cancer, surgery. Megan hugged me, saying all the right things. There are all kinds of amazing advancements in cancer treatment. It sounds like they caught it soon. She’ll have the best medical care possible. I knew all this was true, even filtered secondhand through Megan’s experience with her father, but still I was racked with a horrible guilt for the dozens of ways I’d been a bad daughter.

  I went back to Holmes House for a tense weekend, and early on the morning of her operation, we drove in three cars to the Yale–New Haven campus, following each other on the predawn freeway like members of a funeral procession, Dad and Mom, Kat and me. Mom handled the operation with her customary precision, arriving at the hospital with a list of questions and shoving a practical to-do list into Dad’s hand in case she didn’t make it through the surgery. We stayed with her in the crowded pre-op space, sidestepping nurses and machinery and IV poles. With her face free of makeup, her nails unpolished and vaguely yellow, Mom was almost unrecognizable.

  We said, “It’ll be okay,” and she didn’t answer. That was typical, though—an official no comment.

  In the waiting room, Dad paced in his jeans and Red Sox hat, for once refusing to look at his laptop or phone. Kat called MK with periodic updates—this close to graduation, he hadn’t been able to break free to join us—and left messages at work for Peter and his parents, who were watching Lizzie. I went across the street in search of coffee, and when I came back, balancing three stacked cups under my chin, I spotted Kat in the window, an unconscious hand circling low on her belly. How far along was she? Was she waiting for Mom to recover before telling anyone?

  It was hours before the surgeon came out, still in blue scrubs, a mask hanging from his neck. I took notes, the way Mom would have wanted, more diligently than I’d ever taken them for any class. The tumor was encapsulated, its removal successful. Following Mom’s wishes, the surgeon had performed a double mastectomy. When we were able to visit her in the recovery room, she looked ancient and weak, her eyelids fluttering, her pale hand limp in Dad’s grasp. Her chest was puffy with tubes and bandages, hiding temporarily the fact that her breasts were gone.

  I kissed her on the temple and stood outside in the hallway to cry. More than anything I want
ed Joe to be there, to wrap his arms around me and say something soothing, even if that wasn’t our typical pattern of behavior. I wanted it to be typical, I realized. Maybe, after all, I wanted to have both a present and a future tense.

  Dad, Kat and I made a plan in the hallway, something we hardly knew how to do without Mom. Kat would stay in the hospital while Mom recovered, as long as Peter’s parents could watch Lizzie. Dad had to be back in Washington for an important vote, but he would return on Friday morning. I had to go back to Keale—even before missing days for Mom’s surgery, my grades were hovering at C’s. Still, I offered to stay, to do my part.

  Dad shook his head. “She’s going to need you more this summer, after the chemo and radiation. We’ll need you to stay with her on The Island.”

  “Of course,” I said, nodding fast. I wish I would have suggested it myself, the moment I learned about the cancer. “Anything.”

  “Actually, we should all go to The Island this summer,” Dad said, looking pointedly at Kat. There was weight behind his words, as if he were making an important announcement, one that didn’t require a vote or majority approval. “It would be good for her to have everyone around. And who knows? This might be the last time.”

  “Dad,” Kat protested, “Mom’s going to be—”

  He raised a hand, silencing her. “I only mean, with Michael graduating this spring and Lauren next spring, who knows when we’ll all be there again?”

  Kat and I glanced at each other.

  I hadn’t really thought of it that way, but everything was changing for the Mabreys. We were splintering off the stem, veering off course. This might in fact be our last summer.

  Megan

  Miriam gave me the news that spring, unable to contain her smile—a PEW scholarship, four weeks at Harvard, all expenses paid, plus a stipend that was more than I’d earned all last summer as a campus tour guide.